Train For Xterra Race Using Olympic Distance Plan?

yes, although you could do all your training on the trail instead of the road.

Ideally, I'd try do that but trails are ages away, like 30 mins in the car.  

If you're doing a 3x plan, I'd try to get some good weeks in where you get 2x bike/run on trails.  Keep the shorter ones on the trails, and get your long run/bike in on the road as it is difficult to work on aerobic efficiency on the trails unless you've got some really flat and easy ones.  The trails I ride and run on are like hill repeats, so you don't really want to train on them exclusively, but you need to experience the ups and downs so you're prepared for your race.

Don't let the distances there fool you, a 26k mountain bike race will still take over an hour for the fastest guys (again assuming it's not pancake flat), and most trails will add about 1 minute/mile to your road time.

x2

I'm a beginner with only one sprint tri under my belt.  But I do a lot of my biking offroad, mostly cause I just like it better.  FWIW, on a pretty much equal exertion level, I average about 17mph on the road (on a mountain bike) and between 8-10 offroad (depending on where I go).  And the offroad ride has much more ebbs and flows of HR as well, hitting my max, and letting it drop more than I wish, just due to terrain.  I'm targeting an Xterra tri as my next race (several months out) and though it's only a 16 mile ride, I figure I'll train it as if it is a 30 mile road ride (in terms of designing a training plan).  And the 4 mile run I'll plan in as a 10k.  MTBing and trail running is (for me) slower and higher effort (both muscle strength wise, and endurance) than road.

I'm personally going to do my long runs and bikes offroad, and all my shorter weekday workouts either on road or stationary.  I'm wanting to do run 3x, bike 3x, swim 2x / week, and one day totally off.

Sure, why not?

Sure, if you do all your training off road...

In my experience, the sport length XTERRA is equivelant to the Oly length road try (in terms of effort).

The standard length XTERRA (as you indicated) is closer to an HIM effort, IMO...


If it were me, I would follow the HIM plan with at least 50% of my efforts on the dirt.

I've done several XTERRAs and I totally agree. The level of effort is closer to a HIM. I've followed Oly plans for XTERRA training and it didn't help much, but I wanted to do better at the distance. For just finishing a first race, it's probably fine.

Quite a few books and magazines have articles on training plans for your first XTERRA. It's when you want to be competitive that it's difficult to find a training plan. I've finally gone the custom training plan from a coach route.

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ha.. you had scared me a bit before my first race, but it wasn't as bad.. mostly so difficult because I didn't pace correctly, but for an xterra you do have to be able to ride/run on some serious hills.  We had a specific hill in my second one that is about 18% according to BT's route tracker, but with loose rocks, so we did that one twice on the bike and once on the run.  I definitely redlined at one point on the bike as I had a HR spike of 185.. oh and my run pace for that course was 11:15/mile with another steep couple of climbs in the 40% range.

I'd say go ahead and read some of the race logs from the people posting here and check out their training logs to see what they did to get themselves those results. 

xterra runs can be quite a big deal, as they'll send you through stuff you can't ride your bike through.. at least the ones I've done



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