You say you don’t get any faster in races

Do you get any faster in your training?

Genetic.

I haven't gotten significantly faster in ages, just have the odd race where everything goes together perfectly.

I can ride 3 days a week or 6 days a week on trainer road and i can't maintain an ftp much above 4w/kg. So i just maintain a training schedule that keeps me around that number with minimal effort.

Short course racing im pretty much the same on 7 hours a week as 13-15 hours . The people i know who have gone mop to fop do it really rapidly from an untrained state. Young bloke around here who does junior itu rides like twice a week while heshin school .

+1000.

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

I found it very interesting to listen to Gwen Jorgenson's interview on Triathlon Taren a few months back. She was discussing why she went in to pure marathoning after Olympic gold at tri, and she said she had never pushed herself to her running limits so she wanted to see what she could do.

Turns out she was running D1 women's track and field, running 31-32:xx 10ks in college after less than a year of joining the track team, and in HS never running over 30, if not 25mpw. Even in college, she said she never ran more than around 40mpw, hence the curiosity about what she could throw down if she really trained 'real mileage.' And in HS, she ran for the track team, but it wasn't some diehard focus - she did it because she incidentally found she was good at it, but definitely wasn't super goal-oriented or even particularly serious about it.

Just goes to show the real level of talent that the world-class triathletes are dealing with, when you can almost casually run a sub 33 10k without ever having done serious big mileage blocks of training - as a female, no less. Kinda crazy.

I actually suspect this is the same for most sports, and swimming, despite the crazy volume the top swimmers swim, is no different. The crazy swim yardage just takes an already naturally super-fast swimmer to an slightly more extreme super-fast level, but these were guys/gals with enough talent to crush most of the world on 'normal' training to begin with. For sure, these guys weren't lollygagging at MOP level for a few years while training 'mildly hard'.

There was also another interview with a top KQ AGer on Triathlon Taren (I think) who was overweight/out of shape, and it took him like 2 years to go from near BOP with near-no training at his first 70.3, to winning a KQ slot, but when you look at his training and results, it was more realistically 1-1.5 yrs to lose a ton of weight and go from atrophic condition to reasonable condition, and then the moment he could put in a 'real' training block of 10 weeks, he goes from like a 5:30 HIM to a 4:30 or below in a single fell swoop. Sorry, that's not gonna be reproducible by the typical AGer - that's the great genetics expressing themselves when given a chance with decent body weight and a real training block.

Absolutely true for swimming. What you see with young swimmers is that the ones with real talent are just blowing by the other kids, swimming like 26 sec for 50 yd at age 10, and this just on like 1000 yd per day max. And then they just get faster every year and gain endurance until they are the guys you see cruising at 1:08/100 yd in warm-up. :)

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

Former marathon world record holder Robert de Castella was once asked for his advice for marathon runners aspiring to the elite level.

His succinct reply, "Choose your parents carefully."

Everyone can improve markedly during their first few years in the sport, irrespective of the age they commence. Ultimately genetics is the limiting factor to how much improvement is possible. Training determines how close we go to fulfilling our genetic potential.

Whether you personally can be FOP depends on why you keep struggling on the run. If your training numbers indicate that you're in FOP shape but you're just having issues with pacing or nutrition which are screwing your race up, then FOP should be possible if you execute right. Struggling on the run 3 times out of 3 does suggest that it might be more fundamental than simply poor execution, but maybe you're just unlucky, or it's been different problems each time. Or maybe you're just a really slow learner ;-) Suggest doing a very honest appraisal of what's going wrong in your races and working with your coach to address it.

More generally genetics is a big factor in being FOP and certainly not everybody has the potential. I used to row at college, basically everybody in the squad was on the same training programme, nobody had real weight issues (and weight isn't much of a factor in rowing anyway), but the variety in scores and numbers being put out was huge and most of the discrepancy was down to genetics. Had guys who would work their nuts off for a couple of years to get mediocre results, and then some first year who had never been in a boat before would jump on the ergo after a couple of weeks training and produce a score they could never get near. Guys in the third crew who were living like monks trying to get into the second crew, while there were guys in the top crew going out and getting drunk multiple times every week and refuelling on McDonalds and doughnuts after training. 20+ years later I'm still in touch with a bunch of guys from that squad, most of whom are still somewhat active and on Strava, many have done or still do triathlons, and the genetic pecking order from those rowing days still pretty much holds true.

