How Alex Yee Trains (the Runner Who Wins Triathlons)
Alex Yee won Olympic triathlon gold in Paris by doing one thing better than anyone else in the race: running off the bike. He sat behind Hayden Wilde's early move, then reeled in a fourteen-second gap over the final lap to win. Yee is a runner who happens to do triathlon, with a pure-running pedigree most triathletes can only dream of, and his whole approach is built around protecting and deploying that run. He's also a useful contrast to Kristian Blummenfelt: where the Norwegian is long-course and lactate-lab, Yee is short-course, British Triathlon, and run-first.
A genuine runner first
Before the triathlon golds, Yee was a seriously good runner: a 10,000m in the 27-minute range and 5000m speed around 13:30, the level of a professional track athlete, not a swim-bike specialist who learned to jog. That running background is the engine of everything. When the swim and bike are survived rather than won, the race comes down to a 10k or a 5k, and Yee brings a runner's speed to a field of triathletes.
He's coached by Adam Elliott and trains in Loughborough, having come up years earlier in Leeds alongside the Brownlee brothers. His weekly load in a normal block is around 30 to 35 hours across the three sports, with two gym sessions built in for run durability rather than size.
Pace and heart rate, not lab lactate
Yee's training is notably less gadget-obsessed on the run than the Norwegian method. He tracks his running by pace, distance and heart rate, and describes heart rate as a metric he uses across all his training to understand how his body is coping with the load, alongside how he feels. On the bike he rides to power, but the run is anchored to a threshold heart-rate band and a target pace.
The signature session is the brick: a hard bike effort straight into threshold-pace running, drilling the exact scenario that decides his races, running fast on legs that are already trashed. That transition, from bike to run, is where amateurs lose the most time in a triathlon, and it's the most trainable thing in the sport.
Pacing a run on tired legs
Here's where the tool comes in. Yee holds his run efforts to a controlled band rather than sprinting out of transition and blowing up, and the modern instrument for doing that precisely is running power. Just as cyclists pace to watts, a running power meter gives you a real-time number that ignores hills and fatigue and tells you whether you're holding a sustainable effort. Its anchor is your running critical power:
Running Critical Power
280W
| Zone | Range | What it trains |
|---|---|---|
| Z1 | Easy ≤ 224 W | Recovery and easy aerobic running below CP. RPE 2–3, conversational. |
| Z2 | Moderate 224–252 W | Aerobic endurance; long-run power. RPE 4–5, steady. |
| Z3 | Threshold 252–280 W | At critical power, tempo / threshold running. RPE 6–7, comfortably hard. |
| Z4 | Interval 280–322 W | Above CP, VO₂max intervals. RPE 8–9, hard. |
| Z5 | Repetition ≥ 322 W | Severe-intensity reps and strides; neuromuscular power. RPE 9–10, very hard to maximal. |
Z1 · Easy. Recovery and easy aerobic running below CP. RPE 2–3, conversational.
Z2 · Moderate. Aerobic endurance; long-run power. RPE 4–5, steady.
Z3 · Threshold. At critical power, tempo / threshold running. RPE 6–7, comfortably hard.
Z4 · Interval. Above CP, VO₂max intervals. RPE 8–9, hard.
Z5 · Repetition. Severe-intensity reps and strides; neuromuscular power. RPE 9–10, very hard to maximal.
- Running power (Stryd) zones anchor to your running Critical Power, not cycling FTP. The two are not interchangeable because running power includes the cost of vertical oscillation and form, not just propulsion.
- Running power responds instantly to hills and wind where pace lags, which makes it excellent for even-effort pacing on undulating courses.
A PDF of your personalized results, with a QR code to reopen them anytime.
Feed in your running critical power and it sets your zones, so you can hold a steady, sustainable effort off the bike instead of pacing on adrenaline. Yee himself leans on heart rate and pace to do this, but the principle is identical: run to a controlled number when your legs are lying to you. If you'd rather work from heart rate, his approach of a defined threshold heart-rate band does the same job.
The low-mileage lesson
Yee proved something else worth stealing. When he stepped up to the marathon in 2025, he ran 2:06:38 in Valencia, the second-fastest marathon ever by a Briton, on run volume well below what a specialist marathoner logs, because it sat on top of his triathlon base. High quality can partly substitute for sheer mileage. For a time-crunched amateur juggling three sports, that's a genuinely encouraging finding: you don't need a pure runner's mileage to run fast, if the quality and the base are there.
2026
Yee's 2026 short-course season has been rocky, with two DNFs and a crash-affected fourteenth at his home race in London in July, where he still posted the fastest run split of the field. He paced, rather than raced, the London Marathon in April. His stated focus is now back on short-course triathlon, building toward Los Angeles 2028 as the reigning Olympic champion. Even the best misjudge execution across three disciplines, which is a useful humility note before anyone treats a zone calculator as a guarantee.
What you can actually steal from it
- Protect your strongest discipline and build around it. Yee shapes his whole triathlon around the run. Know your weapon and serve it.
- Practise the transition, not just the parts. The brick session, hard bike into threshold run, trains the exact moment that decides races.
- Pace the run to a number. Running power or a threshold heart-rate band keeps you honest when tired legs distort your sense of effort.
- Quality can offset mileage. Yee ran a 2:06 marathon on sub-specialist volume because the base and quality were there. Time-crunched athletes, take heart.
Yee is the reminder that a triathlon is often just a running race with obstacles in front of it. Build the run, learn to pace it on ruined legs, and a lot of the sport takes care of itself.
More in this series: Kristian Blummenfelt, Cole Hocker, Eliud Kipchoge, Léon Marchand and Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
Sources
Yee's Paris 2024 gold and final-lap run are reported by Olympics.com and World Triathlon. His use of pace, distance and heart rate on the run, and the brick sessions, are detailed by COROS and COROS. His running pedigree and coaching setup are from his British Triathlon profile and Wikipedia. His 2025 Valencia Marathon time is reported by TRI247. Weekly-volume figures come from secondary reporting and are given as approximate.
Cover photo by Eric Salard, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The photo is from the August 2023 Paris Olympic test event.
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