Adressing this run injury and be back to normal run training (for tri)should be your priority. By normal training i mean some 40/50k per week. With a long run, longer than your expected time 1h45ish for 1h30 expected.
Running can be hard on the body and as you are quite new to running and maybe injury prone I wouldn’t delay putting more miles in my schedule.
It could work with your approach, with a more experienced runner.
So I haven’t done Tri before but I’ll offer an opinion that you can take or leave.
IMO, SS duration and FTP duration (TTE) track closely together. So in terms of training out TTE, FTP would be the way I go because of the lower calorie burn and lower overall fatigue. Since you can do almost twice as much time at SS than FTP but only at 10% lower power you’d be burning roughly 80% more calories doing SS as well as the extra time it takes to do a workout with 120m of SS intervals.
If FTP intervals are significantly harder than SS intervals when taken to TTE then I’d wager you’re riding above FTP.
If your event is in May I wouldn’t wait much longer at all if you plan to do a VO2 block. It brings a lot of fatigue that you’ll need to recover from before getting back to race specificity.
If I were to lay it out, I’d do VO2 now, recover, then FTP training to push out TTE, and use long SS workouts in a more race specific manner as opposed to the sole focus of extensive aerobic training.
Thx for this great response. I will think about these good opinions and see how I gonna approach the next weeks. Maybe it is better to focus 4-6 weeks at vo2max or ftp and increasing my run volume and swim technic. And then focus more on race specific SS/tempo workouts with then already (hopefully) longer runs…
So you got a TON of time between now and then.
SS is a pretty good proxy for race prep. Though tempo is really the zone but SS will have a better bang for time required. You definitely want to researve the last 10 weeks extending out your TTE and dialing in your planned effort and train that effort for the race. This includes riding after a swim and running race intensity after a ride.
At this point you have some time, I’d think about whats more important. Building your FTP tte now and getting in some vo2 efforts to boost your ftp before the pre race TTE block. OR more focus in your run and swim plan.
Thanks for the hand off.
First up, I haven’t ready the 3,300 posts on sweet spot progression (!)
@stino77 I think you have time to do bike focus particularly while you are building run. Agree with @ThyTri that specificity should come later and unless you have ideal outside conditions the Phoenix tempo workouts are my go to “race sim”. I often do a full 70.3 bike ride indoors once or twice in the year - it should feel hard, off the bike the next day but day two you should be training hard again.
Theres lots of ways to get through winter, I think a variety of intensities is good but the most important thing is that your getting the work done consistently, so what appeals to you and your lifestyle are big factors.
I think bike-wise this is pretty much what the TR Olympic and half tri plans do anyway.
When I looked at the mid vol plans against the custom road plan I’m using now it’s different, but not all that different. I’ve just moved up to build so I’m getting vo2, sweet spot and threshold where the MV build half distance would be vo2, tempo and threshold. Custom lets me flex a bit more and some confidence that it suits my training history.
Ok, thx for all the great advices here. Will adapt my training a little so that sweetspot focus is more directed to the end of my training phase, because it will be more specific (with tempo work) for my 70.3 bike portion, and also because it is already my strength as a cyclist also (tempo/SST)…
I am nowhere to put intensity in my runs so…that was the whole reason I began thinking about going to a more specific bike vo2max/treshold block. And after that normally my runs will be longer and I can incorporate more bike/run and swim/bike sessions…
Good advice thx.
Edit: Just did indoor ‘The Grade’ FTP test on that climb. All-time indoor PR zwift 12min (296W). Not bad after my shift the last 4 months. FTP 261W says zwift. Nah, let’s make it 265W (even think 270W is still correct). But ok. Let’s set TR FTP @265W.
WKO5 sets my mFTP @270W and TTE 35min.
Yes sir, I do. That’s actually my primary background. Runner (lifelong) → Triathlete (15 years) → Bike racer (5 years).
What @JoeX said works. Think of this as periodization, right? So you want race specific efforts as you build up to your goal event. Especially in Tri where we do fewer events overall, not like crit racers going every weekend… the caveat being, for ultra events like 70.3+ you need more time to do those race specific efforts because you are training for primarily aerobic benefit, and that takes time to adapt, unlike a crit racer or even sprint tri where you can extend TTE at threshold (sprint tri) or build anaerobic fitness (crit) in 2-6 weeks… we’re looking for longer term adaptations.
