I will be doing my first HI in Racine in July. This is my 4th triathlon season. I am following Joe Friel’s Training Bible plans (self-coached). I trained for around 400 hours the past two seasons and I have planned 450 for this one, which translates to around 13 hours for the longest week. I have been racing 3 olympic triathlons in each of the past 2 seasons, I am going to do the same this season, plus the Half Ironman. My best olympic triathlon time is a 2:42, and I am planning to be in the 2:30s this season. For the Half Ironman, my conservative estimate would be 5:45 (40 min swim, 3:00 bike, 2:00 run).
Given this data, what are the appropriate lengths of my longest workouts? I have planned as follows:
Bike: up to 3 hours (zone 2 for now, a good amount of zone 3 later on)
Run: up to 2 hours (same as above)
Brick: 2.5-hour bike + 1.5-hour run zone 2 and/or 2-hour bike + 1-hour run zone 3
Well, those are reasonable enough. The more important part is how you will integrate those workouts into your training week and how you build in the zone 3 stuff, plus taper. I think the run portion of your brick is too long. For the brick, I think 2 hours bike, 45 min run would be plenty for a 1/2 IM.
I would agree with what the other posters said. I don’t think you need anymore than 1 hour on the brick. I would do something like 50/6 (miles) for my bricks. I did one 40/8.
I did a long ride of 56 miles for weeks 8 through 3 leading up to the race (tapered the last two weeks). When race day came, I knew exactly what the distance felt like and had zero worries.
The run looks fine. Again, I did a long run of 13 miles most of the weeks above and it worked out fine.
The key to this race is holding back on the bike so you have something left on the run.
Brick 2.5 bike + 45 min run and then only once or twice. Really 10 to 15 minutes is all that us needed. The longer bike ride day should be about the bike and not have focus shifted to what comes after the bike.
Weekly running volume and consistency is more important that doing long runs for HIM. I plan on doing a HIM in a few weeks and my most recent long run will be 12-13 miles. Most of my long runs have been 10 miles. However, I have been running in 40-43 mpw for 2 months. I was running 70-80 mpw in September-October so this helps but I think you need to focus on weekly miles vs the long run.
Everybody says it right, weekly volume means much more than your longest workouts. Personally, I like my longest ride in a HIM build to be as long as I expect to ride and run on race day, which is just under 4 hours. Some call it excessive, and maybe they’re right, but in my opinion you can never have an aerobic engine that is too big. For a brick I wouldn’t do longer than the expected bike time plus an hour run, which for me is 2:20-30ish on the bike, an hour on the run. Running off the bike takes way too much out of you. My weekly long runs are in the 1:45-2:00 range, which again may seem excessive to some (I run ~1:35 for HIM), but again I don’t think it hurts, assuming you have good weekly volume behind you. For example, a long run of 1:30 will take much more out of you if you’ve been averaging 15-20 miles a week, compared to a 2:00 long run when you’ve been running 40 miles a week.
Last year it was 5@3:00, 2@3:30, 2@4:00 on the bike with lots of climbing and numerous 2:00 - 2:15 running. IME, being reasonably fresh after the bike makes for a much more enjoyable race. Ask yourself how you will feel after the bike, if you plan on doing it in 3hrs when your longest stand alone bike is 3hrs.
I will be doing my first HI in Racine in July. This is my 4th triathlon season. I am following Joe Friel’s Training Bible plans (self-coached). I trained for around 400 hours the past two seasons and I have planned 450 for this one, which translates to around 13 hours for the longest week. I have been racing 3 olympic triathlons in each of the past 2 seasons, I am going to do the same this season, plus the Half Ironman. My best olympic triathlon time is a 2:42, and I am planning to be in the 2:30s this season. For the Half Ironman, my conservative estimate would be 5:45 (40 min swim, 3:00 bike, 2:00 run).
