Trains, Travels

Since I began triathlon I’ve hated brick runs! Sometimes I’ve tacked on extra bike mileage as an excuse to avoid them. I wanted to state my prejudice before I wrote any more on the subject. I get the impression most triathletes love them and most Ironman athletes like them very long. I’m not about to suggest you avoid them, but question how much you do.

Specificity is a common theme of mine, it’s important how you train is relevant to your event and what could be more relevant than a brick session? I won’t devalue them for that, if you’re unfamiliar with the experience of running off the bike it’s worth practicing. My problem is with them as run training. Too often I’ve seen athlete’s blame disappointing run performances on insufficient brick sessions.

It would be a rare case where a lack of bricks was the cause of a poor run, yet they’re held in such high esteem. Perhaps a short course athlete has more to gain, but if you’re struggling with a marathon after a 112 mile bike you’re problem doesn’t relate to bricks. Run performance relates to your run and bike fitness and how you’ve paced the race, suitable training along with a well executed race plan deliver run results.

Given my dislike you may be wondering why previous posts have brick sessions in their plans. It’s a matter of time efficiency, especially when you see more than one in a week. Allocating time straight off the bike is usually easier than scheduling an entirely separate run. These brick runs aren’t key sessions, but they increase run volume and help time limited athletes develop run fitness.

In my early career time efficient run volume gains were the main reason I utilised bricks, but once full time I experimented further. Whilst living on the Gold Coast I tried running off every bike, over a month building from fifteen to forty-five minute runs. I’d added four hours run training to my week by the end of that block and the race that followed went well.

You can’t draw conclusions from a brief experiment, but the result wasn’t enough for me to adopt the practice. It’s impossible to tell if any impact in performance was specifically a result of brick running or simply because of additional volume. Periods of high run volume have yielded better results since so I suspect the increase wasn’t significant enough. I see advantages to running more, but little significance in whether extra running follows a bike ride or not.

For Ironman triathletes brick sessions can form a challenging training day and well executed are a good test of race pacing. An occasional four hour ride followed by an hours run makes for a solid day’s work (consider adding a swim too). My aim in these sessions is to build the effort on the bike and finish with a lot of race pace work then repeat that process over the course of the run. Building into race pace in both ensures this should be a tough session that gives feedback on race pacing.

I use these sessions sparingly, perhaps once a month and not at all over winter. My preference is to split bike and run over the day, it gives time to recover and eat so I run better later on. Learning to run on tired legs is often given as a reason to brick run lots, but I’m concerned too much reinforces poor run form. Rested legs will run better and the bulk of run training should be done with an emphasis on running well.

Fatigue is a natural part of the training week so you run on tired legs anyway. The long run delivers this experience, after an hour or two it takes effort to continue running well. A structured program should deliver enough run volume, but also enable some of those runs to be performed fresh. Brick sessions can fit in there, but shouldn’t dominate.

In training plans I tend to place the weekly brick run following a shorter threshold bike session. Logistically it’s easier to manage and the hard bike guarantees legs are in no fit state for running. A short well paced run after gives a good sense of leaving transition without too much impact on recovery. Those long brick sessions always concern me, if you push then the affects could carry into the next few days.

I’ve seen Ironman plans with serious brick workouts built around long bikes followed by two hour runs. If you can do that and recover to train as normal afterwards great, but I’d seriously consider their value. The training load achieved is comparable with racing which would be a far more enjoyable way for the same result. I want long bricks to be challenging, but I don’t want them to break me down to the detriment of the following week. This sort of session needs recovery, you’d be better dividing the work over a couple of days and keeping consistency.

I won’t deny there’s prejudice involved, but consider whether bricks are going to give you the improvements you want. Don’t remove them from your plans, but when you want to run better in triathlon don’t turn to them as the answer either. Run performance in triathlon is highly dependent on how you’ve paced your bike relative to fitness. To make improvements look to develop bike fitness further as well as working on run fitness. In the overall scheme brick sessions are fine tuning.

