So: past TR user here, loved the program but decided to use a coach for my first half Iron and I’m glad to say it went great. The past TR work helped me come into the coaching process reasonably fit, especially on the bike, so with the coach I spent about five months focused mainly on the run and it really paid off. Hit all my goals (sub-six overall, sub-two on the run), and came within four minutes of my stretch goal (finished in 5:34) even while spending a total of 17 minutes in transition. (Hey if you’ve never tried freshly sliced tomatoes on your T2 BLT you don’t know what you’re missing…)
But, that was a month ago - now I’m back on TR using what I learned from the coaching process to prepare myself for the Savageman aquabike on September 15th. That’s 14 weeks away, but I’m also going to be on vacation for the first two weeks of July. (I’m pretty good about getting some runs in on vacation but I basically lack the discipline to get much out of the the “spin bike in the hotel gym” deal.) I’ve been going fairly soft in workouts since the half Iron (which was on May 5th), basically all unstructured so I feel reasonably fresh both physically and mentally.
So here’s what I’m trying to figure out: I’ve got three weeks before vacation and then eight weeks between vacation and my race. Do I rely on the base I built training for the half Iron to do three weeks of build now and then a specialty plan for the eight weeks up to Savageman (which has about 6k feet of climbing in its 56 mile bike leg), or do I do three weeks of sweet spot base before vacation and then do a build plan leading up to the race?
(Or is there so little difference between these two approaches that I should basically just htfu, stop distracting myself with the TR forums, and go do a workout???)