POLL: Intensity How Often (7 days of 1 hour swim, bike or run)

Triathlon Forum
1

Amplifying on something Erikmulk was getting at in one of the swim threads that slowman started, let’s say you were doing a hypothetical 7 hour training week single sport only and we made it simple, 7 days in a row of 1 hour only. To make it more simple, let’s make the 7x1 hour week of biking on the trainer so none of the overhead of getting out of town through traffic and wasting time…just sit on the trainer, warm up and get into your “main set”.

How many times would you go with high intensity given that the duration is fairly short and the overall volume is not “that high” (although 7 hours of running alone or 7 hours of running alone may feel like high volume to many triathletes) and there are zero “long” workouts.

2

4 for bike
5 for swim
2-3 for run
.

3

I’m relatively new to planning my own training but I did get my FTP from 296 to 350 over the last 10 months so maybe I know more than I think.

Here’s how I’d probably do 7 1-hour rides.
1: 2x20 at 90% w/ 5 min at 75% between. Build the 2x20 by 1% until you can do that workout anymore.
2: 1 hour at 75%.
3: Hill climb and sprint workout. 3-4x3 min HARD, like 120% with big recoveries. Put a 30s 200% sprint inbetween each of those.
4: 45 min of sweet spot alternating 5 min at 90%, 5 min at 85%.
5: 1 hour at 75%
6: 2x20 at 85%
7: 1 hour easy spin

Take that with a grain of salt. I used the building 2x20 for 5 weeks and it helped a lot, and the sprint and climb workout was just fun to do on Zwift. I also use Zwift races a lot to mix it up and embrace the pain.

4

I’m relatively new to planning my own training but I did get my FTP from 296 to 350 over the last 10 months so maybe I know more than I think.

Here’s how I’d probably do 7 1-hour rides.
1: 2x20 at 90% w/ 5 min at 75% between. Build the 2x20 by 1% until you can do that workout anymore.
2: 1 hour at 75%.
3: Hill climb and sprint workout. 3-4x3 min HARD, like 120% with big recoveries. Put a 30s 200% sprint inbetween each of those.
4: 45 min of sweet spot of 5 min at 90%, 5 min at 85%.
5: 1 hour at 75%
6: 2x20 at 85%
7: 1 hour easy spin

Take that with a grain of salt. I used the building 2x20 for 5 weeks and it helped a lot, and the sprint and climb workout was just fun to do on Zwift. I also use Zwift races a lot to mix it up and embrace the pain.

Thanks for that info and congrats on the massive progress. Would you be comfortable with this same intensity (or equivalent) breakdown while swimming 7x1 or running 7x1

5

Edit: Just re-read your post and realized what you asked after typing out the below. I wouldn’t be comfortable with the same intensity for running. It is just too hard on your body. Swimming is another story.

Happy to weigh in, but I don’t know how much my run/swim advice could be trusted (my running sucks and I usually decide on my swim workout when my toes hit the water).

Swim (SCY)
1: MS: 20x50 w/ 10s rest
2: MS: 3x500 @ CSS, surging effort for 25 every 100 yds
3: MS: 8x200 HARD (for me that’s 2:40) with 20s rest.
4: just swim, keep it all easy.
5: MS: 5x400 @ CSS, pick up last 100.
6: MS: 10x200 HARD (for me that’s 2:40)
7: just swim, keep it all easy

Run:
1: Jog for an hour. Aerobic time on your feet.
2: 40 minutes of fartlek at 1:00/mi faster than yesterday’s average. Keep it interesting, intervals no longer than 60s.
3: Jog for an hour.
4: 4-6x90-120s hill repeats at aerobic pace
5: 2x15 min tempo run
6: Jog for an hour
7: Jog for an hour

To explain my run plan a bit, my body gets beat up a lot more when I run every day. This amount of intensity would probably not break me, and from what I understand the engine is built by just getting out the door and running. If you can commit to those intervals and recover in the days after, you’ll get faster.

As for the swims, I just do whatever sounds interesting. Zero science there. 200s and 400s pushed my average swim pace from 1:38-40 to 1:28-30 this season. And allowed me to do swims up to 6k without feeling too beat up.

