# IRONMAN Run Training: Your Questions Answered | Ep 536

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 23 Apr 2025, 30 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/101262974/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-3-14%2F46f4a33a-54ae-f7ca-5dcd-c955357ee875.mp3

🚀 Join Team Oxygenaddict's FREE IRONMAN Accelerator webclass and learn how to dominate your first IRONMAN in as little as 6-8 hours training per week: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/ironman-accelerator * * * * * * * * In this week's episode... Coach Rob addresses ten listener questions about improving running performance specifically for Ironman and 70.3 races. Including: How to determine the correct running pace... Returning to running after injury... Why everybody should be incorporating Run/walk intervals... Structuring brick sessions... ...and much, much more! * * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * Like what you heard in this show? Join hundreds of other age group triathletes making the most of their limited training time, training with Team OxygenAddict - the most comprehensive triathlon coaching program for busy age groupers. Book an application call to see if you'd be a good fit for Team Oxygenaddict for the coming season here: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/consultation-call/ * * * * * * * * * * * * precisionfuelandhydration.com Precision Fuel & Hydration help athletes personalise their hydration and fuelling strategies for training and racing. Use the free Fuel & Hydration Planner to get a personalised race nutrition plan for your next event. And then book a free 20-minute video consultation with a member of the PF&H Athlete Support Team to refine your strategy. Listeners get 15% off their first order of fuel and electrolytes with Precision Fuel & Hydration. Simply click this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Team Oxygenaddict on YouTube Team Oxygenaddict on Spotify Team Oxygenaddict on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:01] Hello, and welcome to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon Podcast.
[0:04] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors, Precision Fuel
[0:07] and hydration.com. You can get 15% off your first
[0:10] order with the code Oxygen Fuel 25.
[0:13] Welcome to the show everybody. I'm your host Coach Rob will be
[0:16] from Team Oxygen Addict and every week will bring you an
[0:19] episode of this podcast to help motivate and inspire you.
[0:22] On this week's episode, we've got an episode of Ask the Coach.
[0:25] I've got 10 questions here on improving your running.
[0:29] These are real world questions that have come in either from
[0:31] athletes we coach or listeners to the podcast or viewers on
[0:35] YouTube. So some real questions that I
[0:37] think will help everybody get to the bottom of how to help really
[0:41] improve the running for Ironman and 70.3.
[0:44] Before we kick off though, there's two quick things you
[0:46] could do that would really help us out.
[0:48] Firstly, if you like and enjoy this episode, please follow us
[0:51] on Spotify or a podcasts. If you consider giving us a
[0:54] review there as well, that would be awesome.
[0:56] And secondly, if you've got a big Iron Man goal and a crazy
[1:00] schedule, our new free web class could change everything for you.
[1:04] We're going to show you how Team Oxygen Addicts Iron Man
[1:07] Accelerator programme is enabling busy professionals,
[1:10] that's people with kids careers in real lives, to average 8
[1:14] hours or less of training a week and still cross the Iron Man
[1:17] finish line. It's often not about training
[1:19] harder, it's about training smarter.
[1:22] So if you're interested, you can watch our free coaching webinar,
[1:25] the links down there in the show notes.
[1:27] I hope you enjoy it. All right then.
[1:29] So with that said, let's jump right into the questions from
[1:32] this week and answer 10 questions from listeners about
[1:35] how to improve your running. OK, so firstly, how do I know if
[1:39] I'm running too fast or too slow in my sessions?
[1:42] And you know what? Going back to the very early
[1:44] days of when I was a coach in the real world at a running
[1:48] track every week, or coaching kids at the the local running
[1:52] club or even coaching the county standard teams that I used to
[1:54] do. It used to be a real challenge
[1:57] to say to athletes like I wanted to run at this pace and This is
[2:00] why we'd set them off. And what would happen was
[2:03] everybody would default to trying to run at the pace of the
[2:07] fastest person. And so the challenge there
[2:09] becomes how do we know how fast or how slow we need to be
[2:14] running relative to some kind of benchmark for whichever distance
[2:19] we're running over? And how do we know whether
[2:22] that's right or not? And over years of coaching, I
[2:25] was really lucky. I got introduced to the work of
[2:27] a running coach called Jack Daniels.
