New to Triathlons, looking for advice

Triathlon Forum
1

Hey all,

New to tri’s and hoping ya’ll can give me some advice. I know I should get a coach, but I’m a poor grad student… Anyway, I’m hoping to do a couple of tri’s this year, hopefully peaking for an Xterra in August. (1600m, 20 mile mtb, 10k trail run)

A quick history if it helps-
I have a pretty good background in cycling, I raced a few world cups as a junior (not that I did much more than fetch water bottles and try not to crash/get dropped). Raced on the mountain bike in college. Good, but nothing special. I could podium in most regional “A” races and did fairly well in national races when I could keep the rubber side down.

25-30 hour weeks burned me out pretty fast. Switched to running, never took it too seriously. Lot of trail running, few small races. I lived with the XC team while at school, and trained with them occasionally (well, with the freshman girls). PR’d in a naked 5k (15:05)

After college I took up rock climbing and kayaking. (Mostly to impress women. It didn’t work as well as I had hoped.) Never took it too seriously. Really enjoy it, but I’m an endurance athlete at heart and now I want to get back into training.

I’m a grad-student, so I have mucho free time. But for my sanity, I’d like to keep my training to 12-16 hours a week. I’m not looking to turn pro or anything so I feel the law of diminishing returns applies. That said I would like to get back on the podium (at local races).

Currently my fitness looks like this:

  • 7-ish min miles for 10+ miles

  • ride at 20mph (road bike) for 50-60 miles, flat

  • swim, 1:33 to 1:38/ 100 x 10 (with a long rest between 100’s… (This was my first time swimming in 2 years so I was friggin pumped!)

  • Sub 7 Beer Mile

What do ya’ll think of this http://www.trifuel.com/triathlon-training/Half-Ironman-Training.php as a program? I was going to follow it starting at week 12 and repeat weeks 12-14 until I have a better idea of what I can/want to do

Thanks All!

2

A couple of thoughts:

  1. Work on your swimming; your bike and run are already in good shape, you’ll get the most improvement in the water.

  2. Just start doing some tris. Learn how fast you can go on the bike without paying too much on the run. See if can really hold that aero position for 40k and then run w/o back cramps. Learn to deal with the crush of flailing arms around the first buoy. There’s a lot more to being good at tris than just being fast at three sports, and races are the best place to learn (plus you have people to talk with about it after).

  3. If you are trying to impress girls, forget biking and take up guitar.

3

I’m a grad-student, so I have mucho free time.

First and foremost, I need to transfer to whatever program you’re in. I’m a grad student and I often work 60+ hours a week! (It’s 7:30am, I’ve been at work for two hours, and my only reprieve is goofing around on ST for a few minutes while I wait on a reaction.)

Now, getting back to your training plan. You never specifically mention that you’re interested in long distance tri’s–half iron and up. If you’re talking about doing local races and such, I’d think you’re probably looking to start with sprint and olympic distance races. If that’s the case, I think you’d be better served finding a training program that focuses on speed rather than distance. Oh yeah, and as mentioned before, find one that has a swim bias since that’s your weakest area. If you’ve got 12-16 hours of time to devote, you can easily be in the pool 4x a week.

Good luck and welcome to triathlons!

4

Hey all,

New to tri’s and hoping ya’ll can give me some advice. I know I should get a coach, but I’m a poor grad student… Anyway, I’m hoping to do a couple of tri’s this year, hopefully peaking for an Xterra in August. (1600m, 20 mile mtb, 10k trail run)

A quick history if it helps-
I have a pretty good background in cycling, I raced a few world cups as a junior (not that I did much more than fetch water bottles and try not to crash/get dropped). Raced on the mountain bike in college. Good, but nothing special. I could podium in most regional “A” races and did fairly well in national races when I could keep the rubber side down.

25-30 hour weeks burned me out pretty fast. Switched to running, never took it too seriously. Lot of trail running, few small races. I lived with the XC team while at school, and trained with them occasionally (well, with the freshman girls). PR’d in a** naked 5k** (15:05)

After college I took up rock climbing and kayaking. (Mostly to impress women. It didn’t work as well as I had hoped.) Never took it too seriously. Really enjoy it, but I’m an endurance athlete at heart and now I want to get back into training.