Given this data, what are the appropriate lengths of my longest workouts? I have planned as follows:
Bike: up to 3 hours (zone 2 for now, a good amount of zone 3 later on)
Run: up to 2 hours (same as above)
Brick: 2.5-hour bike + 1.5-hour run zone 2 and/or 2-hour bike + 1-hour run zone 3
Would this be appropriate?
Thanks!
I did pretty much that, except for the bricks (I did zero bricks.)
My longest bike was 3:15, and most of my bikes were 2:50-3:00, very consistently on weekends. I felt I was very well prepared for my HIM with that regiment but you still do have to pace is correctly and not overdo the bike on race day.
You shouldn’t have any meltdowns if the overall volume is good with that plan. I overbiked my last HIM for sure, and even with that overbike, my run was slogging it for about 5 miles, and then I bumped back up to true speed and passed everyone who had passed me for those 5 miles and a handful of more.
Thanks to everybody for weighing in so far. I am glad to hear I wasn’t too much off target. I will adjust the bricks as suggested.
Regarding consistency, I don’t have a problem, I am usually around 95% of planned time. Regarding volume, as I said, I have planned 450 hours/week, which puts somewhere in the 80/100 miles/week on the bike and 20/25 running. I know I might be stretching it a bit trying a Half Ironman on this volume, but it is hard to fit more training hours in my schedule. Also, I only have 3 years of consistent training under the belt, starting pretty much from scratch (never ran before, biked recreationally, swam pretty good but never competitive). And I’m not that young anymore (early 30s).
So all in all I’d be happy with anything under 6 hours and not dying on the run. I will definitely be very conservative on the bike.
My oly time at Columbia 2013 was very similar to yours (2:40) and I was able to go 5:53 at Eagleman (admittedly on a very forgiving day) with about 75-80% of the training you describe. My bike weeks were very similar but I had IT band problems that kept me from running as much as I would have liked in March/April. Basically I’m just echoing that if you stick to your training and race day plans (with a shorter brick), you should be able to meet your goals.
Thanks to everybody for weighing in so far. I am glad to hear I wasn’t too much off target. I will adjust the bricks as suggested.
Regarding consistency, I don’t have a problem, I am usually around 95% of planned time. Regarding volume, as I said, I have planned 450 hours/week, which puts somewhere in the 80/100 miles/week on the bike and 20/25 running. I know I might be stretching it a bit trying a Half Ironman on this volume, but it is hard to fit more training hours in my schedule. Also, I only have 3 years of consistent training under the belt, starting pretty much from scratch (never ran before, biked recreationally, swam pretty good but never competitive). And I’m not that young anymore (early 30s).
So all in all I’d be happy with anything under 6 hours and not dying on the run. I will definitely be very conservative on the bike.
You should be fine. I was nearly sub-5 with exactly that volume, and I’m not a speedster by any stretch (no athletic talent.)
Also to put in perspective, while I’ve yet to actually do the training program, the Trainerroad HIM program maxes out the long rides at 2hrs, with back to back 2hr rides on Sat/Sun. I got through the first 4 weeks before being felled by 3 consecutive colds, but it wasn’t too onerous, and I asked Nate about the plan creator a few months back, and the coach is legit - both the TR guys went like sub 2:30 on the bike at their HIM using a similar regimen.
Thanks to everybody for weighing in so far. I am glad to hear I wasn’t too much off target. I will adjust the bricks as suggested.
Regarding consistency, I don’t have a problem, I am usually around 95% of planned time. Regarding volume, as I said, I have planned 450 hours/week, which puts somewhere in the 80/100 miles/week on the bike and 20/25 running. I know I might be stretching it a bit trying a Half Ironman on this volume, but it is hard to fit more training hours in my schedule. Also, I only have 3 years of consistent training under the belt, starting pretty much from scratch (never ran before, biked recreationally, swam pretty good but never competitive). And I’m not that young anymore (early 30s).
So all in all I’d be happy with anything under 6 hours and not dying on the run. I will definitely be very conservative on the bike.
You should be fine. I was nearly sub-5 with exactly that volume, and I’m not a speedster by any stretch (no athletic talent.)
