I did my first tri, a sprint, off of a few months of 4 hour weeks, and finished middle of the pack. I don’t mind middle of the pack, But I didn’t finish comfortably (caught a nasty bug the day after, sick for a week).
Keeping in mind the 80/20 rule (80% of the benefits come from 20% of the work), what would be the bare minimum workouts I would have to do to be able to comfortably complete an oly distance tri?
I’m guessing 4 workouts:
1 x 3k swim
1 x 80k bike
2 x 10k run
Out of curiosity, why are you interested in the bare minimum workouts? Personally the training is the fun part and the racing is simply icing on the cake.
If you put it that way… I would say… 3xswim, 2xbike, 1xrun… so it makes 6 
Klep
Why more swimming than biking and running? The swim is shortest part of race. I would think 3 days bike, 3 days run, 2 days swim. But im not a coach.
Ed
Time is the issue. I’d try to race w/o any training if I thought I could get away with it.
Klep is not a coach either
.
No reason to it, I just doubled the race distances.
Robb, it would seem silly to comment on this without knowing your goals. Just finish? Have fun? Win? Minimums are different for each.
For me, I can finish an Olympic on almost experience alone. It would be more wise of me to swim a good bit beforehand so I’m not tired out by the swim (I’m not a good swimmer - 1:07-1:10 or so Ironman times). It would be even smarter of me to run a few times per week, if my goal is to just finish, as a 10K run isn’t as easy as a 25 mile bike (for me).
Bare minimum to PR? I need to schedule this race in line with an Ironman training regimen.
Bare minimum to be competitive? Nobody could call it a minimum.
To win? When I figure that out I’ll let you know.
Goal: Just to finish comfortably, not get sick like I did after my first race. I’m OK with being middle of the pack right now.
edit:
My first sprint (500yds/20k/5k) was 1:19. 9 minutes for the swim, 40 for the bike, the rest was run & transitions. I finished right in the middle for overall males and in my age group.
Having been friends with a number of sub 1’55’ triathletes throughout my university days I can say that you may be surprised how ‘little’ training is necessary to do very very well in a olympic distance triathlon race. Most of them were once a day exercisers. It is more about these factors:
consistency over a long period of time
finding the optimal degree of intensity so that you recover adequately for the next training day
Lots of rest
I was always told to use the elastic analogy. Pull it far enough so that it recovers and goes back into shape but don’t pull it too far and snap. The only problem with that analogy is that, unlike the elastic, the human body becomes stronger with repeated stimulus (stress).
the bare minimum is zero hours per week. Breastroke/backstroke/dog paddle for 1.5K, take two hours to ride the bike at 12 mph and walk the run. You will finish comfortably. Seriously, why even ask this question. The main fun is training. I’m sorry, but if you can’t find 7-10 hour per week to train, I’d suspect that training is not high on your list of priorities. For starters, are you riding your bike to work to the grocery store or to the barber ? How much time do you spend watching TV, and if TV is high on your priorities, can you watch your favourite show/sports and also ride a trainer for 3x45 min per week ? I can guarantee you that I can find 10 hour per week in your schedule by taking away any wasted time or multitasking.
Sorry, but I hate it when people ask about ‘bare minimum amount of training’ instead of looking for wasted time in their day where they could easily have fit in a 20 min run (which takes all of 25 min if you include shower time). If you run 20 min every day before you shower, that’s ~30K per week of running. I don’t buy the excuse that you cannot find time. Now if you don’t want to find time, that is a totally different story.
Robb-
I’m no coach but I’ve gotten fairly fast on limited time (top-ten finishes on 6-8 hours per week year-round.) I would do as recommended above – 2-3 swim workouts per week (2-3k each), 2-3 rides per week of at least 20-30 miles with some hard efforts like 2x20 minutes w/ 5 min rest, and 2-3 runs per week of 5-8 miles. I try to get in one long run of 10-12 miles at an easy pace, a tempo run with 20-30 minutes at a hard effort, and a speed session with 15-minutes of intervals at a very fast pace with adequate rest. For all your workouts think QUALITY, not QUANTITY. Make every workout have a purpose – build strength, build speed, build endurance, recover – not just “to get a workout.”
