Mark Allen's Brick Recommendations in question

Triathlon Forum
1

The 2004 Triguide from Inside Triathlon Mag has an article by Mark Allen called Pitfall Prevention 101. Mark’s suggestion for bike/run bricks is to go extra miles on the bike and limit the run portion to less than 50 minutes. (e.g. 125 mile bike ride, then 40 or 50 minute brick run.) He actually said to toss out those 15 mile brick runs and that doing a brick run longer than 50 minutes will actually diminish your fitness.

Is this an effective brick workout? Most of my peers comment as they exit the Ironman events wishing they had done longer brick runs. One of my peers, after IM Florida, said he is going to start doing two hour brick runs, following a long bike ride, to prepare for his next IM. Will ‘going long on the bike’ and ‘limiting the brick run to 6 or 7 miles’ properly prepare you for the Ironman?

The article is pretty good and right to the point in avoiding the pitfalls of training. In magazines and on the internet, there is an abundance of training advice out there, but when a six time world champion gives advice, you’re more inclined to listen and heed the advice. The suggestion of limiting brick runs to only 50 minutes seems to fly in the face of what most IM athletes perceive they should be doing on their brick workout days. Your thoughts?

2

Joe Friel (Training Bible) advocates something similar. From my personal experience (1/2 IM distance) I agree. Their reasoning, in my words, is that a long run on very tired legs gives little or no benefit while it greatly increases the chances of injury and greatly increases recovery time.

I’ve found great success in 1/2 IM training doing very minimal running. In one base week, I’ll have a long run in the 15-16 mile range, one tempo run around 9 miles and a short run after my long bike.

3

Most coaches that I am aware of prescribe few, if any, really long bricks. It seems the current view is to run 15-30 min off a long ride to get the feel for having tired legs and that the recovery cost is to high for the long bricks. I have not done a brick run longer than 30 minutes in 5 years and had an IM PR last year.

4

I think Mr. Peter Reid said that his longest Brick run is in the 45-50 minute range as well. Didn’t seem to hamper his run in Kona this year.

5

The question is do you really plan to run in your IM? If you want to go under, say, 3:45 on your marathon run, then I think you should do longer runs on your bricks.

Perhaps you should post this on Gordo’s forum or/and get a copy of Going Long, it’s a good starting point.

6

This subject has been bantered about on Gordo’s forum many times before. The general consensus was that very long runs off the bike are not good. Increases risk of injury and elongates recovery time. What many on Gordo’s site recommended, and what my IM coach employed for me, were broken bricks. For example, do something like 3 back-to-back sessions of 25-30 bike and 3-4 mile runs. You end up with 75-90 bike miles and 9-12 miles running, but the overall fatigue and mental pain is nowhere near as high. I did longish broken bricks for about 6-7 weeks of my IM training, and had, for me, a much faster IM marathon than anticipated. I usually did alternating weeks of broken bricks and weeks of one long bike/one long run.

7

In my opinion (and this is only opinion), Long brick runs do nothing for your overall fitness, but what they do achieve is adding some often needed psychological confidence going into the big event. I know lots of guys who do 4+2 and even 5+3 to get ready for an Ironman. Doing these puts you in the danger zone with respect recovery, so I do not do them. My one long brick is in a super long training day 3/180/21.1K called Epicman that I typically do 5-6 weeks out from Ironman Lake Placid. Most would argue that this is way too long, and in general, I would agree. It is a fun training day that I do with many buddies in LP and it gives us a huge confidence boost. In general, it has lead to good results on race day, except for a major blowup last year which I attributed to other race day factors. Besides Epicman, max run off the bike is 30 min.

You can read about Epicman here:

http://www.xtri.com/article.asp?id=985

This year, Epicman will be on Jun 10th (Thu at 6 am at Mirror Lake Beach).

Dev

8

Having done the long bricks i.e. 90 mile rides followed by 2 to 2.5hr runs as scheduled by my coach in prep for IMCDA, I’ve got to say that Allen is probably right on the money. I did several of these long workouts and had no problem with injury or completing the workout. The problem comes in when you start talking about recovery. It’s really tough getting in any type of quality training (biking, running or swimming)for some time after those long workouts due to fatigue. Mentally it may give you some confidence but I’ll never do them again as after doing two of them my performance(particularly on the bike) fell off dramatically and the third one was a disaster. I did them probably 7 to 5 weeks out from my Ironman and really never recovered until probably 6 weeks after my Ironman and that was after doing absouloutely no training for those 6 weeks which lasted longer than 40 minutes/day. After that I was fine and went on to have some good late season performances.

9

Dave Scott has been preaching the bike/run/bike/run/bike/run brick for a long time now…he was the first one I’ve ever heard talking about this type of workout.

TxDude

10

Everyone is right, the recovery from these is long. However, if you really want to do one then do it at the end of your 3 week build up knowing that you’ll have a rest/recovery week coming up so you can recover from it. I think this is a way to go for some, plan it out well ahead of time and rest afterwards.