I’m a grad-student, so I have mucho free time. But for my sanity, I’d like to keep my training to 12-16 hours a week. I’m not looking to turn pro or anything so I feel the law of diminishing returns applies. That said I would like to get back on the podium (at local races).

Currently my fitness looks like this:

  • 7-ish min miles for 10+ miles

  • ride at 20mph (road bike) for 50-60 miles, flat

  • swim, 1:33 to 1:38/ 100 x 10 (with a long rest between 100’s… (This was my first time swimming in 2 years so I was friggin pumped!)

  • **Sub 7 Beer Mile **

What do ya’ll think of this http://www.trifuel.com/...Ironman-Training.php as a program? I was going to follow it starting at week 12 and repeat weeks 12-14 until I have a better idea of what I can/want to do

Thanks All!

My thoughts- start a blog (ala DaveRoche), post the link, let me follow it. You have a good sense of humor about this whole triathlon thingy we all do and it would give me something to read when grad school makes my head hurt.
Good luck with training.

5

I agree with points 2 and 3, but not number 1. Yes, the swimming can improve and will likely improve the fastest out of the 3 disciplines, but the biking will yield the best results overall. To go from 20 to 22 mph for a half Iron is about a 12 to 15 minute savings. Even if you went from a 1:33 to a 1:15 per 100 for a 1.2 mile swim, you would only save about 5-6 minutes.

If you can hold 1:33 for 1000 yards, work on swim endurance and go 20 x 100 at 1:30. That is just getting to the pool 3 times per week and doing a 400 warm up, 1500 - 2000 main set, 200 cool down.

Plus, the 7ish pace run will be greatly affected by the bike, so work on bike more.

6

  1. Ugh. I hate swimming. Not the actual swimming part, I just don’t like being indoors (confined area with screaming/peeing kids) and the old septic systems in my town make open water swimming an equally unpleasantness choice. Should I man up and join a masters club, or am I not fast enough for that yet?

  2. Top end speed has always been my limiting factor. I regularly got my @ss handed to me in crits and TT’s during my bike racing days. So if I’m focusing on Olympic distance and Xterra’s (no desire to do an IM or HIM, yet) i’ll need to work on that. Would 12-14 hours of faster-ish work be better (for my goals) than 15-20 hours of training at a slightly slower pace? Seems like 12-14 is about the average for ST’ers doing shorter races. I’ve always been stuck on ‘more is better’. But that’s not always the case, I suppose. Even though I seem to do better on less miles and more intensity. Any recommendations for ‘off-the-shelf’ training plans that would work for me?

  3. tkeru - “reactions” sounds science-y. I’m thinking you’re chemistry grad student? Whew, that all sounds like a lot of work. Too much thinking for me, I’ll stick to goofing off in the social sciences. (God I hope my advisor isn’t on the ST message board)

7

swimming is my weakest led by far. ill place 115th in swimming, 1st on bike and usually top 5 on the run. its horribly frustrating, but masters classes definitely help. i swim 2:00 per 100meters, and i’m in a masters club (though in the slow lane) so def do it.

8

Sorry I didn’t see this earlier.

Quantity without quality is just wasting time. Your body and muscles have to get use to harder work and faster speeds to be able to perform in a race. You need endurance and fitness to get to the end of the race.

If it came down to it, yes, I would put in less hours per week of training, and put in shorter faster periods of training. During the weekdays, Quality over Quantity, you should be around 1 hour per discipline, but make it count and be spent after doing the workout. Do each discipline 3 times per week Monday thru Friday. Put in a long run and long ride on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday and Sunday are your Quantity over Quality days. Recover by eating well and getting rest (not watching tv and eating bon bons, but feet up and protein and carbs).

Recovery is a huge part of being able to wake up the next day and go again.

Training plans - I think the best is to get a coach OR get a training peaks account (www.trainingpeaks.com) and download a training plan from their list.
There are a lot of good coaches on this site, just check out the list. If you live on the West Coast, ask DesertDude for some advice as he knows a lot of people out there in the California area.