What I’d typically recommend is spending a good deal of time many months (like 6-8 months out) pushing that FTP up on the bike, develop swim technique and just keep run volume enough to maintain bone density and neuromuscular adaptations for running. Think like 15 min runs off the bike, maybe a 30 min or so every week. But you don’t need to be doing tons of run volume 8 months out. Do it on the bike instead, IMO.
So do your base, do a SST progression… I’d go to 90 min for a 70.3 athlete. Then hit VO2max on the bike. I would still do block style here, because it works… and you have time… and you just keep everything else very easy/simple. Then train FTP for 3-6 weeks after VO2.
Once FTP is UP, then you worry about pushing TTE at threshold and then race intensity OUT. So the shift goes from intensity on the bike SST->Vo2->Threshold->Tempo (for 3-4 months with some maintenance SST or threshold efforts if needed), to intensity on the run (Endurance → Threshold (when you switch to bike tempo for 1-2 months) → Race pace (till raceday). Swim is kind of separate and depends on the athlete, but always technique work, and heavy focus on things like endurance sets, then eventually 300s for “Speed” again when bike intensity drops off.
I typically have triathletes focus on growing one sport at a time and kind of maintaining the others. So it’s a lot of intensity focused in one sport at a time, which might take longer in terms of training adaptions but in my opinion you are way less likely to plateau for a long time this way.
That’s a general approach for people who have the lead time to their event to do it. If someone has a REAL weakness that’s holding them back, focus on that. But remember, triathlon is still at its core a bike race. If you’re not good on the bike, your run is going to be slower (more energy use on the bike) and everyone’s going to catch you after the swim anyway. If you have shorter lead time to your goal races, then you probably need to mix things up more, and that can work. I just always kind of hit a wall with that approach, where I’d max out at like 255W on the bike because I was trying to train all the things. When I was able to do more focused work, I could get up to 275-280W on the bike and still run fast. When lack of training time (on active duty) forced me to “mixed block” train and have relatively lower volume, I was stuck at like 235W… and guess why I didn’t qualify for Kona/Nice in my last 70.3?
By the way, when I say triathlon at its core is a bike race, this is assuming non-draft legal racing. Draft legal racing is another animal, and requires quite a bit more focus on swimming and running in my experience, because you can hide on the bike a bit if you can stay with the front group on the swim. And if you can’t stay with the front group on the swim, you’re likely proper screwed anyway (overall placing wise).
Thx again for another great response @kurt.braeckel.
Just finished up my initial SST progression of the year. Trying some stuff early in advance of main goals later in the year.
Having done an initial TTE FTP baseline test, I followed it up with 7 SST (at 92%) workouts over 4 weeks with what turned out to be a pretty aggressive progression in the end, after using the first 2 workouts to feel my way into the block.
Progression:
Block Interval Markers:
Overall feel pretty good with the results and how my muscular endurance/ fatigue resistance has seemingly improved. Will probably use this as part of my build later in year but keen to keep some maintenance in between now and then to keep on top of things.
Nice work.
On what base you decided to start with 3x15? And not 3x20 or 3x25 maybe? or 3x10? Just asking myself the question what starting duration people start with and based on what data?
Thanks!
I started my SST progression on the basis of the long form FTP TTE test I did which was about 41 mins in length.
On this basis, I probably could of gone straight to 3x20 but eased myself in with a few workouts as I had come off quite a big traditional style (z2) base period and some illness.
I’m coming back to the bike after injury and illness and I’m planning to use the aerobic development approach in this thread around extending time at sweetspot in the coming months.
If I haven’t been training at higher aerobic intensities, and I don’t have an accurate power figure for lactate threshold, what do people recommend as I transition back into training? I’m thinking something like a month of moderate/tempo rides before doing a long-form FTP test and then starting to train proper.
I’m just wondering would lack of muscular endurance provide an inaccurate test if I’m not used to holding higher powers at the moment.
Also, I don’t ride a trainer, so don’t have AI assistance
Spend a couple of weeks getting back to being used on the bike- . get consistency back and don’t worry about specific training, just ride to RPE and feel your way back. Then, as you suggest do a long-form FTP test and base your SST progression off the back of this. Don’t overthink it.
3x20 to 3x25 seems like a big jump. Is that a week to week progression?
Last 3 weeks I’ve gone:
2 × 20
3 × 15
4 × 15
3 × 20
2 × 30
1 × 45 (tomorrow - all being well)
… with no problems. All at 90% FTP (and probably in reality nearer 92% or 93% as I suspect my FTP is btwn 5 and 10 watts optimistic) with 5 minute recoveries.
Rest week next week and then another three loading weeks kicking off with 2 × 35.
H/T @hubcyclist 