I guess Triathletes must have gotten this figured out, but I have no idea where to start to be honest. Is there a decent triathlon training book that is the standard recommendation.

I don’t have a ton of time, so I want to make my training count. I can afford some books, but probably not a coach. Sadly.

My goals are simple:
* Make sure my on the bike endurance is good
* Beat my time in a September sportive by a decent chunk (i.e. work on speed)
* Run the inaugural Bristol to Bath Marathon in late October.

I think the running will be the biggest challenge – at the moment I can do a 10km in about 55mins, so not fast. I haven’t run further than that in about 5 years.

How do you balance your competing demands?

Triathletes training bible is a common choice

Or Going long

Depends what distance you want to do. If it’s an Ironman then going long is useful.

I used to do runs during mon-fri mixed in with my swims, then weekends were saved for long bikes. I was doing Ironman distances races though, so needed a good 5-6hrs for a ride!

I hear ‘Mein Kampf’ is popular among triathletes.

How do you balance your competing demands?

I think it’s going to depend a lot on what your goal times are and available time. Cycling is easier to ‘wing it’ in that you can draft people, freewheel etc. plenty of opportunities to save energy. With running there isn’t really any where to hide, and most mortals need to log up a lot of consistency in miles. So that would be what I would prioritise. The good thing though is that it’s possible to do a relatively hard running session one day followed by a long endurance bike ride the next.
So the trick is to alternate sports and alternate hard easy.

I used to cycle 10 miles to and from work and would leave my run kit set out on a chair to change straight into when I got home, gave a bit of transition training too.
Injury put paid to my tri hobby , I still miss being slim and toned but not being anal about my training.

Train hard for the run then wing it on the bike seems to be another popular choice. After all, it’s just riding a bike innit.

Your biggest challenge will probably be running the marathon. You need a plan to build up running mileage, both weekly total and longest run – the latter to about 3h. Start soon and do it steadily is my advice. Most people would say 2-3 runs per week is pretty minimal for a marathon, but you might get away with that if you do plenty of cycling too.

As an uncompetitive middle aged man, I just tried to do each one 2 times a week, and tbh that was more than enough for me. That was a long slow and short fast run; 2 swimming club sessions; a MTB group ride and a fast road ride. With hingsight I probably should have ignored the bike and concentrated on my weakest one, the run.

If in doubt prioritise the bike

Plus practice some brick sessions ie run after the bike. You need to get used to that!

If in doubt prioritise the bike

As someone who’s run a few marathons and has been known to race a bike occasionally, I’d completely disagree.

The endurance needed to run a marathon, even slowly, is very different to a sportive. It’s not just cardio, but heavy impact.

I’d focus on the marathon, running four times per week… one long, one very short and fast, two medium (e.g., mine the other week was 20 miles, 5 miles inc 1 mile warm-up, 1 cool-down, 3 at 5k race pace, and two 8 mile runs. Your distances and speed will vary, but the pattern will se you good).

The marathon fitness will easily translate to the bike, but not so the other way around.

If the OP was actually doing a triathlon, then yes, bike focus is useful because it’s an easy place to gain time. But he’s not.

Plus practice some brick sessions ie run after the bike. You need to get used to that!

No he doesn’t, read the goals of the OP.

Personally when I dabbled in triathlon i found my bike fitness suffered (just lost enough top end to make riding with my d friends a slightly painful experience), and I was still shit at, and hated, running. Didn’t have enough time to do either as much as I wanted.

😳 read the OP!!

Excuse my nonsense

As an aside, when I got bored of the trad triathlon path I started doing ultras and other endurance events. Taught myself his to run slowly for long times (eg 48 hour non stop events). Fine BUT lost all my speed endurance and am really struggling to get speed back now. Last HM was 20 minutes off PB 🙁

Beware of the downside of endurance events!!

Some good pointers there folks – thank you.

I won’t be trying triathlon, just thought they might be folks I could learn from….