I’m trying to put my in-Season plan together. I’m concentrating more on run, so, wondering how many days on bike, given 5 days running. 3 runs will be easy runs, 1 quality run as threshold intervals and one long run with some fartlek work. Swimming will be 2-3 days per week. I use power, so all bike rides will include FTP and/or VO2 work.
Thanks,
Mercer
I run six days a week for a total of six hours. Now that my kids are running with me I sometimes run twice a day. Along with that I do three rides–one threshold day, one Vo2 day and one day where I combine tempo and threshold (a desert dude recommendation). The key is figuring out how much is too much. I used to run more, but found that six hours was the most I could run and still do three good workouts a week on the bike. I also do one threshold run-no more than 20 minutes of hard stuff–and a speedier 3x3 minutes at a Vo2ish pace since I have an early season duathlon focus. Compared to the intervals I used to run, it is nothing, but at 40, running speed beats me up, so my better ROI is bike intervals which have been improving my FTP consistently now for nearly 8 months since I started this schedule.
Chad
bad news, if you want to be the fastest sprint triathlete you can be, you have to bike/swim/run just as much as an ironman
best approach at dividing up time is to spend the most training hours on your weaknesses, it is lower hanging fruit
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When I did olympic distance stuff, I had a rule of thumb that I should do each discipline for my total race time once a week during the peak season (except for taper weeks). That meant at least a 2-hour run, 2-hour ride, and 2-hour swim. Plus I was a strong cyclist, so I would make sure that I got in at least 200 miles on the bike. With 35-40 miles running and 3 other swim workouts (in addition to the 2 hour swim) I was pretty well set. Of course, I was in my young 20s at the time and had few other commitments other than school or a job. Girlfriends didn’t stick around long back then.
If you are already a good cyclist, I would say you can drop your riding mileage to 100-125 miles a week. Maybe a little less depending on your specific training and the quality of your workouts.
My current plan is 5 runs/week (2 easy, 1 long easy, 1 tempo, 1 track workout), 2-3 swim/week topping out around 7000y/wk, and 3-4 cycles/week. I’m very new to this whole cycling thing, so the current plan is to have 1 weekly long ride of 2-3 hours to help build endurance, 2 days of moderate/threshold style work, and 1 day of VO2max or hills (or both).
how do you define “tempo” and “threshold” or, for that matter, differentiate between them. I guess tempo is modestly easier, but I’m curious how you or DD define it.
I always found 3 rides a week worked for me.
What kind of rides were you doing? Duration, intensity?
tempo: 75-95% of ftp
threshold: 95-105 % of ftp.
If you are running 5 times a week I would stick to 3 rides. The times when I have tried 4 rides I have just ended up more tired and not got any faster on the bike. I am riding 4xweek at the moment but only running 3 x which makes it easier to absorb the riding. I am assuming you work full time.
One longer ride, 2.5 - 3 hours at a good tempo effort, not a zone 2 or 3 pace. One ride about 2 hrs. Slowly pick up the intensity for the first hour and then basically finsh with 45min TT effort. Third ride would generally alternate each week with either hill repeats or intervals. Also, I rarely ride and run on the same day except for maybe one brick workout a month.
My focus for the next 7-8 months is oly focus with HIM secondary focus. I spend at a minimum 7 hours-12 hours max divided between 4-5 workouts. Volume is still key even for a fast sprint or oly bike split. The bike is the key in my opinion as great bike fitness allows you to run to your potential, and it seems you run a lot.
Now each person is different so my hours and frequency may not matter. These are the rides i do each week and have seen great improvement in my quest to break 2 hours (sitting on 2:09 right now),
Most of my workouts come from the training and racing with power book to meet the general guidelines of these four key workouts, in the early season i may drop one of the interval secessions for a base ride. Getting in around 8hours + every week has really helped. I used to just do three rides a week and it was just not enough to breakthrough and or maintain a high level of fitness, that fourth and fifth rides are the winners.