Also to put in perspective, while I’ve yet to actually do the training program, the Trainerroad HIM program maxes out the long rides at 2hrs, with back to back 2hr rides on Sat/Sun. I got through the first 4 weeks before being felled by 3 consecutive colds, but it wasn’t too onerous, and I asked Nate about the plan creator a few months back, and the coach is legit - both the TR guys went like sub 2:30 on the bike at their HIM using a similar regimen.
If you do the more advanced TR HIM plans I think they go 3hrs and 3hrs on weekends. Sub 2:30 bike splits on 2 hour long rides is insane in my opinion. Having said that I rarely ride more then 3-3.5hrs while training for a HIM and I bike ~2:30.
Regarding volume, as I said, I have planned 450 hours/week, which puts somewhere in the 80/100 miles/week on the bike and 20/25 running. I know I might be stretching it a bit trying a Half Ironman on this volume, but it is hard to fit more training hours in my schedule. .
I did quite well on 80-100 bike and 20-30 running last year.
Your longest workouts will not make your season, but they can certainly break it.
If you’re consistent in your run training, then 2-4 runs of 90 minutes at race effort (excluding warm-up) is probably sufficient. This should give you the opportunity (and hopefully the ability) to start your run on un-fresh legs and still finish it off in limited debt. Tired = okay. Exhausted = not okay.
A 4-hour ride is pretty safe, even if you overreach a bit. It’s far easier to recover (and extract value) from an overdistance ride than from a full or overdistance run.
While I don’t view bricks as a staple of training, they do have some learning value. Personally, I would ditch the long brick runs as it simply adds to low-quality run volume. The run off the bike should be long enough for you to reach a steady state effort. If you can’t accomplish that within a 20-25 minute run, then you’re either coming in too hot off the bike, or going out too hot on the run. Recognize it, correct the problem, then verify as necessary.
While I don’t view bricks as a staple of training, they do have some learning value. Personally, I would ditch the long brick runs as it simply adds to low-quality run volume. The run off the bike should be long enough for you to reach a steady state effort. If you can’t accomplish that within a 20-25 minute run, then you’re either coming in too hot off the bike, or going out too hot on the run. Recognize it, correct the problem, then verify as necessary.
+1
Do the brick, not for gaining fitness, but for gaining understanding of how hard you can go. Last year was my first 70.3 and I did a 70 mile race-pace ride followed by 3 mile run last year as my longest workout. I learned that I could not hold that pace on the bike and expect to run well. Even with this knowledge I still cooked myself slightly on the bike during the race, but managed to finish well ahead of my goal. 44, 2:35, 2:04 - finished right at 5:30. I was shooting for <5:45.
Thanks guys, this is really good advice.
So one more quick question: when we are talking of long rides/runs, that’s a zone 2 for the base periods and then progressing towards a greater percentage of zone 3 (i.e. race pace) for the build period, right?
You should be doing the things in your training that are least applicable to your racing the further you are away from your race. As you get closer to your race, the rides should mimic what you are doing in your race more closely.
Training should always be from farthest away to close to you event as least specific to most specific.
Correct, I am aware of that principle. Hence my further comment about zone 2 base / zone 3 build (more race specific). Mostly just asking for confirmation of my thoughts.
I am trying to get my arms around the practical aspects of specificity and have read a whole bunch of posts on here on the subject. I get the concept of less specific the further away from the event and more specific the closer to the event. What I am stumped on is what kind of things are we talking about being less specific? My gut tells me less specific for HIM/IM training are high intensity workouts, such as those designed to increase speed. So, if I am training for an IM distance race say in August lets say, then today (March) should I be working more on speed/intensity than endurance or volume? Then as I get closer to the race, I should be reducing my speed/intensity workouts in favor of more endurance/increased volume type workouts?
Any help verifying or telling me I’ve got it all wrong is appreciated. I’ve read Friel, Daniels, Skiba and believe I understand the concepts. Its the practical application I am trying to find some examples on.
