this year I will participate in two Extreme Triathlons, the Swissman and the Janosik. I try to plan my power output on the bike with bestbikesplit. And here is my question. I am not sure what boundary condition I should choose. If I start with IF=0,65 I get TSS=320. Allen/Coggan recommends a value of 250 to 280 for a full ironman (in the book “Training and Racing with a Power Meter”). With TSS=280 as a boundary condition I got IF=0,6 and round about half an hour longer finish time. Does anybody have some experience/values from races like that (also Norseman, Evergreen Endurance, Embrunman, Celtman etc.)?
Also interested in hearing. I’ve planned Norseman using BBS based on TSS=290 (lucky to be a strong runner off the bike, but will test this theory!!) and this gets me 6:15 off IF=0.68, with variability index 1.06.
I feel like that is a nice IF for a hilly course, but am not at all convinced by the time prediction! I know they model typical weather conditions but it is massively changeable on the day.
I think the amount of TSS you accumulate will be a product of your IF but also your FTP and the course, as this determines how long you are out there. If you are bounded by IF then the higher FTP will accumulate the lower TSS, as you finish the course sooner. If you are bounded by TSS as a model for total work/fatigue, then the higher FTP will enable a higher IF, as again you will cover the course more quickly. Which in a nutshell is why IM pros can ride at such a high % of FTP.
Be very interested to hear from people who have applied either approach to a hilly/extreme course, and what they learned. I’m still inclined to target TSS for the Norseman bike, and by all accounts my target power from BBS isn’t putting me into the red up the hills. I’d bloody take 6:15 in a heartbeat!! I may need to drop my TSS target but my FTP will be higher come August… :-).
Speaking with past winners of the local Extreme Triathlon (Israman, ~3000m of altitude on the bike and a net 700m downhill in the first quarter of the marathon), there’s no way around exceeding the TSS “guideline” for that kind of race. On that kind of course, sometimes the extra time lost on the bike can’t be recouped by running faster.
Once you have chosen your target TSS (example : 280 TSS), then you still need to find the more realistic association IF / Time
Is it 66% IF over 6h30 ?
Or 69% IF over 6h ?
Or 59% IF over 8h ?
Simulation is nice, but testing in similar conditions is better, if you can.
You can test you on just 1 or 2 hours, on a relatively similar course (% uphill and downhill, altitude, wind, …) to see what speed (so what realistic time) you can expect at some given % of IF. This will help you choose the right targets % IF and time.
I can tell you from my norseman experience (my first and only long distance race, unfortunately without power meter). I am a bad swimmer, resonably good cyclist and strong runner → target was black shirt, reality withe shirt. My team and me thought that we were in the plan but realised in Geilo (half of bike corse) that we were not. Then I start pushing on the bike and also at the run. I ran out of T2 with another strong runner, we were pushing really hard (57th run time until the checkpoint). Over all I was on P167 at the checkpoint. For my next norseman my goal is to leave T1 before 1:30 and try to cycle faster then 7 hours. You have to do it on the bike, on the run you can only defense. But if I look on your numbers, you should not be concerned about the black shirt :-).
Thank you for the tip, the test over 2h seems to be a good plan (with an additional 45…60min run). But maybe someone can post his/her values in this thread…
Thanks Marco, and we will have to wait and see because as PW rightly points out there is a big difference between what you think you can do on paper and what happens when the wind and rain hits your face! Black t-shirt is my only goal for the event, but I am just keen to get out there and taste the experience. And I’m also a fairly poor swimmer!
One of the cool things with BBS is the integration with my Wahoo Bolt means I can download the race profile I created and display my real-time target power on the head unit. In theory that takes judgement out of the equation on the day, as you simply ride the prescribed power based on your exact position on the course. I’m gonna play with this on some practice runs, because I’m a bit old school, but if there is ever a course where you want to properly distribute your work it is Norseman! Thanks for replying and good luck with your races.
Hi all,
after I have finished the amazing and very impressive swissman I can give you some numbers. Average Power=165W, normalised Power=173W, IF=0,642, TSS=347. Total time 8:55h, moving time 8:05h. I had very good legs for the run, the time was 6:11h (could be faster but there happen a lot of things that limit my motivation…).
1.08-6.05-5.08 for Norseman. 342 TSS with AP 229, NP 249 and IF 0.75. Just too heavy to go fast with those numbers and too chicken to descend fast on those roads. I felt ok for the first half of the run (1.43), but ran out of gels due to a tight budget and some lost gels along the way. Lost my support going up the mountain and pretty much died just short of the checkpoint. Probably went a bit too hard on the way up to Dyranut but an incident in T1 (8 min lost) had me pretty fired up for the first part.
(Tried to upload a picture of my training peaks file, but apparently it is too big)
