I've just always used my half IM run split X 2, and add an hour as a predictor. Works pretty good.

If your athletes have done a Half it might be a good starting point. Just keepin' it simple.

This is getting really old and totally of what the point of the thread was to start with. I had a simple formula that I started to see very interesting findings. I don't go around preaching it. It was just interesting and I think I posted it almost a year a go. Yes I am little old school since I've been in the sport since 1989 but as many of the readers know who read my articles I last have the knowledge of all the latest research in all areas of our sport. I never said this formula is the be all and end all. If you read the first thread I wrote I just showed a very interesting finding. That's it! Don't like that's ok. If you want to try it you would die either from it. In fact it will not even hurt your training. Not going to say anymore and we can end this conversation.

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Richard Pady
http://www.healthyresults.ca - http://www.race4kids.ca
Indoor Rider (weekly indoor riding videos)

This would be a great cross reference with the data from that old study.

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Richard Pady
http://www.healthyresults.ca - http://www.race4kids.ca
Indoor Rider (weekly indoor riding videos)

Get your true Aerobic Threshold tested and then use that HR as your bench mark

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Richard Pady
http://www.healthyresults.ca - http://www.race4kids.ca
Indoor Rider (weekly indoor riding videos)

That seems slow (2xHalf IM run+1 hour). Take Craig Alexander.....1:15x2+1 hour = 3:30.

I think for most people 2xhalf IM run + 30 minutes should be closer to reality. Those who overachieve, might be 2xhalf+20 minutes (ex Pro athlete).

Dev

Agreed, Dev, that's really high. +30min works better. I still go by the old open Marathon time + 20-30min. works great as a predictor. I can run a 1:27 Half split, which x2 +30min is around 3:25. I can run a 2:50 something Marathon, less 20-30min is also around 3:20ish. I ran a 3:21 at IMAZ.

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That seems slow (2xHalf IM run+1 hour). Take Craig Alexander.....1:15x2+1 hour = 3:30. //

not only is it too low, I think Crowie would have an argument about that 1;15. Pretty sure he has done at least a 1;12, maybe even a 1;11+ somewhere. (-; I think your doubling and adding 20 minutes is pretty standard for most pros. Just about the same thing as adding 20 minutes to your theoretical all out marathon under similar conditions. The over achievers will get close to 15 minutes..If you use Crowie's 1;12, then you have 2;24+20 for a 2;44. That's just about what he does in Hawaii, and I'm sure a bit faster everywhere else. An hour for mere mortals is too much of a handicap, that is if we are talking about a well paced race by a well trained athlete.

The HIM+60 minutes is actually used as a predictor for an entire full IM race - not the run portion. That formula has been around a long time, and it can be fairly accurate if the courses are similar and other variables are similar. This formula is pretty close with the pro's in a lot of cases as well. Im my case for my first IM, it was within 10 minutes.

Inside Endurance Nation we use pace as well, as it's the metric that folks have been testing and training to all year.

I have always felt pace is the best thing to use off the bike. Problem is mile markers can be off. That's why you need to know the pace. That's why T-Runs off long IM simulation bike rides are a good prep. Pace works because it does not lie. HR is going to be all wonky and PE will also not be good as you are either going to feel like crap or you will be pumped up by all the fan support for those first few miles and run way to fast( a very common problem)

I always found when I had a good IM run going that it felt like I was running with the brake on for the first 5 miles or so even though I was right on my goal run pace. It felt like I had to hold myself back.

What is that pace though? Good question. IM run pace is that default pace that you can keep going at for a very long time on trashed and tire legs. No matter what, you will be able to keep that pace up. As I said in the first paragraph it helps to really know what this pace is - know it so well you can just hit it no matter what. To test this , during my final IM prep a common training sesion would be a hard 4 - 5 hour ride at or below IM bike race pace, then right into a one hour run doing the first few miles on a 400m running track trying to hit my goal IM race pace without always checking the watch.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Definitely get a Garmin. Even knowing good 1/2 mile marks at IMFL I went out too hard and had to wait 1/2 mile increments to get my next check so it took me close to 2 miles before I finally got things under control...it just felt sooooo easy. At IMCdA this year I had a Garmin and KNEW what pace to limit myself to and had continuous feedback. It was really hard to hold back that much but I knew it was the right thing to do. I ended up with a nice negative split and 3:16 marathon.

It was really hard to hold back that much but I knew it was the right thing to do. I ended up with a nice negative split and 3:16 marathon.

Well done. Anectdotally looking at times, any IM marathon run under 3:30 very often yields relatively speaking very impressive place performances. My point with this is simple - run well in an IM and you will almost certainly do well.

Rich has taken some flak here for this formula, but people are missing the key point and I just said it above. If you are serious about IM performance, you need to nail the run. Do that and all of a sudden performance goals like bagging an IM qualifying spots can go from impossible to a reality.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

If you have the data you can probably use some individual benchmark such as average HR for a max 10km and fit the data you have to find what factor you need to multiply the benchmark HR by.Of course you need to check how well the model fits the data to find the best benchmark. You still make your point about pacing and get rid of the arbitrary HR threshold.

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Francois-Xavier Li @FrancoisLi
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your control is bunk, it's not controlled. HR fluctuates +/- 10% in an individual throughout the day, week, what have you.

If you're really a coach why are you using HR?

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
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“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Monty you make a great point. All running is based on your max at some level.... like a 5k PB for example.