That said, I think long course racing is probably one of the sports where the balance of natural talent vs hard work is tipped about as far towards hard work as the scale will go. I don't think anybody gets near FOP without either putting in at least 8-10 hours/week, or having done some big chunks of endurance training previously that still gives them a great base and allows them to do well on smaller volumes. And the sample size of people who are prepared to put in those sort of volumes consistently is small enough that you can get a long way with average talent and a strong work ethic. Certainly further than you'd get in most sports.

Also, what does your coach say? I assume you've had this discussion with him?

Generally, the longer the distance, the more time it takes to mature into a strong athlete, particularly at the back end of the race. Building that kind of endurance doesn't necessarily happen quickly.

How may years of tri do you have behind you? How much racing? And how much running? What are your times? Both tri and run times?

Genetics is important, things like natural hematocryt percentage (better above 45% than below).

If you have problems with the stomach, maybe that's repairable. I think you should be able to take a gel in every 20 minutes. Do you eat carbohydrates the months before a race? I heard once a lowcarb diet can become a problem the moment you become dependent of the ability of you body to process carbs.

I was a MOP athletes who was able to jump to the FOP. Sure genetics play a role, but when I was a BOP/MOP athlete I was regularly told I just didn’t have the proper genetics to be faster (I’m definitely not as slight as most FOP athletes). I had the same issue as you, my swim and bike were okay, but my run just wasn’t good enough to be FOP. I decided to take 8 months off triathlon and train purely as a runner with a group of runners. This was the best decision I made. Focusing on one sport I was able to make massive improvements in my run.

I’ve made this recommendation to a number of friends lacking the speed to KQ but they’re all afraid their swim and bike is going to disappear and have never followed through on it. I found my swim and bike came back relatively quickly, and I now had a run that could keep me at the FOP.

This ^^^^^ This is what I need to do, Thanks for all the responses

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Yellowfin Endurance Coaching and Bike Fits
USAT Level 1, USAC Level 3

Great story. Shows that everyone is different. I came to the FOP in the AG by changing my biketraining. I needed years to find that out. My running had always been good.

Yeah my bike has always been pretty good and I think I focus on it to much and avoid my weakness to much.. I can run fast in sprints but I just melt in any kind of distance.

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Yellowfin Endurance Coaching and Bike Fits
USAT Level 1, USAC Level 3

it's nutritional

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

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Genetics sets the upper limit of everyone's potential. Most people don't come close due to limiters with volume/injury/time constraints. People may have some more natural talent or simply enjoy one (or more) of the 3 tri sports but it doesn't mean you cannot continue to improve. I'd argue that since you achieved FOP in 2/3, you should be able to get there in the third (R).

The IM distance is a long day with lots of ways for the race to go astray and extremely few people do well in their first. So, 2 attempts with a poor run doesn't come close to showing me that you don't have the talent. There were clearly mistakes and your coach should be able to come up with a list of things that didn't go as planned.

Training volume/intensity/Race day pacing on the bike/run? Nutrition/hydration bonk? Poor taper? Weather? I can think of 10 more things...

On a personal note, my USAT ranking has gone from ~74>84 over the last 7 years.


But, since this is ST, where we all want to help out-let's hear the specifics. Results/training/taper/race day execution etc. It'll be interesting to hear some comments and perhaps you (or some of us) will learn some things.

I actually don't think the run block is going to save you. If you're reduced to a shuffle during your IM, but you are putting down decent run training time and volume during training, the problem isn't that you're just so lousy a runner than you have to walk large parts of your IM, but that either your nutrition is suboptimal so you're bonking the run before seeing your potential, and/or overcooking the swim and bike so that you're again not seeing your run potential.

