Hi TheEd - thanks for checking in. I've been getting some more consistency this month and things are getting back to normal as you expected.
Long runs around 13/14k on Sundays. The weekly total is around 35k. The structure has had to move a bit as I'm doing an open water swim once a week and that will become an evening group activity from next month, so things are shuffling around a bit, but it's all good fun.
The runs are currently something like:
- Long run Sunday
- 4-5k tempo Monday or Weds (either just after the OW swim or earlier in the day)
- Easy 8k somewhere
- Intervals session somewhere
- The odd ROTB if I can fit one in
The challenge is that two rides a week are really quite intense. One is threshold and one is VO2. These are hard - e.g. Tuesday's ride was 8x3 mins VO2 where each interval had the HR up in the 160s or nudging 170. But the body seems to be absorbing it so I hope it is making me fitter.
Garmin's 5k prediction has come back down from 21 mins to 20:18 as of this morning.
I've been doing 1/2/3k intervals at something like 4:20/4:25 pace which I think is around my threshold. Then if I do a 400s session they are faster like 3:50.
I did 7x1k this morning with 1 min easy between the intervals. They were all around 4:20 pace (1st one 4:26, last one 4:14) and the max HR on the last one was 168 (lower 160s for the others) and the average HR was 150s). It was a solid session but felt pretty good.
So I think I'm doing ok training, and Garmin's prediction is moving in the right direction, but I *feel* I am some way from holding 4:04 pace for 4k which was what I did in the 4k test about 6 months ago.
Hi TheEd, ok so the tri on Sunday went fairly well. I came in 8th out of 56 in my age cat, which was definitely better than expected.
- The swim was choppy and tough - 7/56
- The bike felt good - 16/56 (I might get a TT bike soon which will change things...)
- The run was hard but I felt I paced it ok and didn't have much left by the end - 7/56.
The run time was 21m51s so about 4:22/km pace.
This was made harder (slower) because of:
1. I stopped to sort out my shoe (tongue was twisted). Probably didn't cost much time but felt like an eternity!
2. The way out was along a beach path and the way back was along a road which was quite a bit higher up, so there were some steps / steep hill to get up to the road.
My current target is to be able to run a sub 21 minute 5k in a tri.
Based on recent training that pace seems about right though. I feel a 5k in a tri is about a minute slower than a standalone 5k and as mentioned before, I don't feel my form has been that amazing.
Garmin says my threshold pace is 4:19 at the moment and I also feel like that's the sort of pace I end up being able to hold in a 5k in a tri.
13-12-2024, 10:03 AM (This post was last modified: 13-12-2024, 10:49 AM by GavMoon.)
Now for the training. I've been having a recovery week this week and then I have 8 weeks until the next one so quite a good chunk of time. The weekly load will be:
- 1 swim
- 1 strength session
- 3 rides (1 VO2 intervals, 1 threshold intervals, 1 easy)
- 4 runs
I'm planning to try to get more rest / sleep as well as I wonder if that has been holding me back a bit.
In terms of the running, what I had in mind for the 4 sessions was:
- 1 easy long (13-15k)
- 1 intervals 400s, 1k, 2k, 3k intervals etc (7-10k)
- 1 easy (8k)
- 1 easy or maybe slightly faster like "steady" or tempo or threshold (7-10k)
So 35-40k a week.
That's what I was thinking, but I would love some guidance please. Any suggestions on the overall structure or some individual sessions you'd recommend? Would you like me to do another 4k?