[2:29] He's got an amazing book out called Jack Daniels Running
[2:32] Formula. He was a physiologist.
[2:34] He studied thousands of runners. He did VO2 Max tests on them.
[2:38] He cross referenced that with their ability to perform at
[2:42] 5K10K, half marathon, marathon and produced a set of tables
[2:46] that are really accurate. You can kind of reverse engineer
[2:49] if you like, what an athlete's VO2 Max is and how fast they can
[2:54] be expected to run over different distances given their
[2:58] either VO2 Max. But what's more important for us
[3:01] is given their performance, a given race distance.
[3:06] So for example, you can say if your 5K time is this, your
[3:10] potential to run at 10K is this or half marathon is this.
[3:14] And it gives us a real accurate framework to work through.
[3:17] And from there, what we can also then say is there are three or
[3:21] four different paces we can train at.
[3:24] Each of those paces is there for a specific reason.
[3:27] We'll do our training sessions at that specific pace for that
[3:31] specific session. And you know then that if you
[3:35] are AI don't know a 24 minute 5K runner that you should be doing
[3:40] your endurance runs at this pace, you should be doing your
[3:43] tempo runs at this pace, and you should be doing your interval
[3:47] threshold pace runs at this pace.
[3:50] And you can be accurate down to within a couple of seconds per
[3:53] kilometre doing that. Now, how does that translate
[3:56] over for 70.3 and Iron Man athletes?
[3:59] Well, this is where there's been a little bit of adaptation from
[4:02] me over the years. I've, I've been doing this now
[4:05] for over 15 years professionally.
[4:07] And so I've been able to refine Daniels's pace calculator in a
[4:13] way that works for triathletes because obviously it's, it's
[4:17] very interesting to know what your 5K time is, but it's not
[4:22] necessarily a great predictor of how fast you're going to run a
[4:25] marathon off the bike at the end of an Ironman.
[4:28] It's it's nowhere near as as cut and dried as and, and honestly,
[4:32] Daniels's formula was very, very close for almost every runner
[4:37] when they're just doing stand alone run races.
[4:39] But when you're doing a triathlon, when you're running
[4:42] off the bike, the paces are going to be different.
[4:45] And so the question becomes, how do we train around that?
[4:49] If we know that in my target half Iron Man, I'm going to be
[4:52] running at a certain pace off the bike, what pace should I be
[4:56] running at in training? That's a specific to the pace
[5:00] I'm going to be doing on race day in my half Iron Man.
[5:02] But also how does that tie in with the paces I should be
[5:05] training to change those physiological variables in my
[5:09] run fitness in training. So I'll give you a brief
[5:13] overview of this and and how we approach it with runners.
[5:16] You'll have heard me talk on previous shows about the Halo
[5:18] effect of bike training affecting run fitness.
[5:22] And that's the first thing to consider here.
[5:25] You're training like a triathlete.
[5:26] You're not training like a runner or a cyclist or a person
[5:29] who does both. So there is going to be an
[5:33] interplay of the training that you do on the bike affecting
[5:36] your run fitness and to a lesser effect the training that you do
[5:40] on the run affecting your bike fitness.
[5:42] It's a lot less that way around. But certainly the aerobic
[5:46] conditioning that you get from training on the bike has a very
[5:49] positive effect on the aerobic conditioning you have for
[5:52] running. And So what we can say is for
[5:54] the majority of runners, we can do away with the the riskiest
[5:59] part of run training. We can do away with the very
[6:02] hard run intervals or the very hard uphill run intervals a lot
[6:07] of run coaches would have you do because we as triathletes will
[6:10] be having you do those sessions on the bike.