6

2x for the run.
Maybe 4-5x for the bike
Not sure about the swim. Maybe 2-3x.

7

I only run and it’s around 8-9 hours total per week. I’m working with a well respected run coach that everyone here knows and many look to for guidance. Just looked at my last week of running and counting what’s in store for tomorrow I’ll have about 20-25 mins of total intensity across the week. The rest is all easy and moderate pace.

8

I’m 55 and recently “returned” to triathlon after being a way for a decade. I kept up the running during that decade, but rarely did I do anything up-tempo. What I quickly discovered, upon my triumphant return, is that my body now takes F**KING FOREVER to recover. Over and over again, I’ve had to dial back the intensity of my training schedule by adding rest days. It aggravates me more than I can describe. I keep wondering, how the hell I’m going to become competitive again when I can do so few workouts that are genuinely hard or long.

I can’t even do ride or run easy days instead, because they seem to slow recovery. Instead, I have to take 2 days off from running/cycling after each run or ride day. I go for a 2-3mi walk with the dogs. There is no longer any such thing as a moderate easy run or ride day. No sense to it, near as I can tell, so only hard ride/run days. Help, I’m a 30yr old trapped in a 55yr old body.

Week.
Swim. 2 hard days, 2 easy days. Lift weights 1 day.
Ride. 1 Hard day.
Run. 1 Hard day.

In my 20’s and 30’s I could do double-daily workouts week after week. I could PT all day, chase girls half the night, and get up early and PT some more. PT=military speak for physical training. In my 40’s I had to go to a easy, hard, rest, 3 day schedule which would have been workable if I’d done an easy week each month. But of course I was too stupid and hardheaded to take an easy week. This kind of thing tends to only be obvious in retrospect. But now that I’m in my 50’s, it takes 2 wks to do 1 wks worth of workouts. Pitiful.

9

Interestingly, I’ve had a rethink of my training as of late.

I’ve been very consistent in my Oly-sprint race times in the last 7 years, with a bit more variability in the HIMs due to course and conditions. I race similar races repeatedly as often as possible to get year-to-year comparisons and most of my oly-sprint races are minutes if not seconds apart, with slightly improvement in the last few years.

I tried a bunch of stuff - last year at one point I did ALL hard runs 3-4x/wk + ALL hard bikes 2x/wk (FTP pace or higher, not too long) with 1-2 long rides and runs on top.

This season I’ve done a lot less hard stuff - 1x/wk of either run or bike or swim and 1 session of semi-hard S/B/R per week, with nearly identical results and not a lot more training volume.

And now that I’m well into the 40s bracket, I’m believing that more recovery and less intense training is the way to go for long-term performance, and especially since the gains from the super hard short-distance stuff tops out very quickly (like 98% of max ability in <4wks of training if you’re coming from a good base.) I’m going to spend the next season/year being a lot more gentle on myself for most of the week and be well recovered/rested for that ‘hard/intense’ day, and take the longer volume days with overall easier intensity and likely less volume than I have in the past, but peak more correctly for race day.

10

I could do high intensity swim workouts every day. Intense Biking every other day, with an ez day in between. Intense Running? Every 3rd day at best.

11

**I can’t even do ride or run easy days instead, because they seem to slow recovery. Instead, I have to take 2 days off from running/cycling after each run or ride day. I go for a 2-3mi walk with the dogs. There is no longer any such thing as a moderate easy run or ride day. **

We’re the same age so this interests me. I’m not making any kind of comeback so you’ve got me there…

How long has it been since you found you’ve had to take 2 days off between workout days? Are you seeing any change in your recovery ability?

12

I could do high intensity swim workouts every day. Intense Biking every other day, with an ez day in between. Intense Running? Every 3rd day at best.

I did not reply with what I would do, but here goes
Swim = 6 days with at least my main set being intense to very intense. The other day at least a few pickups for 25 m, so still some intensityBike = 5 days with either intervals of some sort, hills or TT of some sort, 2 days easy but even then I may do some pickupsRun = 2 days hills, maybe one day track or a third day of hills. The other days, I would add 10 minutes where i jog 45 seconds and accelerate for 15 seconds

Note this is based on only 7 hour training week. I am used to training 15-16 hours per week average for the last 30 years (basically 750-800 hour year). So 7 hour week is really coming down in total volume. On the 14 hour tri week, 4 days swim intensity, 3 days bike intensity, 1 day run intensity. Typically would put the intensity in all three sports on the same day and do the intensity run first, intensity swim second, intensity bike last (non technical sport…so by the time I get to the intensity bike, my FTP range may be down 5-10% for that day, but no big deal).

