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seabri tri program

Hi Rich,

Good to get started here!

I would like to get your general opinion with respect to setting realistic goals:

 - if I said to you that I had unlimited training time, would you change my tp?

 - if I wanted to reduce my 1500m swim time from 27' odd by 2' by July 21 is it feasible without damaging other training areas (I am learning to swim, been at it for 9 months now).

 - if I needed to increase my bike speed by 5 to 10% by July 21, is this a normal expectation of being on a consistent program (seeing as I have not really trained much on the bike) or am I dreaming or is there something more that could be done?

- is it normal for run speed to diminish with tri training (= less running) or is that just poor training? 

 

 

Comments


  • Posted By Brian Gross on 08 May 2013 03:53 AM

    Hi Rich,

    Good to get started here!

    I would like to get your general opinion with respect to setting realistic goals:

     - if I said to you that I had unlimited training time, would you change my tp? We can advise you what changes to make yourself. 

     - if I wanted to reduce my 1500m swim time from 27' odd by 2' by July 21 is it feasible without damaging other training areas (I am learning to swim, been at it for 9 months now). 27' 1500m swim is pretty good for someone who just started swimming. Dropping 2' from that means dropping your /100m pace by about 10secs. Doable but takes some work and your sorta bumping up a point of diminishing returns -- more and more work for smaller and smaller gains. 

     - if I needed to increase my bike speed by 5 to 10% by July 21, is this a normal expectation of being on a consistent program (seeing as I have not really trained much on the bike) or am I dreaming or is there something more that could be done? 5-10% improvement in power, absolutely. Speed, depends. Power increase converted to speed increase is not linear. You will work very, very hard on the bike and many of our athletes see very healthy power gains on the bike which do translate to speed gains.

    - is it normal for run speed to diminish with tri training (= less running) or is that just poor training? Depends on where you're starting from and what your experience is on the bike, I suppose. If you were a 34' 10k runner used to running 50-60m/wk and a 1:10 40k TT cyclist, you have a LOT of gains to be made on the bike and not a bad tradeoff to give up a minute or two off your run. 

    In the end though the ability to get faster during the race season is often a function of the races you're training for. Short course athlete = sure, can get faster across the race season. But as race distance increase, training volume increase, intensity decreases and it's more about building endurance on top of the speed that our athletes have built during their OutSeason with us. This is why the OutSeason is so important for us, because it's where we can focus our athletes on making themselves much faster. 

     

     


  • And these would all be great questions to post to the team in the General Discussion forum and get their experiences and feedback
  • Hi Rich,

    Loaded up the short course intermediate as per your screen cast.

    This was last week for me:

    Mon: swim easy sets, drills, 40 min, stat bike medium 30 min, run steady treadmill 30 min, 

    Tue: Bike wu 30 min out to test loop, 40 min hard/v.hard, wd 30  min back, swim eve, 30 min stretch/floor excercise and 1 hour swim

    Wed: Bike regular hard hill loop (1500 ft climb and 1500 ft descent total) 21 min above 80% HR 36 min 75 - 80%, 1hr 25 min, swim  drill 1 hr

    Thurs: swim 40 min, stat bike 50  min increasing from 125 watt to 208 watt (hr to 77% steady), swim eve, 30 min stretch etc and 1 hr swim

    Fri: swim test 1000 m plus 1100 m drills etc

    Sat: swim/drill 1 hr hard, stat bike 1 hr to 79% hr and 208 watt hard all higher cadence coming down to 90 at 208 w, 45 min easier run finish at 80% hr (tri practice done fairly consecutively 7 am to 10 am)

    Sun: 3 hr 10 min hard hilly ride (3000 ft up, 3000 ft dn) over extended after an hour-ish  (26 min above 80% and 45 min 75 - 80%, rest of ride was steady medium easy grind (all I could manage)

    Wondering what you think of the work load of your plan vs my usual-ish (above). July 21 is make or break qualifier. I feel like I need to push for some gains now. Also whenever the weather allows, as lots of rain/storms now in winter. These rides have been getting faster, especially the hills. When I used to marathon run train at more than 70 miles a week I naturally got faster and was also able to run mountain trail race of 50 miles with very little change. By the way, I installed Power Cranks and have been using since mid January?

    Thx,  Brian

     

  • Brian,

    Why don't you take our plan for a spin for a couple weeks and see what you think?

    The short answer is that you / your plan appears to be speaking a different intensity language than what we use around here. In our experience, many triathletes come here from an endurance training / sorta wishy-washy framework of defining training zones so that their "work" isn't the same as our "work," their "hard" isn't our "hard," etc.  

    • I don't know what a "stat bike" is, unless that's a typo?
    • Don't know what 78% of your HR is...78% of what?
    • Don't know what 208 watts is, what percentage of your FTP that is, or if you're using a different system, etc. 

    Finally, you mentioned running 70 miles per week during marathon training. That's great, and an indication that you certainly have durability and a running base, but you're not training for a marathon you're training for an Oly triathlon. If it were me, I'd bank that base and focus on becoming a faster runner and faster cyclist. I would do much less than half of that mileage, freeing up training and recovery resources to apply to becoming a faster runner and cyclist. 

