Curious what the consensus is on race simulations from the ST faithful. I completed Quassy Half in early June and PR’d but didnt perform to what I feel my potential is. It is a tough ass course but I dont want to just blame it all on that. What I didnt do is much in the line of bike->run bricks that were of race sim distance. I am doing Rev3 OOB and have a couple months, if I were to schedule a race sim effort like a 60mi bike 6-8mi run say 3 times in that two months would that be too much? I realize this is personal so I guess I am looking for personal experiences with it. I know the view on bricks is quite polarized but for me adding them in the last three weeks before Quassy helped a ton as I felt fresh coming off the bike for the first 4 mi then those damn hills slowed me way down.
Just a few questions. You PR’d, acknowledged it is a tough ass course but still didnt think you did enough in training?
How far off were you of what you thought you would do?
Based off of training rides and open run times I figured I could do a. 5:15 ended around 5:35. My swim was a mess thanks to poor sighting as my garmin had me at 1.6mi. Bike goal was a 2:48 and I was toast with 15mi left despit lots of long rides (by my standards so 3hr) some more seasoned and faster athletes have suggested I need to make my longer rides longer with bricks more often so I may go for that an see what happens. I wasn’t sure of there was any merit in measuring out a 60mi ride and then 10k run and racing it with a goal of getting faster at HIM effort.
I think your better off focusing on longer bikes, say ~70-80 mile range (short brick run) those 2 months leading up and 1 race sim close to the race,
I did my 55m+4m race sim on the Sat of the weekend prior to race. Had a big PR HIM race the next week at Nationals, but i feel it was mainly due to good solid Long Bike/Long Run weekend training at Zone 2.
If you felt good off the bike and had good 4miles then i’d say you accomplished the main goal.
How did you pace the bike? Powermeter?
Sometimes you can just have off days. If you don’t feel strong at the end of the bike, your run is not likely to go well.
I think we’d have to see you overall training load to make a real judgement and metrics such as power numbers in training vs. racing.
For example my recent performance was no surprise when you look at my training numbers, how I’ve done on long rides with brick runs up to 6 miles and a open 1/2 mary I did 3 weeks before my race.
I’ts not about the length of you training rides, it’s the overall training load of them. A 3 hour ride ridden at 70.3 pace (Z3 Tempo) is just as good or better than a slower 4 hour ride… and much more time effective. Then shorter rides during he week are a mix of Z2 recovery and Z3-4 harder efforts. Or some prefer all Z3 with a Z4-5 hard rides.
For me, I did a LOT of Z3 rides in the final 8 week build. Probably 80% of my riding was between about 80-90% power…tempo in rolling terrain similar to my race. Very little faster stuff, very little slower.
60mi + 10k is something I did a couple times. Mostly as a confidence builder and to verify my nutrition plan. Weeks where I have bricks usually result in lower overall mileage since miles run off the bike are more fatiguing.
I don’t think you need to do longer than 20-30 min tempo runs slightly faster than half pace off the bike. And you only need to do that a few times a season once you’re racing. I do a lot of 2.5-3 hour rides at close to half pace, as well as a fairly steady 4.5-5 hour ride with a short, very hard brick every week.
Do some sprints and oly’s at the end of your down weeks though - great workouts and don’t require much recovery.
Specificity is important, but doing a 60 mile ride with an 8 mile run after is going to require too much recovery, and you’ll be missing valuable training time.
Most common take away is more
Consistent volume on the bike, thanks for taking the time to respond.
I pace myself off RPE, was going to get a Stages but ended up canceling the order via my LBS when the wait went from 4-6 to 8-10 weeks. I will order again next year. A friend suggested a longer ride sat then a 90min ride Sunday both with short bricks so I may try that. I tend to recover quick. I did a 132mi group ride last week and ran the next day and have been on the bike twice since them with no issues so far.
Thank you to those who responded
One question I would have is how shagged were you on the run? (e.g., did you overbike it?). Did you hold your HR steady if no power or creep up into z4? Hammer the hills?
I completed Quassy Half in early June and PR’d but didnt perform to what I feel my potential is. It is a tough ass course but I dont want to just blame it all on that. What I didnt do is much in the line of bike->run bricks that were of race sim distance. I am doing Rev3 OOB and have a couple months, if I were to schedule a race sim effort like a 60mi bike 6-8mi run say 3 times in that two months would that be too much?
Race simulations are days where you nail down your execution; your pacing and nutrition.
Most of the time, poor pacing and nutrition shows up on the run of races. A rough guide is that a well executed race will get you within 10% of your “open” race times. So your run split would be expected to be within 10% of your half marathon split. Be careful to use a real half marathon performance rather than “I think I could do a” half marathon performance. A training run will do if you were really gettin’ it on that run.
So take a look, your half marathon split at Quassy vs your half marathon run time, if they are more than 10% different then your pacing and nutrition could use some refinement. I’d say two simulations and I’d go 45 mile bike and 9 mile run, the run is where you see the difference.
If your run was pretty much up to standard already, then the race simulations might not help that much and as already noted, they can take a couple of days to recover from.
As others have said, it’s more about the consistency of training than any single magic workout. Given Quassy is such a hard course, you probably hit the hills too hard, and burned a lot of matches. It’s quite possible your time goals were not actually realistic. A half is long enough that nutrition is very important, if you didn’t get in enough calories that could be part of the problem.
As for the swim, assuming you wore your Garmin on your wrist I’d take it with a grain of salt. Was your time so far off that you really think you swam .4 mile long, that would be going really far off course. I find my Garmin essentially useless on my wrist, I can only get good GPS data in open water by putting it in my swim cap, so for races I just leave it on my bike. As an example of how bad it can be, last summer I swam the IMLP course, following the cable the entire way. The GPS track showed me zig zagging all over the place and covering an extra .2 mile.
Good timing for this thread. I was considering doing a semi race simulation this weekend in getting ready for my HIM. I was going to ride 50-60 miles then do a 10 mile run. Thing I’m most worried about is nutrition and hydration. Would I be better off skipping it and just a longer ride like 70-80 miles and go for a 2-3 mile run after?