Jason80134 wrote:
steelrain66 wrote:
Second guessing my strategy for this weekend.... This will be my first Olympic distance, have done lots of Sprints, and have been planning on treating it like I do a Sprint. Curious what the majority does, pace the bike and all out on the run or just all out the whole way through?
nchristi wrote:
Of course you have to pace; you can't go all out much longer than 10 seconds or so.
What does that mean? Of course you pace yourself. Are you saying you try to run your 10k at the speed of your all out 40 yard sprint? That would be all out. Anything less is pacing.
I can't be the only one... When I say "all out" in the context of a Tri (particularly a sprint), of course I don't mean I'm attempting to go as fast as I possibly can instantaneously from the start or else I'd completely blow up about a minute into the swim; I mean I'm pacing each leg as though it were a stand-alone event, and figuring that I'll recover just enough juice during the transition and the switch to different muscles that I don't really need to 'save' myself for the bike during the swim nor for the run during the bike. If anything, I think there's a subconscious tendency to try and save for the run anyway so I find it mentally harder to make myself NOT hold back on the bike.
As for comparing sprint to Oly ~ I find my Oly times are actually slightly faster than double (assuming the sprint swim is 750m) on a comparable course since you don't double the transitions and the swim & run drop-off isn't that much, while the net bike pace is often just as fast if not slightly faster in the Oly (which might seem counterintuitive at first)... although the max threshold pace in the sprint should naturally be a bit faster, you always lose a little off the avg at the beginning & end depending on the course exit/entry config of the transition area, as well as it usually taking a mile or two to physically settle into a pedaling groove after the swim, so that drain takes a proportionally bigger 'bite' out of the shorter race while a larger % of the Oly is spent at full race threshold.