Thanks Clive.
At the moment I’m managing to squeeze all my training in before work/during lunch due to working at home which is amazing for my training and for spending quality time with the wife (and family/friends once I can see them) Hoping my work continues this after lockdowns are finished!
I think if I ever have aspirations of an IM it will have to be on minimal training, or when my (currently non-existent) kids have grown up enough to be left to their own devices. I plan to be a very present dad so shorter distance triathlons will probably be my bread and butter!
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Fantastic, I’ll expand my search in that case. Cheers
Thanks for the recommendation of Aliexpress, got some on the way for £9.50. I THINK I get both speed and cadence sensors too.
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Hi @Valaspuku
I hope things are going okay? I am also new to triathlon and from what I can see on your thread we are not to get too worried about complicating things too much at present?
I try to do something most days but have recently gotten worried I’m just running and cycling for the sake of it and not really focussing my time efficiently.
Obviously swimming is out of the question for now but as a newbie what advice have you picked up so far? I run 2-3 times a week and use a turbo trainer 2-3 times a week at the moment and do have some strength equipment like yourself in a makeshift gym in the garage. “Pain cave” I believe its called 
I’ve read a lot of your thread but I’m both lazy and a slow reader. I’m also not sure I can create my own thread as yet either as this is my first post.
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As long as the intensity is high enough for it not to be continuous detraining, which is going to be pretty much the case for anyone new to training then just for the sake of it if you enjoy it is really good at getting you fit. When you’re new, everything you do builds fitness, you don’t really need to worry about what, and a load of different things will be good.
Efficiently only really comes to matter once you’ve already maximised the easy adaptations, and need to ensure that you’re not wasting time. So for example one of the good adaptations that helps fitness, is getting lots of mitochondira grown in the muscles, there’s obviously a limit to the useful number that can be, imagine you’re already at 99% of the limit, then more training to drive that adaptation isn’t going to help much - that’s olympic athlete specialisation - when everything is that maxed. But even if you’re at 90% then driving that extra 10% is probably not worth it if other portions of fitness are still at 50% of what they could be.
At the start, everything is low, so there’s very little junk, just do whatever you enjoy, and avoid injury.
Is this what is linked to “zone 2” training? Another thing I just do not understand! There’s zone 2 as defined by MAffetone and then there’s my impossible to reach Garmin watch zone 2. This also got me worried when I watched a GTN youtube video saying working in zone 3 could be wasting time? Can anyone advise any thoughts on this too?
Thank you.
As I said, I mainly wouldn’t worry about prescriptive zones, by all means look at them, but you don’t really know what zones you’re actually in, and you don’t know how zones will move as you change fitness - your heart’s gonna grow, you’re gonna get more blood, you’re gonna get better at using the blood, so you don’t really know.
But yes, mitochondria growth tends to be encouraged more more by lower intensity (but not too low, you’ve already adapted to the walking around town intensity, although maybe not during lockdown) whereas high intensity does less to encourage it - that encourages more central adaptations.
Looking around, this appears to be reasonable simple explanation
But remember these aren’t universal, how your body will decide to build itself up to meet the demands you put on it is somewhat individual, it’s the putting demands on it that really helps.
Oh and there’s no way I’d say any zone was wasting time - particularly for the new, my suspicion for the myth that zone 3 is bad is because that was what everyone fell into all the time and they were just driving things that had little room to grow.
Hi afraid it’s a bit early for me to say if things are working here. Only a few solid weeks of “training” in.
What I have found is I’m enjoying training more often and less intensely, and just doing a hard run/bike session once a week. It makes it quite easy to fit my lifting into my schedule too and so far no injuries or even niggles. I’m also not getting sore any more as I’m adapting to the workload.
I’ve entered the monthly 5k thread on here somewhere (should come back to the top of the forum around the start of the month when people run another). Using this as one of my hard sessions, and a chance to shoot for PRs, hoping I can keep bringing the number down each month.
