Seperating Bike and Run Blocks in the OS

David Ambrose

My personal situation has necessitated altering the OS schedule, which leads me to give thought to the following:

I've been doing OS bike work and am having much greater success this OS season than in past OS seasons on gaining cycling fitness, endurance, and FTP while simutaneously solely maintaining run fitness [not trying to increase vdot at this point, simply maintain vdot].  My belief is that a contributing factor to my greater success on the bike side of training is due to lower fatigue in the legs as a result of simply maintaining run fitness, and not attempting to simultaneously increase vdot at the same time as increasing FTP.

As such my questions/thoughts are:

Assuming an athlete has time (e.g. time as in many many months until A-event and actual IM training plan begins), is there benefit / no benefit if one breaks the OS training period into large blocks, perhaps many weeks or a month or two at a time, between cycling and running?  For example, spend Block 1 focusing on raising FTP while maintaining run fitness and then Block 2 focusing on raising vdot and duration with that vdot while solely maintaining FTP earned in the prior block, and so forth for how many blocks is available for one's schedule before actual IM training begins.

I think one question which arises from the above is........Can one actually gain a greater FTP and/or vdot by segregating the focus of FTP and vdot compared to attempting to raise FTP and vdot simultaneously?

Thoughts?

 

Al Truscott

David - here are some (random) thoughts about this, based on no real experience except for one year when I decided to go for a 10K PR at the expense of cycling, during the winter.

One of the tricky things is how to *maintain* the cycling fitness through a prolonged (8 week?) effort at raising the VDOT. How would you see doing that? Continued weekly or twice weekly FTP interval efforts? Anything less would probably result in deterioration. Unless you keep doing the work, you will lose the speed.

I'm a firm believer that I am always "training to train". In other words, in order to get full benefit from an IM build (which is usually 6-10 weeks for me), I need to be well-prepped in all three sports. Also, I believe that the best race results come from a balanced level of fitness - no one sport predominates as my "best". Since I'm training to race well overall, I feel the need to be always vigilant as to how well I'm doing in each sub-specialty, and to not let one slide relative to the other.

Having shown my bias towards balanced training, I would also say that, if one has an unbalanced skill set - say you are a super runner and a so-so cyclist - then this is the perfect time to emphasize that deficit in your training. But if you're roughly equal in the effectiveness of your cycling and running, than I would work on both at all times, as that's how we end up racing.

Like I said, my bias, and not to be taken as a prescription for anyone else.

Peter Greagg

Hi David — I assume someone more knowledgable than me will chime in soon. 

In the mean while, a few months ago when I had a trial membership I read somewhere in EN that in the very early days OS were offered as balanced, run focused, and bike focused.  I read a piece by Coach P about it to the effect that because just about nobody chose the unballanced OS, that it was discontinued.

I had a look for it but couldn't see it (removed perhaps?), but is had the instructions to do what you arre asking — Unfortunately, I can't remember the details.

Cheers

Peter

Keith Wick

I believe that Coach Rich is trying something like this out now in his prep for IMWI. I think right now he's a study of n=1.

jburbatt

Here's the wiki on focusifying your OS plan towards a bike or run: http://members.endurancenation.us/Resources/Wiki/tabid/108/topic/Focusify/Default.aspx

I agree with Al that if you aren't going to be putting in hard work in one discipline than it's natural that it's going to drop off. I'd imagine it wouldn't be as hard to re-acheive a high FTP or high vdot if you were already there (you'd have to take age and injuries into account though too). But, I can't see splitting up blocks allowing you to maintain a high FTP/vdot while concentrating on the other. That being said, several people have taken significant time off to do a bike or run focused year and made significant gains much faster than they would if they were doing simultaneous builds. But then you have to come back and rebuild your other discipline, so there is definitely a trade off. But it might be worthwhile if you think you'd see some pretty significant gains from the focus.

mgraffeo

David, I'd say that with enough time, absolutely it is something to consider. I've seen Rich talk about how quickly he can get back to a certain point on the bike, even after prolonged periods of down time. I think it is a bit tougher on the run, but if you have been a fast biker/runner, it's easier to get back there than if you've never been there before. So, taking a period of time to train like a biker (even at the expense of running) followed by a period of time training like a runner (at the expense of biking) has the potential to reset the bar in each for you, enabling you to develop both together at the return of a balanced plan.

What i cant answer is if this would be more efficient than if you had been training a balanced get-faster plan all along. Probably too highly individual a thing to answer for a particular person, but if forced to guess, I'd say that the unbalanced plan may have a slight advantage, but really only if you have large chunks of time to sacrifice one sport, then the other, then build them both together prior to race prep.

Coach Rich

Yes, I did nothing but ride a bike March-September '10, with the intention of finishing with a very high bike FTP and then transitioning to run training. All plans were foiled when I rolled my ankle very, very badly the day after my cycling block finished....anyway...

If I were thinking about doing this and I had an Ironman on the calendar:

• During a bike block, I would still run 3x per week. Maybe as warmup, 10-15 x strides, 1mi @ T-pace, cool down. Or not do the T-pace, just the strides. My point is that I would do the minimum to maintain "most" of the durability in my legs and "some" of my speed, even though I'm in a cycling block. See IM on the calendar above.
• During a run block, I would still try to get in minimum of 2 rides per week, as 1hr total hammer sessions. In my experience, this is the minimum required to sorta hold-on to your FTP.