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I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and writing about training the last few months. I’ve been forced to articulate a training philosophy, not that I didn’t have one, but as a full time athlete I often trained without reasoning. As time becomes increasingly precious it’s a luxury I can’t afford, as a philosophy train more only takes you so far.

Defining my coaching philosophy for a prospective athlete isn’t a point I want to stumble on. I’ve replaced early vagueness with a definite approach. Train more hasn’t gone, it’s just too simplistic and never sits well when an athlete has 10 hours spare a week. Most of us have a limit on how long we can train and that may come before the body gives up.

I’m not abandoning the value of volume, but suggesting that it’s not essential to your goals. If you enjoy it, have the time and your fitness can handle it I’d encourage any athlete to train as much as they can. What’s evident from my last few years of experience and the resulting changes in training is how you train more is an important part of the equation.

I’ve been beaten by athletes who train less than me and questioned my approach. Perhaps they had a better taper, a longer training history or maybe it was a better training plan? Looking at hours misses so many factors, if they worked harder in fewer hours then effectively their training load could be the same. I’ve seen that transformation first hand.

Reviewing four years of diaries to develop my simple Ironman training plan and more recently for my season review at Endurance Corner let me follow the transformation to the present. Over that time I’ve tried a lot, but only selected so much to carry forward. The chart below breaks down those four years into five stages of training.

Beginning at the centre with life as a working Ironman triathlete the most important aspect of this stage is that the proportion of hard training is at it’s highest. I’d more time to recover whilst sat at a desk and less overall training stress in my life (I was also younger!) The bulk of my training is still at steady intensities, but it’s at it’s lowest proportion.

This period was the biggest influencer on the simple training plan and a lot of key concepts for my coaching philosophy were born here. The focus was time efficiency and getting training done, weekend sessions were longer, but on weekdays time was limited. Consistency in longer sessions was lacking, I had the potential to train more.

After two Ironmans I move into my obsessive stage. There’s a relative increase in the proportion of easy and steady training to harder work, but training hours had risen so it’s likely time spent at harder efforts remained the same. I lacked fitness to increase both overall volume and intensity at this point. I was still working so increased training involved weekends or camps, I learnt the benefits of big training weekends and periods of volume.

When the obsession took me full time there was a huge swing in training, volume increased further and with it the proportion of time spent at steady or easy efforts. I’d train for hours and fatigue ensured most of it was steady, it took a lot to make me work. I was slowly adapting to handle the longer hours.

Training more works, even if it’s steady training, the problem is if it’s steady you have to do a lot. I was doing enough to see improvements to my Ironman results, but you couldn’t replicate it whilst working. My approach to swimming and running might be used – frequency and a little more volume gave good results with only a small amount of hard work needed.

More experienced my second full time year saw a drop in hours, but an increase in the proportion of hard work. Less training by time, but more by workload I was applying a greater training load in a more efficient manner. Race results gave an indication that the approach was working, I realised more volume had initially increased load, but I’d taken it as far as I could.

My present training hours have settled lower than the full time years, but the proportion of hard training has increased. I’ve adopted the time efficiency of my working days and the need for volume. Weeks involve shorter, hard sessions and longer steady work as the season progresses I mix the two, but always keep easy sessions to a minimum. Kona may have been an early indicator of things to come, I felt far stronger on the bike than previous races.

I still believe in training more, but not in doing so blindly. It isn’t more hours it’s training load and you can increase that through intensity or duration. An effective program needs both, ratios of intensity are determined by fitness and available time. Each sport applies different stresses to the body and this has to be accounted for too. More training is good so long as you can recover, work hard and work specifically.

I don’t doubt in another year I’ll be adding a new stage to my evolving training philosophy. There are fundamentals that remain true throughout, but constant refinements to be made. Patience and a willingness to work are perhaps the most important parts of my philosophy.