I've been doing triathlon long enough to have done pure marathon running blocks for 12 weeks, hitting 70mpw and even running PRs at the races, but after going back to tri and doing tri training for 10 wks, I actually ran slightly worse than I did when I was doing a balanced triathlon block for longer. The swim and bike were notably harder as a result of my having taken so much time off to just run; even 10 wks didn't bring me back to PR-level swim/bike abilities, and it def impacted my run.

I will note that I was already at a run performance plateau before this meaning I had realized most of my run gains already. Obviously things will be different if you haven't trained the run as seriously ever, and still have a lot of easier gains to realize by just putting in the run training time. Still, for the IM, there are quite a few stories of sub 2:45 runners who are reduced to the IM shuffle time and again, because of the swim/bike beatdown that has to be solved first.

This.

Almost everyone can be FOP in their AG with hard work *and the right strategy.* Grinding away at yourself isn't going make you faster if there isn't a plan to improve the weakness holding you back. Your coach should able to articulate that plan.

First I would adress that FOP and being on an elite level is a huge difference.

I agree that for success on an elite level genetics are a huge factor.
If we talk about becoming top 10% in your AG, genetics often seem more like an excuse. Like the often heard "I can never be great in this sport because of my bad genetics".

If you can become FOP also depends if you have already checked all the boxes:
weight, nutrition, gear, bike position, recovery

If you are on a decent level in all these categories it might be hard to improve a lot.

I agree with this statement. The IM 'run' is a relatively easy run in which you don't slow down, and keep on running (not walking). The most common causes of failure to execute to your run potential on race day is (IMO):

overbiking/cramping/inadequate nutrition or hydration/too fast a run pace (*based on training/race day weather)

Your last sentence in bold implies that your swim and bike were already good enough for you to be FOP or close to it coming out of T2? In that case I'd say it's clear you already had good enough genetics to be FOP, you just didn't have the right training/approach. At AG level, I think anybody who is putting in FOP performances in the bike is capable of also being FOP in the run, and vice versa, barring those at the more extreme ends of the body shape spectrum. Whether they're willing to make the changes/sacrifices to achieve that potential is another question (as you say, plenty of people are scared of making the necessary changes), but they're being held back by their approach not their genes. On the other hand there are people who are MOP or BOP in all 3 disciplines, in some cases after years of putting in decent training volumes - they're the ones who I think don't have the right genes to ever be FOP.

What you guys define as MOP and FOP, let´s say, in 1.5k field?

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I would say if you're top 15% AG, you can call yourself a FOP AGer.

Obviously, this is a farrrr cry from an OA podiumer or elite podiumer. I'm sure some here will say I'm too soft, as a top 15% M50 might be hugely far away timewise from the #1 OA winner, but I still think it's fair to say that if you can beat 85%+ of your AG-matched peers, you are not overstating it when you say you are "FOP AGer."

I think you can say similarly for OA - if you want to call yourself FOP in the OA category, top 15% is a reasonable cutoff.

I also think this is best assessed at BIG races with huge fields like WTC races or similar in size. Obviously, you might crush your small local tri than has 100 entrants, take #1 OA+AG, but when you scale it up to a WTC race with a national-class field, you might find yourself barely cracking the top 20%.

I wasn't spectacular, but was good enough. Syracuse 70.3 in 2014 (33:44/2:28:38/1:38:50/4:45:25) was my final race before doing my big run block. I wasn't walking my runs before my run block (thought I did walk up the huge hill on my second lap in Syracuse), but I just wasn't very fast. Challenge Quassy in 2015 (31:14/2:42:51/1:24:23/4:41:22) was my first race after my run block.

I certainly agree that people need to be willing to make the changes and sacrifices to achieve their full potential, and it can be hard to make those sacrifices when the results aren't guaranteed. But I feel like I was in a similar situation to the OP, and the run block approach worked for me (I'm actually planning on doing another run block November - January to see if I can bump my triathlon speed up again).

The IM shuffle & gastro issues are’t genetic, just areas to address with training & testing.

FOP does depend on field, but for local races I think anyone can get there if they’re willing to really put in the effort over a few years. Nationals or WTC FOP is a lot harder, I don’t think that requires ‘elite’ genetics, but you likely need some natural ability