Anybody tried the Winter Maintenance run plan?

what sort of weekly time commitment are you looking for run wise in total mileage or time/ and single day runs?

I'm pretty much fine with my current hours (check my logs) and haven't got any issues with even upping it as a whole (I'd prefer to limit my 4+ hour at a time sessions though... although that's more of a bike thing.) a couple more hours/wk. It would be more an issue of what I could handle without injuring myself. I've been doing 70+ months for a bit now and this month I'll probably hit 100mi'ish...  No problem with 2 a days (although 3a days would have to be weekend only due to work)

outside of the obvious, just run when you can advice, i had a lot of luck this past winter with a slightly modified half higdon plan.


check out his website if you have not, halhigdon.com and click through some of the plans on there.

I used one of the advanced marathon plans over the winter, knocked the long runs down to a cap at 17 miles for the longest, and replaced the track work with a tempo run.
this is what i used: http://www.halhigdon.com/marathon/advancedint.htm

he has multiple plans though for all distances, so if you like them, just find one that hits the mileage you feel comfortable with when you start.

while i dont think most of them are 100% enough for the distances, for shorter stuff they do a good job of structuring builds and keeping you healthy while getting in some steady mileage. the beginner/intermediate plans for the diff distances normally have less speed work/more days off per week.

a few weeks in there i added another run some days, or lengthened a few out, and got up to 50+ miles a few weeks.

doing that i dropped a 4 year 5k PR from the upper 18 min range to 16:55.

so how did you continue your swim/bike training? Any changes to it or did you put effort soley into the run and just throw in some s/b to keep fitness?

My last race of the season last year was a half IM the last weekend of sept.

After that i took approx 2 weeks off anything real (maybe a bit of bike commute and rowing in there, but nothing real to speak of).

From that point (mid oct) i started my running slowly.

about once a week i rode my mountain bike or tri bike is the weather was ok, :45min through 2 hours for the longer one, maybe one swim a week (i normally get back in the water closer to christmas).

through new years i was riding 1-2 times per week, and swimming 1-3 times week up until christmas.

over the xmas/new years holiday i really kicked off the swimming, jumping to 4x and then 6x a week over two weeks.

mid jan through mid feb, swim was 5-6x per week, bike was 1-3 still weather permitting (all outside).

mid feb on biking resumed as normal, quickling building up to 3-5 rides a week.

As i got back on the bike though from all that running, i felt like i had lost nothing at all minus a bit of short distance power (think 20min power or faster).
And that came back FAST.

Now, i may have been a bit faster on the bike had i been riding more, but i also A- am by far the best on the bike, and B- my run was killing me last year, so without that, a tiny bike gain was not going to do me much.

In my first race in april, in a half, i biked about where i thought i would be considering everything, had my slowest paced bike split (11th overall), and then got off and dropped the 2nd place run and moved into 5th overall.

I would have also had a lot more bike mileage in later feb/march but my bike was stolen so that hurt things a bit.

I'm planning on a similar progression this winter with a bit more riding and less swimming (considering a switch to duathlon next year, not enjoying swimming at all).

maybe I need to just follow your logs

Or sign you up as my coach

Rev3 Knox's Oly this year was a real disappointment for me (being hometown and all) and it's certainly becoming less of a "Oh this is coming to my area, I should do it" to "I really want to podium in this race."

I know that feeling well, my first few seasons i saw thigns go from, oh lets do this race cause its down the street to what can i do to place at this one?

If you follow my logs do so at your own risk, they are not 100% accurate (but do give a general trend).

If you want to talk about specifics shoot me a PM or email at either: [email protected] or [email protected]

I'm not familiar with that program.

When I started in tris, running was by far my weakness. IMO, if you're a decent swimmer and biker, then it doesn't take much training to maintain that level. I can go a year or more without swimming, then ramp back up to a decent pace within a month. Same with biking.

For me the focus on running starteda few years ago. During training for a marathon I noticed that my times at every distance improved greatly when I started averaging over 40 miles/week. I didn't maintain that level, but it stuck in my mind. In Sept. 2007 I decided to test this out and ramped up to 40+ miles/week with the intention of holding that level for a few months. I was doing some racing during that time and every race was a huge PR. Encouraged by that I continued to increase the mileage to 50, then 60 and finally just over 70 miles/week. By mid winter 2008 my running had greatly improved. So much so that I PRed every distance from 2 miles up to a BQ marathon in which I took 27 minutes off my previous best time.

When I did tris again in 2009, my swimming and biking skills returned without too much effort, and my running in tris was vastly improved. I was no longer seeing a continuous line of people race by me on the run. I was doing the passing and it felt great.

I never followed a plan. 90% or more of all my running was done at an easy pace. The easy pace allowed me to run almost every day and gradually build mileage. I used races as my speedwork, but in my area there are races almost every weekend year round. My goal in the races was to push myself as hard as I could for as long as I could, then back off a little. I had done most of the races several times before and figured if I blew up is wouldn't be any worse than some of my previous times. The thing was - I never blew up. I started being able to carry that initial effort longer and even when I backed off I was going much faster than before.

Basically it boils down to Scout's advice - run LOTS, mostly easy, sometime hard.