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- It's all very well being good
at the individual disciplines within triathlon,
but if you're not very good at putting them together
and performing them as one, then it's not really much use.
- No, and you're probably all likely familiar
with the dreaded jelly-legs feeling as you exit the water
or head out onto your run.
And I hate to admit it,
but these feelings don't really tend to go away,
but you can reduce them and get used to them.
- Yeah, and that's where the brick workout comes in,
and predominantly, you're going to have
the bike-to-run, as that's the most common,
it's the easiest for most people to do,
but you could also have a swim-to-bike,
or even a swim-to-run.
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- Right then, a few things before we get started.
And if this is your first ever brick,
then forget about any intensity.
It's just about doing it nice and easy
and going through the motions.
And for this example,
we're gonna talk about 45 minute bike
and a really short run of 15 to 20 minutes.
- Yeah, and this can be performed indoors or outdoors.
A lot of people are up for indoors
'cause it's just that bit easier,
if you do have a treadmill, obviously,
but you can also do one inside
and then go and do the run outside or vice versa.
- Right then, so let's get stuck in here.
And as I said, we're gonna go for bike-to-run,
so have your running shoes at the ready.
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- For this session, we'll focus on sprint
to Olympic distance triathlon intensities,
but it will tap into that top-end speed
that can be useful for longer distance races,
so sometimes gets forgotten about.
- [Fraser] So we're going to start all of our workouts
with a warmup for the bike of 15 minutes
at your zone two power or 73 to 80%
of your maximum heart rate, or an RPE of three to four.
But of course, do feel free to extend this out
longer if you've got the time.
Now on to our main set for the bike.
We've got three minutes at your FTP
or 91% of your maximum heart rate or RPE of eight
into one minute at your zone five power
or 93 to 100% of your maximum heart rate
or an RPE of nine to 10.
Back into two minutes at your FTP
followed by 30 seconds back at your zone five power,
into 3.5 minutes of recovery spinning
at your zone two power.
And we'll repeat this set through four times.
Then on to the run of four times three minutes
at your threshold run pace or 95% of your maximum heart rate
which is an RPE of seven to eight
with two minutes of zone two jog recovery between
at 73 or 80% of your maximum heart rate
which is RPE of three to four.
Now after the final rep, go straight into the warm down.
In fact, we're gonna finish all of our workouts
with a warm down of five minutes jogging recovery
at zone two which is 73 to 80% of your maximum heart rate
or an RPE of three to four.
- Now we're gonna head to a more level
and even pace workout, sweet spot to tempo.
Sweet spot is for the bike, tempo is for the run.
Now sweet spot is pretty close
to most people's Ironman 70.3 race pace,
and it's also a popular one for training,
as you're working just below that lactate threshold.
So in theory, you're pushing up
the ceiling of your threshold
and because you're not going into that lactate area,
you should be able to maintain that for longer as well.
- And then running off that at a similar intensity
which would be somewhere around
about seven out of 10 on the RPE scale,
in terms of our heart rate,
well that would be somewhere around about 85 to 90%
of our maximum heart rate.
And if you want to think in terms of piece,
well, you could take your current 5K piece
and add 30 seconds per kilometer to that
or indeed 15 to 20 seconds to your current 10K pace.
So, now for the session.
- [Heather] After you had a good warm-up on the bike
you're gonna head straight into the main set
which is two lots of 20 minutes at your sweet spot intensity
which is 84 to 94% of FTP,
75 to 85% of your maximum heart rate or an RPE of 67
with 10 minutes at zone two recovery spin
but then after the second and final rep,
you're going to jump straight off the bike
and then on to the run,
which is two lots of 10 minutes at tempo
or 85 to 90% of your maximum heart rate,
an RPE of seven followed by five minutes at zone two,
just recovery jog in between,
with a heart rate of 73 to 80% of your max
or an RPE of three to four.
- Now then, if you're looking to spice things up,
well, we've got a multi-stage brick workout
for you here which is effectively bike-run,
bike-run, and yes, bike-run.
Now, if you are looking to work through that dreaded
jelly-leg feeling that I chatted about before,
then this is exactly where you need to start.
- Yeah, this is a great workout if you're training
for those longer distance events,
as it teaches your body to deal with that fatigue
you get at the back end of a race.
But if you are training for something shorter
you can just decrease the length of each of those intervals
and increase the intensity a little bit.
- [Fraser] 30 minutes on the bike at zone three
or 80 to 87% of your max heart rate
with an RPE being five to six,
on to the run for 15 minutes, again at zone three,
80 to 87% of your max heart rate and RPE of five to six.
And now, to interject a little bit of pace change
in fatigue, you get back on the bike
for four times four minutes at your FTP
or 91% of your max heart rate, RPE of eight.
With four minutes of zone two recovery spinning
between each rep, but not after the final rep
because we're straight into a run of five minutes
at threshold or 80 to 90% of your max heart rate,
RPE of seven, five minutes zone two recovery
with another 2 1/2 minutes at your threshold,
back into 2 1/2 minutes at zone two for recovery
and a final one minute and 15 seconds at your threshold.
Finally, a bike of 30 minutes zone three
and a run of 15 minutes, also zone three,
which is moderate aerobic pace or an RPE of five to six.
- Now we're gonna finish up with quite a simple workout
that's aimed at Ironman distance racing.
We're going to do three hours on the bike
at your target Ironman race pace or race power
which will be around 64 to 80% of your FTP
or 72 to 84% of your maximum heart rate
and an RPE of four to five.
And then straight on to a one-hour run,
again, at your target Ironman race pace,
70 to 85% of your threshold pace
or 65 to 75% of your maximum heart rate
which will be an RPE of three to four.
- Now then, these are some of the sessions
that I used to really enjoy doing and they're excellent
for letting you target and dial into your race pace,
but crucially, for giving you
some much-needed confidence ahead of race day.
- Yeah, there's some meaty sessions in there,
so good luck with those and let us know how you get on
and maybe which is your favorite workout.
And if you've enjoyed it, hit the thumb up like button
and to subscribe to GTN to make sure
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And if you are training for a marathon,
whether that's at the end of an Ironman or standalone one,
we've got a video to help you with your training just here.
- Yeah, and if you want to see a session that we did
about top four bike workouts, you can find that here.