Search around online to find workouts for Sprint or Olympic racing and pick ones you think you’d enjoy, then go do try them out. And remember, if it doesn’t hurt at least a little, it’s not a workout. 
Have Fun
If you hate the question, then simply don’t answer it. No sense in being an asshole! And you’re right, training is not high on my list of priorities, ergo the question I asked.
Fair enough, it is a free world, we are both entitled to our points of view. I can respect that training is not high on your list of priorities. Perhaps I need to clarify. I hate it when people say they have no time to train and want to know the minimum amount of time need to achieve ‘X’. The reality, is that most people’s aspirations to achieve ‘X’ are higher than their will to put in the work to get there. If you concede that you do not want to do the training, then that is OK, just don’t expect much on race day. There is no silver bullet in triathlon. You end up at the level of performance that you worked for. Have fun.
Your minimums depend upon your background. I could probably swim once or twice a month because I was a swimmer through college. Swimming about 4 km once a week makes the swim fairly easy for me.
Similarly, since I trained for marathons the last five years before this one, I could probably cut back on the training a great deal and two six mile runs a week would be more than enough. Right now, running between 15 and 20 miles a week in three workouts/ week has let me finish my first Olympic race fairly easily with a very good run (at least for me).
Enough cycling? I think you would be better off riding twice a week for a shorter distance than riding 80 KM once a week. But, if you are really looking a bare minimum just to finish, you might not need much more than 40 KM on the bike once a week. Personally, I finish in the BOP on the bike even spending three days a week and more than 80 KM/week on the bike because I have no real cycling background.
You may not realize what the 80/20 rule or “Pareto Principle” is. It’s an old business idea:
80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes.
in sales:
80% of the sales results from 20% of the sales force.
or, in triathlon:
80% of the results stem from 20% of the training.
And I’m not the only wacky one to apply it to tri training: I read about it in Friel’s book.
I’m not saying I have no time to train, I’m saying I have other priorities that limit my training time. 2 of those priorities would take as much time as I could give them.
I just want to know what the 20% is.
Yeah, I have heard of 80/20 or 90/10 or 95/5, call it what you want. You might find the holy grail, or you may not. For the rest of us, who actually enjoy training, we’ll concentrate on the other 80/90/95%. Looks like you are ACTUALLY trying to achieve some level of results if you care about that final 20%, so if I read you correctly, you might actually fall into the category of folks who are trying to achieve “X” without doing the work to get there (ie not do the other 80%). Experience through 20 years of racing tris of all distances and coaching a number of friends has shown me that one might achieve X through concentrating on that elusive 20% that is often a shifting target, but those that actually suck it up and do the 80% of mundane stuff will have a higher likelihood of achieving ‘X’. You can decide your approach based on your priorities, but don’t be dissapointed if you don’t get to ‘X’.
Dude, you really, really don’t get it.
Thanks my friend, I did stochastic theory as part of my masters in EE. Its all irrelevent in the context of tris. A wise high school chemistry prof told me that the moderately intelligent guy who does the work always gets better results than the smart guy who does no work. You can replace intelligence with athletic genetics in the case of triathlon. Bottom line, there is no substiture for work. You can apply any statistical theory you want, but in my view the wise chemistry prof was correct in more ways than I can imagine.
Good luck on finding that 20% holy grail :-). You might spend as much time finding it as it would take to do the other 80%
I’ll offer my opinion, having just completed my 6th oly tri this season and my 10th tri ever. BTW - I sort of agree with some of the other posters, but will try not to be too judgmental.
What’s your weakness? Train that the most.
My weakness is cycling, so I might do a 40-50 miler and a 20+ miler at the minimum (4+ hours a week) My running is strong and comfortable, so one 6-8 miler and 2x3 miles a week (2 hours a week) is plenty (for me) to make the run easy, Swimming 2X a week for 2,000 yards would suffice to get me through the swim. That still makes for 7+ hours a week.
I would guess lots of short workouts beat fewer long workouts. I would also say 8-10 weeks of consistent training is about enough, too.
Just my 2 centavos
-TB