- [Taren] Morning, trainiacs, group bike ride today,
and then after, we're gonna talk
about the one thing that is critical
to becoming a very serviceable bike rider in triathlon.
Admittedly, ya might not like the answer,
unless you're a real badass.
(tire spokes click) (rhythmic electronic music)
Oh, that was good, that was good.
It is a 48K ride, hard.
Average power 156, normalized power 219.
Hard, slow down, hard, slow down.
Four sprint sections, but today, it's rest week,
so I only did two of the sprint sections,
one of which I took down very decisively,
second one, rookie move,
shoulda taken it down very decisively,
however, I celebrated about 30 feet
before the finish line as somebody passed me
that I didn't think was there.
Good job, Taren, (claps slowly) good job.
So, the key to cycling fast is forwards,
time in the saddle.
It's a double-edged sword,
but allow me to explain, after I get off
this awesome little get-up that I'm wearin'.
So fashionable.
So yes, trainiacs, the one thing that is going
to make or break you triathalon bike time
is as simple as time in the saddle.
Are you putting out enough time on the bike
to get faster?
Biking is not like swimming.
If you come from a swimming background,
you can probably get away with maybe just swimming
once a week, if at all, and still
do quite well in the race.
Running, as I've proven this year,
if, let's say you're very susceptible
to injury like I am, you can still back way off
of running and lean on strength training,
brick runs that are quite short, little bit of hill work,
and a lot more quality over quantity.
But even if you have a background as a cyclist,
if you back way off of the bike training,
you aren't going to have a very good race.
As far as I can tell, there are really no hacks in cycling.
It's not like you can really cheat your way
into being a good cyclist.
You need to be biking at least three times a week,
and I'm going to tell you why.
Number one: you need that long endurance ride
building your way up to 100 kilometers plus,
and that's even for an Olympic distance event.
You want to get yourself to a point that you can bike
the course distance without issue.
That's where over-distance rides come in.
You also want to work on building your top end of speed
with another completely separate workout,
where all you're doing is going really really intense
for as little as ten seconds, as much as ten minutes.
Now also, you want to add another bike in there
sometime during the week just to keep those bike legs fresh.
With one workout a week, you're not going
to be progressing a ton unless you're in your first year
or two of triathlon, where you can basically just sneeze
and all of a sudden you get fitter, but beyond that,
one workout a week isn't really even maintenance.
Two workouts a week, basically maintenance,
but once you add that third workout a week,
you're not going any longer than three days
at any one time if you're spacing them out well.
And that is keeping the muscle memory going
and the blood flow moving so that every single week,
you're progressing because you're not letting
your body to stagnate and get a little bit gunky
and not progress on the bike, so in my case,
I'm biking probably about as little as I would want to,
but about as purposeful as I would want to.
Tuesday, this morning, really friggin' intense ride.
Sunday, really really long ride, going way beyond
how long I'm going to go in a race, upwards of 145K.
Friday is just that light one hour easy spin,
around 100 watts that I'm using for recovery,
and it's another chance to get time in the saddle.
The results?
Personal best in the 90K bike ride
at half IRONMAN Coeur d'Alene,
on a fairly tough bike course with a lot
of elevation change and I ran well after.
These are the things that I'm incorporating
in the workouts, of the new team training platform,
if you're interested in this, the more I talk about it,
go to triathalonteran.com/teamwaitlist.
You're not paying anything at that point,
you're just putting yourself on an email list
to know when things happen and they come out
and are made available.
How I'm building the workouts is with a lot
of quality over quantity, because I know
everyone is really busy, so it's basically
what is the minimum effective dose
that we can get away with
and how can we design workouts
to be really efficient, so that all of us busy trainiacs
can get as fast as possible with still making
our wives and husbands and children happy with us.
Now, that said, it's just about four o'clock,
I'm gonna get in a quick run before NTK gets home,
okay, shhh, let's make this quick.
Montage from the day of training, now.
(fast-paced house music)
And we end the day off with just a beauty, 12 minute run.
No fancy pace, but I did three times, 30 seconds
of big bounding strides, 30 seconds of regular easy running,
30 seconds of fast feet, do those three times
in that 12 minutes, that is a recovery run.
Alright triathlon trainiacs, if you aren't already
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and if you are subscribed, you're the best.
You, are the best.
You, I mean you. Later.