Improving Your Run-Bike Performance in Triathlon
I have been getting asked a lot of questions about the "fridge door" set which featured in a photo on our Facebook site a few weeks ago - so I thought I would post the set with an explanation of why we did this. This set is a great one to do when it's too wet to get outdoors - which it was on the day we did this. I put this set together fairly quickly on the day we did it, and it worked well for Ben, El and Sam.
The set works the higher ranges in aerobic zone - which is helpful for the build phase or as specific prep. But, the set is really helpful for adapting to the switch between the bike phase and the run phase - and firing up the muscle groups for run performance.
When we did this set, we didn't work to HR - instead we used race pace effort as a guide and then selected the gear ratio depending on whether the effort was being done on the rollers or ergo - with bigger gears being pushed on the rollers. "On" is race pace effort. On+ and On++ are harder than race pace effort. We have played around with adding variations in the on periods as well, like including 10sec as max on 30seconds.
The 3x efforts on the bike were done on as ergo/roller/ergo to break up the set and introduce a skill element.
Here's the set:
Warm Up
20m00: Spin/drill elements
Main Set
Set 1 (45m00 work on bike/20m00 run):
3 x through:
7m00 on / 2m00 spin
5m00 on+/2m00 spin
3m00 on++/2m00 spin
Then transition to run quickly and do 20m00 tempo with first 8m00 at 5km pace.
Set 2 (24m00 work on bike/15m00 run):
3 x through:
5m00 on+/2m00 spin
3m00 on++/2m00 spin
Then transition to run quickly and do 15m00 tempo with first 8m00 at 5km pace.
Set 3 (9m00 work on bike/10m00 run):
3 x through:
3m00 on++/2m00 spin
Then transition to run quickly and do 10m00 tempo with first 8m00 at 5km pace.
Cool Down
14m00: as spin
This is a hard set that will test your mental toughness!
Cheers,
Steve
