Here’s my story. I’m a 44 y/o woman. Doing tris for 5-6 years. Have a stubborn 15 lbs to lose to really get lean. I was told that cycling is more important than running for maintaining fitness with respect to triathlon. Not sure this makes sense to me. My first goal is to lose those lbs in off season. But I also want to get faster and have more endurance to ride with the big dogs in my group next year. Right now I average 15-16.5 on hilly rides and 8:20 for 5k and 9-9:30 for 10K +. I know there are a lot of people out there with knowledge and ideas on this topic and would love feed back as I start my off season base building. BTW did first 1/2 IM at Timberbman in 6:51. Run was horrible 2:35 coming of bilateral achilles tendinitis after 2 months no running and just a quick build up to race. Bike ave was 16.5 mph swim was 41 (no kicking as my calves cramp). Any input?
I just did IM Lou (my first IM) and I am fairly certain my overall fitness was worse than it was for my spring marathon. I don’t think there is a better way to develop overall fitness than running. Though it might be that I am just better at developing my fitness through running, not sure which.
Usually the right answer is to have the proper mix of each. How much are you doing in each discipline?
I think riding definitely allows you to run less and still get faster on the run…to a point. I’ve also found that the only thing that gets me lean is running…and I’m talking 30+ miles per week. In the off season, maybe ride twice a week…keep your long ride quite a bit shorter than it is during the summer, and run lots. Also, make sure you are doing some quality workouts while running and not just slogging along at the same pace for every run (I recommend Jack Daniels Running for workout ideas). I’m doing this right now and I’m told once I get back into tri mode it will take a month of work on the bike to get back to where I was…but my run will be improved and I will be skinnier so my power to weight ratio will be improved = faster on the bike. All else equal, I find the run matters the most for half iron and iron distance races and everything matters equally for the shorter stuff.
Here’s my story. I’m a 44 y/o woman. Doing tris for 5-6 years. Have a stubborn 15 lbs to lose to really get lean. I was told that cycling is more important than running for maintaining fitness with respect to triathlon. Not sure this makes sense to me. My first goal is to lose those lbs in off season. But I also want to get faster and have more endurance to ride with the big dogs in my group next year. Right now I average 15-16.5 on hilly rides and 8:20 for 5k and 9-9:30 for 10K +. I know there are a lot of people out there with knowledge and ideas on this topic and would love feed back as I start my off season base building. BTW did first 1/2 IM at Timberbman in 6:51. Run was horrible 2:35 coming of bilateral achilles tendinitis after 2 months no running and just a quick build up to race. Bike ave was 16.5 mph swim was 41 (no kicking as my calves cramp). Any input?
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Body composition should be something you should consider. You can alter that with a nutrition strategy in the off season that emphasizes lots of protein, healthy fats, and minimal processed carbs. That should take care of the “getting lean” part. That, and doing strength work. Not that it would help your sport specific movements, but it helps to maintain strong muscles.
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To get fit, I think doing a lot of training at lactate threshold intensity would be a good start. Aim to get faster at that intensity. Then, when the season kicks in, then focus on building up to the required distance of your goal race.
if you had to pick one thing to do, running would be it.
BUT, at 44, its probably a safer option to bike a whole lot, and pretty hard, and only run a little.
just because running can be injury inducing
Here’s my story. I’m a 44 y/o woman. Doing tris for 5-6 years. Have a stubborn 15 lbs to lose to really get lean. I was told that cycling is more important than running for maintaining fitness with respect to triathlon. Not sure this makes sense to me. My first goal is to lose those lbs in off season. But I also want to get faster and have more endurance to ride with the big dogs in my group next year. Right now I average 15-16.5 on hilly rides and 8:20 for 5k and 9-9:30 for 10K +. I know there are a lot of people out there with knowledge and ideas on this topic and would love feed back as I start my off season base building. BTW did first 1/2 IM at Timberbman in 6:51. Run was horrible 2:35 coming of bilateral achilles tendinitis after 2 months no running and just a quick build up to race. Bike ave was 16.5 mph swim was 41 (no kicking as my calves cramp). Any input?
Take it for what it’s worth–I know several people that have had huge success with it…
and/or www.crossfitendurance.com
what about the fact that if you only run you will lose all your bike fitness which could take 6-8 weeks to regain where if you bike you maintain/improve your aerobic run fitness (but lose your sprint/anaerobic speed)
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what about the fact that if you only run you will lose all your bike fitness which could take 6-8 weeks to regain where if you bike you maintain/improve your aerobic run fitness (but lose your sprint/anaerobic speed)
my personal experience is that when I spent months only running, it took about a 2 weeks of very little biking to be back faster than ever at biking.
I think to a large degree the question of how to split up your run and bike volume depends on how much time you have to train. At some point you max out the run mileage you can handle, and then you add more and more biking and swimming
…you bike you maintain/improve your aerobic run fitness
What?!