  • Hi Rich,

    Everything going well, I think. Couple questions perhaps you can give me some guidance?

    How do I correlate pool swim speed to wetsuit lake swim speed? Wondering how to determine/target what my goal race pace should be. Think I have improved these last several weeks in pool. Used to just about make 2 min/100m pace in pool. Today I did 5 x 400m (30sec) at 1:57, 1:53, 1:53, 1:51 (this was 450m by mistake) and 1:55 and this was right after track vo2max 4 x 800m and 45 min total run (not to mention yesterdays 1 hour bike with max efforts and 40 min run off bike) - so I was definitely feeling tired in the pool today.

    Haven't done a wetsuit/ocean swim (winter here) since end April. I know it feels different. Should I try and practice wetsuit ocean and or what about wetsuit in pool (bad for neoprene though)?

    All percentages of HR that I gave are of my HR max. Stat bike is stationary bike at gym. Think I was probably over-training although I was seeing good improvement bike ride to bike ride. Also wondering about what pace I should shoot for race day for the run.

    Thanks,

    Brian

     

     

     


  • Posted By Brian Gross on 12 Jun 2013 02:37 AM

    Hi Rich,

    Everything going well, I think. Couple questions perhaps you can give me some guidance?

    How do I correlate pool swim speed to wetsuit lake swim speed? Wondering how to determine/target what my goal race pace should be. Think I have improved these last several weeks in pool. Used to just about make 2 min/100m pace in pool. Today I did 5 x 400m (30sec) at 1:57, 1:53, 1:53, 1:51 (this was 450m by mistake) and 1:55 and this was right after track vo2max 4 x 800m and 45 min total run (not to mention yesterdays 1 hour bike with max efforts and 40 min run off bike) - so I was definitely feeling tired in the pool today. I think you might be overthinking it a bit. In the pool we want you very dialed into your pace, etc, because it's a very controlled environment, the clock is right there, etc. That pace stuff doesn't translate very well to open water swimming because the environment is so different. In my experience this will all sort itself out when you swim open water. That is, swim at what feels like a pace / effort that you know, from your swimming experience in the pool, that you can hold for the distance. 

    Haven't done a wetsuit/ocean swim (winter here) since end April. I know it feels different. Should I try and practice wetsuit ocean and or what about wetsuit in pool (bad for neoprene though)?  Ocean would be better, if you can make it work. 

    All percentages of HR that I gave are of my HR max. Stat bike is stationary bike at gym. Think I was probably over-training although I was seeing good improvement bike ride to bike ride. Also wondering about what pace I should shoot for race day for the run. 

    It's very, very important that we all speak the same language here. All of the training zones in your training plan are based on your lactate threshold heart rate, not your max heart rate. The second week of your training plan (after you completed your 7-day trial membership) included some bike and run tests that would determine this LT heart rate and then be used to calculate training zones. Did you do those tests? 

    Same for race pacing on the run. Again, very, very important that we are speaking the same language here. 

    Thanks,

    Brian

     

     

     


  • Thanks for that Rich.

    By the way, really enjoyed your swim video part 1 and 2. Tried the no shave shoulder rub and hit a new pb. Thought it might be a fluke so did 8 x 100s all at around 1:45 to 1:42 . Jumping Jimminy!? Hoping I can make the translation in wetsuit. From December through April I was ocean swimming/racing between 2 to 4 times a week. Distances from 500 m to 7200 m, generally no kicking. I race ok if I can swim alongside someone on my breathing side,sure makes direction and pacing easy!

    Did all the tests and used the calculator for the LTs/zones. I have all the HR targets/zones for run and bike for the training (plan). Disappointed with running, the HR was way high and pace way slow compared to running training only. I mean I can't really believe that my LT is 90% of max. (170 HR avg for 20 min and some for 5k w HR max around 190).

    On race day, should I be keeping my heart rate within certain zones for the bike and run?

  • Posted By Brian Gross on 18 Jun 2013 03:41 AM


    Thanks for that Rich.



    By the way, really enjoyed your swim video part 1 and 2. Tried the no shave shoulder rub and hit a new pb. Thought it might be a fluke so did 8 x 100s all at around 1:45 to 1:42 . Jumping Jimminy!? Hoping I can make the translation in wetsuit. From December through April I was ocean swimming/racing between 2 to 4 times a week. Distances from 500 m to 7200 m, generally no kicking. I race ok if I can swim alongside someone on my breathing side,sure makes direction and pacing easy!



    Did all the tests and used the calculator for the LTs/zones. I have all the HR targets/zones for run and bike for the training (plan). Disappointed with running, the HR was way high and pace way slow compared to running training only. I mean I can't really believe that my LT is 90% of max. (170 HR avg for 20 min and some for 5k w HR max around 190).



    On race day, should I be keeping my heart rate within certain zones for the bike and run?

    Forget max heart rate or your old zones/frame of reference. 

    For short course racing most people bike at high Zone 3, low Zone 4 and run in mid-high Zone 4

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