So I have been thinking, are there standard pace equivalencies for all three sports for triathlon specifically? By that, are there short, non-disruptive (by that I mean short recovery so it doesn’t require taper or recovery) to test your ability in all three sports that give an indication of your potential in racing.
Is there any standard measure to convert TT times to race times? If these exist do these actually work?
Do you use any sort of TT to know you are race ready? Will you share TT results and following race results? How short can a TT be to achieve effective race estimation? Does a 1km pool TT transfer well, or does a 400m pool TT work? The same with the bike, a 40km ITT seems to be the indicator for me, but can a 5km TT, or 2x20min or 3x10min repeats be used instead?
So for the three sports, I would guess the following to be a reasonable gold standard that will not disrupt training with long recoveries:
Swim
1km pool TT (non-wetsuit, non-drafting and tumble turns)
Bike
This seems the simplest to me, an honest ITT (40km) or FTP (2x20 or 1x30) test adjusted for distance and the course should give a fairly accurate time.
I think it depends on your limiters and your level of performance. Being fast even at relatively shorter distances generally means you’re probably putting in (or have put in at some point in your life) pretty high mileage and don’t have any particular form, endurance or speed limiters. So for a FOP athlete, I think you could extrapolate a decent guess at Ironman potential (I’m assuming you’re referring to Ironman here) from distances as short as 200m, 20k or 5k in SBR respectively. If you have the speed and endurance to knock out a sub-20 minute 5k, then you can make a decent go at a marathon.
For a MOP or BOP athlete, I think it’s harder to extrapolate since you’re more likely to have limiters that will kick in at longer distances. E.g. somebody who runs a 5k in 30 minutes might simply have a speed limiter and could jog a marathon in 5 hours, or alternatively they may have an endurance limiter which means their performance is going to drop off drastically beyond 5k and they might struggle to even finish an Ironman. For a lot of the MOP or BOP athletes I see (and I’m a solid MOPer!) their 5k run time is meaningless in terms of predicting their IM run performance because due to lack of endurance/nutrition/hydration/pacing they’re walking most of the run anyway.