Episode 128: Transitioning to Outdoor Training, Strategically Using Doubles, and Heart Rate Nuance
In this week’s episode, we start with a timely reminder that sometimes it’s not your fitness—it’s the elements (heat, humidity, wind) making everything feel harder. From there, we dive into practical strategies for building outdoor durability, staying safe on the roads, and knowing when to take things inside. We break down fueling through the lens of habit-building, why doubles can be a powerful (and realistic) way to build volume, and how to approach training by feel over data. We also touch on mountain biking as a sneaky performance tool, priority shifts in the specific prep phase, Ironman swim strategies, and a more nuanced take on heart rate zones. We wrap with a mindset shift from “or” to “and,” unpacking why your best and worst days almost never come down to just one thing. Check it out!
Intro banter
We start almost all of our episodes talking about one of two things: the weather or that it’s race season. Today we’re talking weather because the east coast has officially had a few of the first hot days of the season
Ran at 11am in 75 degrees / 70% humidity / direct sun two days in a row; questioned all of my life choices
Then remembered to check the JAHI
This will be a thing in the coming months! Be (mentally) prepared for it in lieu of being totally physically prepared! (Jump to heat & bicarb study below?)
Wind: 10 - 20% more effort to complete the ride. 10% or more of most rides is coasting, that is highly reduced in high winds and the sections you would normally recover on, pedal lighter become sections where you have to work. In a sport where a 2 - 3% increase in performance is noticeable, working 10 - 20% more on a long ride is very demanding and real.
Insights
Katie:
Reminders on bike safety
Garmin Varia
Bright colors - especially socks, shoe covers - biomotion
Consistent bike maintenance
Be careful around group rides with new people
Be extra cautious when roads are wet and don’t ride directly on the yellow/white lines
Be extra alert around 2-way or 4-way stop signs - cars can be idiots
Practice bike handling (parking lots, etc.)
Get to know your bike routes, ideally on times/days where roads are not as busy (navigation can turn into a distraction)
Hand signals for cars and group rides
If you live in a super busy / traffic-y area, consider driving out to safer roads to start your ride; for race sims, even doing multiple loops of a relatively short and safe course is fine to keep more controllables *course selection is a controllable and very important
If you can: preview bike course before race day
Atomic habits approach to improving your fueling
“Make it Obvious” – lay out all of your carbs before every ride so your only job is to eat them; if even that is hard, set timers to ping you and remind you to eat/drink at certain intervals
“Make it Attractive” – choose fuel that you actually like! A treat that you don’t usually have is great; definitely don’t rely on gels that you hate (candy often has similar nutrition facts)
“Make it Easy” – similarly to making it obvious; also, keep your carbs stocked at all times before your run out
“Make it Satisfying” – note it / write it down when you feel a lot better than usual as a result of taking in your carbs!
Thoughts on Z2 HR cap training
We often tell athletes that as a general rule of thumb you should stay under 150 HR for zone 2
Why? Because people often want/need a number and 150 is usually pretty close for the majority of people
However: there is WIDE variation in HR zones, and without testing in a lab, we can’t know where someone’s LT1/LT2 falls for sure.
Reminder on what LT1 and LT2 is:
LT1 (aerobic threshold): initial, low-level rise in blood lactate above resting levels; upper limit of Zone 2 training; roughly marathon pace for runners.
LT2 (anaerobic threshold): point where lactate production exceeds the body's clearance capacity, leading to a rapid, exponential rise in concentration. Highest intensity that can be sustained for a relatively long period; roughly 10K pace for runners.
Keep in mind: Your LT1 may naturally be higher than 150 (I have seen values as high as mid 160s in a handful of runners who have gotten tested), and without expensive lab testing we won’t know
Reasons to not exclusively focus on 150 HR cap:
(1) if feel does not correspond to HR (i.e. “I feel like this is super easy and I could hold a conversation, but my HR is 152”)
(2) if you feel like your form is suffering (often form is worse at very slow paces compared to faster paces)
(3) if you are super frustrated by staring at your watch the whole time
What to do instead:
Ignore your HR and try to just run at a truly easy “feel,” meaning you could hold a conversation the whole time
Look at your HR after; you might see an average that is just above 150 but way more comfortable than forcing 140s
And crucially important: in case you are wrong about where your LT1 is and you do end up training in the gray zone a lot (but you think it’s ‘easy’), incorporate lots of x-training where your HR is truly low (120s-130s) but it’s easier to keep it down, such as biking, hiking, elliptical, uphill TM, etc.
Cue: smooth
Jim:
Specific period: easier week day, harder weekends
Many of you are headed into the last 12 weeks before your “A” race which means you are entering the Specific Period where we start to add more intensity and bike volume on the weekends.
As such, you’ll start to notice that we are shifting toward easier week day workouts and longer, more specific race efforts on the weekend.
Your week becomes a little more polarized than in the Base period.
Key focus: The Specific Period is about saving some energy during the week so you can really apply full mental and physical effort on the weekend key workouts. Modify your plan as such during Monday - Friday sessions.