11

Search “Big Day Training” on my board. Here is a far more effective long workout for IM that won’t result in extended recovery.

Swim 60 mins, Bike 5 hours, Run 60 mins

All easy pace – meals in between all sessions – sessions are split apart – total time to complete might be up to twelve hours including the breaks between the three sessions.

Benefits – body learns to digest and function all day // low biomechanical risk // reduced fatigue

Once you get to the point that this is easy then you can make the back half of each session – steady state.

This workout addresses the key limiter of most IM athletes – base endurance.

g

12

Gordo - what would be the next step if base endeurance is not a limiter anymore?

13

Gordo - what would be the next step if base endurance is not a limiter anymore?

First up, don’t compromise your steady-state endurance training for intensity or monster sessions. I think that is a common mistake. People try massive increases in intensity or volume – and – end up failing to get the benefit because they need greatly extended rest periods. The overall goal should simply be consistent training on a daily basis for a long time.

The next step (with the workout that I posted above) is to increase the steady-state component of the training. An example of what I might do – I’ll speak my own lingo…

Swim 5-6K LCM, 3-4K main set done mod-hard to hard

Bike 5-6.5 hours, hills done steady to mod-hard, flats done easy to steady

Run 1 hour easy

So the next step is to increase the race specific component within the Big Day.

I know very few athletes where endurance is not a limiter, it requires constant work. Most IMers think that they graduate to tempo-type training (I certainly did when I started). It doesn’t work that way. The core of the optimal program is a varying amount of steady-state training, year-round.

The ultimate goal of training is to improve race performance at goal race intensity. Most of the IM field has an average race intensity of AeT, or lower. Many (most?) of the field believe that IM performance is optimized through maximizing pace/performance/endurance at LT or AeT+15/20. That’s not my experience.

If you test aerobic efficiency of most endurance athletes – lactate step test or other method – then you’ll most often find upside through increased focus on steady-state efficiency. This is a message that many don’t want to hear. Why? Because it takes a long time to get good and we’re all in a hurry.

Even elite and top AGers tend to race at average intensities that are lower than what many realize. True ironspeed is achieved from superior pace, power and endurance around AeT. Take my numbers when well-trained… AeT Power about 265w, AeT Pace just under 4 min per K. For a decent single sporter these are pedestrian performances – until you seek to maintain for 180K and 42K respectively.

More on my website, tips page – see Endurance Essentials and Training for IM.

g

14

I take Gordo’s word as Gospel. I’ve been following his suggestions for AeT training since December. Skeptical at first, but as of late I’m noticing some very nice results. For example:

  • My AeT is 150-159 on the run (I just call it 155 for training purposes). At peak fitness last summer, I’d do my long runs averaging about 7:30 miles and 165-168 HR. It felt very comfortable. However, in December, after taking two months off from running and biking, I started AeT training following gbyrn’s principles and I was only able to hold 9:00 miles running at AeT. I continued with consistent, steady work (and trust in gbyrn) for the last 3.5 months. Yesterday, went out to do a limit test to see how fast I could run at AeT (this was the day after a 3 hour ride at AeT, which is very hard for me because strength is my limiter on the bike). My running times were 7:40-7:45 miles at 156-157 ave. HR. So, I’m running almost the same pace as I did last year (then at the height of my fitness), with a 10bpm lower HR and absolutely NO speed/tempo/intensity training.

  • I’m noticing very similar gains on the bike.

  • As a side note, about 3 weeks ago I did a Time Trial day, just to see where my speed was. It was disappointing, as my times were pretty slow for what I’m used to. However, the interesting part was that in the past, after any one of my personal TTs (10k run, 20k uphill bike, 20x100m swim) I’d be trashed for the rest of the day and sore the following day (especially from running). However, I noticed that within 15 minutes of finishing each TT I felt perfect, ready to go again. In fact, I felt so good that I did all three TT on the same day with about 2 hours rest inbetween each. Also, I felt absolutely fine the day after.

I’m 100% sold on AeT training. Unlike years past, I’m actually NOT looking forward to intesity work. I’ve seen such noticable gains with less pain and recovery that it makes doing mile repeats (my former favorite running workout) seem ugly.

15

I do a 1 hour EASY spin before a long run and a 4-5 mile run after a long bike. I never do a long bike and then a long run! Takes to long for me to recover, chance of injury and overuse type stuff increases amoung many other things!

16

I have had good luck with

25-6

25-5

25-4

75 bike/ 15 run
.

17

I do the same. For my tempo and interval runs, I actually warm up with 30 min on the rollers at high RPM and then head out to run for 60-90 min. This way, I am used to running off the bike, and in the morning, I start on the bike when I am half asleep and am totally warmed up before the run thus extracting full value from the run, rather than spending the first 30 min waking up and getting going :slight_smile:

19

For Half IM – yes, likely overkill – for Half IM, I like long rides that build to the shorter of six hours and anticipated race duration.

g