Hey all, so this past weekend, I did my 4th 70.3, and again bonked during the run. I’m a 50 year old male and have mostly utilized advice and the Be Ironfit series for training. I run 8:30 mile half marathons but during the run portion of the tri, will bonk around mile 6 or 7 and end up with something like a 10:45 minute mile.
I generally bike around 190-220 watts during races and have tried to dial this down to avoid overcooking the bike. Have done plenty of shorter brick sessions and for the past 4 months, have been training for a 140.6. I was able to comfortably spin for 5 hours in zone 2 for my long bike sessions and am doing 2 hour long runs on the weekend, so I thought I could hammer the bike for 2:30 and then do the run, but sure enough, bonked again.
Short of getting a coach, I was wondering what people have done to overcome this problem during the run. It’s just a little frustrating…
Tuesday: 7 miles, Wednesday: 2 miles after 45 min spin, Friday: 7 miles, Sunday: 1:30-2 hour run which is continuing to ramp until until June. So: 27-30 miles per week of running before the 70.3.
Something doesn’t add up based on what you’ve said.
What paces are you training at running? What watts are you usually doing during your training rides? Do you do intervals? Do you use the same nutrition during training?
Describe your bonk, do you feel out of energy? Muscles giving out? Out of breath? How’s your heart rate?
Running pace is a steady ramp up- start at 8:40 per mile and then each mile will get faster so usually end up around 7:40-47 per mile by the 7th mile. Will do some interval training. Will just use energy drink during training except for gels during longer runs.
The bonk is almost pure muscle cramping of the legs. Lungs feel absolutely fine, not out of breath at all. I don’t wear a heart monitor but I suspect Zone 3 HR. Yesterday during the race, my legs were lead, so I’d walk 2-3 minutes, then jog at about a 9-9:20 pace, felt fine for 3 minutes or so and then legs would give out again.
It might be sodium intake on the run. Not knowing your sweat rate/content that could be very very low. The cost of going to low on sodium is very high with performance, having a bit too much sodium is very little risk. For refrence I lose about 600mg an hour and I lose a little over a 1L per hour at 75 degrees. I take around 1200-1400 mg/hr during a race.
Good point. I’ve always been careful about too much fluid intake during the run because of a sloshing stomach, but with better fitness, it seems to be less of a problem. Do you take a liter of fluid in during the run per hour? My sodium intake definitely drops dramatically during the run- I should consider salt tablets.
I think if you are bonking in the 70.3 run, it’s likely one of these things:
bad pacing (swim too hard, bike too hard, burn too many matches on the bike, running too fast)
inadequate nutrition (likely calorie intake is too low but could be hydration issues too)
both
It may also be that in training you’re going too hard or not practicing your nutrition enough (hence can’t
handle it on race day). Maybe your FTP/threshold is overestimated. Any event over 3 minutes is considered mostly an aerobic effort. In triathlon we go for hours, most (70-90%) of the training should be Z1/Z2 regardless of the race distance. You want to be able to hold a conversation or sing the lyrics of a song.
From what I see, most triathletes are either going too hard too soon or underestimating nutrition.
It’s also easy to confuse the two things. Some people are having GI issues but what really happened is they went too hard. Going too hard has knockdown effects that you won’t perceive at first and that bubble up in a different form later in the race.
Hard is a relative term when you’re talking about multi-hour efforts. It shouldn’t actually feel hard in a strict sense. A Sprint is the only triathlon where you can really go hard from beginning to the end. In all the longer distances you always have to hold something back. The longer the distance and the lower your fitness level, the more you have to hold something back.
Was this Oceanside? Idk if there were any other 70.3s over the weekend. The nutrition honestly looks pretty good. Maybe play around with a different sports drink that has more carbs (Maurten, for example). The weekly mileage looks good to me too. You’re not going to get better run conditions all season than Oceanside. High-50s/low wind/low humidity. If you’re cramping there and the nutrition is good then you gotta look at pacing/training. How did the swim go? It seems like you stayed within yourself on the bike. For the run, you said you were hitting 8:45s, before falling off. Was mile 1 8:45 or 8-flat. It makes a difference. If you want to run 8:45 for 13.1 in a 70.3, I’d recommend going out at 8:50-9:00 through 3k-5k and then settling into goal pace.
It looks like more of a training issue to me. I would be a little more intentional about structure/design. It looks like you’re doing one 2 mile brick/week, 2 7 milers, and 1 long run? You don’t get to run fresh in triathlon so I would try to train like that (within reason). On 4-5 runs/week I would do 1 easy run, 1 interval day, 1-2 brick (s), and 1 long run. Think specificity. Minor tweaks to what you’re doing should help a lot. Except for the long run, I would try to swim or bike or both before your other run days. If 8:45/mile is your 70.3 pace, your easy days don’t have to get down to 7:45 pace. I would never run 1:00/mile faster than 70.3 pace at the end of an easy run. That’s ~5k pace for me. I don’t touch 70.3 pace on easy days. One 7 miler should be easy (maybe >9:00 pace, it might feel easy but with some other changes the slower pace might be needed). Do the faster running on an interval day. Interval day meaning 70.3 specific work. Do 30:00-40:00 of work at tempo/threshold straight or broken. 8k-10k worth of volume. You should not be doing 5k “speed” workouts. Do short (1k) to long (2 miles) intervals at slightly faster than 70.3 pace (threshold). I would scrap the 2 mile brick off of the 45min bike. I don’t think there’s a ton of value there. Do a longer brick (3-5 miles) off of your weekly bike interval and maybe alternate a similar brick off of your long ride. You don’t have to run hard during these sessions. You can and should experiment with some pace work in there but to start just running easy will help you get used to running off of the bike. The weekly long run is good. I’d keep that.
Did you do Galveston 70.3? It’s windy and bit chilly in the morning over there but it gets humid and muggy afterwards so without realizing, you can sweat more and get tired fast. If sun is out during the run, it can get pretty hot. It also depends on where you train and where you race. I’m exactly in the same boat. My half marathon pace is 7:50 min/mile but I suck at run during 70.3. It’s always over 10!! I’m trying to use Saturday Morning nutrition App this year and see if I can improve. Can’t give you real advice but read Dr. Alex’s articles and look into Saturday nutrition App.