Half-Distance Triathlon (70.3) — 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 an olympic or two behind them, and runners with a half marathon in the legs who ride regularly. This is the first format where the weekly hours, not the sessions, become the real constraint.

How the bike is written

A half-distance bike leg is raced at tempo, at the low end of the moderate range, and the plan reflects that: the key ride is a sustained tempo effort rather than the threshold work a shorter race would demand. Riding it a notch too hard is the single most common way this race is lost.

The long ride

The long ride is the backbone of the block and climbs toward a ceiling set by the format — noticeably beyond what an olympic asks, and still short of a full distance. It starts from your own longest recent ride; if you have not ridden recently but already run, it opens at an hour, with one short spin beside it, and reaches ninety minutes by the third week, as published beginner plans do. Then it grows by about a tenth a week, never more than 20 minutes, and peaks three to five weeks out: around three hours for a newer rider, up to four for an experienced one. Two weeks out comes a shorter confidence ride with blocks at race pace. If your race is too close for that climb, Leo says so and offers an olympic first, a later race, or a finisher's plan with a capped peak ride.

Where the bricks sit

The long ride becomes a brick every other week early on, then every week across the closing eight, with a longer run off the bike than a short-course athlete would do. The run part stays at the easy end of its band: the point is to make running on ninety kilometres of tired legs familiar, not to test a race pace — and on race day that pace will not be your standalone half-marathon pace anyway.

The swim, in metres

Two swims a week is the floor, more if that is already your habit. Once a two-distance pool test is on file, your sets are written around your critical speed — easy, aerobic, threshold and faster repeats each have their own target per 100 m instead of a vague instruction to swim steady.

The last weeks

Two to three weeks, and deeper than a short-course taper because the block that precedes it is heavier. Volume comes down step by step in all three sports, by about half over the taper, while each sport keeps its number of sessions and one short, sharp effort a week so you do not arrive flat. The long ride and the bricks get shorter, the last brick comes before race week, and race week holds only short sessions, with nothing hard in the last three days.

What you need

A watch that records the three sports and takes structured sessions, regular pool access, and a bike you can spend long hours on. A power meter is optional but earns its keep here: pacing a long bike leg by watts is easier than by feel.

Frequently asked questions