I’m training for a half-marathon at the end of November. I’m still ramping up my weekly mileage, but I’m aiming for 60 to 70 km a week (37 to 44 miles) and hopefully a sub-1h30 finish.
I’d like to complement my running with some cycling in order to keep my “cycling legs” for when I switch back to more cycling later on, while also mixing up my training (to keep it fun) and adding a bit more volume without increasing my risk of injury too much. I’ll probably do two rides a week: one endurance ride and another that’s a bit more demanding. What kind of ride would be best? Sweet spot seems like the logical choice, but my legs are already tired from the running sessions. VO₂max work could be interesting to develop my cardiovascular system (and shorter intervals feel easier to me), but I don’t want to overdo it. Any suggestions?
If your legs are sore from running the day before, and you’ll likely have to run the following day, just keep your rides easy. Shoot for using your Z2 HR as a governor on those days, and ride just to get your blood flowing. You’ll still be getting good training stimulus in!
Yesterday was the day of the Berlin Marathon, and it was going to be my first ever Marathon.
Two weeks ago, I was in tip top form. I was really smashing volume and paces I had never done before and was really looking forward to smashing it in Berlin. In one of my last long workouts, I did two sets of 45 minutes at goal pace. During the latter, I started feeling something wasn’t right. I have felt niggles and little pains here and there before and usually done well do just push through. Not this one.
After the run I was in pain. There is good pain and bad pain. And this was bad pain. My first thought was: “Fxxx, I may not be able to run in Berlin”.
The days after I was a the physio every day. I also did a CT scan, and they found I had quite severe ITBS. We build a plan to still be able to run in Berlin. I dialed back speed and volume and substituted with more cycling. I don’t really know if any of that helped anything, but I arrived in Berlin with minimal pain and a fully taped knee.
I had dialed back my expectations massively and was super weary to just not be able to finish the race.
The pain was there the entire way, and a few times my other heel also started hurting.
Between my level of fitness, being carbo loaded to the max, and having trained in warm conditions for months, all the other marathon problems you usually experience, weren’t there for me. At 32k I was certain I could do it, but wasn’t ready to speed up.
I reached the finish in 2:54:02. The moment I stopped, my knee told me to not walk ever again. It was a long and slow walk back to the hotel, but man, I have never felt more proud, although it wasn’t the time I was shooting for.
Apologies if this has been asked before, but a search didn’t find anything.
I’m playing with the TR Triathlon plans and deleting the swims to have a bike+run plan. If the plan prescribes a 25 minute easy and low TSS run, but I go do a 45 minute run at threshold, when the run uploads to TR, should I “associate it” with the planned easy run or mark it as “unplanned activity” and not associate it? I want to do whatever will help the AI adjust my future rides and runs based on my real effort/fatigue.
I believe the plan will just want to keep your weekly TSS in the range and if you do more, it will then adapt the following days cycling to ensure you don’t overdo things.
Annoyingly, this means it will take intensity days and make them endurance days which gets boring but probably best for you…
I’d love to be wrong about this though. perhaps post in the tri thread as more folks there have used the tri plans
Run adaptations on the tri plans are fairly rudimentary; I don’t think TR does any sort of analysis on the runs, they’re just pass/fail. If you miss a run, the “adaptation” is usually simply that it replaces the next run and the entire run portion of the plan moves accordingly. In other words, if you associate the 45-minute run with the 25-minute run on the plan, then you “passed” the run and the plan won’t adapt. If you don’t associate it, then your next run might be replaced by the “missed” 25 minute run.
The one adaptation that could happen is if the longer run triggers RLGL, in which case rides and runs can both turn into a recovery ride or run.
When no one replied, I kinda just figured others have tried this and deemed it unusable, so I deleted it all and just went back to a cycling only plan and will do my own run stuff. I wish Garmin Coach would do a 3 days a week running plan to compliment my 4 days a week TR plan, but you end up ignoring either what Garmin schedules or what TR does.
My brain thinks it should be so simple to do combined running and cycling plans, but none of the standard apps I’m familiar with other than Join seem to do it. I may just go back to Join as a result.