[6:13] We can focus on the number one thing that's going to get in the
[6:17] way of your progress in, in terms of completing your Iron
[6:21] Man or 70.3 is if you pick up an injury and you can't run in
[6:25] training, the consistency of your run training is 90% of the
[6:30] success of your race day. It's not about how fast you go.
[6:34] And that's why I'm always with our athletes.
[6:36] If they come to us and they say I'm really keen to go and do a
[6:38] 5K and and just get a benchmark for where my run fitness is at.
[6:43] There's going to be sometimes when that's appropriate, but for
[6:46] the vast majority of the time, I'm going to say to the athlete,
[6:48] look, let's take a step back here.
[6:51] Let's look at the bigger picture.
[6:52] What is the thing that is ultimately what you're aiming
[6:56] for this year? Is it to break 20 minutes on the
[6:59] 5K or is it to run really well off the bike in your Iron Man in
[7:03] four months time? Because if it's the latter, the
[7:08] best way to go about that is to make sure that your run training
[7:11] is consistent for four months, that you don't miss any sessions
[7:15] for four months, that your durability is really strong,
[7:19] that you get to race day with the ability to just keep going
[7:22] on race day. Now, whether you are a few
[7:26] seconds either side of 20 minutes of 5K, that's not going
[7:29] to affect your race day marathon performance anywhere near as
[7:33] much as whether you've consistently managed to run 3 or
[7:37] even 4 * a week in training and avoided those pitfalls and
[7:41] avoided those injuries and ended up with a really strong, robust,
[7:44] durable body that isn't going to feel fatigue on race day.
[7:49] That's the key to this being fatigue resistant, much more so
[7:54] than an inverted commas, being fast over 5K.
[7:57] Now, I've said this a lot on the podcast, said it a lot on
[8:00] YouTube. I often get pushback from people
[8:03] who say, you know, you say that 5K result has no effect
[8:07] whatsoever on an athlete. But an athlete who's faster over
[8:10] 5K is always going to be faster than an athlete who's slower
[8:13] over 5K on the Ironman marathon. And like, yeah, that's true to a
[8:18] point. It's true to the point where you
[8:21] can run the entirety of your Iron Man marathon to potential.
[8:26] In that case, the athlete with the faster 5K time is going to
[8:30] beat the athlete with the slower 5K time.
[8:33] But my experience of the real world experience of people on
[8:37] Iron Man race day is that almost always doesn't happen because
[8:41] it's the person who's prepared best for their Iron Man marathon
[8:45] or even for the 70.3 half marathon, who's prepared most
[8:48] specifically for it, who is most fatigue resistant.
[8:52] That's going to be the thing that ultimately determines your
[8:56] success on Iron Man on 70.3 race day, much, much more so than
[9:02] your time over 5K. OK, question 2.
[9:07] How should I approach my run training when I'm coming back
[9:09] from injury? Right.
[9:11] So often these things are going to happen despite our best
[9:16] preparations and despite our best intentions.
[9:18] Sometimes we are going to get some kind of injury that is
[9:21] going to affect our run training.
[9:23] Often it won't be down to anything we've done wrong in
[9:25] training. It might be down to slipping on
[9:27] the stairs, or it might be down to getting a sore Achilles
[9:30] because your bike cleats are worn.
[9:33] And that injury, that niggle doesn't show up on the bike, but
[9:36] it shows up when you go out running.
[9:38] So when we're trying to come back to run training, the first
[9:41] thing I'm going to remind you of is the Halo effect of biking on
[9:44] running. If you're training like a
[9:46] triathlete, the fact you've been able to keep up your bike
[9:50] training when you've not been able to run will mean the impact
[9:53] of taking a break from running is much, much smaller than you
[9:56] might expect it to be. Certainly if you were just a
[9:58] pure runner and you've had two weeks off from running, yeah,
[10:02] you can expect to feel significantly different when you
[10:04] come back. If you're a triathlete and
[10:07] you've had a couple of weeks off running, but you've maintained
[10:09] your bike training in the in the interim, what you'll probably
[10:12] find is you don't notice very much difference at all when you
[10:16] come back to it. With that being said, a couple
[10:18] of guidelines I'll give you here.
