? for all you experienced 1/2 IM regarding training distance

There are three things to keep in mind when upping your bike volume:

1.  running endurance can begotten from long slow bike rides

2.  the longer your ride the better you get and you can make up a significant amount of time on a 56 mile bike leg.

3.  you should be able to ride 4-5 hours with little chance of injury due to the low impact nature of cycling.

When I was getting trained up for my 1/2 IM.  I was doing 4-5 hour bike rides nice and slow.  I do, however, remember doing a 60 mile TT last year which basically meant I sat on the wheel of my coach for 3 hours! 

The long rides totally helped me because my bike splits dropped and my run splits dropped too.  Also, the total time difference between 18.5 mph avg and 20.5 mph avg is significant in a 56 mile ride.

So I would err on the side of shorter "long" runs and longer "long" rides...

Thanks Steve, if I may paraphrase, you believe the incremental improvements you can make in biking, would benefit you more (from a time stand point) than the improvements you can make running. (Which seems to make sense, my 1/2 Mary PR is 1:49, and it's doubtful I could pick up much on that whereas, if I was able to increase my average bike speed from 18 mph to 20 mph, I could cut my time by 18 min.)

One other question, what kind of run distances did you do as bricks during your training.  I'm planning on bricking just about all my long rides from here on in (race is end of June).  Is it worthwhile to bike for 40 miles, then get off and do a 10-15K, or am I taking a chance in doing more harm then good and maybe better off staying in the 5-10K range.

Thanks

Chris 

That's way too long to run after all your bike rides.  10K at 1:49 Half Mary pace is roughly an hour.  The thing that you are trying to accomplish by running off the bike is getting your legs used to transitioning from cycling to running.  Only occassionally are you trying to build endurance by running after cycling.

Last year, my long ride leading up to a Half was 4 hours.  My long run was 2:15, which was about 17 miles.  My longest brick was 2 hr/1 hr.

Wow, doing bricks after every long ride until June?  I don't think even my slave-driving coach would recommend that.  However, if you think you can handle that without injury...go for it.

I do agree however, to run MUCH shorter after your long rides....3-5 miles max with perhaps in your last build week prior to your rest week (which for me is every 4th week) you go more towards the 5 miles.

The other thing to consider doing is doing your LONG bike on saturday and then doing your LONG run on sunday.

I hit my 1/2 IM PR last year by doing a brick (albeit sometimes brick repeats) only once every 4 week cycle.

FWIW, IMO, just my $0.02

20 minutes is more along the line of what I would call a transition run, but I think that the strict definition of a transition run is any run off the bike.  Brick is just two disciplines in one workout.  You could do a swim-bike brick...

My plan has a scheduled brick once every four weeks in lieu of the long run.  For instance, the last cycle had a 2 hour runs on weeks 1 and 3, with a 2 hour/1 hour brick on week 2.  That's a brick.

Thanks so much for this thread. I gotta' spend more time here since I'm doing a 1/2IM in Sept. I've recently started riding 2hr+ for my long rides and running afterwards. And I can say that after about three miles it's like I was never on a bike. What I mean is it takes about 30 minutes for that wobbly, lead feeling to get out of my legs and then after that I'm running normally (normal is horribly slow) but it's nice to know that I'm a 12-minute miler with or without the bike! I think I'll take the advice and do more long cycling stints and shorter runs. I'm going to shuffle through the 1/2 Mary anyway so I'm not to worried about that. I just HAVE to finish the bike in 4 hours to make the cut off.