I haven’t tried Join, but I’ve tried a bunch of running apps, including Runna and Stryd, and I always end up back on TR for triathlon plans. All of those apps have tri plans, but none of them manage the training load from cycling as well as TR manages the training load of running. Runna was the latest one I tried and it was killing me.
Forgive me but I just want brag for a second.. I just ran my first marathon at Indy and crushed my expectations and ran 2:36. I had never run a marathon before because it tapering/recovery seemed like a huge hassle and I like my training rhythm the way it is. It seems weird to say but I basically just did cycling training without the bike. I did sacrifice a lot of time off the bike to make it happen and I am excited to get back on the trainer. I am a bit disappointed that my cycling ability isn’t commensurate with my run fitness but I am excited to start working on it.
I meant to post in this thread around the new year and be involved but (maybe for the better?) spending time on internet forums fell down the list of priorities. It’s so satisfying to set a long term goal and end up exceeding it.
I ran 1:25 half 3 years ago because i was having saddle sore problems and I ended up f’in around around and getting legit fast.
I don’t listen to the podcast anymore because it has changed so much but what it taught me about getting in a good place mentally for training, and enjoying myself, and being forgiving of your own mistakes has helped me so much. I’d probably kiss coach @Jonathan on the lips if I ever met him for being such a huge help and I guess helping me to internalize what I intellectually know to be true.
I also have the best training partner anyone could ask for who just went sub 3 at the same race as a woman that just doubles my satisfaction!
Sorry again for the rant but I try not to be the cyclist/runner guy in my day to day life and I don’t have anywhere else to let it out! Now i just need to work on not being a middling cyclist.
Brag away… that’s a great result! Congratulations. I’m hoping to run a 2:36 half marathon in a couple of years, so you get all of the appropriate respect from this end of the bell curve. Bravo!
Just one thing: what the heck is “cycling training without the bike”? I have no idea what you meant by that.
So staring a mini block I would run something like 4x 1 mile at threshold by feel/rpe. Then would do a progression like 4x1 mile → 5x1 → 6x1 → 3x2 → 2x3 → 2x4. I don’t think runners think of their progress like that. I would do extensive VO2 intervals on the track working from 400s out to 1k/1200 repeats really focusing on extending time on maximum heart rate. Time at >90% max hr isn’t something I hear about in any non-cycling circles. I’ve kind of also adopted the hard/medium/easy training rhythm that seems to be popular. The guy who’s name I can’t remember from wko has a video about ‘finding you training rhythm’ that has influenced me quite a bit also.
There doesn’t seem to be a 2026 Thread yet, so I’ll just be posting here.
Ongoing snowfall in Germany has pushed back serious racing quite a bit, so my first race of the season took place quite a bit later than anticipated.
I haven’t attempted a 5K PR in 2 years. After a solid training block over the past 12 weeks, I really felt primed to put the hammer down. This is a 5K run in a park, in Bremen, Germany. My goal was to go sub 16:30, but I had an eye on sub 16:20.
At the start I had to really sprint to get past all the slower runners quickly, and tried following a guy who looked fast. After 2:55 pace for the first 500m, he slowed down significantly, and I knew I had to over take him. I hit the first K in 3:10, but my pace had dropped to 3:20.
I had a guy in the distance I was trying to follow. Whenever I looked down on my watch, it said current pace „3:25“ but average never got above 3:15.
At 1.8k I had the first intrusive thoughts getting into my head. I wasn’t even hurting but my head was trying to sabotage me.
At 3k I knew I had this one. Also, I had caught up to the guy in the distance. He was the second placed. My average pace was 3:15, but on the home straight I could accelerate for a final K of 3:07. I blasted by him and would’ve taken second… but my lactate laden brain told me the finish line was more to the right, and I went accord the wrong line. So officially I only placed 4th. While dumb, I can’t really say I care. I wanted a new Pb, and got a 1 Minute 8 second best, so I am over the moon, with a 16:11 5k best.
Really looking forward to seeing what I can deliver at the Berlin half in 4 weeks.