[10:20] You know that I'm a big fan of putting walk breaks into the
[10:23] runs and often I'll advocate for a minute's walk every 10 minutes
[10:27] in your long run. So I'm going to advocate for
[10:29] this as well as you coming back from injury.
[10:32] Keep those walk breaks in there, make them more frequent.
[10:35] Even if you need to come back and it's a minute jog, a minute
[10:38] walk, that's fine. Do that and get through that
[10:41] first run successfully, and then the second run back.
[10:44] You can do 2 minutes jog, minute walk, then 3 minutes jog, a
[10:48] minute walk. Over the course of two weeks,
[10:50] you've gone from one minute of jogging there to 6 minutes of
[10:53] jogging, and then another week you're back to the 91 ratio and
[10:57] you've done it safely and you've protected yourself from the idea
[11:01] of coming back, deciding you're going to run 20 minutes, maybe
[11:05] accidentally going out and doing 30 minutes because you felt
[11:08] good. The niggle flares up again, and
[11:11] so the cycle continues. So the key here is to be really
[11:14] conservative when you come back, to put plenty of walk brakes in
[11:18] and be patient. And you can afford to be patient
[11:21] because you know that your bike training is maintaining your
[11:23] overall level of fitness in a way that it wouldn't be if you
[11:26] were a pure runner. Question 3.
[11:30] How do I adjust my pacing when I'm adding run walk intervals
[11:34] like the nine one run walk method that we do?
[11:36] How should I adjust my pacing? So this is a really common
[11:39] question for athletes when they say, look, I, you know,
[11:42] typically they'll say I've decided I want to do a 330
[11:46] marathon on race day and that's going to involve me doing 5
[11:50] minute KS. So should I do my run intervals
[11:53] at 5 minute case and then the one minute walk is going to slow
[11:57] me down very slightly, or should I do it at 4:50 and allow for
[12:01] the one minute and run interval to adjust the pace to average
[12:04] out at 5 minute case? So what I'll say here is you
[12:08] need to be led by the training at the pace that's appropriate
[12:11] for you, not being led by the pace that you want to run on
[12:16] race day, because one's going to follow the other, but one isn't
[12:20] necessarily going to determine the former.
[12:23] What I mean by that is it's very, very hard to decide you're
[12:26] going to run a 330 pace if the paces that you're running at in
[12:31] your fitness suggests right now don't support that.
[12:34] I think a much better approach to this is to say my current E
[12:37] pace is 5 minutes AK. So on race day I'm going to run
[12:41] for 9 minutes or 5 minutes AK, and then I'm going to do my one
[12:45] minute walk interval and the overall pace will come out at, I
[12:48] don't know, maybe it'll be 5, 10 or 512 AK, something like that.
[12:52] Meaning it won't be a 330 marathon, it'll be a 336
[12:56] marathon or whatever the maths will work out to be.
[12:59] The key here though is accepting that your fitness will improve
[13:03] as quickly as your fitness improves.
[13:05] Very hard to make a prediction on how that will change for
[13:07] people. I've seen some of our athletes,
[13:10] there's an example today of an athlete whose run fitness has
[13:13] improved by 10 seconds a kilometre just over the last
[13:17] three weeks. I've got examples of athletes
[13:20] who admittedly have been with us longer, but their run speed
[13:24] doesn't improve by 10 seconds a kilometre over an 8 week block.
[13:28] So it's going to be different for different people.
[13:30] But the key here is if you know your E pace is 5 minutes AK, you
[13:35] know you're going to be somewhere in the region of that
[13:37] 3:30 to 3:35 marathon. You've got to do everything you
[13:42] can to protect being in that area rather than trying to run
[13:48] just a bit too fast early doors and ending up blowing up and
[13:51] running a four hour marathon. Next question, what's the best
[13:57] way to maintain my fitness if I can't run due to injury?
