My first duathlon

TheRoadRunner

Right so, a local tri club is organising a duathlon that will literally start and finish 800 metres from my front door. I've always been interested in trying a duathlon so will give this one a lash. The distance is 5k run - 20k cycle - 5k run.

I've no issues with the first 5k run obviously. Use to cycle a lot but very little in the last few years. Have got myself a lend of a decent bike so the plan is to cycle to and from work a couple of days and maybe take a longish cycle in at the weekend now and again. I'd appreciate a couple of tips especially regards the 5k run after the cycle.

I'm training for a marathon at the moment (well actually injured at the moment) and the duathlon is 3-4 weeks after the marathon. I reckon the bulk of cycling will happen in these weeks. Not going to go mad on the cycling but I'd to do enough that I could be relatively competitive going into the last 5 run.

Basically I want to get bang for my buck time wise in training on the bike so I'll take anything on board

littlemsfickle

The best thing you can do is practise running off the bike a few times before the race - nothing else can prepare you for that "jelly legs" sensation you get from running after cycling. The first time I experienced this in a triathlon I felt dead on my legs.

tunney

TheRoadRunner wrote: »

Right so, a local tri club is organising a duathlon that will literally start and finish 800 metres from my front door. I've always been interested in trying a duathlon so will give this one a lash. The distance is 5k run - 20k cycle - 5k run.

I've no issues with the first 5k run obviously. Use to cycle a lot but very little in the last few years. Have got myself a lend of a decent bike so the plan is to cycle to and from work a couple of days and maybe take a longish cycle in at the weekend now and again. I'd appreciate a couple of tips especially regards the 5k run after the cycle.

I'm training for a marathon at the moment (well actually injured at the moment) and the duathlon is 3-4 weeks after the marathon. I reckon the bulk of cycling will happen in these weeks. Not going to go mad on the cycling but I'd to do enough that I could be relatively competitive going into the last 5 run.

Basically I want to get bang for my buck time wise in training on the bike so I'll take anything on board

You'll die a death on the second run. If all you bike training is going to be in the five weeks before it doesn't matter how fit you are from running, if you want to be "relatively competitive" after the bike you have to be able to bike. Won't happen in five weeks.

shotgunmcos

TRR I agree with Tunney re: the bike. You can't 'cram' 5 weeks of biking and hope for a miracle. So either adjust your goalpost expectation to suffering like a dog on the 2nd run or take the bike easy and enjoy passing people.

Training: the issue here is I suspect you are not going to jog the marathon and so recovery will be a factor. This dircetly conflicts with the kind of bike stuff you would have to do, aka high intensity example 4-6 sets of 6 min hard bike, 4 min hard run off it (jumping straight back on the bike after the run etc...)

TheRoadRunner

tunney wrote: »

You'll die a death on the second run. If all you bike training is going to be in the five weeks before it doesn't matter how fit you are from running, if you want to be "relatively competitive" after the bike you have to be able to bike. Won't happen in five weeks.

shotgunmcos wrote: »

TRR I agree with Tunney re: the bike. You can't 'cram' 5 weeks of biking and hope for a miracle. So either adjust your goalpost expectation to suffering like a dog on the 2nd run or take the bike easy and enjoy passing people.

TheRoadRunner wrote: »

I'm training for a marathon at the moment (well actually injured at the moment) and the duathlon is 3-4 weeks after the marathon. I reckon the bulk of cycling will happen in these weeks. Not going to go mad on the cycling but I'd to do enough that I could be relatively competitive going into the last 5 run.

I hear ya but as I said above I am planning on doing some bike sessions while training for the marathon. I just don't know how best to approach it. My definition of "relatively competitive" could mean not last by the way

shotgunmcos wrote: »

Training: the issue here is I suspect you are not going to jog the marathon and so recovery will be a factor. This dircetly conflicts with the kind of bike stuff you would have to do, aka high intensity example 4-6 sets of 6 min hard bike, 4 min hard run off it (jumping straight back on the bike after the run etc...)

