Triathlon training with Leo Training

Who this is for

Age-group triathletes, from a first sprint to a full distance, and runners who ride and swim without ever having called themselves triathletes. You do not need a power meter, a lab test or a coach's spreadsheet. You need a race in the calendar, a connected account that carries your training, and an honest idea of how many hours a week you can give.

What Leo builds, week by week

The plan is sized on the legs of your race rather than on a distance you typed. A sprint and a full distance do not ask for the same long ride, and Leo sets that ceiling per format. Your bike sessions are built as real sessions, with a warm-up, a set and a cool-down: endurance, tempo, sweet spot, threshold or intervals, in watts when Leo knows your FTP and by heart-rate zone and effort when you ride without a power meter. Your swims are built the same way, in metres, around your critical swim speed. Each sport starts from what you already do in it and grows step by step, with a lighter week every third or fourth week: the long ride by about a tenth a week, never more than 20 minutes, the long run by five to ten minutes, so a sport you are new to comes in gently. Every session counts toward one training load across all three sports, and each sport is measured against its own recent weeks: a heavy week on the bike shows up as a heavy week, not as a rest week with a bonus. In the taper the volume comes down and one short, sharp effort stays in each sport.

Three thresholds, one athlete

A triathlete does not have one engine measured three ways, but three reference points. Your profile carries all three: your threshold pace for running, your threshold on the bike, and your critical swim speed (CSS) per 100 m. Leo derives the running one from your history and updates it as you train. For the swim, the plan opens with a two-distance pool test, 400 m all out, full recovery, then 200 m all out: the gap between the two gives your CSS, and every set is then written around it. For the bike, Leo takes the best evidence you have. With a power meter, he estimates your FTP from your own rides (eFTP) and only uses it when two independent readings agree within 8 %; a 20-minute FTP test sets it outright. Without a power meter, a 30-minute test at threshold heart rate sets your bike zones. Failing that, the talk test does. A test always outranks an estimate, and until a threshold exists Leo prescribes that discipline by heart rate and effort rather than inventing a number for you.

The long ride, sized on the format

The long ride is the session that differs most from one format to the next, so Leo sets its peak by format and by your level on the bike: about 1 h 15 to 1 h 30 for a sprint, 1 h 30 to 2 h for an olympic, 3 to 4 hours for a 70.3 and 5 to 6 hours for a full distance. It starts from the longest ride already in your history, grows by about a tenth a week (never more than 20 minutes at once) and reaches its peak three to five weeks before the race. If you have not ridden recently but already run, it opens at one hour. When the race is too close for that climb, Leo says so and offers a shorter race first, a later race, or a finisher's plan with a capped peak ride.

Brick sessions, where they belong

A brick is one session with two disciplines in it, and Leo writes it as such: the ride, the transition, then the run leg at the easy end of its pace band, never faster. They come every other week from the second week of the block, then every week over the last eight, because running off the bike is a rehearsal that makes the transition familiar, not a way to build fitness. When you come back and your watch has recorded two separate activities, Leo matches both to that one session.

A taper for each sport

Leo tapers the swim, the bike and the run separately. Over the last one to three weeks, depending on the format, each sport loses roughly 40 to 60 % of its volume, step by step, while it keeps its number of sessions and one short effort at race pace each week. 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.

On your watch, not only on your phone

A structured session is useless if you have to memorise it on the pool deck. Bike and swim sessions export to your watch like the runs already did, with their intervals, their targets and their distances in metres for the pool. Your rides and swims come back in automatically from whichever source you connect (Strava, Suunto, Polar, COROS, Garmin, Apple Health or Health Connect), and your swim and bike records sit next to your running ones.

What Leo does not do

Leo does not estimate your overall triathlon time. Projecting a finish across three disciplines, two transitions, a course profile and a race-day sea state is a different job, and we would rather leave the field empty than fill it with a number you would plan your pacing around. Leo does not model your cycling power without a power meter either, and it does not coach your swim technique from a video. If those are what you are shopping for, say so out loud: there are tools built for them, and this is not one.

Your format, in detail

A sprint and a full distance are not the same sport stretched. Each format has its own leg distances, its own weekly shape, its own bike intensity and its own taper. There is one page for each, saying what Leo builds.

Frequently asked questions