Hi all
I’m a “masters” athlete with a number of years of trainer road behind me.
I’m at the stage when I need to do a couple of running workouts per week to maintain my ability to referee high level competitive rugby matches.
Can anyone offer any good advice on how to integrate these into a low volume 3 rides per week on trainer road?
Thanks
I started running a bit just to include some impact in my training (for bone density etc.) and to make sure I have the durability to be able to run when I’m away for work and can’t bring a bike with me. So I don’t really care if I’m fast or anything, I just want to run with some consistency. Sounds pretty similar to you.
With that in mind I think of it in the same way you’d schedule strength training - it’s ok if your bike workouts diminish your running ability but not the other way round. So the one thing you don’t want to do is run in the 24-36hrs prior to your key bike workouts.
Beyond that, your running training will obviously be more productive if you can be more fresh when you run, but if you’re like me and you don’t particuarly care about being good at running then you can just stick those sessions in wherever they fit. For me that’s usually on Tuesday after what is generally the shorter of my two most important bike workouts of the week.
If you say you’re doing 3 days and I’m assuming correctly that those are Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, then Sunday makes a lot of sense for a run since you’ve had a night to recover and you still get another rest day before your next bike workout. Otherwise I’d suggest doing it after your bike session on any of the other days.
Triathletes will obviously have much better insight into how you’d want to approach this if your running progression is really important to you, but since it sounds like it’s just about maintenance and overall physical health then you don’t need to overthink it too much and the above should work well.
I guess I would start with how often you want to run and duration?
I would do something like a Tri plan without the swimming. Personally I would do casual jogging in my between days. I would start with two days a week and maybe go to three if the body feels good after a few weeks. I would start generally with 30 min runs, adding no more than 10% per week.
Schedule would look something like this
M - Off
T - Bike
W - Run
T - Bike
F - Run
S - Bike
S - Off
That’sa really good point about running before important bike workouts. I’d been focused on when I can run after the big bike workouts! Thanks 
Semi related question… As background - I am a trail runner and ride MTB & gravel. I even “dropped” riding for a good couple of years having enjoyed the trail running so much. Obviously that has changed around a bit again!
Relatively new to TR. But - how do you guys use running IF? Because running is (for me, at least) taking much more of a toll on the legs. This morning I did a VO2 Max session on bike, and HR was responding accordingly, so the interpreted stress is aligned.
Yet even when I do an easy 7-8k road run, my HR obviously remains low because of the easy effort, but my legs feels worse than after the VO2 Max session… Not even talking about a longer run in the mountains, just a very easy after work cruise in town with HR not even in zone 3 at any point.
That’s not an easy concept for me to convey to TR software… As stated by somebody else, the legs are not happy about a key workout the next day, and you struggle through it more than you should have, even if you did a hard bike workout instead of easy running.
I think the true answer is that you need a bit of trial and error and to factor your own past experience into how you evaluate your running. I know TR does this to some extent - they’ve said several times on the podcast that other activity types do feed into adaptive training and that the AI weights those activity types differently depending on your individual training history (so your first run ever logged might trigger a yellow day even if it’s only 15-20 mins, but a 30 minute run might not move the needle at all for a regular runner or triathlete). So the more you make sure that all your training uploads to the platform and the more you fill out your effort level surveys, the better TR should get at adjusting.
Ultimately though, you’ll need to be able to make some additional adjustments based on your own observations about how different terrain, surface, and intensity types affect you differently. Adding annotations in your TR account can be really helpful for this if you find it difficult to remember those details (details about the runs and then qualitative descriptions of how you felt in the subsequent bike workouts).
Hey @BigLee!
Lots of good advice here!
By looking at your schedule, you could incorporate your runs on Wednesdays and Fridays, or I like the idea of @alexfthenakis idea of integrating them after your interval work, so you can perform your cycling workouts with quality. You could add them on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
That said, I am not sure what your experience with running is or for how long you plan to run in these sessions. A safe approach is to start with light runs and gradually progress to more intense or longer runs. I am a trail runner myself, and running takes twice the toll on your body! So, progressing into it is best if you don’t want sore muscles 