As someone who finally qualified (in my 4th attempt - with a couple very close tries), I can definitely relate. I was able to play to my bike strength and chose a hilly course, so not a fast time, but knew where I would fare best. IM is so much about strength and being able to hang on to a decent pace at the end of the run. One thing that I think helped be over the past couple of years was incorporating some strength-based biking - lots of low cadence around sweet spot - for long durations. Many of my long rides (pretty much all on the trainer over the past two plus years) had several hours of 20-30 min intervals around 85% with cadence under 65. This works both the muscular and the endurance side of things.

I have a marathon PR of 3:04 (from 2012) and was able to run 3:22 in my KQ race. My best 70.3 run time is 1:27, and that came this past season, in a race about two months after my qualifying race. I'd say work on the bike - bring your FTP up to the 4-4.2 w/kg level and you could have a good shot. Of course, so much depends on who shows up at a given race, but you'd definitely be in the running for a KQ.

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With an IF of .7 and likely an AP of 180-190 that’s a pretty conservative ride.

The question in your OP should be “why didn’t I win my AG and go to Kona this year?”

You lost 20+ minutes on the run due to nutritional issues.

Please understand I’m not being negative because I and likely everyone responding here has had suboptimal IM experiences.

Don’t rip up the playbook if it’s working for you and your family.

How many calories did you have? Breakfast? Bike per hour? Run per hour?...or what was the plan? Also hydration in L per hour.

Maurice

I think you make a fair point Maurice- maybe I only need to dial in my nutrition and keep doing everything else the same way, but I also see the validity in other’s suggestions to strengthen the bike. It certainly won’t hurt my chances if I do.

Regarding nutrition I had a breakfast of instant oatmeal, which has always agreed with me, totaling about 700 calories and then took a gel worth another 100 prior to the swim. I was taking in about 400 cals/hour on the bike, which worked during training rides but overwhelmed my stomach during the race. I’m going to experiment w ucan maybe in combination with carbopro. Once on the run I was just trying to catch up because I couldn’t get many calories down in the last 1/4 of the bike. But about 1/2 through the run I started to perk up and ticked of 8:30’s consistently but was afraid of pushing it and blowing. On the bright side my legs weren’t sore after the race!

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"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time."

It good to have power goals but if your HR is jacked because races are exciting and your swim fitness wasn't there then you will not get the calories you need. Body is supplying the muscles, not the stomach to digest food. Food will get put on hold until your HR comes down. The problem then becomes that we keep shoving it in to get the recommended calories per hour. Then we bonk. Your 1:02 swim might have ended your race. I would recommend swimming 3x a week @5k each to come out of the water feeling fresh with a HR that recovers quickly. Bike in upper end of zone 2 HR and you will run sub 3:20. Use your power numbers to train. Race by HR or feel.

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Hi,

Finished second in your AG at IMLP 2019. I think you have to build your bike strenght and work on your economy (work on your IV). That way, you'll actualize your run potential.

Last years race was hot and windy. I ran 3:19 at IMMT in 2018, but 3:29 in LP. Course is a little more difficult tough.

You are a good swimmer (I am not). You have to get much faster on the bike so you can run. Integrate overpace splits on long rides and high power at the end. Practice race power on hilly courses too.

At last, practice brick workouts with long runs at your IM run tempo... and practice nutrition.

Got to Kona for the first time. Could not train a lot before the race to bring back the edge, but I did it and it was a fantastic experience. I wish you best of luck and a great season.

Now moving to 45-50 AG. Cheers, JF (Quebec, CAN)

Some good advice here.

I also raced at IMLP, and finished 5th in M30-34, but lucked into a KQ with 2 roll downs. I don't think you need to make any huge changes. Clearly your run was the weak link, and that may have been caused by climbing too hard on the bike and nutritional issues.

I think if you continue to work on all three disciplines and nutrition, you're one "representative race result" away from a KQ. Doesn't have to be 2021, but I'm guessing you will qualify by then. 16 hours with a family with 2 young kids is about where I peaked for IMLP training and personally it's hard to find much more. Focus on quality for as many of those hours as you can.

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Meditate for 20 minutes a day
Get a good coach
The amount of swimming you are doing is making your bike and run slower.
Unless you “cherry pick” and/or get lucky at a race, you’re probably 2 seasons away from Kona.
If you are injury prone, get a good strength and conditioning program. It’ll allow you to train more efficiently.
Sleep is more important than more training.

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As many have said the best advice would be to get a great coach--iot's not one I've frequently followed but when I did, I had my best years.

Also many others have pointed out that your limiter is your bike. for the bike split itself and especially for your run off the bike.

Given where you are the approach I would take (I'm an over the hill 62 year old, but with a ton of experience whose strength is the bike):

First, I'd get my FTP up to 300w between now and when you can consistently start riding outside. Lots of ways to do this. If you Zwift, it has a 10 week program you can follow (better yet, get a coach).

Second--lots of volume with a high quality 100+ mile ride at least once every 10 days as soon as you can when the weather is nice. By lots of volume I mean at least 200 mpw. I try to ride my 100+ mile rides at as close to target watts as you can. For your current FTP of 279, that means a Normalized Power of about 200/205 watts. If you can boost your FTP to 300w then that target would be 215/220 or so. At that wattage a sub 5 hour bike becomes possible and if you've done enough bike work you could back it up with a run in the 3:15 range.

Of course this implies that you can consistently train 20 hours/week....

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Randy Christofferson(http://www.rcmioga.blogspot.com

Insert Doubt. Erase Hope. Crush Dreams.

A lot of conflicting info, short sighted info and some good longer term info, which is the strength of ST. If you can do everything everyone says you should you'll being doing diametrically opposed things all the time and probably win the IM...overall (pink font on winning overall, why can I never get pink font?)

Anyway being serious there are numerous ways to go about this. You have a long time frame & you're realistic which is a great start.

- You could keep doing the same thing and get there

- you could go to a block structure where you're focusing on 1 thing for x-xx weeks and get there

- you could race short course predominately and some 70.3s this next season develop speed & increase your skill set. Speed kills....your opponents. After all IM is about going slow as fast as you can

- you could switch your nutrition to burger & fries during the week and coke & snickers on all your rides and get there

- You could put these 1000's of decisions regarding your training that need to be made between now and race day into the hands of a competent professional with a track record of working with athletes like you & a track record of getting results and get there

- you could get into the best shape of your life, have the race of your life, PB by xx minutes and still miss out on a slot. That needs to be part of your conversation as well

What I'm hoping you take away from this post is there are many pathways to achieve your goals. Your hardest decision(s) will revolve around the big picture question(s) of what do I need to do to get there, strengths/weaknesses, time availability etc. While that's often the hardest part, aka the which recipe and I going to use question, the next hardest part is how do I structure the cooking process.

Like I said it's a 1000+ decisions that will need to be made, many of which depend on 1000s of things that happen during now and the finish line.

It kind of reminds me of these threads which are along the same vein as your thoughts/questions. Thread 1 Thread 2

Lmk if that helps

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Thank you for least acknowledging there is plenty of conflicting info/advice in this thread and there is more than one way to accomplish his (or anyone's) goal. I'm gonna give the cheeseburger/fries/snicker thing a go and see if I can KQ ;)

2:54 pure vs 3:40 IM is a bonk or at best a fade. I would look at this from an execution angle, you are on the bubble with being out 1-2 spots.


I always say this when it comes to place (and time performance), in a competitive AG race, it invariably comes down to the run. If you can run "fast" and strongly over the final 13.1 miles - you will do well. HOWEVER you make that happen, and HOWEVER you arrive at that point, THIS is what you have to do. Why? Simply - everyone else is falling apart!

I agree with you Maurice that the OP is possibly under performing on the IM run. Generally speaking there should be about 15 - 20 minute differential between stand-alone Marathon and IM run split - assuming optimal performance. This means that this guy may have the potential to run in the 3:15 range! Question is - does he get there, with more run focus, more bike focus or a bit of both. With him already using the BarryP (High Frequency running) - which I'm a BIG advocate of, I am guessing it's more about raising bike fitness, so that, the bike is taking LESS out of him, and he's in better shape to optimize his run, and get closer to that theoretical 3:15 split.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Thanks for summarizing desert dude. I've solicited the same kind of advice from this forum before regarding the half iron distance here and took a pinch of this and a dash of that to shave 25 minutes off my HIM times over the course of a couple of seasons. My hope is to do the same with all of the great suggestions and information that everyone has shared in this thread. In particular here are some things I plan on doing/am already doing:

Bike- V02 max intervals regularly in order to raise my ceiling and increase my FTP to around 300 as rcmioga suggested
-Increase volume on the bike. Already this winter (I'm in upstate NY) I've been doing 2.5 hour trainer rides as well as 3 1-1.5 hour sessions during the week. I plan to build up to 3 hours or so, but that's all I can handle on the trainer until I can ride outside. Then I'll increase up to 5 hours/100ish miles. I didn't have that deep endurance base going into IM training last season and I felt it in the final 30 miles of the IM bike.

Swim- Swim 3x/week and work up to a 4k per swim. All swims are done before getting to work at 7:30, so 4k is all I can squeeze in.

Run- Consistency by not getting injured. Lay off at the slightest niggle and live to run another day. Tempo efforts weekly to build strength.

Strength- Working on glute, hamstring, quad, hip, core, and groin strength so far this winter. That started back in November and I'm already seeing gains. I agree with what some have suggested that strength training=injury prevention and I'm finally prioritizing it.

Timeline-wise, I'm shooting for KQ redemption at Lake Placid 2021. Family life requires a year away from IM training at this point, but my goal is to consistently train around 10+ hours for the next 13 months or so before going into my build for IMLP and increasing the hours. I've probably averaged around 6-7 hours for the year in 2017 and 2018 so that bump will help me build a broader base on which to pile IM training.

Thanks again for all the encouragement and suggestions everyone!

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"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time."