[14:01] OK, so we've we've covered very similar questions to this
[14:04] already. The Halo effect of the biking is
[14:06] going to mean that you can maintain an awful lot of your
[14:09] fitness even if you're not running for two, 3-4 weeks.
[14:13] The way that I would adapt A triathlete training plan if they
[14:16] can't run is I would say let's have you put extra bike sessions
[14:20] in there and let's have the bike sessions be at the same relative
[14:24] intensity to the runs you would be doing.
[14:26] So in the most cases, we're just adding aerobic runs in here.
[14:30] So the mostly E pace runs and we'll say that the bike session
[14:36] can be as long as or up to 1 1/2 times longer than the session
[14:42] that was scheduled. So if you've got a 30 minute
[14:45] run, the extra bike session can be 30 to 45 minutes.
[14:49] If it was an hour's run, it can be an hour to 90 minutes.
[14:55] I would advise if you've got a long run in there, if it's a, if
[14:58] it's a 2 hour run session, I would replace it with nothing
[15:01] longer than a 2 hour ride. So just be mindful of the fact
[15:05] you don't want to be really pushing the envelope on the
[15:08] volume that you're doing there. But for most people that's a
[15:11] really effective way. Even just replacing like for
[15:14] like so 30 minutes of running became 30 minutes extra on the
[15:18] bike just at aerobic volume, just at sort of 60 to 70% of
[15:23] FTP. That's going to really help
[15:25] maintain your aerobic fitness and even build your aerobic
[15:28] fitness while you're not running.
[15:32] OK, next question. How do I build my run insurance
[15:35] without risking overtraining? So my rough rule of thumb for
[15:39] athletes here is I don't want to see your long run increase by
[15:43] more than 15 minutes a week and 15 minutes longer than your
[15:47] previous longest run over the last couple of weeks.
[15:51] So if your previous longest run was 75 minutes, don't do more
[15:55] than 90 minutes this week. That 15 minute increase is
[15:58] usually well in the safe zone and people can can safely
[16:03] maintain that kind of level of increase.
[16:05] I've occasionally extended that to 20 minutes a week for
[16:09] athletes who have had to miss a couple of weeks through injury.
[16:12] And we're, we're trying to build them typically to get to an Iron
[16:15] Man marathon type volume. But that would be the absolute
[16:19] maximum. I would, I would try and go to.
[16:22] It's a little bit different with ultra runners because when we
[16:25] get to the realms of people who can run for, you know, 681012
[16:29] hours, we're into the realms where they can, they can do
[16:32] bigger volume increases than that.
[16:34] But we're in the very edge cases.
[16:36] And if that's not you, if you're not an ultra runner for the vast
[16:39] majority of our listeners, I'd advise you to stick to that
[16:41] advice that I've given you there, which is no more than a
[16:44] 15 minute increase a week and 15 minutes, no more than it being
[16:48] 15 minutes more than your previous longest run over the
[16:52] last couple of five weeks. And that way you can be sure
[16:54] that you you're getting that volume increase in a Safeway,
[16:57] but you're not risking doing so much because you probably would
[17:00] be capable of doing a a 30 minute jump or a 40 minute jump
[17:04] and completing that one single stand alone run.
[17:07] But the question is at what cost?
[17:09] What would be the knock on effect?
[17:11] How sore would you be after? It might be a risk of injury and
[17:14] niggle there. The answer's probably yes.
[17:17] So you probably don't want to do that at this point.
[17:21] It's a good time for a sponsor shout out.
[17:23] We're going to say thank you to Precision Fuel and Hydration for
[17:26] supporting the show. I'd like you, if you haven't
[17:29] done already, to go over to their website and use their free
[17:31] fuel and hydration planning tool and you'll get a personalised
[17:35] strategy for your training and your next race.
[17:38] The planner will help you understand your own
[17:40] carbohydrate, electrolyte and fluid needs.
[17:43] You can even book a free one to one video consultation with PF
[17:46] and HS athlete support team and they'll help you come up with a
[17:49] plan that works for you. If you're racing Iron Man at
[17:51] 70.3, and I genuinely mean this, the fuelling on race day is as
[17:57] important to your success as the training you've done to get you
[18:00] to race day. And you can't just start doing
[18:03] the fuelling on race day, you have to practise in training.
