Training for my first Ironman

No problem combining them into bricks, in fact just about every weekend will turn into a brick workout if youre using the Beginner IM training plan from this site.  Try not to pack two long days of the same sport back to back though.

Personally I like long bikes on days before long runs, because I have a better time completing a run workout on tired legs than I do a bike workout, but thats just me.

I tend to only do bricks when the plan requires them.  I want to take some of my own decision making out of the equation - I don't trust it sometimes...  Trust me, there are days I would like to just throw them together for convenience, but when I put about 4-8 hours of "rest" between the workouts, I feel like I can do just a little better at each one.

The intermediate plan here on BT pretty much alternates weekends for a long bike and long run.  However, as the plan progresses, I may have a Sat. Long run then a Sun. "longish" bike.

I considered the beginner plan and the Int. plan for a LONG time, and finally decided on the Int. plan.  I'm glad I did.  I still look back at the beginner plan and think there are some weeks I could just not do (too much time required - 20 hours or more)

Helen120 - 2008-09-10 1:10 AM I always tried to do long bike on Saturday (weather permitting) and then long run on Sunday, somewhat simulating the race...legs are tired after biking, so running the next day should be harder....I'm no expert, but that seemed to make sense to me. In training, I've never had any issues with the 'brick' and I am always surprised how good I feel, but I know from experience in half ironmans that I've never been able to 'run' the run coz my legs are bagged. This year will be my second attempt at ironman distance (last year, a huge bush fire smoked me out during the race, so much for quitting smoking, haha)....but this year we added a heck of a lot of stair climbing (we used a hotel's back stairs that has 26 floors) to our training plan because our IM has lots of hills. And it's paid off. I sacrificed running for bike time because of time committments...no point in running hard if you can't make the bike cut off, right? But the stair climbing has paid off...I went from a max of 16 miles all year (that was once in April) to 22 miles a couple of weeks ago, slow & steady. And that's how I plan to finsh this ironman. Swimming, well, that's another issue, but I did some practice runs in the pool with the wetsuit on (I didn't do that last year). Nice surprise, I shaved off 15-20 seconds per 100 yards consistently...so if you're like me, like a turtle in the water, as long as you can make the cut off time, you're gold!!!! I've just purchased an online swimming book that I will use for next season...I'm thinking a week before IM is a little too late to change my stroke now! Another thing I learned this year...that I will take into next year's plans....is I have to stop babying myself. My new motto is 'train like you mean it, don't be timid'. I've been training at a much too low intensity, just training to finish the ironman, and that made me fall short in other events I participated in this year, like the half ironmans & the odd half marathon here & there... Go hard!!! You'll be happy you did. Train like you mean it. Kona will be yours!!!!!

What does this mean? You started stair climbing to strengthen your legs and went from 16mph to 22mph?

I trained for IMAZ 4/08 with a long Sat ride, Long Sun run combo.  Mon was off, but Tuesday was trashed.

Currently training for IMAZ 11/08 and I have the opportunity to move the run to Monday, and I can't tell you waht a difference it makes in the quality of a long run.  Frankly, if you are doing 100+ riding miles and 25+ running miles, your legs will always be tired.  I have gone from the "run on tired legs cuz that's what you do in a race" camp to "get as high quality long runs as you can"

My other "theory" from reading a lot of experienced IMers and coaches, is that you can have all the run fitness in the world, but if you get to the IM mary bagged, it really doesn't matter.  You have to get to the mary prepared to run 26.2.  Not just prepare to run 26.2

Just the opinion of this non pro non coach AGer

I agree with you.  When I trained for LP last year, I was trying to do long runs and rides on the weekends.  This year for B2B, I've moved most of my running to weekdays and feel my training has gone much better.  I don't feel as run down and don't have as many nagging pains and sore spots.

I agree with your pacing thoughts.  It sounds straight from the Don't Eat the Paste article.

Ernie