Currently prepping for IM70.3 Lake Placid next Sunday…my training has pretty much fallen apart over the last month (haven’t swum in over a month as both pools I have access to are temporarily closed for renovations). I’ve been getting back into this week and just want to get used to the saddle and water again before the race.
Not too worried about finishing, but it’s very unlikely that I’ll do better than Connecticut earlier this year in June (sub-5hr time with shortened swim).
On a more-exciting note, I’ve signed up for my first full IM…IM Lanzarote 2020! Timing works perfectly with my summer schedule and after the race I should be able to spend a few weeks traveling Europe .
Great thread! Just signed up for IM Lake Placid 2020, which will be my first full. Very excited. First off, I’ll be on a road bike with clip-ons. The race entry was my splurge for the year; tri bike is not going to happen. A bit discouraged reading folks’ thoughts on this- anyone had a decent full distance in a road bike? I would love a tri bike, but I can’t swing it at this stage of life.
As for training, I was thinking of doing SSB1 mid volume before doing all three full triathlon plans, mid volume. Looking through the plans, though, I fear the full triathlon base plan will burn me out on intensity. While a week of build and specialty seems to follow a pattern of two rides above .8 IF and two below .7 (which seems manageable to me) the base plan has lots of weeks with 3/4 and even 4/4 above .8. Even with just one day of hard running, I have to wonder when I’d ever have time to recover from that intensity workload. I’ve had massive improvement following a roughly 80/20 (maybe more 70/30 if I’m honest) intensity distribution in the past, so I am hesitant to stray too far from that. Has anyone tried swapping out one of the moderately hard bike workouts for an easy aerobic ride? Or should I just turn down the intensity? Or HTFU?
Last question, who really follows the TR swim and run workouts? I trust Chad for cycling, but I’m inclined to look elsewhere for the other two disciplines. As of now my approach will be, in addition to the four rides: three runs (one quality, one recovery, one long), and 2-3 swims (I have a swim background). Thanks all!
I feel your pain on the pool availability. So frustrating when external factors derail your training. Hope you get it back quickly! And congrats on your full next year.
Nice one @velopiano, my first full was on my road bike with clip on bars. You will be just fine, check your bike fit.
I used a combination of the low and mid volume plans, easy to burn out was my experience. I did not worry about the swim sessions as I swim with the masters where I live. I did follow the run plans though, maybe not all the mid-week brick sessions but the long and tempo runs did work for me personally.
I’ve followed the TR run and swim workouts pretty closely and like them a lot. They seem to hammer on the intensity a lot more than my local masters swim group ever does. It definitely seems like they’re geared at getting you faster at running/swimming rather than just getting you in shape (which seemed to be the goal of the first half ironman plan I followed).
Just so it’s clear, the previous poster asked if he was leaving anything on the table with clip ons vs a tri bike and the answer to that is a definite yes. However, there is no requirement to have your fastest setup. Heck, bring a mountain bike or your wife’s Huffy if you want to. Unless you’re gunning for AG win, nobody other than you will care if you finish in 10 hours or 16. The goal is to have fun.
@flyinryan, you may want to look at your sodium intake. Unless it’s cold, it’s really really hard to overhydrate. In races where I’ve been peeing like a horse, it’s usually been too little sodium intake.
Do not worry about the tri bike. I think the concern is here is that it is nice to have and certainly faster, but in no way necessity. Don’t worry about it, you will see plenty of road bikes at the race, you’ll be in good company.
As for the plans, I’ve had good results even with the low volume plans, swapping out the weekend rides for longer outdoor endurance rides. I can’t recover even mid volume with proper run training.
As for run and swim workouts, I’m following a separate run and swim program.
Hi All, still trying to keep up with training offshore. Last week i completed the 4th week of Mid-Volume Full IM build and cracked almost 13h of training inside a vessel. Riggers are already calling the the threadmill psycho…lol
Project completion keeps delaying and I should be here for more two weeks and i need to find a solution for the long rides. I have 415hours planned for next week which I’m a bit worried because my motivation to stay pedaling in low gear for hours on that wattbike with no entertainment whatsoever is getting really low and although i was able to pull out a 0400h long ride last week, i can’t see myself doing that again. Also there’s the issue that i don’t have my cycling shoes so after ~2h I start feeling pain on the sole of my foot because of the lack of support and i don’t think it is right to train like that.
With that in mind, do you guys have any recommendation for me to replace the long rides? I wanted to limit it to two hours mostly because of my feet. Maybe make it a brick and add a base run an hour everytime to build endurance? Split the ride in 2 x 2h - these would be 12h apart, before and after my shift?
Hey @Yannick super performance and improvement year on year.
One comment from me is be careful if you have a coach he/she will need to see what TR sessions you have to avoid too much fatigue or conflict. Did you work with a coach this year, certainly seems to be working.
Yeah that’s true and I think I read somewhere that I could export my TR calendar into TrainingPeaks which he would have access to (although I may have misunderstood)?
May be a good idea actually to have the coach in parallel especially to go through the analysis and mitigate any situation where I might be getting too fatigued and injury prone… I feel like that’s where I would run myself into a wall if I’m left alone with TR’s tri plan haha
Decisions decisions…
Try doing long sweet spot work back 2 back with aerobic mixed in.
Something like Tallac+3 and Wright Peak-1 back to back and at nights add Pettit. That’s a lot of work but will at least break it up mentally for you.
I’ve paid for the event and bought a bike travel bag and now am figuring out what other races I’ll do leading up to it. There’s a mix of local sprints/olympics and domestic 70.3s (Florida and Oceanside…which is sold out already) in April that could work as they leave me with just over a month before flying out to Lanzarote.
Just added the complete low volume full distance training plan to my calendar. The base phase doesn’t start until early November, so I’m thinking about just doing an extra base phase between now and then.
I also need to start running a lot more as I’m doing a 50k at the end of October and haven’t done much training on top of my half-distance training…
Hey Man, i was looking at the sweet spots workouts yesterday… they look painful. i’m not sure i can do them back to back but I can give it a try. If i have another week here on this vessel i’m thinking to shoot for one 2h long sweet spot ride and assess after that. If the second sounds too much i’m thinking of doing an easy ride on the next day before my long run. Maybe also look for a one hour sweet spot as an option.
Hard to train for endurance when you can’t really train for endurance…
I’m finishing the year with an Olympic race this weekend and Manchester half marathon. 2019 has been fantastic, and this thread has helped keep me motivated, so thank you, and extra thanks to @JoeX for maintaining it.
I am definitely trying to avoid the 2020 thread, but I think it might be in vain. Although I’d much prefer a flatter course I think Bolton may have me hooked!
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