What you do in the last 12 weeks before your “A” race and particularly what you do during the weekend key sessions has the most effect on your race performance.
Ironman Swim Training
During the Specific period, aim for 3x swims per week.
If your schedule only allows 2x swims per week, try to make one a shorter, speed based session and the other a long distance set with focus on IM pacing such as 5-8 x 500. (If you have to write out your swim set, it’s too complicated!)
At this point, you should have developed your own preferred swim warm-up between 500–1,000 yards. Think about what gets you warmed up and activated — then jump into the Main Set.
IM swim goals over the next 10–12 weeks:
* Develop an easy, relaxed, sustainable swim pace. An Ironman swim is the warm-up act to the warm-up (bike leg) to the main event (the run). At mile 90 on the bike, nobody has ever regretted swimming too easy!
*Build swim durability. We need to make 4,000 yards/meters feel "normal." For any of these workouts, if you want to add extra time or distance, please do. A great way to add volume is with a paddle and pull buoy doing sets of easy 200s.
*Get outside. Most of your early swims will be in a pool. Ideally, aim for at least 4–5 open water swims before race day.
*Practice open water sighting in the pool regularly. Find a pattern that works for you — such as sighting every 7 strokes. (Doing IM Lake Placid? There is an underwater cable that reduces the need for frequent sighting — but you should still get comfortable with it.)
Double Ride Day: When You Can't Fit the Long Ride
In the last podcast, we talked about bike volume being the king and queen of Ironman training — and the weekend long ride is the crown jewel of that. But life happens.
Friend of the pod, JSmitty, reminded us of a great option: if you can't carve out time for a long ride in one block, split it into a morning and afternoon session.
For example — spin an hour on the trainer in the morning, then get out for a longer ride in the afternoon. You still accumulate the volume, and your body still gets the stimulus it needs.
This is especially useful for parents. Sneak in an hour before the kids wake up, then if the afternoon opens up, get outside for 2–3 hours. It's not the perfect long ride — but it's a lot better than skipping it.|
The same concept applies to long runs. Get part of it done in the morning, come back later in the day to finish the time or miles. It's not something we want to do every weekend, but in strategic doses it's surprisingly effective.
Key point: With a little creativity, an imperfect schedule can still lead you to getting in your key, long workouts.
Using Mountain Biking for Training Rides
A little history first. Mountain biking used to mean old-school, organic trails — raw, technical, and honestly kind of punishing. That kept a lot of triathletes off the single track. The risk felt high and the payoff wasn't obvious. Who likes to fall off their bike into roots? Not me!
That has changed. Over the last decade — and really accelerating in the last few years — ski areas and local communities have put serious time and money into building trail networks that are actually accessible. Varied terrain, good flow, something for everyone. And it turns out this is a great investment all around: support for local businesses, growth of new businesses, good for community health, another workout option for us.
The best example in our backyard is the Northeast Kingdom trail network in Vermont. Where there was once a rural community with an out-of-the-way ski mountain, there's now a whole economy of small businesses built around mountain biking. It's an incredible small town economics story — and you're seeing versions of it pop up all over New England. Check out Bike Borderlands connecting Quebec, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and New York.
This also comes at a good time for another reason. Road cycling has gotten more stressful. Distracted drivers, lack of cycling specific lanes, too much traffic. Every road ride involves risk you can't fully control. Mountain biking puts that control back in your hands. Yes, it’s risky and you could get hurt but you are more in control of risk factors.
Here's why I like it for triathlon training:
You will become a better bike handler. Singletrack demands constant adjustments — weight shifts, line selection, braking, body position. That translates directly to how you ride on the road and in a race.
It's sneaky nervous system training. Like trail running, the unpredictability forces your body and mind to adapt in ways that steady road miles just can't replicate. You're building a more stable, resilient athlete — and it doesn't feel like work.
And remember: fitness is fitness. You can build it in dozens of different ways. This just happens to be a really fun one.
Easy substitutions for a mountain bike ride:
* Any Zone 2 ride
* Zone 2 ride with sprints
* Active recovery — especially on rail trails or dirt roads
Change the “or” to “and” method
I hear many athletes say something like, “Today I felt great. It might have been ‘this’ or ‘that’ or ‘etc’. Which is very natural: we crave certainty so the world is predictable, controllable and repeatable. We see a lot of influencers that say their performance today was due to that supplement - usually they are being paid to say that. That’s very appealing especially to athletes where performance often feels elusive or mysterious.
My general principle is to change the “or” to “and” because in reality it’s a combination of many factors, some of which we consciously know and some we don’t. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells. That’s a lot of confounding variables!
Was your good run tonight due to good fueling beforehand or you ran with a fun group or the weather was warmer? It was all of them!
Swim Cap Giveaway
I have several dozen high quality Endurance Drive neoprene swim caps to give away. All you need to do is send me your name and address and I’ll pop one in the mail for you!
Challenge or Resource of the week
Katie: Do a run or ride completely by feel and look at the stats after
Jim: Borrow my new favorite mantra, “Be present for the experience.”
Gear pick of the week
Katie: Flipbelt for runners