Tri / Triathlon / Triathlons - do they float your boat?

177cm/90cm chest.

Bang on the total volume training for last week (9h05) as long as I count 5-a-side as running.

9h55 to do this week and I should be able to do that without counting the 1h40 of 5-a-side although I might be slightly light on the cycling, depends on how much time I can be arsed to do after my swim on Friday. Need to be better prepared for it and have lunch to take with me on the bike.

Trying to apply 80/20 rule to running and so only Saturday's parkrun will be 'high' intensity, the rest will be plodding along.

10h is just about at the limit of what I can do without eating into family time or getting up early any mornings.

-29 TSB this morning (HM PB yesterday, rest Saturday, 1h15 hard swim and 3h hard-ish cycling Friday, 1h10 run and 1h 5-a-side Thursday). Going to enjoy lazing in the pool this afternoon whilst my daughter has her lesson.

I'm looking to get some races in the calendar, what with it already being May and all that. Thinking of an Olympic next month - either the Dartford Bridge or the Brett Ashford. Dartford is close to home but the course doesn't look massively inspiring. They're on the same date. Has anyone done either before?

Also, the seals on my goggles have expired due to lack of use - where can I go and buy goggles in person, in London? I would quite like to try them on.

Trying them on in a shop isn't massively helpful as you can't tell how well they're sealed until you try them in water. If you got on well with the old ones, just buy the same model again online.

Perhaps there's a gap in the market for a goggle shop with tanks of water so you could submerge your head and test out the goggles. Kind of like treadmills in running shops.

I find it takes a while to get the goggles adjusted to prevent leaks when new; finding the right balance between leaky and eye-bulging pressure.

This is more out of necessity in my case as I have to use hideously expensive prescription goggles so I don't really get any choice, I just have to make the best use of the ones I get. Not bitter at all, no, really no.

Damn that's a lot of of hours! Have you been doing triathlons for a long time? These last two weeks for me with 4h each have really put a toll on my body, guess I'm not used to the volume. This is a recovery week which suits me well, specially after a long 217km ride I did on Sunday.

I'm guessing the 217km ride will have put more of a strain on your body than the other 4h of training. It certainly did when I was riding 200km Audaxes regularly. You can't claim to only be doing ~4h a week and then throw in that you did a 217km ride!

As for my 10 hours a week, it's nicely spread out so I tend not to feel it too much. Here's my current week:-

Mon: rest day but 10min swim (usually just kick) and then spa pool recovery whilst daughter having her swimming lesson
Tue: 2x35min cycle commutes (medium intensity), 40min 5-a-side late evening
Wed: 1h lunchtime run, 45min swim (drills mostly) before collecting daughter from school
Thu: 1h10min run in to work, 1h 5-a-side after work, undo all good work in pub
Fri: 1h15min swim (distance), 2h-3h cycle ride (4-6 laps of Richmond Park), gentle swim with daughter after school
Sat: 25min run (parkrun - high intensity)
Sun: 1h (or longer) run

(I thrive on routine.)

It's taken a while to build up to this and not feel shattered, but soon the hours really start ramping up; the Wednesday runs will switch over to speed/intervals once I move to 4+ hours of running a week and I'll have to get up early (ugh) one morning (Mon/Tue/Wed) to fit in another hour+ swim.

I rarely fail to get 10,000 steps in during a day and my average is closer to 16,000/day thanks to the running.

Oof, a bit of a cold and a TSB of -30 caught up with me. No run yesterday (was supposed to be a gentle 10k) and no run in this morning.

Currently sticking my plan into a spreadsheet and getting some even scarier TSB numbers (although I do include swimming in my CTL/ATL).

The 20 week beginner IM training plan has PREP/BASE1/BASE2/BASE3/TAPER blocks of 4/4/4/5/3 weeks. If I fiddle that to 5/4/4/4/3 then it works a lot better for me with holidays and other commitments (MR24TT, Audaxes, etc) and I allows me to build my CTL up a bit more before a rest week (which would now coincide with half term).

First 70.3 this Sunday at Grafham Water. :)

Aiming for a sub-6h but a sub-5.5h would be nice. Problem is I'm the world's weakest swimmer!:(

its alright the swim is only a minor part of a 70.3 - just keep calm and steer clear of the pack, focus on smooth steady strokes and get through it, save yourself for the bike and run!

Grafham Water is where I spent a lot of my childhood - pretty much every activity-based school trip was to there! It's good for swimming, just relax and don't get stressed mid-swim (like I do), it goes by a lot quicker than you think even if you're basically just floating along. Good luck!

Reminds me, need to get down to Shepperton Lake some weekend soon for some open water and wetsuit practice.

Cheers guys.

It's a rolling swim start so I can position myself with similar swimmers and avoid the scrum. The problem is I'm incredibly slow and inefficient in a pool without the buoyancy of a wetsuit (I think my huge quads make me a leg-sinker! :D). In a wetsuit, in open water I'm quicker due to the buoyancy correcting my body position but then my arms ache! This happens in both of my wetsuits.

Maybe I need to pull the sleeves up more to give my shoulders some slack?

