Do you do drills?

[Tri'inMomma]

I was a swimmer growing up too, so I also do swimming drills when I go out - freestyle catchups, kicking drills, etc.

I started going to a triathlon training group 4 weeks ago and we do run and bike drills as well. We do a lot of Fartlek training with our weekly runs (usu 30 sec all out and 30 sec recovery or 1 min hard and 1 min recovery, sometimes they pyramid them - 1 min hard, 1 recover, 2 hard .... etc), running catch up lines for longer distances, in addition to about 5 drills on the grass: high knees, soldier, backwards running, grapevine and side to sides.

Bike is new to me so I am still learning all the bike drills. Today we are supposed to bike for 45 minutes as follows:
-15 minute warm up
-15 minute workout (openers or pick-ups) - hard for a full minute then actively recover for 4 minutes. Do this three (3) times
-15 minute recovery

I can already tell a difference in my running. I think without the run drills we would be lulled into training at our usual pace and wouldn't push ourselves to pass the uncomfortable threshold needed to train our hearts and legs to go faster.