Now i would recommend dropping two of your runs down to 4 per week, big believer in eliminating junk running miles as running incurs the most fatigue on your body. If you are committed to running 6 times per week then i would turn two of your runs into easy transition runs after your bike workouts.
300-350 TSS per week is pretty much suffice for maintaining bike fitness during the racing season.
“bad news, if you want to be the fastest sprint triathlete you can be, you have to bike/swim/run just as much as an ironman”
It’s nice to know I’m not the only one with that concept.
jaretj
You have a long run, a long ride, two harder runs and three harder rides. That means you are doing seven different workouts (not even counting the swim) that are going to be fairly stressful. Maybe I’m old, but I’m lucky to do four or five of those type workouts in a week. I really saw a good jump in FTP when I did a monday threshold run (20-25 minutes), tuesday threshold ride, Thursday V02 ride, Friday long run (not really long at only 90 minutes) and a Saturday tempo/threshold ride. My total FTP riding for the week was about 60 minutes, with about 40-60 minutes of tempo and 20-25 minutes of Vo2. Other than that I just ran six days a week adding up to six hours. Your schedule would kill me. And I’m not even swimming.
Chad
Seasons change defined them pretty much at standard. DD told me 80 percent for tempo and 95-105 of FTP as threshold, but that is pretty much standard Coggan stuff. Until I bought the power meter and started using it with Brian’s advice, I was all over the place in training. Not that I wasn’t fast a few times, but it was the result of A LOT of volume. Now I seem to keep improving on about 1/2 to 1/3 the bike volume. Since the improvement has not stopped in seven months, I’m sticking with three rides per week until it does.
The smartest think DD taught me was that no workout should be so hard that you can’t do the next day’s workout effectively. This was really a problem with many before any time I introduced intensity. I would feel good and then crush it only to ruin later workouts. Now I use perceived exertion compared with wattage to cut off workouts when I’m not recovered. I also understand why he could train half as much as me on the bike and still outride me.
Chad
There has been some ok advice so far- and I’ll preface this by saying I’m only a cyclist, not a triathlete, but I’m not sure doing a long ride, ftp ride, vo2 ride, etc all in each training week is really the best strategy. Unless you are just trying to tire yourself out and not improve any one aspect too much.
I’m becoming a bigger and bigger fan of training 1, MAYBE 2 things at a time. What are your courses like? If you don’t plan on racing steep hills, and you’re doing non-drafting events, you might never do much intensity above 110% of ftp.
If you are racing some courses with short 10% grades, well, then you might get a good ROI with some intervals around 5 minute power. You may not have to start these until 4-6 weeks out.
A somewhat generic 3 day/wk schedule that you could use 10+ weeks from your important events would be 2 moderate length rides focusing on FTP (2x20, 4x10 w/ minimal recovery, or the like), and a longer ride with 40-80 minutes at ~85% FTP. This is just a rough idea for you.
This is a great foundation for sharp end race fitness.
-Physiojoe
Can you give any details of the tempo/threshold day you mentioned?
I’m doing something similar with my “quality” workouts.
The rest of my training is Masters swim and easy or recovery pace run for total training time usually in the 8-10 hour range. I’m looking for something more structured or beneficial for #4. Can you share any info on that tempo/threshold workout you’re talking about?
2-3x per week, 1 of those being a hard interval session on the bike (5x5 or something) and another being a bike race.
bad news, if you want to be the fastest sprint triathlete you can be, you have to bike/swim/run just as much as an ironman
I got into an argument with my roommate about this a few nights ago. Being a former collegiate runner, she should know better, but she absolutely refused to believe that I wouldn’t be training more if I was preparing for a half or an IM. I tried to explain that the structure of an ITU athlete’s schedule might look different from a Kona Pro’s, but that the overall weekly/yearly volume was comparable, but she just wasn’t buying it.
I then tried to explain cognitive dissonance, but I think she’d had enough.