Just skimmed through 3 race files from 1F & 2M

The more technical the course the more coasting. Anywhere from 5-14%.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

its a terrible habit for age groupers and thus why most like the bike leg - because it becomes easy. People need to train on fixed gear bikes

Other than braking into tight turns, 0%. Same percentage as when I'm swimming and running. I'm there to race, not coast.

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Too old to go pro but doing it anyway
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Even on descents you pedal? Hard to justify pedaling down a 7% grade, you’re not going to contribute meaningfully to marginal speed

Did you check your power distribution chart? If not do that but change the default from 10w silos to 2 or 3w silos and report back the % of time >2w.
May surprise you.

Also for anyone reading Davetello's post, less pedaling = less kJ expended = more energy for the run. Maybe not pedaling a few % more is smarter/faster overall?

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

It's going to be very course specific. The only IM's I've done have been relatively hilly (Tremblant, Placid, Norway, Kona), so there was a good chunk of time where I was coasting. This was pretty much all at 35+ mph on a descent or around corners.

Looking at two 70.3 races I did this year that were completely opposite profiles on the bike (Eagleman and St. George), the percentage of time at 0-24 watts is pretty different. At Eagleman I crashed, and that took at least two minutes sorting myself and gear out before I was moving again - taking away those two minutes of not moving, I spent 2% of the time in the 0-24 watt range. Fast forward to St. George (luckily no bike crash here) and I spent nearly 14% of my time (a bit over 18 minutes) in the 0-24 watt range. I'm definitely not one to freewheel, but I don't see a huge benefit of trying to push on the pedals at 35+ mph, when you can be resting the legs a bit and saving them for later in the race.

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Blog: http://262toboylstonstreet.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/NateThomasTri
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Good stuff. The question here is to what degree should most folks coast?

That's why I encourage my folks to do more that just 1 IMC distance bike ride as prep for the event. Try the coast versus non - coast rides to see just how much slower you are for the bike and how much faster you are on the run. Conditions of the day will of course vary. Hopefully you walk away with some sort of data that you can apply on race day.

I'm not sure to what extent you could do a shorter ride with coasting to get the data you need to make these sorts of decisions.

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http://www.fitspeek.com the Fraser Valley's fitness, wellness, and endurance sports podcast

If you don't mind my asking, what were the circumstances of the crash? Wet conditions on an unexpected turn? Carbon rims? Curious, as I've gotten faster on the bike (new bike helps for sure!) and I'm starting to get the creepers about my safety at race speed, especially in damp/wet conditions.

What's wrong with making the bike 'easy'? Not everyone is there to podium, KQ, etc. and an 'easy' bike ride might set them up for a more enjoyable and possibly faster run.

The more technical the course the more people are going to coast. Also the more often they'll spike their power as well but that's a different thread we can have.

On a course like IMFL it's going to be low 2-3% of the time, Lake placid as Nate said, something like 18% iirc.

I'd agree that people need to ride over a variety of courses to test out where you can coast, where you should/should not coast etc. I've got some rules of thumb for my athletes but everyone's approach will probably vary a bit

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Challenge Almere this year - 0-15W is 3 minutes and 39 seconds - including take shoes on, off and the run in T2. Which is 1.39% of the ride. The run is about 1 minutes 29 seconds = 0.82% of my ride is coasting.

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Long Distance PB: 8:25
Instagram: larsschmidttri

I try to keep the pedals moving all the time, because I live in a very flat area. In my one IM, IMFL, I was under 60w about 5% of the time, 16 minutes total. Looking at my data, about 5 minutes of that was soft-pedaling and coasting in the last 5 minutes of the ride. The remaining 11 minutes were mostly heading into turns. There were also some zero-powers that were probably coasting after being passed to avoid drafting, digging into the bento box for whatever, and coasting down the one real bridge twice.

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<The Dew Abides>

Well they make bike tour events for that. A local tri organizer who does bike tours introduced that into the Tri series they purchased. This bike times are slow thanks to congestion (more from narrow courses,because design focus not on speed)

0% unless the grade is steep enough that pedalling becomes nonsensically fast (~55 kph for my bike).

