Your forgot the most important point.

Racing sprints is DAMN FUN!!!!!

And almost all of us on here do this for fun!
And, as you noted, you can test your progress/find your limiters many times in a season with sprints.

And they are such much harder and less boring. Did a sprint yesterday. Just 110% for the swim, bike and run. Nothing gets held back. Unless ones
bike seat is not tightened down. :(

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

I like sprints, but since there's usually an Oly option, I usually go for that one. I just like racing those Oly distances more - that's my favorite distance, as it's fast enough to really go hard, and long enough to force you to train long. My "A" race of the year is usually a HIM, but that's mainly to force me to put in legit training hours and not start slacking off; I most enjoy the Oly distance racing.

I always feel a bit like "that's it?" with sprints, but they can really hurt!

good way to practice transitions, and get comfortable not using gatorskins, etc.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
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Why do you say the ONLY way to predict what your body has to say the longer you race?

Why is a sprint the best predictor of half or full success later in the year?

Then you are not pushing hard enough unless of course you are the overall winner

The thing I like about sprints is that I usually just need a day or two of easy bikes or swims to let my body fully recover and then I can get right back into training at full intensity. If I race an Oly (instead of just turning it into a workout) my body needs at least a week.

I like the 70.3 distance so I think next year I'm going to have my A race be s 70.3 later in the year and do a ton of sprints early on while building my engine and then switch to more specific work a couple months out from my A race.

Oh yeah... sprints ARE fun :)

Not sure how you can recreate race conditions any other way? How would you create that special feeling of someone in your AG passing you on the bike or run?

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STIndiana
America Multi-Sport, Inc.
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Cranking out a sprint or two in when you have a longer " A" race in the season is great. Sometimes I get so focused on the longer-distance issues ( nutrition, volume requirements, etc.) that I forget about the smaller stuff. I also am a firm believer in supporting the small, local races. (For those of you near enough, any race put on by Georgia MultiSports or TriBlueSky rocks.) It's also a great way to earn a shirt without being wiped out for the rest of the weekend. Thanks for starting the thread!

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-TMT

That isn't relevant to 99% of people in triathlon. You can create the physical demands in training easily.

Shorter races I great, I think people should do them. But they certainly aren't a necessity and aren't the only way to predict a longer race.

Love shorter races, but I don't do sprints b/c it takes too much time to prepare for a race that is going to last an hour. I do oly/int'l or longer. I find that an oly/int'l distance races address those issues below better than a sprint, IMO.

No, there's a huge difference between an acute burn that feels agonizing, vs the deep fatigue after a 6-12 hr race. Even after you go all out in a sprint, you won't be trashed for the week unless you were realy out of shape going into it. You can't wait for the race to end, but once it's over and you catch your breath for about 5 minutes, you might actually be up for another one!

I love sprints, because I actually finish in the top 10%, maybe because all the really fast guys here are so focused on long courses. Oly's, well I finish in the top half.

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"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

Steve,

I've been saying this for years. The fundamentals of human physiology say this is so. The best coaches advocate for it and preach it. However, among rank & file triathletes, it typically falls on deaf ears - even those one who claim to be performance oriented when it comes to their longer races.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I don't think you need to do a sprint to determine if your hamstring - to take your example - is going to be a problem in a LD race, I'd have thought that might present its self if you're doing fairly long bricks in training, and I'm not sure that they address nutrition issues but I'd agree with the rest of the points and they're a bit like running 5k's - you can go flat out and its over with little need for recovery

I do think you can replicate some of it in training - but training for LD, it will be long rides, long runs and bricks that should highlight issues with nutrition and injuries as Its not as if you're knocking out your LR at the same pace as your sprint tri

It may not be the best predictor of long course performance, but I firmly believe it's critical to a good performance in your 'A' race, regardless of the distance. You absolutely cannot recreate a race like experience in any training session no matter how hard you try, unless your training is actually a race. Even for long course races where your performance is all about monitoring your effort and not getting caught up in the heat of racing everyone that passes you, a sprint gives you that race sensation and lets you practice doing your own thing. But mostly it gives you the un-duplicable experience of getting up on race morning and getting yourself to the start line ready to race, then making all the split-second decisions during the race that mean the difference between success and failure. You could get this same experience doing another long course race, but you have to balance the gains you make in your mental preparedness with the losses you will sustain in training time. You can get plenty of experience and really nail down your routine in two or three sprints and only have a combined total of maybe 2-4 extra recovery days, or you can get less experience in a single 70.3 and spend over a week recovering.

Also, sprints may actually be the best indicator of fitness because they can mitigate a lot of the variables (they are normally early in the morning so the heat isn't much of a factor, there aren't as many people so you don't have to worry about fighting crowds, the courses are so short that weather and terrain don't have quite as significant of an impact), which allows you to see gains or losses between performances more easily. If you don't like short course racing for some reason then sure, keep throwing more money to the WTC and traveling all over the country to get yourself prepared for your long course 'A' race, but I firmly believe the guy who is regularly doing short course races will still be better prepared.

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Powertap / Cycleops / Saris

This is def true - if there's a sprint concurrent with an Oly, the Oly will usually all the fast folks. It's usually like 2x more competitive around here.

I'd agree to some extent. I know plenty of guys that do a lot of long course that get whipped in sprints.

I also know guys that can do well in on Oly, but get regularly beat in sprints.

They are different beasts. Maybe it's a mental thing.

I don't necessarily disagree with your first paragraph. People with limited racing experience should do some races before their main event.

But, as it related to the OP, I don't think the 5 reasons listed were very legit. Nutrition issues in a sprint are minimal and I don't think they transfer to a long course race very well. The race only highlights certain weaknesses, not the the ones that impact a long course race. Sprints don't do anything to identify equipment needs that can't be determined during training. I also don't think a sprint predicts anything about a long course event, other than a gross measure of fitness. So, that leaves one aspect that is relevant, learning about managing yourself on race day.

That's fair, I certainly wouldn't advocate doing a long course race without having done extensive testing of your nutrition during long sessions. If I had to pick between the benefits of race experience and the benefits of long sessions in race like conditions with race day equipment and nutrition I would choose the latter 100 times out of 100. But I think leaving out either of those would leave you unprepared.

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Powertap / Cycleops / Saris

Once upon a time when 10K was the most popular running distance, most races had a 5K and 10K together, and the 10K was where the talent raced. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yep, some of those reasons are a stretch...especially the gear. Racing a sprint is not going to tell you that you need to update your Rudy Wingspan for an LG P09, or your carbon 60mm deep wheels for something deeper, or that maybe you need a new tri-bike. The best reason for doing sprints is because they do provide an extremely intense workout. But if you are training for a long course event, and the sprint is on a Sunday, it is NOT worth giving up a long Saturday session to compete at the top of your game. That pretty much knocks out 90% of the sprints around here from my consideration.

Ya and once upon a time when there were only a handful of iron-length races, everyone raced all the distances:)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I love short races, and I hate them. They hurt so BAD if you are actually racing them, but then it is over quicker and your day isn't eaten entirely.

I happen to be good at racing the short format, but I don't do it as often as I like. This season my full-distance A-race is in June and I haven't planned anything big after that. Instead I am racing a bunch of short course races and just going out to have fun going as fast as I can sustain.