Did my first open water wetsuit swim in one of the Hampstead Heath ponds this week. Was a very different experience than pool swimming! No one else around, brown muddy water and no walls to rest on to for a quick breather. Felt a bit panicky at first but got into it pretty quickly. Pace felt very slow but Strava says around 2:30/100m which is decent for me. Must be the buoyancy from the suit that helped. Definitely want to get out there more often!

Race went better than expected! :D

Brilliant! Look how many places you gained on the bike!!

Yeah, the course was pretty quick and cycling is definitely my strongest discipline. I'm a reasonable runner but it's hard going sub-90 for a half after the bike!

Swimming in Grafham wasn't too bad in the end. On Saturday it was 11C so I was crapping it but it "warmed up" to 14C today. I still found it cold and it took a few 100m for my breathing to settle down from the gasping sensation of the cold.

I'm a reasonable runner

Says the man who was running at 133km/h...

Not a great week. Have felt knackered all week after last Sunday's HM PB and dropped two usual runs from the week.

Swim: plan 2h10, actual 1h58 - happy with that volume but need more time for drills
Bike: plan 4h30, actual 3h20 - tired and couldn't face another hour on Friday
Run: plan 3h15, actual 2h05 (and 1h40 of that was 5-a-side) - lazy but at least I got a parkrun SB

Plan for this week calls for 2h10 swim, 4h30 bike and 4h run which should be ok now I'm less tired and I can also do a big Friday as I don't need to pick up daughter from school as she's off to a friend's for a sleepover straight from school. Given this I think I'll make my Friday a long swim (4k), get home then 60k on the bike and then straight out on to a 15k run. I may be asleep in the pub later on that night at a friend's birthday party, but it means I can do very little on Saturday.

Get a free age grade %-age boost soon.

Keep going, if you aren't managing to smash all the sessions out of the pack then sometimes it helps to decide on 1 or 2 sessions in the week that you are going to smash and give the rest your best effort rather than stretching and failing at all sessions.

are you sure you've got those number right though, that's a LOT of running full stop, but a huge amount proportionally!

i signed up for the sprint event as at the time of application i could barely swim 25 metres let alone 750. been doing swimming lessons twice a week and improved a lot so looking forward to the event! although i'll also be glad when its over to get a bit of midweek social life back!

have you done any open water swimming yet? i imagine its gonna be completely different to what im used too!

My problem is that the plan is all about volume and relatively easy effort right now, but I keep smashing certain sessions when I shouldn't and blowing any chance of doing it all.

Numbers are roughly based on the beginnertriathlete plan for beginner IM. I had to jiggle it to make it fit my schedule and adding in extra running is 'easy' as I count the 1h40 of 5-a-side I do a week as part of the running if necessary (I can't just ignore it and I'd bin the idea of an IM before I stop playing 5-a-side).

Also I'm trying to apply 80:20 to my running so out of that 4h probably only 50m or so will be at high intensity, and that's pretty much covered by the 5-a-side, so the rest of the running (~3h10) is nice and easy RPE 3-4 type stuff. Just have to remember not to get carried away which, for me, hopefully means keeping HR under 150bpm.

What knackered me last week was the HM (it was a proper race rather than just a training run) which I ran pretty hard (for me anyway). Usually I don't trust my pacing for longer events so I tend to err on the side of caution but thought I'd push it a little bit on the HM:-

5k: 25:24, HRavg 171, max 184
HM: 2:06:28, HRavg 167, max 182
M: 5:07:24, HRavg 150 (thanks to the walking), max 167

A max of only 167 on the marathon! That's scaredy-cat pacing. If I'd known my legs were going to give up at 18 miles anyway then I would have got there a bit quicker!

(The other reason my VDOT drops as distance increases is the extra weight. Cardiac drift comes on faster the more extra weight you're carrying and I'm still carrying at least 10kg too much.)

But, stick a football somewhere front of me and I can't help but run around like an uncontrolled idiot (it's a while ago but it's got the best numbers):-

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/885464110

HR avg of 172 and a max of 199, and that's not a random spike, there's a good few times it goes over 190bpm and, one time, it stays over 190bpm for a good minute and a half.

If only I could learn from that to push myself a bit harder when running at a constant pace. Maybe I will be able to when I get my weight down and my body is having to do less just to fight gravity.

Similar with swimming (can crank out 1:50/100m for 4k at avg 140bpm max 154bpm) and cycling (26kph laps of Richmond Park at avg 158bpm max 170bpm). Guess I need a few swim ladders to get me used to swimming faster and see how my HR responds to the different paces. Wednesday I'll build in a Swim CSS test to my drills.

Anyway, this ^^^ is what happens when I haven't been out running/swimming/cycling; I look at numbers too much.

Only once so far, in one if the hampstead heath ponds. It was very different, will take some time to get used to. I will be aiming to one OWS a week to get ready for the event. Next one for me will be next weekend, in 12 degree water back home in Norway. Can't wait.

4000m pool swim (1:13:40), 60k cycle (2:29:02), 14k run (1:44:16 - I went bang!).

So 1/3 Ironman but with a full Ironman swim.

I feel a bit tired, and I'm 4kg lighter than when I started.

Run was horrid. Way too warm for me and I'd drunk my water by the half way point (despite pre-hydrating). First 7k done in 44:44, second 7k in just under an hour; had to stop for a total of 10 minutes halfway and at various points on the way back.

I'll be asleep in the pub in about 2 hours.