I’m coming off my biggest volume block ever and now have two months to duathlon nationals. I’m going to do a weekly bike/run time trial (13.2 ride/3 mile run) and then threshold workouts on the bike and run later in the week. If I averaged 13.5 hours riding and 7.5 hours running without speedwork before, what might be a recommended target volume to accompany the increased intensity?
Chad
Chad…more is more…keep up the volume and jack up the intensity :-). Seriously, I can’t recommend anything useful :-(. Maybe Desertdude will tell you to go on the 5hours per week program so that he can hammer your butt 
So, you’re just going to flip a switch and turn on the intensity? No transition?
Interesting.
This is Chad…his basework is likely already at sub 40 min 10K pace for the run. Its not like he is going from 6 min per K to 3:20! Which is why I kinda joked and said that he should keep the volume the same and just notch up the intensity a bit…he is likely in a position where he can deal with the additional intensity load on top of the existing volume (or marginally reduced volume…ex…one light easy day before his really hard day).
Dev
So, you’re just going to flip a switch and turn on the intensity? No transition?
Interesting.
What’s interesting about that? Seems like a pretty normal thing to do IMO.
So, you’re just going to flip a switch and turn on the intensity? No transition?
Interesting.
What’s interesting about that? Seems like a pretty normal thing to do IMO.
Yep, at some point you just got to let it rip!
Hi Chad, how many threshold workouts will you be doing each week for run and bike?
it depends on how technical you want to get. What I’ve been doing since getting old and losing my ability to tolerate much intensity (or volume, or… 
is a simple calculation of time x RPE for each workout, and summing this over a week. That gives me a point score which is intended to roughly simulate the more accurate TSS calculation that the good Dr. Coggan developed, see cyclingpeaks for details. Then the idea is to track this score and make sure the addition of speedwork/intensity doesn’t spike the score, because that would probably be a double-plus-ungood thing.
I tried this on last year’s training log data, and by golly it predicted my late-season crash
The technical way to do it would be to track TSS on the bike, and use Philbert’s TSS-like GOVSS scoring for the run utilizing a GPS, see his site.
Two months of speed is going to require some variety:
Warm-up/ Cool Down/ Strides
First Month: My track session is always led off with 1600/3200 of ins/outs (Corners at Marathon Pace and Straights at 5k pace.). Then some set of 600s/800s or 1000s). Followed by 1 mile tempo and then Strides.
My tempo days are either 5 miles tempo or 2x 2mile or 2x 5K.
2nd month: lengthen Ins/ outs to 5k and work in the 400s/ 600s.
My volume dial goes all the way to eleven.
Why not just make 10 on your dial higher volume?
Chad, you the man, go get them.
Dave
But this dial goes to eleven!
I find it interesting, because it’s not the way I would approach it. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m saying it’s interesting to go from zero quality to quite a bit of quality.
Anyway:
I’m thinking CDW will know how much to reduce volume because he’ll feel like he needs to after the first Bike/Run TT in order to recover for his next bike or run workout.
And:
If he’s going to progressively overload before nationals his workouts that don’t incorporate quality will probably remain at a constant level for those weeks while his quality workouts get longer and/or faster.
What I’ve been doing since getting old and losing my ability to tolerate much intensity (or volume, or… is a simple calculation of time x RPE for each workout, and summing this over a week. That gives me a point score which is intended to roughly simulate the more accurate TSS calculation that the good Dr. Coggan developed
That would be Dr. Carl Foster’s “session RPE”, and although no one has done any specific research on the issue, on average I would expect it to track w/ TSS rather closely (see slide #29 of this presentation: http://www.cyclecoach.com/andycoggantrainingload/).
Hi Don,
I’m going to do one each, probably running on Thur and Cycling on Friday. Nothing too crazy, probably just a 20 minute threshold run and then a couple of 15 minute rides a little above race pace. Just reading all that stuff about TSS gives me a headache trying to follow. That is why I ditched my powermeter as well. It takes the fun out of it for me.
Chad