Like I said above, my overall fitness decreases with decreasing running, even when I increase my biking. I went from about 50mpw biking, 70mpw running to 180mpw biking, 35mpw running and lost fitness.
what about the fact that if you only run you will lose all your bike fitness which could take 6-8 weeks to regain where if you bike you maintain/improve your aerobic run fitness (but lose your sprint/anaerobic speed)
Where does that fact come from?
what if you biked 180mpw FASTER!
but yeah in general I agree with you, its hard to get the same aerobic load on a bike, unless you have talented and well trained bike legs.
hard for a triathlete to get there.
Like I said above, my overall fitness decreases with decreasing running, even when I increase my biking. I went from about 50mpw biking, 70mpw running to 180mpw biking, 35mpw running and lost fitness.
what if you biked 180mpw FASTER!
but yeah in general I agree with you, its hard to get the same aerobic load on a bike, unless you have talented and well trained bike legs.
hard for a triathlete to get there.
Like I said above, my overall fitness decreases with decreasing running, even when I increase my biking. I went from about 50mpw biking, 70mpw running to 180mpw biking, 35mpw running and lost fitness.
You suck Jackmott (said with smiley face). It is advice like this that killed me on the IM run portion. I did low HR running for my marathon and loved it. Then I think, well since I am decreasing volume I will increase intensity and everything will be fine, right? Not right. I stopped doing low HR work and my fitness decreased. I am choosing to ignore the fact that my run volume also decreased and am instead blaming the “just go faster” mindset.
What JackMott said…
It is a lot faster to regain bike fitness than run fitness.
Fred.
caveat: I have never done an ironman, only half and olympic
I too think that for triathlon, long slow running is the best bet. you will be running long and slow in the race too.
For biking though, I say go hard almost all the time, unless you are blessed with the time to put in big mileage on the bike.
You suck Jackmott (said with smiley face). It is advice like this that killed me on the IM run portion. I did low HR running for my marathon and loved it. Then I think, well since I am decreasing volume I will increase intensity and everything will be fine, right? Not right. I stopped doing low HR work and my fitness decreased. I am choosing to ignore the fact that my run volume also decreased and am instead blaming the “just go faster” mindset.
Hey Barry, on this subject whats your take on short runs to maintain frequency and increase days of running (milage will probably wont increase much). By short I mean 10-15 minute runs.
Peace
What JackMott said X2…at our age (44), running just seems to make more things hurt than biking or swimming for me. I bike and swim a ton, and do as little running as possible, and that seems to keep me in good enough shape to run low 50 min 10K’s at the end of olys. I recently got all psyched about trying to get more into running, by shifting to a run focussed workout and all that got me was a sore knee and an achey low back. Listen to your body.
Hey Barry, on this subject whats your take on short runs to maintain frequency and increase days of running (milage will probably wont increase much). By short I mean 10-15 minute runs.
I’m not exactly sure what you are asking. Do you mean running 15 minutes a day 6 days a week instead of running 30 minutes three times a week? Typically the same same amount of mileage on fewer runs will be a higher “training load”…though I’m not entirely sure if that’s the right terminology.
Follow me if you will, on a perhaps over simplified level. If a brand new runner wanted to complete a 45 minute run, they would be better off running 3 30 minute runs, as the other option never really gets close to the demands of a 45 minute run.
I recommend the mulitple shorter runs as a means to increase over all training. So its not a matter of doing three 30s versus six 15s, but rather doing three 30s versus three 10s, two 20s, and a 30 equaling 100 minutes a week instead of 90…and then possibly improving to 12s, 24s, and 36s in short order.
If the question is more reagarding the aging athlete, I don’t have a ton of experience in that area. Again, typically, more runs allows you to get in a higher training load on less stress, which I would think would be to the advantage of the aging athlete as well.
Consistency in both sports will make you faster.
Running by itself does not cause injuries. Generally people are injured in running because they don’t have the patience to increase their volume and/or intensity slowly enough to prevent injury or sickness. As you get older it becomes even more important. After several extended bouts of sickness this past year (brought on by overtraining), I started grinding out a slow, even progression to try and get back where I was last year.
I started out tri as a 40 percentile finisher in the swim, 70 percentile on the bike and about 99 percentile on the run. It took me four years before I finally went away from riding and running hard all the time and built up the sufficient volume to be really fast. Over the course of two years I doubled my bike volume while maintaining a fairly high run volume and my bike performance finally fell in line with my run. In general, I try to hit about 20 percent (by time volume) for swim, 30 percent for run and 50 percent for cycling. Over the winter I do more running to get ready for spring duathlons and then during the summer the running is reduced and swimming and cycling go up.
If you are swimming 41 minutes, kicking is not your problem, especially in a wetsuit.
How much time do you spend in each sport now?
Chad