43 years old triathlete here.
I have a TT nationals coming up in 8 weeks, and just coming off a long racing season (4 70.3 in 5 months) but I’d like to give the TT championship a go -ideally- without losing the gains I made in the swim/run in the past year which are enormous.
Would you rather have me do a TT low volume plan and insert runs/swims in the middle of those 3 cycling days? Or am I better off going with a High volume Half-Ironman plan from the plan builder?
To give you a bit of context of where am I in terms of physique/strength, FTP was 3.7 KG/W before getting covid 6 weeks ago, and slowly trying to get some of that back.
Attached are my Training Peaks stats for the past year.
Are you saying your tri racing season is finished? If so I’d just focus on the bike for the next 8 weeks with the TT plan. You’re really not going to lose much run/swim fitness at all in that time if you’re staying fit on the bike and anything you do lose will come back extremely quickly. You can probably still incorporate a fair bit of swimming without impacting the bike. I think if you cut running to nothing or just short easy runs you’d be pleasantly surprised at how much better you can bike with fresh legs, and giving your legs a bit of a break from running is probably a good thing before you start tri training again anyway.
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I would absolutely recommend this…swimming is as much about keeping your “feel for the water” as it is about fitness. So definitely log a few swims / week.
100%.
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Similar to others, I would just run and swim easy and only do intensity on the bike.
I’d say it’s done for the next Q at the very least (it’s winter down here) but I might do some local tris in Q4, just to keep the feeling of racing.
Now, how would y’all feel about this Frankenstein I made 
:
I set up a MED TT plan and overlay a 70.3 LOW base plan on top of it, removing it just the bike sessions and kept the running/swimming sessions in there, so basically, every time I’m on the saddle, I’m executing the MED TT plan, and every day off, it’s just swimming and or running base stuff.
Am I a genius or a complete idiot?
I wouldn’t run at all personally.
The running is going to make it really hard for you to train well on the bike.
If your goal is to finish TT Nats as a lark, do whatever you want. If you want a good finish, focus on the bike, ditch the running.
You need to be clear on your goals. It’s fine to do all the things: train however you want, just do a tri plan. If you want to maximize your performance at a TT, you need to be willing to let some of the other event fitness go.
As to your plan: if the TT matters to you at all, you should remove the intensity from the swim and the run altogether.
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some good advice here already
maybe that’s your experience. for my part I loose a significant amount when I drop swim/run, even for a week. and now OP is planning to do that for 8 weeks. maybe some off season after.
however 1-2 weekly sessions per discipline at a lower overall load could be enough to maintain most gains.
second this!
as @kurt.braeckel I fully agree that you need to prioritise what is most important for you. that will guide your choices.
Yep. And you don’t need the intensity. Ultimately you’re better off “letting gains go” sometimes. They’re not gone. They come back faster than the first time.
If TT Nats are important, train like a TTer. Swim 1-2 sessions (think 6x500 easy as an example). I wouldn’t run at all, but if you must, even a 10-15 min session twice a week off the bike would be enough. I would do those runs after your interval sessions on the bike and plan the following day to be easy (long easy is OK… just make sure it’s actually easy, like .6IF).
