BIKE

General

Swim

Bike

Run

Bricks

HRM & RPE

Transitions

Gear

Bike training can either be out on the road or indoors on your turbo trainer or as part of a spin class at the leisure centre.

A typical programme includes an aerobic session out on the road and two indoor turbo sessions per week. The outdoor session is usually about two hours in length, while the indoor sessions are between 45 minutes to and hour.

A typical interval session would be something like a 2-3 minute warm up, followed by 12 repeats of 2 minutes at near flat out pace, then 1 minute at recovery pace. Then 2-3 minutes of easy cool down.

If you were doing threshold work, this would be a warm up followed by 2 or 3 repeats of 20 minutes at threshold then 5 minutes recovery. Then a cool down to finish.

If out for a long ride, concentrate on keeping at a constant (below threshold) effort going for the whole ride, but allowing for a higher effort to get up the hills.

Training on hills is great for building up strength and stamina.  

For your first triathlon train to complete the distance that you'll be racing at. There's little to be gained from putting in very long bike sessions if your aim is to complete 23Km's at your local sprint event. For your long ride, aim to go a few Km's over your target distance and perhaps try 2 efforts of 20 minutes for your threshold training.