Hi, I am new to Slowtwitch and have enjoyed reading the postings. On Sunday, I watched IMWI and signed up for the 2006 event. Congratulations to the the IMWI finishers and good job to the others who fought the heat and wind for as long as you could, it was a tough day.
Here’s my question: What kind of ratio do you use for an average week’s workout? Right now, I am going easy on my running since I fractured a foot bone about 7 weeks ago and have doing a lot of aqua running and over the past two weeks started biking again.
I measure my workouts in minutes vs. distances and next week, I will spend 53% of my workout time biking, 24% running and 23% swimming. I’d like to know the ratio of your workouts.
It all depends on your limiters and your focus. My limiter is running. I suck. So for this next year, I plan to spend more time running and less swimming (I’m a decent, FOMOP triathlon swimmer). I love cycling, so Ill spend a lot of time on that anyway.
In a “balanced” 10 hr training week (i.e., one not focused on a single sport), I’ll probably spend 2 hours swimming, 3-4 running and 4-5 biking.
Be very careful with the advice you get here - I would say that whatever the consensus is for cycling percentage, subtract 10-15%. Too many on this board think triathlon is all about the bike.
In short, 1 point = 1/4 mile running = 1 mile biking = 100 m swimming. You’d aim to keep point totals comparable in each discipline unless you were intentionally trying to weight one heavier.
At my speeds, that’d be about 29% of my time running, 43% of my time on the bike, and 28% of my time in the water. YMMV (literally).
In 17hrs this week, I’ll log 8 hrs riding, 5 hrs running, and 4 hrs swimming, 47%, 29% and 23.5% respectively.
Keep in mind that running can beat you up, so run more often, not longer in each session (i.e.: I will run 5-6 times this week). Now that I only have 1 long run a week, I get less beat up… (better recovery).
50B/25R/25S seems to be “standard issue”. I can’t comment if that is “best” or “ideal” or not.
In actuality mt split for my 1/2 turned out to be around 55B-43R-2S. Guess which leg went the best? Guess which went the worst? Often, we get what we deserve.
Obviously, I am making the necessary adjustments.
From what I can see, programs like PC Coach, T’Peaks, etc use the 50/25/25.
I might prefer something like 55/30/15 … with more swimming coming in the winter months (snow & darkness) when most cycling done indoors.
I don’t see the rationale for spending as much time swimming as you do running. The race time for each leg is not comparable. Perhaps someone could explain and/or elebarote?
Thanks. RyanB.
As usual, I am commenting more out of interest than expertise.
*** don’t see the rationale for spending as much time swimming as you do running. The race time for each leg is not comparable. Perhaps someone could explain and/or elebarote?***
The only rationale I see is that most AG triathlete don’t swim well, so that’s the “scariest” leg for them. Hence, they tend to want to swim more.
I’ve had quite a bit of sucess by doing mostly running with a decent amount of swimming and very little cycling. Running and swimming are many times more time efficient than cycling for aerobic development. I cycle only enough to maintain strength in the cycling specific muscles, maybe 50 miles per week. It seems to me that cycling should be treated like speedwork in running, just the sharp tip of the pyramid with the aerobic development gained by running and swimming as a base. I’d do more swimming, but it is expensive and difficult to access pools and running is free. I however am not training for IM or half IM distances, only olympic and sprint.
My weeks typically look like this
35-45 mile running (counted @ 7:00 pace regardless actual pace, so 4-5 hours running)
5000-7000yds swimming (average around 1:32 per 100, so about 2-3 hours swimming)
40-50 miles cycling per week (average around 18 mph, so 2-3 hours cycling)
8-12 hours total excluding stretching, lifting, showering etc…
This training yeilded pretty good results this season, generally top 10 swim split, top 5 bike split, and top 1-2 run split in races of between 200-500 people.
I would think that your training fits pretty well into international and sprint races, but as you acknowledge, might be less than optimal for HIM and IM training. When considering those distances, it just doesn’t make sense to dedicate a high percentage of your training to swimming, since it’s such a short part of the day. This assumes, of course, that you swim reasonably well. If you’re just learning to swim, you need to put in some time to become good enough to make the swim cutoff, at least.
Sometimes its not how much time you put in, but what you do with that time. If your training is mostly cycling then you have to add a bunch of hours to up your mileage significantly - which I argue for olympic/sprint distance racing is ineffiecent. Also some of it is in how you count the hours - some of my running partners would count 2 hours for a ten mile run because it took them two hours to leave there house, wait for the group to show, shoot the sh!t for 20 minutes and then run. I count 1:10. Don’t even get me started on track workouts which take 2+ hours, but only involve 6-8 miles of running.
Plus as I wrote earlier, I find that running beats up people more than swimming (usually). When many folks up their run volume, they get injured or over-trained.
I’d say this is somewhat of a misconception, higher mileage runners as a whole tend to be far more injury resistant than low mileage runners. Obviously running more will place greater strains on your body than running less, but most people who sustain running injuries do not sustain them from running to much - that just a hokey runners(joggers)world wives tail. Most running injuries are caused in my opinion by:
To much intensity - especially among women. Everyday run pace should be approximately 2+ minutes per mile slower than current(not pr) 5K race pace. Most 30-40 mpw runners I’ve trained or run with are closer to the 1:15/1:30 minutes per mile range. To fast, asking for injury.
Heavy, over-built, expensive shoes. I don’t have the reference handy, but there is a well known article which reports that the frequency of running injurys increased by like 60% among runners who ran in the most expensive trainers (ex. Asics Kayano) vs. those who ran in the least expensive trainers. All that motion control, arch support, gel insert stuff only serves to transfer impact from your feet - which were made to absorb the impact - to your shins and knees. Only like 6% of the general population has actual structure biomechanical deficiencies in form, but like 80% wear some form of motion control.
Not enough of a mileage background - it takes years to get good at running and build to real mileage, not months.
I’ve was a pretty good runner once, and have trained with some very good runners (NCAA All-Americans, Olympians, ex.), and some very poor runners for the better part of 10 years - so while I may not know everything I’ve been around the block.
Oh forgot number 4: Carrying too much body weight. It just reality that you need to be pretty light to run well - fortunately running is very good at producing the type of body which make for good running. To a degree though some calorie restriction is generally necessary (more so for male runners). This however is a personal matter and should be considered on a individual cost/benefit basis, and not with a gross generalization.
I am fairly well balanced in all three disciplines with running probably my poorest.
05’ - 13% swimming 57% biking 30% running - I figure I average 1 minute per 50 meters of swimming, on average I bike 19 mph and run 8.5 minute miles. I go totally by time and only use mile markers or computers infrequently. 1:02 swimmer 5:40 to 5:50 biker run 4:20 to 4:40 IM marathon. I average 10 hours a week of training with biggest weeks close to 12 to 13 hours. If you apply the percentages you can figure the approximate volume of each sport.
My goal for 06’ is swimming 13% 54% biking and 33% running. I want to increase my running volume by 10% per week on average by adding another day.
HI, Im pretty much in the same situation. I am new to slowtwich, signed up for IMWisconsin 2006 and fracture readily (2 times + 1 surgery in the last 3 years from marathon running) I finally just had a healthy year doing triathlons and although the IM calls for a marathon at the end (I am an experienced runner-college, marathons etc…) but know my body can only take running 2-3 times at most a week. I know one of these runs has to be long…any suggestions for the other or crosstraining (non impact, other than swimming and biking:) that can be substituted so that I will be ready for the race
Definitely I agree with you, the point being it takes years to get there, to that high mileage place. Most folks who aren’t there will get beat up by running longer vs running more often.