[18:06] So there's tonnes of information on their website about how many
[18:09] grammes of carbohydrate per hour, the milligrammes of sodium
[18:12] you need, how much, how much fluid you need per hour, and
[18:16] most importantly, how you were able to train your body to
[18:20] gradually absorb more when appropriate across a period of
[18:25] time. So that if you can safely take
[18:28] in more carbohydrate and process that carbohydrate, essentially
[18:32] you're going to be fuelling the back end of your half marathon
[18:35] or marathon more effectively. And almost certainly that's
[18:39] going to lead to a more successful race result for you.
[18:42] So get over to Precision Fuel and Hydration and check that
[18:45] out. You know, it's great with those
[18:46] guys. I don't actually feel like I'm
[18:48] reading an ad for them. I feel like I'm giving you guys
[18:50] information that's genuinely going to help you out on race
[18:53] day and that's why they work so well as a partner of the show.
[18:57] OK, next question. Should I focus more on speed
[19:00] work or long runs when my time is limited?
[19:04] While this is a really easy question for me to answer, this
[19:07] is one that's coming from an athlete we don't coach and
[19:10] presumably from the the tone of the question here from someone
[19:14] from a running background. The speed work aspect of running
[19:18] I will really, really limit with all athletes who were doing.
[19:22] Certainly doing Ironman and 70.3 will have some elements of runs
[19:26] being faster at Sprint and Olympic distance, but they're
[19:29] going to be specific to race day intensity rather than thinking
[19:33] of speed work. So we have to be really clear
[19:36] what we mean by speed work. When I was getting into my
[19:41] triathlon coaching journey, I remember talking to old guys
[19:45] that knew at the running club and they were really sceptical
[19:48] of the idea of runners being successful without doing an
[19:52] inverted comma speed work, without going to the track twice
[19:55] a week and running 200 and 400 metre repeats.
[19:59] And I did a a winter's worth of work with my triathletes,
[20:02] brought them down to the local 10K, and a whole bunch of them
[20:06] broke their 10 KPBS by a minute, a minute and a half, two
[20:09] minutes, despite not having done any faster running at all during
[20:13] the winter. They were amazed by it.
[20:16] They thought was something really strange going on and it's
[20:18] that Halo effect of the bike fitness crossing over and
[20:21] improving the fitness in a way that affects running really,
[20:25] really positively. O my advice is always going to
[20:28] be cut the speed, work out on the run, focus on the run
[20:32] frequency and the durability of your running and that's
[20:35] ultimately what's going to turn you into a better runner on
[20:38] triathlon race day. But also done correctly, much
[20:42] better runner overall with a much lower risk of injury.
[20:47] Next question, what's the best way to practise pacing for a
[20:50] long distance race such as an Ironman?
[20:53] OK, So what I'll do is I'll have our athletes do 1 long run a
[20:58] week. That's done as the nine one run
[21:00] walk method. We'll do 9 minutes of running,
[21:03] one minute of walking. We'll be running at the faster
[21:06] end of our E pace. The closer we get to goal race
[21:09] day, we're going to get closer to the faster end of E pace
[21:12] because that's ultimately what we want you to hit come race
[21:15] day. And what we're going to do is
[21:16] we're going to try and practise running at that pace with a
[21:20] minute walk. We're going to practise fueling
[21:22] and hydration during the minute walk, so we get used to taking
[21:26] in the correct amount of calories, the correct amount of
[21:29] fluid during that walk break. And then when it comes to race
[21:33] day, what you're going to find is there's going to be an aid
[21:36] station roughly every 10 minutes apart on the run.
[21:38] It's going to be somewhere between 7 and 15 minutes apart
[21:42] depending on your run speed. So you're going to have a walk
[21:45] break to go through the aid station anyway.
[21:47] So you've got this dual effect. The walk break will massively
[21:50] extend the amount of range you've got as a runner and it
[21:55] will massively reduce the amount of soreness you experience the
[21:58] next day. So it's a win win.
[22:00] You practise this and you don't get sore, you practise it and
[22:03] you can actually run further than you might be able to run if
[22:05] you were just to do a straight run.
[22:07] And also it's specific to the way you're going to end up doing
[22:10] the race on race day, taking into account the aid stations.
[22:16] Next question, how do I adapt training when I'm travelling or
[22:21] on holiday? Shall I just run every day if I
[22:23] haven't got access to a pool and a gym bike?
[22:27] OK so it's really really tempting when you go away on
[22:31] holiday if you've not got access to a bike.
[22:33] In particular the the 1st place of mine goes is well if I can't
[22:36] do the bike sessions I should replace them with extra runs?
[22:39] Because I know that the coaches said when I can't run, I should
[22:43] replace them with extra bikes. So it's tempting to think that,
[22:46] but it's flawed logic and I don't want athletes to do that.
[22:49] If you've got your three or perhaps four runs scheduled in,
[22:53] I think the best thing you can do is just do those four runs.
[22:57] Don't schedule any more. Don't go any faster, don't go
[23:00] any harder, and use the extra time that you've got as extra
[23:03] recovery. You're not going to become a
[23:06] worse athlete in a week or even in two weeks.
[23:09] If you don't have access to a gym bike, that's absolutely
[23:12] fine. Most athletes I talk to, when I
[23:14] when I say to them, no, don't run every day.
[23:17] All of a sudden they find a way to get access to a bike while
[23:21] they're away. They find a gym that's got a
[23:22] bike in and they can do one or two bike sessions.
[23:25] Sometimes people hire a a mountain bike if there were an
[23:28] holiday and just go and go and ride up and down a local hill
[23:31] for an hour and basically do some interval training on the
[23:34] bike there. They find a way to get the bike
[23:36] training done. But I don't advise running every
[23:39] day while you're away. I'm a really big believer in
[23:42] giving the body a day off after each run wherever possible.
[23:45] Certainly not running more than two days back-to-back.
[23:48] Let's give our body every chance it's got to recover from the
[23:51] strains of the run and then we can keep up that consistency
[23:55] across, you know, 3456789 months of the year without needing to
[24:01] miss a session due to niggles or injuries, things like that.
[24:06] Next question, what's the best way to structure my brick
[24:10] sessions for my Iron Man? I'm going to expand this and
[24:12] talk about both Iron Man and 70.3.
[24:15] So first up, we won't start having our athletes do brick
[24:19] sessions until 8 weeks before race day.
[24:22] I think that's adequate preparation time.
[24:24] And the main purpose for doing a brick session is to experience
[24:29] that feeling of Jelly legs running off the bike, to
[24:32] experience the panic in your head of thinking there's no way
[24:34] I'm going to be able to run, you know, 1/2 marathon or a marathon
[24:38] feeling like this. And then experiencing after
[24:41] three 4-5 minutes that your legs gradually come back to normal.
[24:45] And then from 5 minutes onwards it just feels like a normal run.
[24:49] So you've got to expect it to feel really bizarre and quite
[24:52] horrible for the 1st 345 minutes.
[24:56] But it's part of the mental resilience training to learn
[24:59] that this is going to change. You are going to feel better
[25:03] very shortly. You don't need to panic, just
[25:07] know that it's going to get better.
[25:09] So that's the first thing to remember.
[25:10] The brick session is there for your mind as much as it's there
[25:13] for your body. In fact, in the other days, it's
[25:15] there for your mind more than it's there for your body.
[25:18] And so the first brick sessions, our structure will only be
[25:21] maximum 15 minutes long. And the purpose is just to run
[25:24] until you feel normal again. And at that point you can stop.
[25:27] You can go and get showered and get on with the rest of your
[25:29] day. As we gradually approach race
[25:32] day, we're going to extend the brick session.
[25:35] We'll go from 15 minutes to 30 minutes.