13

Interestingly, I’ve had a rethink of my training as of late.

I’ve been very consistent in my Oly-sprint race times in the last 7 years, with a bit more variability in the HIMs due to course and conditions. I race similar races repeatedly as often as possible to get year-to-year comparisons and most of my oly-sprint races are minutes if not seconds apart, with slightly improvement in the last few years.

I tried a bunch of stuff - last year at one point I did ALL hard runs 3-4x/wk + ALL hard bikes 2x/wk (FTP pace or higher, not too long) with 1-2 long rides and runs on top.

This season I’ve done a lot less hard stuff - 1x/wk of either run or bike or swim and 1 session of semi-hard S/B/R per week, with nearly identical results and not a lot more training volume.

And now that I’m well into the 40s bracket, I’m believing that more recovery and less intense training is the way to go for long-term performance, and especially since the gains from the super hard short-distance stuff tops out very quickly (like 98% of max ability in <4wks of training if you’re coming from a good base.) I’m going to spend the next season/year being a lot more gentle on myself for most of the week and be well recovered/rested for that ‘hard/intense’ day, and take the longer volume days with overall easier intensity and likely less volume than I have in the past, but peak more correctly for race day.

I don’t think that you need any more recovery in your 40’s than in your early 30’s. I’d posture that even in your early 50’s there should be limited need for more recovery. But all of the items below can affect need for more recovery:

Sleeping 8 hours per nite or not. Treating sleep like a “training block and getting all your sleep in”…not shortchanging the 56 hour per week targetKids. It is what it is. They get in the way of recovery especially item 1 aboveCumulative effect of alcohol and sugar on organs. OK ask yourself, what it is that makes you recover faster or slower. Well, your organs are the factory that rebuilds you for tomorrow. Anything you do to poison them will make them less efficient. We kill them incrementally every day gradually by doing bad things to themToo much caffeine…inteferes with 1 and 3Not managing work and family stress. Interferes with 1 and 3. It is our choice to see the glass half full or half empty on the same thing and worry or not about things way outside our control that eat us out from the inside. If you can’t control it, don’t let it control your emotions/stressLosing body symmetry over time. All those aches and pains and compensation. If you don’t straighten them out constantly, it just takes longer to recover because every workout is more damaging and pulling you out of alignment. Why do some athletes never get injured…they are more coordinated and more symmetrical.
Most of this stuff, no one wants to pay attention to. They just say, “I am getting old”. The best masters athletes, I see, they take care of all this stuff more than the training. The training becomes the easy part after that.

OK back to the thread (sorry, not picking on you, just trying to remind my masters peers what our choices are)

14

Zero in training

I save it for races, as I will do tomorrow
.

15

At this point you need to not do hard days of bike or run at all. I came back at 45 after 20 years of just swimming and the first couple of years were humbling. But it does get better. But there is a pretty big tail off between 50 and 60 in terms of performance.

16

**I can’t even do ride or run easy days instead, because they seem to slow recovery. Instead, I have to take 2 days off from running/cycling after each run or ride day. I go for a 2-3mi walk with the dogs. There is no longer any such thing as a moderate easy run or ride day. **

We’re the same age so this interests me. I’m not making any kind of comeback so you’ve got me there…

How long has it been since you found you’ve had to take 2 days off between workout days? Are you seeing any change in your recovery ability?
From age 46-54 I mostly just ran an easy 4-6mi prob averaged every 3days. My last 4yr triathlon effort ended a decade ago. I was overtrained and exhausted. The hard, easy, off, pattern of runs and rides just didn’t give me enough recovery time, but I refused to adapt.