I disagree. Speed is what's important, not pedaling time. In training, yes, but in training I'm going for max energy expenditure/work, which is sort of the opposite of racing.

It's even more profound inn bike races where I'm actively trying to coast as much as possible. To put your sentiment in another vein: I'm there to race, not train.

Lick your opponent's plate clean before starting in on your own...

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

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8% on a flatter route going through a couple towns with turns and stops.

Depends on the course. Here are some recent examples of how much time I was coasting in some races.

• 12% St. George 70.3 - this was upright clutching the bars hoping I would not get blown over.
• 6.5% Memphis 70.3 - this is a surprise; not sure when as it was steady rollers and I was laying it down.
• 1.5% Gulf Coast 70.3 - dead flat, and I was hammering.
• 15% Nice 70.3 - half the course was down a mountain

Not sure if the guy was trolling, but a guy local to you and I that does full IM's and is pretty good TT rider once told me he hammers on the downhill and flats because that is where the aero advantage is.

I was like, WTF.

Had to be trolling.

But if I'm training on my TT bike it's a KJ's game, spending. Racing is different, even for TT versus tri. It's about using the energy you have to finish the race the fastest you can. In tri, that means a run also.

In training TT I will try to meter my output so I just get a LOT of tempo and sweetspot, meaning some fast power applied downhills. Races here for club meetups west of here have a few hills. You go a touch easier on downhills (90 to 97%) and maybe "punch over" a bit to flatten hills out. But saving yourself 100w for 1 minute down a hill in a 30min to 60min race you won't be able to suddenly add 10 or 20w to the other 29min or 59min of the race. Maybe 2w. Just shorten your power duration curve from the event time by the coasting time. What's the increase in power? Not as much as I think many would assume. I can't really "use" that since I'm not running after.

But it is cool to listen to strategies for this with you all running after.

Best IM bike and run I had was around 2005 or 2006 at IMC, I coasted any chance I got on downhills and on rollers I would get speed up on downhills and coast up the other side until I was losing momentum then pedal just enough to crest then repeat, I think I rode around 5:04 that year I believe I averaged 178 watts at around 148 lbs. I think I ran an even split run around 3:30 , which I think was in the top 40 ona crazy windy day. Held back on first half of run talking to people and had a top 20 second half including pros

My own fault on the crash. I usually race with my bike shoes attached to the pedals w/elastics for faster transitions and mounting. Downside is that it’s sometimes harder to get into my shoes (Giro Empire w/modified elastic laces). In trying to get into my shoes at speed I think I may have hit a small pot hill or something in the road at around 22 mph. Slightly leaning to one side and only w/one hand on the bars, I went down pretty hard and didn’t have the race I’d hoped for. In recent races I haven’t bothered with already having the shoes on the bike ahead of time, and I really don’t see it as a noticeable time loss.

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Blog: http://262toboylstonstreet.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/NateThomasTri
Coaching: https://bybtricoaching.com/ - accepting athletes for 2023

As others said it is course dependent. There is a speed when pedaling does not contribute at all and being aero is the top priority.

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https://www.strava.com/...tes/zachary_mckinney

Probably the greatest gain for anyone who doesn't cycle well is to at least push through the crests of the hills before letting off. M9st cyclists with any road racing experience are going to turn the pedals up until mid 30's mph even if they aren't pushing a lot of watts, just habit. I think the biggest lesson for me when I started riding with a power meter was to push harder on the descents. I'm already choosing a target wattage based on saving energy for the run, so that's mostly going to take effect climbing. For me, I want to observe that power goal, but I also want to squeeze the most speed out of that expenditure, so if that means standing on the pedals for a few turns to tuck up and coast, that's just good energy conservation.

This is good up until a point. Then you're utilizing a lot more watts for very little speed gain. The speed to coast is going to be different for everyone though. For some it may be 30mph for others around 35.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta