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Using Tri-Fitness to Improve Your Run...

Friday, 28 October 2016 23:10

Capitalize on your end-of-season tri fitness to boost your run speed in 2017.

By Mike Ricci (triathlon.competitor.com)

As the triathlon season comes to an end, it’s the perfect time to take all of your hard-earned fitness and use it as a springboard to improve your running. Your annual fitness is at an all-time high as you peak for your last...

triathlon of the year, and it’s an ideal chance to have a goal marathon or half-marathon late in the season. If you are ending your tri season with an iron-distance race, you’ll want to give your run legs a break before embarking on run training again. However, if you are an athlete who is finishing your triathlon season with a half-iron or shorter distance race, here’s how to maximize your tri fitness to be even stronger off the bike in 2017.

Post-triathlon season

Ramping up volume here makes perfect sense as you already have plenty of run volume in your legs, and backing off on the bike and swim will give you the extra energy you need to safely increase mileage. As you are building toward an end-of-the-season run race, focus more on quality and race-specific pacing. For a marathon, you can focus on tempo efforts during your long run—starting with 2 x 3 miles at marathon pace. You can add 2 miles every other week, so the next session would be 2 x 4 miles, and two weeks later you would bump up to 2 x 5 miles, etc. For a half-marathon you’d be looking at finishing your long runs with 30–45 minutes at half-marathon pace. Eventually you could build up to 3 x 20 minutes at half-marathon pace during your long run. These types of workouts are going to give your running the race specificity it needs. Due to the marathon or half-marathon build-up, this block of training would be one of your higher volume blocks of training for the season.