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

90% of competitors will be unable to go up any incline whatsoever.

Final piece of advice:

Triathlon is VERY SRSLY BZNISS to some people. Do not make light of the triathlon.

I am doing this too.. turnaround is at Leamouth.. 4 laps if i remember correctly ..not hugely exciting
and I think the rules don't allow drafting =(

It's 4 x round a 10km linear road section of outside the excel centre. Flat as it gets.
Attached.

No drafting allowed apparently. The rules states you are not allowed to be within 5m of a wheel unless you are progressing forward and overtaking.

Let's see how it goes.

No risk of me becoming a full sleeveless tri lad though as I am terrible swimmer.

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I was only joking (not very well) with my drafting comment! You'll be fine.

I would be more helpful, in that i have a 51cm TT bike, but its 5 weeks from my IM, and i need it to ride myself!

No worries chap. We'll find him something, I'm sure.

WJ, is it a mass or staggered start?

Starts as a mass start for the swim I think, so when the baton gets handed to me it should've thinned out a bit.

Well, I posted a 1:13 for the 40km cycle, which I reckon could've been a 1:06 if I didn't have to stop and change a tube following a puncture in the first 1km.

Great fun.

That's about 2 min slower than the slowest male CWG time triallist on Thursday!

Cue DOS

a silly question: was the water in the dock salty?

test

you failed.

you're right, but it works now...

I think!

Will have 6 hours to myself every Friday (term time) come September. Going to use that time to get fit again (as well as work gym bike intervals, cycle commutes, midweek 5-a-side and other runs). This will involve cycling (Richmond Park mostly), swimming (local council run swimming pool) and running (local roads and Parkruns at the weekend).

Long term (2016) goal will be a Triathlon (either Ironman or ease into it with a 70.3 first).

With 6 hours I reckon I can build up to do a 1/3 distance Ironman (given the transitions will be a bit longer than normal - it's 1km from pool to home - and I can't just dump a pile of stuff at the pool). Something like:-

9.15am - get to swimming pool after dropping MiniGB off at school
9.30am - start 30m swim
10am - out of pool
10.30am - changed and home from pool, quick snack
10.45am - out on onto bike
2.5 hours for the 60km to Richmond Park, 5 laps and then back home (eating lunch whilst on the bike)
1.15pm - home, quick change
1.30pm - out for 14km run (1h20m at 10.5kph to begin with)
2.50pm - arrive a sweaty mess outside school gates ready to pick up MiniGB

(Very conservative estimate for the bike ride, I should be able to get that down to under 2 hours within a few months. That'll give me enough time to finish the run at home, shower and then amble down to the school.)

Won't do that every Friday. Different day structures could be:-
a) Cycling hills: Quick blat out to Surrey Hills, 50km hilly route and then train home (or cycle if time)
b) Longer swims (build up to 1 hour and beyond, work on speed too) and then either run or cycle
c) Longer runs (outside) building up to half marathon distance
d) Speed work (running) on a treadmill at the gym
e) Or just doing two of the three activities

First job will be to gauge current fitness and start shedding some weight (have ~15kg to lose).

Swimming: Haven't done any meaningful swimming for years (I take MiniGB every week but I can't leave her in the pool whilst I do lengths!) Latent technique after years of being coached though. Pool has swimtag so I can get some geeky stats on efficiency/etc.

Running: Will be building up running on Monday and Wednesdays in lunch break too. Even doing a 5k when carrying 15kg extra is hard work.

Cycling: Least of my worries fitness wise. I do ~80km a week cycle commuting but not fast. The legs (and head) have memories of the long distance (Audax) stuff from a few years ago so hours on a bike doesn't phase me at all. Once weight starts to come down I can shift some focus to intervals on a gym bike to boost power.

Can't wait to get started on it.

I hadn't heard of swim tag before. Looks interesting, but limited to expensive pools. How well does it work?

