Lurker here with my first post…
I’m curious what experienced 'thetes think about conserving energy during the stages of a sprint/oly tri. E.g., I know I can shave at least a minute off my bike time (get lower and work harder), but I’m unsure how that’ll effect my run. Likewise, should I swim all-out or will that slow my bike/run performance? FWIW, I’m in 50-54 male AG, did my first three (sprint) tris this summer. I averaged in the top 25% in the swim (need some serious work there…), 13% in the bike, and 20% in the run. I finish in the top 14% (these averages are of all men, not my AG-ers).
I guess my question is, do folks go “all out” in each stage of the tri? Obviously, with more experience I’ll learn how my body reacts, but I’m trying to speed up the learning by hearing from others.
Work on your bike during training. So what ever is your max now will be 80% for you next year. Races are generally not won by swimmers. If you overextend yourself on the swim or bike and do not have a good run then its wasted effort. I am not a fast swimmer(my warm up). On the bike I start moving up riding harder, the last 10 min of the bike I make sure my candance starts to creep close to my running candance. On the run is where I can really damage myself or others depending on how my race execution is. The run has gotten my really good results in my age group.
If you want to try to go harder on the bike do more transition run after a hard bike. Get your body to adapt to this type of training, since you want it to respond to it in races.
How are your tranistions? I shoot for 30sec transitions for anything oly or under. After I started practicing transitions I shaved 5 min off my oly.
Good points, Pete. I know with practice and coaching I can shave significant time off my swim with my current level of effort. Damaging my run by riding harder concerns me (and I have a race next weekend).
Regarding my transitions, they’re fairly strong relative to other men (T1 14% of men, T2 7% of men). I haven’t learned the shoes-already-on-bike technique (need new shoes) and the T1 timer ends before the bike is mounted, so my 5-10 seconds of floundering the mount aren’t recorded in T1.
There are alot of posts on here about running. Coming from a running background I know what works for me. Try getting in on local running groups or track training with them. Running with faster people can help. Alot of my runs I actually ride 15-20 min first on the trainer just to get warmed up. I actually feel better running after biking them without it.
The key to triathlon is to race as strong as YOU can in each discipline. Like you stated, if you crush yourself in the swim, your whole race goes down the toilet. The same goes for the run if you crush yourself on the bike. That being said, when I first got into triathlon, I would start spinning out my legs about a 1/2 mile out from transition to “loosen up” for the run. BAD IDEA. The run is going to hurt for at least a half mile so you might as well pedal hard the whole way and deal with the pain for that half mile. JUst shoot for a strong race overall. Push hard the whole way but within your own limits. Good luck.