this sort of depends on how long you intend to be out on the course. for an olympic race, most people can do it around their LT for the entire race. this of course will not happen for someone who takes 3+ hours to finish, which is fine, they just have to scale back a little bit.

how long will the bike take you? be realistic. look at your oly results. it will take at least twice as long, and most likely 10-15 min or so more, depending on course. you know how long you can expect to be out there if everything goes well. with that estimate, you could get a better idea of HR during the ride.

tommy

M. I use PE. For Sprint its puke level back off a notch, repeat. For OLy its two notches below puke, to one notch, to ocassional puke level. 1/2IM is absolute no-mans land for me. I haven't a clue. I'm not fit enough to race it, yet can't dog-it either. Comfortably brisk is what my coach says, still working on that one.

I am moslty concerned about HR, not so much about time on the bike. My olympic bike time is 1:05, and that's riding at LT, or just 3-5 beats below.

I've done 4 half IM's to date, but have never paid much attention to HR. I've ridden between 2:40 and 3:20 in these races. The variance has been due to fitness levels, course, and conditions.

My current plan for Lubbock next month is to ride 10-15 beats below LT. I was just curious if anyone else had any experience on this topic.

Thanks,
Mike

I pace Oly distance at LTHR. I've only done one 1/2 IM, but the best pacing strategy I've seen came from Gordo Byrn's site. The recommendation was to do the first half of the bike in zone 2 HR, the second half in zone 3 HR, and the same on the run.

My experience with that race is... ride hard but don't tax yourself. Save your energy for that run! Two big pretty steep hills on blacktop and usually a lot of heat. Sometimes you get lucky and it is not 90% humidity. You will need everything you have left coming back on your feet.

In spit of that... a GREAT race. Have fun.

I think saving it for the run is good advice. I've raced there twice already......and even a cool year like last year, it was over 90F!

Mike

Last year I raced at 85 to 90% LT for the Lubbock 1/2 IM and 90 to 95% LT for Oly races. Sprint races I ride all out as fast as I possibly can and try to recover as much as possible in T2 and tyhe first few hundred meters of the run before I open up again.

This year I'll probably back off a bit in Lubbock. I blew up on the run last year on the first hill. My HR spiked to 185 on the first one and had to walk all of the hills. The heat didn't help even though it really was not that hot.

Rusty

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"Strategy? The strategy was in the preparation" - Lance Armstrong after winning 2000 TDF

In kansas we have buckets of humidity most days - last time I was in Lubbock, the water was drying before I drank it. I had no idea what 12% humidity was goig to be like. The year before it had been 90%. Running out of sweat on the upper flat sucks... ya gotta come back anyway and you still get the hills.