Hey all! I was apparently suffering from a lack of things to do, as I signed up for the annual dualthon at my university. Now I’m too poor (and lazy) to get professional coaching but I want to do as well as possible nontheless, so some details:
The course itself is divided into two 5km running sections broken in half by one 11km biking stretch, and everybody (this being a decently small competition) starts out at once.
I myself am in dang good physical shape, but I’m afraid it isn’t quite the right shape; I’m a professional-calibre dancer, so I’m quite flexible with very good wind, but I’m not used to the kind of sustained exertion a mid-distance race like this requires. At the moment I can sprint full out for about half a mile, run at a good tilt for 1.5 miles (one mile for me takes about 8.8 minutes if I pick up the pace… never tried one going full-out), and jog for at least seven. I can bike a good eighteen miles at a fairly nice (12-15 MPH) rate, but I’ve never tried racing on a bike.
So anyway… with about 2 hours/day free for training, plus a couple of spare hours during the weekends, how should I best be spending my time to prepare? Is it as simple as running and biking progressively longer distances until I have a combined time that I’m happy with?
Really? (please allow me to use my favorite smiley again)
:dubious:
Without truly training for running, I doubt that many people can do this.
I don’t recommend that you do this.
If you can do this, you are in really good shape compared to most people, especially if you’re not training as a runner. I suspect you must be running somewhat frequently, even if solely by knowing these limitations.
Even if this isn’t your first competitive race, 2 hrs/day is still way too much, unless your looking to finish top 5%.
This is all imo:
I was going to post this workout for you, but it was too heavily running orientated. Since you can already run a 10k, you should run some type of speed work out at least 1x/wk. Run steady state for at least 25 mins at least 2x/week. Bike the other two days (or rest one of your bike days). On the weekends, you should work on your transition from running to bike and bike to run. You will lose a lot of time and there’s no real way I can think of that will adequately simulate race conditions, without involving a bunch of people. Anyway, you want to concentrate on being able to run and bike on the same day, one right after the other.
The wind part isn’t related to dancing, I just figured it was pertinent to mention that I was more worried about muscula fatigue than stamina.
Thanks for your advice, though! I’m pretty sure I can come in in the top 30% as-is, but I was really hoping to hit top 5%. This is my first race, and since it’s at a university center I assumed I’d be competing against people who’re really, really, *really * into the sport… hence the rather enthusiastic training schedule I proposed.
IME, pure runners do better than pure bicyclists, but the master of the two will beat them all. There is a lot of technique involved in bicycling, but I’m not much a road racer, so I can’t really help you there. If you’re looking to finish top 5%, you have a lot of work cut out for you. Your 1 mi time is ~8.8? Someone in the top 5% should finish 1 mi in about 5:30 mins, or a 5k in ~17:30-45. That’s really fast. Speed work outs (interval running) will be your friend.