Now, 10yrs later, I thought I could do hard, easy, off, if I just took some extra days off now and then. I was starting to understand cumulative training stress better. Like if you’re fresh you might recover from a workout in 2 days, but if you were a little (not a lot, just a little) optimistic re. your “I’m recovered” appraisal, then it’s going to take 3 days to recover from that same workout.

There’s really 2 errors here. The first error is being over-optimistic and failing to recognize that one needed another recovery day. The 2nd error is failing to recognize the impact of cumulative stress so that the workout that last week might have needed 2 recovery days, this week needs 3 recovery days.

I’m a hardhead so it’s pretty easy to convince myself that I’m “recovered enough, lets do the workout.” I’ve had to discipline myself to knock that shit off, to be more conservative in my estimate of my state of recovery. It’s awful goddamned hard to convince one’s self that if you’re gonna make a mistake re. recovery, make it “too much” recovery.

I have found that the easiest way to determine if I’m recovered from the last run or ride is to hustle up a couple flights of stairs after going for a walk. If going up the flights of stairs is effortless, I’m recovered. If they’re not effortless than no matter how much I think I’m pretty much recovered, I’m fooling myself.

Bottom line last. I can’t really answer your question exactly. Between age 46-54 I wasn’t really “training”, I was just trying to be “not fat”. In addition to the running, I did a lot of weight lifting, and other stuff, but nothing was so hard and frequent that recovery was a big deal. So I don’t know when I transitioned from the 3 day cycle of “hard, easy, off,” to the status quo where I get only 2 hard run/rides per week. What I can tell you is that I’ve always been “young for my age”. I was late losing baby teeth, late getting as big and tall as everyone else, late having to shave, I was pretty much 4yrs late on everything.

17

Interestingly, I’ve had a rethink of my training as of late.

I’ve been very consistent in my Oly-sprint race times in the last 7 years, with a bit more variability in the HIMs due to course and conditions. I race similar races repeatedly as often as possible to get year-to-year comparisons and most of my oly-sprint races are minutes if not seconds apart, with slightly improvement in the last few years.

I tried a bunch of stuff - last year at one point I did ALL hard runs 3-4x/wk + ALL hard bikes 2x/wk (FTP pace or higher, not too long) with 1-2 long rides and runs on top.

This season I’ve done a lot less hard stuff - 1x/wk of either run or bike or swim and 1 session of semi-hard S/B/R per week, with nearly identical results and not a lot more training volume.

And now that I’m well into the 40s bracket, I’m believing that more recovery and less intense training is the way to go for long-term performance, and especially since the gains from the super hard short-distance stuff tops out very quickly (like 98% of max ability in <4wks of training if you’re coming from a good base.) I’m going to spend the next season/year being a lot more gentle on myself for most of the week and be well recovered/rested for that ‘hard/intense’ day, and take the longer volume days with overall easier intensity and likely less volume than I have in the past, but peak more correctly for race day.

I don’t think that you need any more recovery in your 40’s than in your early 30’s. I’d posture that even in your early 50’s there should be limited need for more recovery. But all of the items below can affect need for more recovery:

Sleeping 8 hours per nite or not. Treating sleep like a “training block and getting all your sleep in”…not shortchanging the 56 hour per week targetKids. It is what it is. They get in the way of recovery especially item 1 aboveCumulative effect of alcohol and sugar on organs. OK ask yourself, what it is that makes you recover faster or slower. Well, your organs are the factory that rebuilds you for tomorrow. Anything you do to poison them will make them less efficient. We kill them incrementally every day gradually by doing bad things to themToo much caffeine…inteferes with 1 and 3Not managing work and family stress. Interferes with 1 and 3. It is our choice to see the glass half full or half empty on the same thing and worry or not about things way outside our control that eat us out from the inside. If you can’t control it, don’t let it control your emotions/stressLosing body symmetry over time. All those aches and pains and compensation. If you don’t straighten them out constantly, it just takes longer to recover because every workout is more damaging and pulling you out of alignment. Why do some athletes never get injured…they are more coordinated and more symmetrical.
Most of this stuff, no one wants to pay attention to. They just say, “I am getting old”. The best masters athletes, I see, they take care of all this stuff more than the training. The training becomes the easy part after that.

