Scott and Kelly's Mentor Group- Closed (Page 14)

I'm going to try and address a few things at once.

1. Run volume in a triathlon plan.  Especially for runners it's hard to accept or wrap your mind around the fact that your run volume needs to come down and you'll still have the same, if not a better base of fitness in that area.  Running is the highest impact discipline on your body/recovery.  There is also some crossover from cycling fitness gains into run fitness and not vice versa.  It's an interesting phenomenon.  I think if you're exclusively running that running 5-6 days a week is fine, but tri training and doing the same takes a tremendous toll on your body.  Just be aware and in touch with what's going on and listen to your body as opposed to what most of us do.

2.  Swim fitness and those of us who find swimming distance an issue.  Form, form, form.  I've seen sub 4 marathoners get in the pool and struggle to knock out a 25 and I've seen couch potatoes get in and kill a 1k.  Why is that?  Form.  Swimming is all form and muscle memory and very little (in comparison to the other tri disciplines) about endurance.  New swimmers should have AT LEAST one form only day in their program and then work some form drills into their endurance days too.  Also if you feel your form falling apart in the pool due to fatigue or whatever GET OUT.  There is no use in engraining poor form into your muscle memory.  It's counter productive.  As your form and balance improve so will your times and the distances you can go.  Once your comfortable with the distance then start working in interval sets.

3.  Bricks.  Outside of learning how your body reacts while running off the bike and getting in extra run time bricks have ZERO physiological effects.  When you do bricks, or transition runs as I like to call them, run for 25-30 minutes (60 at most if you're doing a full IM).  Basically you're learning how your body feels after getting off the bike AND more importantly you need to focus on how gain control of your heart rate on the run.  If you train all 3 disciplines properly the fitness will be there on race day.  You don't need to learn to "run fatigued" off the bike or whatever.  If you can run a stand alone marathon then you can run an IM marathon given you paced correctly and hit all your nutrition.  The same goes for all distances.  I've seen programs/coaches that will schedule their athletes for an 80 mile ride/18 mile brick for an Ironman.  All you're really doing is killing the workouts you had scheduled for the next week because you won't be recovered.  So if you have time between two key workouts don't just throw something in willy nilly.  Use that time for recovery (rest, foam rolling, etc) or generally neglected core work.  Make sure every workout has a purpose and not something just thrown in as a time filler.