Good luck!
Thank you again. Just to clarify that I haven’t gone from a couch potato to triathlon training 
I’ve been running for many years and although I only got my road bike last year I am pretty fit.
I’ll check that article out, cheers.
Nice one. Thank you.
I have found the lower intensity running to be more enjoyable as I used to push hard every time which not only became a chore but I just couldn’t do as much. I’ve just been doing a plan for the week and put in a race pace 5k so I will check that 5k thread out.
I signed up for The Windermere standard tri in May and don’t see it happening but it was my motivation to learn to swim and cycle better. I still can’t swim very well so if it does go ahead I’ll possibly drown! 
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I think that the main reason for avoiding Z3 is that trying to do a lot of miles at Z3 intensity is much more likely to cause injury, running in Z2 or even lower requires very little recovery time
Also, I think that there is a trend towards one size fits all approach, @funkster and myself have responded really well to running in Zone 2, Funckster is putting in amazing results in Z1. However, I think that it was @gingerbongo who trains much close to Z3, and it works well for him.
For an inexperienced runner, there is a temptation to push and spend lots of time in Z3 (As Z2 may initially result in lots of walking), however, I would certainly recommend someone new to running to focus on Z2 until they work out what works for them. An experienced runner should have a better feeling what will work for them, although if they haven’t tried training at low intensity, it could be worth giving it a go
I’ve been running a while and only just cottoned onto Z2 training. Should I do a specific test for this or just go with what my garmin is telling me after a couple hundred or so miles? Or use the old 180 - age calculation? In my case 137. Although my garmins z2 is like 109 to 126 which I can barely get into with a brisk walk. Should I start walking again until my heart rate complies?
I’d say on a steady run I avg around 140bpm at a 9m/mile pace and recovery is great and barely any fatigue. I’m not sure what to do for best results so any advice is appreciated.
I don’t worry about Garmin zones… or any zones to be honest. I use 185-age for my slow runs, although recently trying to run closer to 130bpm. I am 48 years old. Intervals are typically 10km pace, 5km pace , 3km pace and 1km pace. I run using RPE (relative perceived effort), although I do look back at my HR after the run.
Sounds like running at 9min/mile pace is a good easy run pace.
Dont worry about zones, run nose breathing. That’s basically low aerobic intensity. Whilst I see some of the evidence for “Maff” etc we are all different. If I followed MAF zones I’d be walking the minute the road went up but I used to walk 5km minimum a day so I could never see the benefit of walking during a 30 minute run. Someone new to endurance training, especially running, then some walking could be beneficial, especially if it means you are running more efficiently with better form than when fatigued.
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Try having a look at firstplacetri.wordpress. com there are loads of posts on triathlon for begginers there.
Hey, welcome to TT. Hope you’ll hang around and join the chat. You’ll find loads of helpful answers to your questions here from experienced athletes and coaches.
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Hi. So how did it go? I’ve just started from a very similar place - always been a runner; have MTB’d quite a bit but not much road cycling; can swim but only around 100-150 metres.
I’m looking at doing a sprint tri for the first time next year and spotted your post so thought it would be interesting to hear how it went.
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Welcome to the forum @leeroy1798. Learning to swim sufficiently well to do a triathlon isn’t that difficult, learning to swim fast is pretty much impossible for an adult learner. I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t be able to do a triathlon as long as you take up swimming this winter, but probably best not to enter an Ironman yet 
I wasn’t the original poster, it looks like @Valaspuku, who created this thread, hasn’t really been active here for the past 2.5 years, so don’t know how he got on.
I started in 2015, from a cycling background, but woefully unfit, I could swim reasonably, however, I don’t swim any better today than I did back then, despite many hours in the pool. In the past 8 years I have gone from unfit and overweight, did my first sprint tri, did some Olympic distance, went on to half Ironman, progressed to Ironman, and now racing Ironmans as well as ultra distance cycling and running.
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