Project Sub 75 For Brent · Race day Saturday 26 September

Your PR is hiding on the bike. Here is the maths.

• The bike is the big fuel tank. Your split sits at 42 to 45 minutes. Lifting your average speed by 2 to 3 mph takes 3 to 5 minutes out of it. Same engine, different sized tanks to drain.
• The run gets maintained, not built. You do not lose a strength by feeding it once a week.
• The swim gains are free. At your current pace they come from form, not fitness.
• You are in a gain phase. Muscle gets built in recovery, and endurance volume is the tax on recovery. One quality session per discipline is deliberately the whole allowance. More is not better this phase. Better is better.

Three endurance sessions. One job each.

Slot the swim wherever logistics suit, paired with a lift day or on its own. Just keep at least one full rest day in the week.

All sessions: 10 minutes easy spinning to warm up, 10 minutes easy to cool down.

• Intervals are comfortably hard: you could speak in short sentences but you would rather not.
• Seated, steady, no grinding huge gears out of the saddle.
• Cadence around 85 to 90 revs per minute. Why: quicker spinning shifts the work toward your heart and lungs and away from pure leg muscle force, which spares your legs for lifting and running. It is also simply how faster cyclists ride.

These are technique sessions, not fitness tests. Two focus points every single length.

• Long strokes. Fewer, bigger pulls. Reach on every entry.
• Exhale into the water, so you only have to inhale when you turn to breathe. Why: most self-taught swimmers hold their breath, which spikes the heart rate and makes 8 lengths feel like 20. Fix the exhale and the swim gets easier without getting fitter.

Every session ends with 2 x 25m at race effort, so speed never feels foreign.

Your run is the strength. This phase we protect it and spend nothing we do not need to.

Week 3 stacks your biggest bike with your only quality run.

• If that week is beating you up: the run tempo slides to week 4, and the week 4 bike drops to 2 x 12.
• That swap is pre-approved. Use it if you need it, no penalty on the scoreboard.

Good. Here is the full menu of approved extras.

• 2 extra strides after a run.
• One extra 25m race-pace rep in the pool.
• One extra sled trip on lower day.

You earned it. Block 2 is built: race-specific bike work, bike-to-run bricks, a full dress rehearsal and the taper, with a date on the calendar and a number to hunt. It is in the Block 2 tab.

Sub 75 is not a wish. It is five numbers that have to add up, and here they are.

• You have already banked the swim. 400m in 7:36 with rests, when you had never been under 8 minutes in your life. A minute and a half off in four weeks, and we are not chasing it any further.
• The bike is still where the race is won. 42 to 45 minutes down to 40 is the single biggest block of time on the page, so it gets the quality session every Tuesday.
• Two and a half of your 75 minutes are spent standing still. Transitions are the cheapest time in the sport and you have never rehearsed them. We fix that for free.
• The run does not need to be fast. It needs to survive the bike. A 24 minute 5K is slower than you can run fresh, and off a hard 12 mile bike it is still a real target.

Nothing about your week gets longer. Saturday just stops being a run and starts being a race.

• A brick is a bike straight into a run, no sitting down in between. Your legs feel like someone else's for the first half mile. That feeling is trainable, and the only way to train it is to do it.
• Friday's lift got shorter on purpose. It is now springs and core, nothing near failure, because Saturday matters more than Friday does.
• Friday 11 September has no lift at all and I have taken it out of the app. That Saturday is your full dress rehearsal and it gets a clean run at you.
• On leadership training days, everything moves to the early morning and that is fine. A session done at 4am still counts. A session skipped does not.

The lifts are in the app as normal under Week 5 - 9, and race week has been added to the app as Week 10. Swim, bike and Saturday live here.

Race pace is 18 mph. Every rep below is at that speed unless it says otherwise.

• 10 minutes easy spinning to warm up, 10 minutes easy to cool down, every session.
• Race pace should feel like about an 8 out of 10. You can get a short sentence out. You would not want to hold a conversation.
• Cadence 85 to 90, seated, no grinding. Same rule as Block 1 and it still spares your legs for the run.
• Even pacing is the whole skill. The last rep at the same speed as the first is worth more than one heroic rep and three fades.