[25:37] We'll eventually go from 30 minutes to a maximum of 45
[25:40] minutes. We'll only do that once or
[25:43] possibly twice. So you don't need to run off the
[25:46] bike more than that. And honestly, that is that is
[25:50] the key. We'll have our athletes do a
[25:53] couple of weekends where they do the 45 minute run off the bike
[25:57] and then very next thing the next morning they'll do their
[26:00] long run. So it's kind of like a broken
[26:02] long run across a 12 hour period.
[26:05] But I am not a fan of doing a really, really long run off the
[26:10] bike. Even for our very top age
[26:12] groupers. I'm a big fan of splitting that
[26:14] up and experience the fatigue differently across two days.
[26:19] Essentially, I think the risk that comes with running long off
[26:23] the bike is it far outweighs the fitness gain you'll get by doing
[26:27] it. So in almost every case, I'll go
[26:31] with that advice of maximum 45 minutes off the bike.
[26:33] And then at a couple of key weekends and our coached
[26:37] athletes, you'll know when those are those the race simulation,
[26:39] race, race rehearsal weekends, you'll have your your
[26:43] appropriate long run very first thing the next morning as well.
[26:48] And then last question here, what's the impact of doing a
[26:51] long run on a weekday rather than doing the long run at the
[26:55] weekend? So with the athletes I coach,
[26:58] what I tend to do is for the vast majority of the time, I'll
[27:01] split the long run and the long ride into different parts of the
[27:05] week. Typically we'll have athletes do
[27:07] the long run on a Thursday and we'll have them do the long ride
[27:10] on a Saturday or a Sunday. And the reason for doing this is
[27:13] the long run, I think is the place in the week where you are
[27:17] most at risk of developing A niggle or an injury if you're
[27:21] doing it fatigued. And so doing the long run the
[27:25] day after a long ride is a big red flag for me.
[27:29] I'd much rather an athlete does it midweek and then they've got
[27:32] time to recover and do the long ride at the weekend and recover
[27:35] and do the long run in the middle of the week and so on,
[27:38] rather than have them do them back-to-back.
[27:42] In the instance where time wise it just doesn't work and the
[27:45] athlete has to do the long run at the weekend as well, I'll get
[27:48] them to do the long run the day before the long ride.
[27:51] Because again, you can ride a bike with tired legs and it's
[27:55] great training for Iron Man on 70.3.
[27:57] Frankly, there's much higher risk of doing a run on really
[28:01] tired legs. Now the obvious question that's
[28:04] going to get lead on from this is but surely can race day we
[28:07] have to run off the bike and so training the run the day after
[28:11] the bike makes sense to me. And, and that's true to an
[28:13] extent, but remember we will have our athletes do the long
[28:18] run the day after the bike at a couple of specific instances
[28:22] very close to race day when they are at their fittest.
[28:26] And when you're at your fittest, you'll be able to handle it
[28:29] miles away from race day. You're not ready to handle it
[28:31] yet. So I think it's a much, much
[28:33] safer way to do it. Have the long run the day before
[28:36] the long ride if you have to do it that way.
[28:38] And again, the impact of doing a long ride and your legs are a
[28:42] bit tired and sore from the long run, I think that's actually
[28:45] good training. It's really good sometimes to go
[28:47] out and do a ride and be tired from the start and have to kind
[28:50] of mentally grind through it because that's great practise
[28:53] for race day. OK, I hope you've enjoyed the
[28:57] answers to those questions and they've been helpful for you.
[28:59] To wrap this up today, here are some discount codes and deals
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[29:21] for Iron Man or 70.3 triathlon this year, please watch our free
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[29:28] It's free and you'll get a tonne of information on the right way
[29:31] to train around your busy life. Again, the link for that is down
[29:35] in the show notes. So remember there's links in the
[29:39] show notes so you don't have to remember them.
[29:41] And until next week, have a great safe training racing week.
[29:45] I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've been listening to the Oxygen
[29:48] Addict Triathlon Podcast. See ya.

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