Full-Distance Triathlon — Training plan

The legs of the race

These are the standard distances of the format. When the event you name has a course of its own, Leo reads its legs instead and sizes the plan on those — the standard distances are the fallback, not the rule.

Sessions per discipline

No discipline goes beyond 4 sessions a week and the week never exceeds 10. If you tell Leo how many sessions your life allows, that number wins over everything above: the disciplines your race actually contains are simply served first.

Who this format is for

Athletes with a half distance behind them and a life that can absorb a long ride most weekends for several months. The limiting factor is almost never fitness — it is available hours, and honesty about them.

How the bike is written

A full-distance bike leg is an endurance effort, and it stays one. The key rides are written in the aerobic range and they are not secretly threshold sessions in disguise: riding the bike leg a zone too hard is how the marathon that follows turns into a walk. That constraint is in the plan, not only in the advice.

The long ride

The long ride is the session the whole block is built around, and its ceiling is the highest of any format. Leo still refuses to get there in one leap: it starts from your own longest recent ride and adds at most a quarter at a time, week after week, until the ceiling is reached.

Where the bricks sit

The long ride becomes a brick every other week through the block and every week across the closing eight, with the longest run off the bike of any format. It is a fuelling rehearsal as much as a running one, and the run part stays at the easy end of its band — you are practising the day, not racing it.

The swim, in metres

Three swims a week, because the volume of a long-distance swim leg is carried by frequency rather than by one heroic session. With a critical swim speed on file the sets get real targets per 100 m; without it Leo prescribes steady aerobic work and puts the two-distance test in the plan.

The last weeks

The deepest taper of the four formats, spread over the last weeks: volume falls a long way in all three sports, the long ride loses a large part of its length, the bricks stop, and what is kept is short and specific. The aim is to arrive recovered rather than to arrive having trained as much as possible.

What you need

A watch that records the three sports and takes structured sessions, pool access several times a week, and a bike set up for long hours. A power meter is optional and genuinely useful here, because the whole race depends on holding an effort you cannot feel drifting.

Frequently asked questions