I guess this is the type of session I was hoping to get some advice on. How many times a week would one normally do something like this? I've read some cycling coaching books and talk to a few cyclist friends and the difference in training approaches between running and cycling is greater than I would have thought.

shotgunmcos

Firstly its just getting used to how your legs feel running off the bike. You are engaging your gluts,hip flexors and quads entirely differently and all of a sudden too your hammers and calves are taking a pounding! The quads suffer most from gunning the bike and they will feel like sandbags but I find personally the calves can be delicate.

During your marathon programme you if you had one bike per week I'd run for just 10 mins off it. Start out with 10 easy then vary it to build the pace as your feel your run legs come on. Or target a certain pace within a minute of the bike and hold for 4 mins before cooling down easy. If you can't run then a few minutes on a skipping rope will feel almost as uneasy off the bike. You don't need to go for a half hour off the bike as the purpose is simply to get used to the transitioning legs. After 180km on the bike last summer my legs and back were giving out to me furiously for thinking about running a marathon. 5 minutes later of simply being upright and putting one foot in front of the other I found some running legs.

After the marathon you can do a few hard bikes with transition runs to prep you for doing the very same thing at a higher intensity.

If you give the bike a bit of juice you can expect to be a minute or 2 slower on the second 5k run.

How many times per week? Its more about how many cycles per week really. I do 3 and run off one of them, generally the bike that my legs will feel heaviest after

TheRoadRunner

shotgunmcos wrote: »

How many times per week? Its more about how many cycles per week really. I do 3 and run off one of them, generally the bike that my legs will feel heaviest after

Aim is for 3 also. However I won't be going very long bar one

Amz

shotgunmcos wrote: »

Firstly its just getting used to how your legs feel running off the bike. You are engaging your gluts,hip flexors and quads entirely differently and all of a sudden too your hammers and calves are taking a pounding! The quads suffer most from gunning the bike and they will feel like sandbags but I find personally the calves can be delicate.

Yeah, I'd done sod all training before my first duathlon and my calves just felt numb for the second run, I felt like I couldn't get any power in my running, so couldn't build up any speed, even though I felt like I should have been able to.

RacoonQueen

Sure you might as well go for a few swims as well TRR, do that injury no harm at all.

TheRoadRunner

RacoonQueen wrote: »

Sure you might as well go for a few swims as well TRR, do that injury no harm at all.

nah I'm too good a runner to be wussing into tri just yet. I'll wait until I get a bit crapper and fatter :P I jest of course

nerraw1111

Shotgun and Tunney are far more experienced but in my experience, I pretty much crammed 5 weeks of biking for an off road duathlon last year and managed to run pretty well off the bike.

Use the first run to run the legs off the cyclists, hang on for dear life on the bike and hammer out the run again. I think you can hope to be relatively competitive.*

*Relatively for me was to claw back places lost on the bike on the second run to more or less maintain the position I had coming into the bike.

BeepBeep67

This in an interesting thread and something I plan to do at some stage.
I have access to a turbo trainer and a treadmill, what would be some good sessions to replicate how you might feel for a 5/20/5?

TheRoadRunner

BeepBeep67 wrote: »

This in an interesting thread and something I plan to do at some stage.
I have access to a turbo trainer and a treadmill, what would be some good sessions to replicate how you might feel for a 5/20/5?

This is also an option for me

shotgunmcos

BeepBeep67 wrote: »

This in an interesting thread and something I plan to do at some stage.
I have access to a turbo trainer and a treadmill, what would be some good sessions to replicate how you might feel for a 5/20/5?

Sample session off the top of my head. 60 minutes

15 mins on your treadie.
5 easy, 5*1 min hard, 1 min easy

Onto the turbo
5 min easy
5 min steady - sweet spot
2 min easy
1 min V02, 1 min easy
2 min V02, 2 min easy
3 min V02, 3 min easy
4 min V02
2 min easy

Back onto treadie
5 easy, 5 hard, 5 easy