Training - run emphasis/bike emphasis weeks?

I've seen something similar to this recommended to people who can't get in a long run during the week but don't want to do a long run and long bike on the same weekend for recovery reasons.  If you change to alternating long runs and long rides every other weekend your training will tend to be heavier on one or the other each week, though maybe not as exagerated as you're thinking. 

I'm may try this next year.

Brian

X1000, IM training is all about being consistent.  Everyone likes to talk about their mega rides and runs but putting together a good string of short workouts (with rest and recovery mixed in) are just as important.

Lance - I would not go 5 to 6 days without getting on my bike. 

If you are going to take this approach build your bike fitness first and then add the run fitness later on. The key to remember is that aerobic fitness is aerobic fitness so the fitness (cardiovascularly) that you build on the bike is going to transfer to the run. What you have to focus on in run training is preparing your body for the pounding of a marathon. Run fitness also tends to atrophy faster than bike fitness so you can build up to your 5-6 hour rides a couple of months out and then put your bike into maintenance mode and build your run fitness over the course of 8-10 weeks. This is assuming that you have some run fitness already in order to build on.

PennState - 2009-07-05 8:29 AM ETA: in an ideal world you would balance everything perfectly and do training runs of 20 miles... but a lot of people can't balance this and stay healthy... so there are other approaches

If asked, I normally tell people that your longest IM training run should be 20 miles or 2.5 hours whichever comes first.  If you can only run 13 miles in 2.5 hours then only run 13 miles.