Block 1 made your stroke good. Block 2 makes it race ready. Race pace is 1:45 per 100m.

• Keep both Block 1 focus points: long strokes, and exhale into the water so you only inhale when you turn.
• New this block: every session opens with 2 x 25m fast starts. Push off hard, sprint 25, then settle into your rhythm. Why: a sprint race swim goes out fast whether you plan to or not, and you want that first 30 seconds to feel familiar rather than panicky.
• Your race is 8 lengths of a serpentine. You will be passing people and being passed. Practise swimming continuously without touching the wall for a breather, because on race day that is not on offer.

This is the new part of the program, and it is the part that turns three separate sports into one race.

You cannot get fitter in the last week. You can absolutely turn up tired. This week has one job.

• You will feel flat and twitchy around Wednesday. Every athlete does in a taper week. It is not a sign of lost fitness, it is the sign the taper is working.
• Do not test yourself. No "just checking" time trials, no jumping in with someone faster. There is nothing left to find out.
• Sleep is the session this week. The CPAP has been doing its job, keep it doing it.
• Eat normally, and nothing new. Race week is not the week to try a gel you have never had.
• Thursday and Friday are the offsite, and two days sat in conference rooms will stiffen you up more than any session would. Get the movement in early and walk at every break.
• Wednesday's body work. Three days out is enough to shake off anything it stirs up, but tell them nothing deep and nothing new on the legs.

Almost everyone races this badly the same way: too hard on the swim, too cautious on the bike, nothing left for the run.

• Swim: go with the fast start you have practised, then settle by the second length. If you are gasping at 100m you went out too hard. Long strokes, exhale into the water. Target 7:00.
• T1: helmet on before you touch the bike. Do not sprint the transition, just do not linger.
• Bike: this is where your race is. Get to 18 mph within the first mile and hold it. Seated, 85 to 90 cadence. Resist the urge to bury yourself in the first 3 miles, you have trained even pacing all block for exactly this. Target 40:00.
• T2: shoes on, go. The legs will feel wrong. You already know that, you have practised it four times.
• Run: first half mile just get the turnover going, do not look at the watch. Then settle to 7:40 to 7:45. Anything left in the last mile, spend it. Target 24:00.

The rehearsal on the 12th is the session that matters.

• If the week is beating you up: drop Tuesday's bike to 3 x 5 minutes, or skip it entirely. The dress rehearsal is never the session you sacrifice.
• If the rehearsal has to move, it moves to Sunday 13 September and no later. Any later and you are still recovering from it in race week.
• If a leadership week eats your Saturday, the brick moves to Sunday and you take Monday off the lift instead. Tell me and I will shift the app.
• Any calf or knee noise, stop and message me. Five weeks out is far too late to train through something and far too early to give anything up.

Same deal as Block 1. You liked it, it worked, here it is again.

• 2 extra strides after a run.
• One extra 50m at race pace in the pool.
• An extra easy swim on a rest day, if you want one. You said you wanted to swim more, so this one is yours, but easy only.

3,150 to 3,250 calories a day, protein 200g and above, all the way to race day. That is deliberate.

• We are not cutting you down for this race. You are 10 months into a build and the scale has been flat for four weeks at 2,950. That was maintenance, so we keep going.
• You said it yourself: you feel slower carrying the extra mass. Here is the honest answer. On the run, a few extra pounds costs you a little. On the bike and in the water it gives back, and your swim PR arrived during the gain, not before it. The muscle is not the enemy.
• Carbs go around the sessions. On Saturdays especially, eat properly before the brick and put a real meal in straight after. A rehearsal on empty tells you nothing about race day.
• Race week, keep the calories where they are even though you are training less. Full tank on the start line.

Rehearse breakfast on 12 September. Whatever you eat before the dress rehearsal is what you eat on race morning. If it sits badly, we have two weeks to find something that does not.