Being creative or digging a hole ?

cgres123

After this Iron Distance race I'm doing this month , Beach to Battleship , I was thinking of doing a marathon in the spring maybe late March or April.

 

Was in the chat room this week and Patrick. He verified for me the concept of running a marathon 2 / 3 Vdot points below what we test at for a 5k. I'm good with that a 5k isn't a marathon by no means. So I'm looking at the Hack on the Wiki and it has of course week one a test week. So lets say I test a 40 Vdot and my question is do I train the whole Hack at my 40 and run my race at a 37 / 38 ?

 

Another thing I'd like some input too as well. I will take some down time after my IM and jump into an out season plan when I feel like training again.

The out season has 2 days per week off , Monday and Friday so I was wondering how the Hack is done as to the training week line up ?

I want Sunday's off to spend with my family , they have had enough of my hobby for quite awhile and I want to get back into my church and my friends there.

 

My training week would look like this.

 

Monday - 30-40 min swim followed by half of the running distance of day 1 of the Hack.

 

Tuesday - Assigned bike per the OS followed by remainder of the distance of day 1 of the Hack.

 

Wednesday - 30 -40 min swim followed by half of the distance of day 2 of the Hack

 

Thursday - Assigned bike per the OS followed by remainder of day 2 of the Hack

 

Friday - Long bike per the OS no brick

 

Saturday - Long run per the Hack and final day 3 run.

 

Sunday - Off

 

My thoughts on the above with so many running days are that say an 8 mile run, for example, split up into 2 days is more or less doing it on the same day per say. The TSS score is low for the day itself i.e. 4 miles with the swim not taxing on the body followed by a run is doable. The next day would be a brick. Wednesday is a repeat swim being followed by the run and so on until the two stand alone days Friday and Saturday.

 

Am I digging a hole here for myself ? Why swim... because I like it .

kurshing

Having done the OS several times now, I amnot sure how people, over the full 20 weeks, are able to do much else in nconjunction with the OS. I would say the you just should add some volume to the Sunday and maybe Wed runs until Jan, then maybe start adding things into the program. I would also say (in my opinion) that is you want to do a marathon and do it right, you should abandon OS and train for the marathon...or scrap the marathon. A half is one thing, but, training for a full correctly is enough training in and of itself, as is the OS if you are trying to get faster for tri purposes.

Just my thoughts - just be careful!

jburbatt

Yeah I agree. It's really tough to get a lot out of the OS and train for a marathon. The OS is hard enough as it is, but adding a marathon training plan onto it "just cause" doesn't really make sense if you are trying to improve in triathlon. Plus with the add-on admin of swimming, it really seems like you are adding on a ton for someone that wants to take some more time with the family and friends. The OS is a nice time to get some time with non-triathletes while improving your game with short, hard workouts. Why add a marathon on top of that?

If you need more convincing see Rich's post here: http://members.endurancenation.us/Training/TrainingForums/tabid/101/aft/7177/Default.aspx

He posts it every year

Coach Patrick

The hack is meant to replace both OS runs...so you'd have 3 bikes and 3 runs. If you take Sunday off for the Fam, then I'd plan on keeping Tues/Thurs/Sat the same and do Mon/Fri as shorter runs, Wed as the longer run.

Alternately, you could put the bikes on Mon/Wed/Fri, plan on long run on Sat, and then do the interval/tempo runs on Tues/Thurs. The swim is the wild card here...if you want to get OS gains and want to race your Marathon, then "liking" swimming isn't enough reason (for me!) to include it.

cgres123

@ Stephen , Thanks for the idea of just forgetting about the OS and concentrate on the mary but that wont work cause I'd still like to get faster on the bike.

@ Jennifer , Do you know my wife ? Ha HA you are right on thx !!!

@ P , That idea sounds better than mine and my liking swimming doesn't really fit in. I don't know if you revisit your own post's but one more thing , would I train at a 40 vdot and race at 37 /38 ?