I remember a thread a while back where Jordan Rapp was referring to his IM run pace as a percentage of his open 5k pace. No mention of HR anywhere.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

HR is an *input* shouldn't your goal be an output, like pace or time?

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
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“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

you ran right at your training pace... that's an obvious indictment of your training methods. Why didn't you run faster in training?

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Fleck you make good points but I disagree with what you think the main point of the thread is... yes, nailing the IM run is key, but the main point to me is

a) that so-called coaches continue to peddle crap like the ridiculous formula in the first post and...

b) that predictor workouts and training based on those predictions are how you nail the run.

Neither of these are true. You nail the run by first properly pacing the bike, and by doing a TON of training on the bike leading up to the race. You run based on your open 5k time, how you paced the bike, how you ate and drank, and how much bike and run volume you consistently put in from week to week. HR has nothing to do with it. Your body has a wattage it can sustain for 10 hours, and you need to bike and run at that wattage. Training to some artificially limiting HR will only lower the wattage you can sustain for the IM distance. The faster you train, the faster you will go on race day.

Anything else is a self fulfilling prophecy. Train at 9 minute miles in training and you run 9 minute miles on IM day. The training works! My coach is a genius!

No, the coach is an idiot.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

you ran right at your training pace... that's an obvious indictment of your training methods. Why didn't you run faster in training?

Part of the problem I see with a lot of this is people desperately want a formula. They want to see 2 + 2 = 4

Do these workouts and you will get this result.

swim/ride/run at these numbers and you will get this result.

If you have any experience at all with long distance endurance sport you know that this is not always the case. There are a host of variables that will influence what is going on. That is why to a certain degree the athlete who is more knowledgeable about how they perform and how they feel in a given situation( PE really) may be in a better situation that an athlet who is locked into some formula or numbers.

Of course this is really hard for people, as I said, they want the formula and then when things start to go awry on race day they are completely lost.

A dirty secret about IM racing is that races rarely go to plan - even for the big race winners. What makes the truly succesful, successful is that they know when to get off the A-plan and go to the B or even C-plan.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Nice!!!! Why do you have to be like that?

Again go back and read the first thread....just interesting. Not the bible. This thread has lost the whole point on why I shared the data.

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Richard Pady
http://www.healthyresults.ca - http://www.race4kids.ca
Indoor Rider (weekly indoor riding videos)

I wrote this to you in a different post, but this gets down to my ultimate gripe about these threads....

the PURPOSE of your training is (should be) to produce physiological adaptations now that will, on a future race day, allow you to race faster.

the purpose of your training is NOT to rehearse, week in and week out, the (artifically coach-induced limited) pace that you are currently able to run, and hope that those rehearsals ad nauseum in training will allow you to run faster on race day.

You run faster on race day by running faster in training. The IM bike is the easiest long bike of my season and the IM run, while feeling painful, is the slowest long run of my season.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

the PURPOSE of your training is (should be) to produce physiological adaptations now that will, on a future race day, allow you to race faster.

That takes time, patience, planning, commitment, consistency and a bit of luck!! :)

What does Gordo say - "No easy way"

I have cleared out my in-box now for the avalanche of anti-Gordo notes. Bring-em.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Nice!!!! Why do you have to be like that?

Rich,

It's the Slowtwitch forum.

Heck even our host, the Publisher and the Godfather of triathlon equipment, Dan Empfield has been told on her that he knows nothing about the sport! :)

Everyone is an expert!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I'm like that because you're using scientific words like "control", which adds weight to your argument, but is a fallacy because your control is flawed. Read all the posts on the weakness of HR as a metric above.

If your "control" fluctuates wildly in each individual hour to hour, day to day, and week to week; and between individuals by upwards of 30%, then why are you using this?

Also, why are you using a measure of performance (or input) like HR when you should be using a measure of effectiveness (or output) like pace or power? You would be better to have your athletes run off the bike (at a controlled TSS score based on a controlled FTP measurement) at a certain % of their open 5k time, and THEN see what their HR did, what there PE was, how they felt. If the do well, they can handle the TSS of the bike they did, if not then they need work on the bike.

Further, why are you basing your erroneous measure of performance on an arbitrary physiological input marker rather than an objective output marker like FTP on bike or open 5k pace for the run?

The goal of racing is to go fast, not to go at the pace you predicted in training based on an arbitrary HR number. It's a self fulfilling prophecy, and makes you "coaches" look good when your athletes run just as you would have predicted. Slow.

My tips to you...

1) realize that those who run the fastest long are also the ones who run the fastest short.
1a) realize tha those who run the fastest long are also the ones who train the hardest on the bike in training, and pace the bike the best on race day.
2) encourage your athletes to get faster at running short first.
3) find a prediction model that works, based on outputs like pace or power, and encourage your athletes to execute on race day based on that model. (Search Jordan Rapp Open 5k pace as a percentage of IM pace in the search function.) I like the McMillan run calculator. Enter a 5k time, get the predicted marathon time, add 20 minutes.

Anything less than this is a bike pacing FAIL.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

yes, all the old timers and professionals know exactly what they're talking about and never make sub-optimal equipment choices or racing decisions.

This is the fallacy of "authority" and is a "dirty" way to win an argument.

Better would be to address the points I made rather than say that I'm not one of the ST Illuminati right?

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Cheers to that. How is your lovely wife? Is she training?

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Richard Pady
http://www.healthyresults.ca - http://www.race4kids.ca
Indoor Rider (weekly indoor riding videos)