Duathlon recovery

[elisaj]

I am interested in signing up for a duathlon that is 4 weeks before my marathon. I am training/hoping to go sub 3:45 for the marathon. Is 4 weeks enough recovery after a duathlon? I've never done one before but I just got my first road bike and am excited to try one. Let me know if anyone has experience with duathlons?

Thanks

[velogirl]

What's the distance of the du? And what's your background (how long have you been running, past marathons?, other marathons this season, how long have you been riding, etc)?

[tprevost]

another option would be to treat the duathlon as more of a training event and not push yourself to the brink. If you did it just to get the experience, you would probably not have any recovery issues in that period of time.

T~

[elisaj]

I've been running and racing for about 6 years and am currently at about 50 miles per week and going to peek at 60 for the marathon training. I'm very new at riding with my current longest distance at 17 miles. The distance for the duathlon is 5k run, 30k bike, 5k run. The duathlon is on September 2nd so hopefully that will be sufficient time to get more training in on the bike. I appreciate your thoughts and advice.

[tprevost]

30k is about 18+ miles so I don't think it would cause a recovery issue. I would still recommend not going full out as you don't want to pull something or cause an injury which would sideline your preparation for the marathon.

Good luck!

Trac'

[velogirl]

If you're consistent on the bike between now & then, you should be just fine. The entire du should only take about two hours at those distances, so recovery is minimal. And four weeks is a really long time to recover from an event like this.

Have fun! I'd love to do some du's but we don't really have many in northern CA.