Hey guys,
A little about myself, I am currently 35, joined TR in October 2020. Before subscribing with TR, I followed a couple of Garmin’s HR-based cycling training plans while doing separate running programs (also by Garmin, trying out their coaches). I have felt a little over trained while combining these plans, but because of that I learned to listen to my body. It was more mental/physical fatigue and lack of motivation. No real health issues.
I started running in January of 2020. I was a bit overweight, but it’s coming down. I am 173cm tall, January of 2020 I weighted in at 90 kg and this morning I am at hovering around 80 kg. BMI around 26.5-ish.
(so 5f6’’ from almost 200 pounds to 176 and still going down).
I started swimming in September because of lockdown and life. I had to learn how to swim freestyle which took me a little while and there was an interruption of 2 to 3 months because of a second lockdown.
Currently I’m doing the half distance mid volume plan as prescribed by TR with some modifications.
As it is planned now, it’s a base, build, specialty (with a peak in June, we’ll come back to this one), build and specialty for the planned race in September.
I am in my last week of the base build and everything has been going great so far. I missed a couple of workouts here and there, (maybe 4 bike workouts) but overall have been able to follow the plan pretty well. At times I substituted and indoor workout for an outdoor ride when the weather allowed for it. I had a little foot injury, which made me miserable on the run but I quickly found the reason, my seat was a little to high. A couple of days of rest on my run and then I was back. Haven’t had any issues since.
For my run I am following a Garmin coach plan which is aligning almost perfectly with TR Tri-plan. For my swim, because I am still in the learning phase, I am not doing the swim workouts as prescribed but following a swim clinic by Effortless Swimming to get my swim to a descent enough level. I am confident though that with the progress I made so far I will be able to cover the 2k swim in freestyle by June.
Now here is the thing where I call on you, Tri-athletes, internet strangers and TR-Forum knights and ladies.
This first peak in June, I want to do a swim, bike and run TT in the same week, before I start the next build phase, to have some baseline times. The Swim I will probably do sometime during the week and done.
Plan B is do an 80km bike TT, recover for a day, do the half marathon at my best pace and call it a day.
Plan A (which I would actually prefer to do) is the same 80 km TT and brick the half marathon at my best pace of the bike. I realize that I would have to consider nutrition (which I have already been doing to a
certain degree).
(It’s about logistics and location of swimming-pool vs location of bike and run why I won’t be doing everything as plan C, all in one day).
Things I don’t know are, what percentages of FTP does the bike leg usually gets to be ridden at in a typical race?
What about the run? How do athletes asses their paces for the run portion? Spaghetti against the wall and hope it sticks?
Things I can monitor are HR (strap), power on the bike (power-meter pedals), pace on the run or power for the run (Stryd-pod), so I can either pace myself on time or on power for the run.
I plan to after this is done, to continue the TR Tri-plan as prescribed, fully, for the swim, bike and run.
Another thing I was thinking (until the adaptive plans are rolled out, I would adjust accordingly), all my ramp-test I performed were on the bars. After these assessments are finished I plan to do the ramp tests in TT position and to fully focus on doing all bike workouts in position.
So fellow TRers what are your thoughts on this?