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Not long after Kona the batteries died in my Powertap, being in recovery I didn’t hurry to replace them, nor did I worry much when I forgot to charge my Garmin. Without power, heart rate or speed I had some of the most enjoyable rides in a long time. I think I set a PB on a local hill, but have no evidence to back it up!

You may have the impression my obsession with numbers means every session is defined in terms of X minutes at Y watts, but much of the time a stopwatch is as advanced as I get. Most rides I don’t hold strict power targets, wattage is a guide, RPE is the major governer. Throughout September I swam with a broken pace clock relying on perceived exertion and counting seconds for rest intervals. I couldn’t tell you my heart rate or exact pace during a run, I’ve not worn a monitor in three years.

Sunday’s club ride revisited the local hill. I stayed with the group until the road pitched up, a quick jump broke away from the bunch, but checking over my shoulder I had two companions. The next ten minutes were spent pushing the pace, slowly ramping things up and throwing in surges till I’d dropped them. In the process I set myself a new ten minute power PB.

The motivation of dropping friends was enough to push me out of my comfort zone. I didn’t expect to be adding fifteen minutes at threshold towing a guy back to the group after he punctured. Both occassions I had power and heart rate in front of me, but the effort felt manageable so I didn’t hold back.

After two days of hard bike sessions Monday was a day for work and running. Runs are a short affair at the moment, but completing a document on training intensity was a marathon. After a couple of enquiries I’ve branched out to offer consultancy in addition to continuous coaching. Every athlete has different requirements, in this case learning to effectively use training tools to guide and analyse sessions.

Writing puts the spotlight on how I use those tools, justifying and describing my approach forces me to think critically. I concluded whatever training tools I’ve worn I’ve always used RPE as my biggest guide. Sometimes I’ve worked harder than intended, sometimes easier, but it’s always felt like what I needed at that point.

I so rarely monitor heart rate I needed to revise the zones used in other training systems and how they compare to RPE. When I run and swim I go by feel and when I ride power is the big number on my screen, at best I’ve a vague awareness of heart rate in terms of threshold and Ironman race pace. Heart rate monitors are the most common training tool amongst triathletes and much as I encourage use of RPE athletes want heart rate guidance.

Reading Joe Friel’s guide to heart rate training seven zones seemed a lot to keep track of especially when you might target the upper or lower end of zones. Given heart rate’s variability with condition and fatigue I’m not convinced you can use it that accurately. Will the physiological benefits of training at the top of zone 2 be different to those at the bottom of zone 3 if you raised your heart rate three beats?

Zones are a guide to stop you going too hard or going to easy, but particularly around their borders a session can feel harder or easier than the zone describes. Lots of zones means lots of boundary cases. My training history effectively contains four zones: easy, steady, hard and ouch!

The bulk of my training and my Ironman pace falls in the steady zone depending on how I feel on the day. A decent portion is made of the hard zone, often at the lower end, sometimes right on threshold. I don’t do much ouch the only recent examples were on the club ride. If there’s any time left it’ll fall in the easy zone, below steady efforts and well below race pace.

I can translate these to percentages of power or heart rate, but it’s a rough guide because my zones are based on feel. Some days 85% of threshold power might feel hard and other days it’s steady. Working from threshold heart rate I’d estimate easy is below 80%, steady is between 80% and 95%, hard is around 95% to 105% and ouch is anything above that.

Exact numbers aren’t important, but four simple zones seem to cover my bases and make it easier to consider training. I still plan bike interval sessions in terms of percentages of threshold power, but in execution feel determines how I hit the numbers. I might as well plan in terms of easy, steady, hard and ouch.

The main point is you don’t need to complexify training. It’s important to track and monitor performance, but when it comes to training there’s a lot to be said for doing the work. Don’t underappreciate the value of RPE and whilst you’re using zones that work for you take the time to learn how the effort feels. In a race I want to know how zone 2 feels, because if zone 1 or zone 3 feel like that I’m going with it.

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