Triathlon training advice for a cross country runner

Triathlon Forum
1

Howdy,

I’m a competitive college runner that likes to do a few triathlons and duathlons in the summer. As I’m training primarily towards the cross country season in the fall, I can only dedicate a few workouts a week to triathlon stuff. Can I expect any sort of benefit towards my tri performance from doing just one or two cycling and swim workouts a week? Also, can you recommend some sort of swim workout that would benefit me best for a 700 or 800 meter triathlon leg if I were to get in the pool once a week.

3

Hey-

I’m fairly new to the sport (3rd season) but have had marked improvement since my start. I was a runner originally, rode mountain bikes for a long time recreationally & had to learn to swim well from scratch. Given that I work more hours than an 8-year-old in China, I have to survive on 2 to 3 workouts per sport in a week.

My best advice to you is to treat the biking just like you treat running (although you should ideally spend more time in the saddle than running.) For run training, you most likely do distance days and quality days. Do the same on the bike, riding 2-3 hours or more at an easy pace on your distance days, and doing hard intervals within a 60-90 minute ride on your quality days. Also try running a mile after each ride, you’ll notice that your legs feel a little, uhh, different.

Swimming is another story, where technique rules over VO2 max. Find someone to give you help on your stroke, even if it’s just one or two sessions. Once you have a good idea of how to technically “swim” (this took yours truly two years to learn) then you can start building on speed & distance. If you are training for a sprint race of 800m, a workout could be simply 1000 to 1500 meters of straight swimming, or intervals like 10x100 with a 15 second rest. Drills are also good, you can find any number of suggestions online.

You’ve got a great foundation on which to build, good luck.

4

You should write a primer for runners. Hit the nail on the head! I especially liked your description of your work hours…hilarious!

5

never ever lose your run speed. You can lose 3 min on the bike and make that up in 2-3 miles on the run. Not many run sub 35 10k’s.

6

Thanks for the help everyone. I’ll try that swim workout next week. I’m in luck with this triathlon stuff, my cousin is a competitive swimmer who can help me with form and my aunt is a pro ironwoman, who got me into triathlon in the first place and helped me get my first bike.