OK back to the thread (sorry, not picking on you, just trying to remind my masters peers what our choices are)

I do think you need more recovery, but you’re right in that the difference between the needed extra recovery for a 40 year old and a 20 year old is actually probably pretty small.

I do strongly agree with the limitations/factors you list above, which unfortunately just get a LOT bigger as you get older and have the complications of life, family, and health get in the way.

My biggest physical limiter for me, in fact, doesn’t have anything to do with triathlon. It’s the inability to get long, sustained periods of continuous sleep. It’s not a matter of scheduling for me - I’m past the waking kids in the morning phase, my job doesn’t require night work, and my young kid requires me to stick to a very regular 9PM bedtime schedule which I don’t vary from often. However, I just have some genetic traits that make me wake up before I’m fully refreshed, and it has nothing to do with anxiety or stress as well. I’ve seen sleep specialists, and already have a CPAP machine (despite being not fat at all) and they help a little, but for sure, it’s a real challenge for me to get a straight 8 hrs of restful sleep. The older I’ve gotten, the worse it’s got, and I have to meticulously plan my sleep strategy including the inevitable early wakeups to make the workouts happen.

Never had this problem in my 18-30 years old years. And during those years, I could be dog-tired from lack of sleep (even though I avoided that from the most part) and could perk up quick with a warmup run. Now if I try that same workout on little sleep, I won’t perk up at all with the warmup - I’ll just yawn my way through the whole workout. (Before my CPAP machine, it wasn’t uncommon for me to be yawning in the middle of rep #6 of 8 of an all-out VO2max track workout where my HRM showed me at 95% maxHR!)

18

I could do high intensity swim workouts every day. Intense Biking every other day, with an ez day in between. Intense Running? Every 3rd day at best.

I did not reply with what I would do, but here goes
Swim = 6 days with at least my main set being intense to very intense. The other day at least a few pickups for 25 m, so still some intensityBike = 5 days with either intervals of some sort, hills or TT of some sort, 2 days easy but even then I may do some pickupsRun = 2 days hills, maybe one day track or a third day of hills. The other days, I would add 10 minutes where i jog 45 seconds and accelerate for 15 seconds

Note this is based on only 7 hour training week. I am used to training 15-16 hours per week average for the last 30 years (basically 750-800 hour year). So 7 hour week is really coming down in total volume. On the 14 hour tri week, 4 days swim intensity, 3 days bike intensity, 1 day run intensity. Typically would put the intensity in all three sports on the same day and do the intensity run first, intensity swim second, intensity bike last (non technical sport…so by the time I get to the intensity bike, my FTP range may be down 5-10% for that day, but no big deal).

Sounds about right for my 50+ years.

Can swim every workout with a hard main set, but just need to toggle between speed development and threshold work).
Can ride probably 2 days in a row pretty hard (15-20 min repeats), but then need to take it easy at least for a day.
Running, 2 hard shorter workouts or 1 longer/hard run…rest is easy…maybe pickups.
The beating of running on an older body is brutal and IMO recovery takes at least a day or even two and is the secret sauce to not get injured.

I disagree that there is NO difference in speed of recovery between the 30s/40s/50s. There clearly is, at least for this lifer.

19

Is high intensity run a tempo, 10k pace or track pace

If the latter once if the first or second perhaps twice

Bike - maybe 3-4

The bigger question is how many weeks is it continuously realistic to sustain?

20

Most people at or near 45+ who have posted here there is a general agreement the body does need an increase in the amount of resting.

How many times would you go with high intensity… is the question

for us in the 50+AG sure does get hard. I’m at the top of my AG in my state putting in 15hrs on average just doing anything from 70.3 distance and shorter. I could do 7 days straight, though I have learnt the trick is getting the balance of intensity and recovery days…keep the ball rolling down the road with daily movement. I too run with my dog on days off - helps check my speed and not over speed.

In fact I am doing this right right now running 7 days straight in my base after 3 months off from the last race. Speed work is 5xcv reps twice weekly and a long run 90mins or longer trial running on the w/end. Consistency is the key. Reading those who have stopped for many years and trying to get back to former glory days fitness level is scary to read and make me just keep up the physical exertion.

A single sport is ok , but multiple sports nah…need a rest day for sure

Don’t use it, you’ lose it.