Good luck with your training. You didn't want to ease yourself in to the triathlons with a sprint or standard distance leading up to a half or full?

It seems a novel approach to fit an entire weeks training into one morning, I suspect there are possibly more efficient ways of getting fit and losing weight, but here's no reason i know it won't work categorically. Good luck.

I'd echo the above about building up to a half or full ironman but if you set yourself the goal you can always do a few races along the way to build up your experience!

I hadn't heard of swim tag before. Looks interesting, but limited to expensive pools. How well does it work?

No idea how well it works, local council run pool (Putney Leisure Centre) has it so it's not expensive (unlimited use of gym and pool for £40 a month).

Good luck with your training. You didn't want to ease yourself in to the triathlons with a sprint or standard distance leading up to a half or full?

That would probably be the sensible approach but I kind of want my first Tri to be a big one. I'd be looking to complete it rather than worrying about times.

Personally, I wouldn't cram a whole day's training in to half a day, especially if your Swim and Run performance is not on-par with your cycling (at least for the first few weeks/months) as I would expect your run training would lag behind the 2 disciplines done earlier in the day due to fatigue. I'd also expect overtraining injuries if you start too hard, too fast.

My partner and I seem to have found a good way for me to fit in x3 training sessions for me in the weekdays around mini-Pifko, but it requires me to look after her from when I return from work until she's asleep, in order for a bit of balance/fairness for my partner.

You could concentrate on Swimming and Running. A long swim in the morning will wake you up. Then use your afternoon run to collect MinGB from school. Maybe use the weekend for the bike if you can?

Or make your commute a little bit longer, add some structured training into it and take care of it that way?

Heh, I've no intention of launching straight into that routine, I did say I would be building up to it. It was more about what I could fit in and working out I could do a 1/3 Ironman during school hours amused me.

It's more me trying to work out how to make best use of those 6 hours. Once swimming and running have been built up (probably some time in the new year) I'd try my "Ironman 46.8"[1] every month or so.

At the moment (MiniGB at nursery) there's very little slack, I can't extend my commute at all (as I do both drop off and pick up) and I don't want to eat in to what precious little family time we get.

Elsewhere I posted something about looking for a site that allows multiple goal tracking (something or the MyFitnessPal ilk) but there was nothing that did everything I wanted, so I'll be keeping track of it all in spreadsheet with a view to knocking up my own website. That will help monitor some of the structured training, goals/targets like:-

1) Weight down to x kg
2) Swim duration up to 1 hour
3) Run duration up to 1 hour 20 minutes (at 10.5kph = 14km)
4) Cycling: 3 laps of Richmond Park lap time down to 1 hour (entirely arbitrary)
5) Cycling (PowerTap): W/kg for 5 sec, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 20 minutes to certain targets (mid cat-4 would be nice)
6) Booze units down to under x/week

Once these initial goals are reached they can be extended or modified, e.g.

1) Weight down to even less kg maybe
2) Hour swim distance to 3 km
3) 14km run time down to 1 hour (ha!)
4) 3 lap RP down to 55 minutes
5) higher W/kg targets for cycling (high cat-4, etc)

There's lots of training detail still to be filled in, i.e. swimming training plan, speed work to improve running speed (as everyone here knows, it's not just a case of running faster), cycling interval selection (5x5, 2x20, 14x2, etc) but they're not goals/targets.

1. In the same way that a half Ironman is an Ironman 70.3, a third distance would be 46.8
   

SwimTag, powerTap - GreenBank you are a wealth of gadgetry knowledge. What else do you have up your sleeve? I feel so in the dark.

I'm a maths/computer geek who likes endurance stuff. It's an expensive, tiring and nerdy set of hobbies.

I find the numbers and metrics help motivate me. Of course they're completely unnecessary for an average amateur like me.

If you're into expensive, tiring, nerdy shit, just get the M-Dot tattoo already, you're trilathon to the bone.

Not until he's spend a fortune on nutritional supplements and sounded off about the latest "science", he's not.