My first Triathlon season was last year, and I saw great progress throughout the year - culminating with my first 70.3 in Austin with a total time of 4:46. Roughly a 34 minute swim, 2:38 bike, and 1:27 run.
This season has been less consistent with training, as I got married and had a great honeymoon in June - but I still wanted to get some racing in. I just did Lake Stevens 70.3 in 4:50 and my splits were 31:50 for the swim, 2:44 for the bike, and 1:29 for the half. The bike was definitely a lot harder (over twice the climbing) than Austin - but I feel like my bike is definitely lacking compared to my swim and run.
Long story short, I’m planning to race Ironman Coeur d’Alene next June and really want to make the most of these next 10 months. I don’t have a power meter, but do have trainer road. What is going to be the best way to focus on getting that bike up, while keeping up with the swim and run? I am self coached and not following a set plan right now. I average 12-15 hours a week of training. About 8,000 meters of swimming, 150 or so miles of riding (lots of easy steady state riding), and around 30 mpw for the run.
I know there are a lot of threads like this - but I really appreciate the feedback and help on this!
Compared to the swim and run, your bike is really, really slow… and you picked IMCdA for your first IM? Huh, that’s interesting. That’s one of the 3 hardest IM bike’s in North America along with Whistler and IMWI. Meaning there’s a comparative advantage to being a strong cyclist on those courses. But you might already know that.
I’m curious what you metrics were for those races (height, weight, bike, wheels, helmet, power?) Do you have a pwoer meter?
4 ways to bike faster in this order:
Improve your position
Get stronger/more bike fit.
learn to pace the bike better
Get better equipment (tires/tube & Helmet are relatively cheap, low hanging fruit)
Next you only train 12-15 hours per week?
You swim and run are good, so I’ve those way back and really focus on the bike this winter. Then do a more balanced approach in the last 3-4 months.
Too much steady state, you need to mix it up to get stronger or ride a LOT more… like 250-300 miles for steady state to work well. You’re time crunched, so you need probaly 3 quality rides and 1 long ride (steady state). Make the bike your priority and fit the others in where you can. Consider running 6 days a week but limit the length of your long runs so you biking isn’t impacted. Doing just 2 3500y workouts a week might be more time efficient and allow you to bike more and enough to maintain where your at. IF you get a little burnt out from biking, then mid winter you could do a swim focus for a couple weeks.
Thanks motoguy for the detail. I messed up, my bike splits were 2:38 and 2:44 - bad typo on my end, I am still obsessing about my finishing time so thinking 4:xx for everything.
To answer your questions and thoughts:
I’m definitely aware of the difficulty of CDA. I think I have a lot of untapped potential on the bike, and after watching the race last year, and the location being so great for me in Portland - I definitely want to do CDA. I think I am capable of a strong first showing for the distance, I just know I need to learn how to train on the bike.
I’m 6’2", 178lbs, 2013 Cervelo P2, and I borrwed 808/404 FC Tubulars. I’ve got the Giro Air Attack. Estimated power on strava was 231 for the ride, but I don’t have a power meter.
I have capacity to train more, and have a great indoor setup as well with a Trainer, Laptop, TV, etc.
Swim and run look good. Your current bike would leave you very close to the IM cutoff, so that should be your focus 4-5x/week. You need to build strength on the hills, so large gears intervals at low RPM once per week. Mix it up with easy, max intervals, tempo, and aerobic long rides.
I won’t be close to the IM cutoff - hopefully you are referring to the accidental times I typed in (4:xx) versus the actual times!
For the max intervals and tempo rides - how structured should those be? I’m trying to figure out (hopefully without a coach) what types of resources I can tap into to really get a good plan in place to make the most of my cycling training.
If you’re 6’2" and run that well (meaning you have a solid engine), you should be killing the bike. Strava is probably close, though it’s possible you had higher watts and still have some refinement in your position. Get a power meter… then we can objectively tell you if your position sucks or not.
I think you probably are struggling with wrapping your head around suffering on the bike in training. It’s a little different than running and swimming which have difference limiters. It can be hard to learn for some unless you’ve done bike racing and really pushed yourself before.
I’d been running for 2 years prior to starting Triathlon last year - so I think that is a great point. I’ve learned how to suffer (to an extent) with swimming, Masters class has helped. The bike training has been completely solo, I’m going to focus on adding a lot more quality into my bike training. Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it!
I have similar short distance times to you and what has helped me improve my bike the most is riding with roadies every once in awhile. You think you went hard before but then you find out that you can keep pushing it after your legs are burning. Your run times are good and a stronger bike will only help your run.
Have you done an FTP test on TrainerRoad using virtual power? (or maybe you don’t even have that?) All the advice on training here is probably spot on, but I find the one biggest thing I have learned is the challenge of pacing the longer distance races and an FTP estimate might give you some idea if you have any pacing issues. As you seem to be running awfully close to your half-marathon pace (from your blog bio) you may be under pacing the bike. Could be some free time to be had there with a harder look at it.
I haven’t done the FTP setup - as I just got setup with Trainerroad last week as I was resting up for the race. I have a Kurt Kinetic so I do plan on using Virtual Power with my Garmin Ant+ Speed/Cadence unit. Are there any plan on Trainerroad that you’d recommend?
I definitely think there is big room for improvement within my training, but I also think you are right with the pacing component. I’ve more or less solely relied on HR for racing on the Bike.
I’ve heard and read a lot about stages, I think that is the route I’d like to go. I’m hoping to buy race wheels in this off season as well.
You nailed it, I am really hoping to learn more about bike specificity with intensity. I have a pretty good grasp on what run focused training can look like, once I get some structure into my biking I know I will benefit!
Uh ohhh… Jackmott,… RChung hurry…we have another guy looking to get a Stages…talk him off the cliff. He’ll end up with useful training and pacing data at a low price that might have some variability that might be more or less than every other PM out there. The horror.
Sorry, can’t recommend a plan because I was using it with workouts prescribed by my coach (although it is an amazing tool!). Once you start using the virtual power, I suspect your next post here will be on how to get a relatively inexpensive power meter. For those trying to squeeze the biggest bang out of their training hours, having power for both training and racing is very useful and the meters keep getting more reasonably priced all the time.
I think two easy ways to improve your bike split is to maximize your time. If you ride 8 hours a week make sure to include structured workouts that leave your legs crying. Also up your swim volume. Easy way to make bike faster is to not start it by being exhausted from swim.
How much time should I devote to longer intervals compared to the shorter/harder ones? I think I’m going to need to make the trainer a priority for some of the more structured workouts, it takes me a solid 25 minutes to get away to completely open roads - so I’m thinking that during the week I could reap a lot more benefit from 1-1.5 hours on the trainer, compared to the same time outside.