My favourite workout: Lauren Brandon

Known for her strengths on the swim and bike, collegiate swimmer-turned-Ironman Lauren Brandon shares details of her training:

Triathlon Magazine December 7, 2017

Name: Lauren Brandon

Coach: My coach is my husband Barrett Brandon. I love that he is able to see me each day and we can make changes to my workouts when necessary. He has coached me the past 8 years and I continue to improve and love the sport and that’s all I can ask for.

Lauren Brandon leading the way at Ironman Mont-Tremblant in August

Current training location: Fort Worth, Texas

I typically train: an average of 20 hours per week, during the season.

My strength in the sport: Definitely started out being swimming, but now my biking has become very strong as well.

In training right now I am: Currently enjoying some downtime, so my focus is resting, having fun with friends and family, and getting caught up on life before starting my training in January. For the month of December, I run, bike, and swim when I want and for however long I want to. I try to do some type of activity almost everyday just to keep the body moving. One big goal of mine for next year is to keep up a strength routine all year, so I have also begun to do some strength workouts a couple of times per week.

My favourite workout: People who know me or have heard me talk about my training know that I love the trainer. I do all of my rides on the trainer and really enjoy concentrating on the workout at hand and not have to worry about lights, traffic, etc.

One of my favourite workouts is a 3 hour trainer ride broken up into 3 x (45 minutes steady and 15 minutes hard). Depending on what part of the season I am in, the 15 minutes might build up each round or they may be at or above 70.3 effort.

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Lazy Saturday on the Queen K ? ? @jgronnemark

A post shared by Lauren Brandon (@laurenbbrandon) on Oct 18, 2017 at 4:19am PDT

My 70.3 watts are usually somewhere between 220 to 230, so this set may look like 3 x (45 minutes @ 150-160 watts and 15 minutes at 220-230).

I don’t know why I enjoy this set so much, but maybe it’s because a 3 hour ride is considered short for me during an Ironman build!

My least favourite workout: For some reason I really struggle with my hour build run (20/20/20). I have a really hard time finding the right pace during this run, but maybe this will be the year that I figure it out!

My best tip for triathletes: Triathlon can be an all consuming sport, so it’s an important to make sure you’re having fun. I see way too many people taking this sport too seriously. I always do best when I am happy and having fun!