Coaching Smarter Triathletes

Planning a Race-Day Bike Strategy

"Shouldn't I just go out and hammer as hard as I can on the bike, and then try to hold on during the run?"  Well, maybe.  Especially during a sprint-distance race.  And it is a common strategy, especially for strong cyclists.  But devising a strategic plan based on your known power output--and sticking to it--can leave you fresher for the run without slowing you much on the bike.  Likely giving you a faster overall time. 

The best way for this to work is to have a power meter and know your watts at Functional Threshold  (basically, how hard can you pedal for an hour). Knowing how many watts you can hold for 5 minutes and 1 minute is helpful during a hilly race.

On a flat sprint-distance course (12-15 miles), you can probably hold 95-100% of your FT power and still have a good run.  On an flat Olympic-distance course, it may only be in the 85-95% range.  A good idea is to experiment during your training bricks to see how well you run after riding the race distance at various power outputs.

A hilly course is a bit more complicated.  If you've been training with hill intervals of various lengths (1 minute to 20 minutes), you can likely hold a higher wattage on the hills, and use the descents to recover.  Climbing hard is one of the best ways to shave minutes off your time.

Below is the step-by-step process I used to plan a strategy for the upcoming Wildlfower Triathon (Olympic-distance course).  This will be my first time riding it, so I wanted to do some recon.

Training in Race Conditions

How important is it to train in the conditions you'll race in?  Very!  Let's take a look at a few important situations.

Running Hills
It's hard to race on hills without actually training on them.  Your body position strengthens different muscles (glutes and calves) more than on the flats.  And you need to learn how to drive off of your back leg much more than running on the flats.  There can be a tendency to shuffle up hills--which is slow. 

Descending steep hills also takes practice.  Being too controlled on a descent is hard on the knees and the quads--not to mention slow!  The key is to learn a controlled fall--leaning forward and bringing each leg out in front of you just long enough so that you don't fall on your face.

Cycling Hills
Riding hills demands a different position on the bike--shifting your weight back to use your quads more, and maybe getting out of aero position.  If the climb is steep enough, knowing when to get out of the saddle.  While many argue that time trialing should involve a consistent effort, there are huge time gains to be made on hills.  Knowing for how long and how hard you push on a short climb without blowing up can really affect your bike split.

Like running, descending hills takes practice, especially if they're steep and windy.  If you're speed is over 30, you're probably better off just going into a tuck and not pedaling at all.  The extra 1 or 2 mph you'd gain probably is better used in resting.   But the amount of time you can gain through excellent descents is generally a lot less than the time you can gain by excellent climbing skills.

Open Water Swimming
Swimming in open water is so different than swimming in a pool it should almost be considered a different sport.  I think the difference is like running trails in the mountains versus running on a treadmill. I'm not a fast swimmer at all; but in open water swims I beat a lot of people who smoke me in the pool.  Here's why: