How to Pace a Triathlon

In this case, it IS about the bike

We hear it all the time in our intake calls with athletes: “I run well in my workouts and open running races, but I struggle to run well off the bike. I keep training my run, but it never seems to improve.”

Sound familiar? You’re in good company. It makes sense, right? Running’s not going well in a race, so train the run. Sensible, intuitive thinking, but incorrect in the case of a triathlon.

Think about it this way: the best long-distance triathletes in the word run at paces that would, put up against true runners, elicit little more than a shrug from the running crowd. A 2:36 marathon in an Ironman includes you in a club of maybe thirty to fifty athletes in the whole world if you’re a man. 2:50 is the same standard for a woman. Those times in an open marathon would leave you running with the strong amateurs. So even the best in the world aren’t actually running that fast, compared to what humans can do.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is the bike (and, to a lesser degree, the swim). If you’re preparing for ANY kind of triathlon, you’re going to have run last, after you have spent most of the race riding your bike at a fairly strong effort OR for a long time. That fatigue is the factor that will determine how your run goes, and as many of us know, how you do on the run will determine how your overall race goes. Another thing we hear all the time (or see on social media, where it will definitely get an eye roll), is “everything was going so well until the second half of the run!” Yeah. That’s the sport, Broheim. If you’re too tired by the time you get to the run, you’ll be able to fake it for a little while, but then the lights will go out.

Today we’ll show you how to fix it. And if you work with us, your coach will help you fix it.

An Energy Cascade

Nope, not a dishwasher. An energy cascade is a gradient: there is more energy at the top, and the system loses energy as it moves forward in time (just like a waterfall or a natural cascade: there is more potential energy at the top and less at the bottom). When you start a race you are fresh, hydrated, and full of carbohydrates. You spend some of that energy during the swim, but ideally not too much. Then you spend some more energy on the bike but…ideally, not too much. Get the idea? If you do it right, you end up at the start of the run with just enough energy to accomplish your goals. Swim and ride too hard, Broheim? Your cascade will turn to a trickle halfway through the run.

Fitness Embiggens the Cascade

We’re really into some weird subheadings today, huh? If you know the reference in the subheading above, shoot us an email or leave us a comment. If you believe us about an energy cascade, our next goal is to make the drop from the start of the race to the end of the bike as small as possible. You have TWO tools at your disposal to make this happen: your training and your pacing. We’ll talk about the pacing in the next section, but we’re going to introduce another metaphor here: your energy is a bank, and your training functions as the deposits into that bank. With endurance sports, very often more actually is more, if you do it right, and if you can make more deposits or bigger deposits, eventually you’ll have more bank. The first question we ask athletes in those intake calls we referenced above is “how much do you ride your bike each week?” Very often the number is far too low, usually close to the amount of time the athlete is running each week. Your cycling volume needs to be at least double your running volume each week, and that’s the minimum. Large sweeping statements like this are always bound to get the person stating them into trouble, but we’ll stand by this one in most cases—the vast majority of triathletes aren’t riding their bikes enough. 

Pacing is the Budget

A budget is a great tool, but it usually misses an important dimension: time. It’s easy to look at your budget for the month and think “Ah, snap. I got this this month,” forgetting that usually your income doesn’t show up all at once—there will be bottlenecks and periods where money is coming…but isn’t quite here yet. If you get into that situation in a race, we’re sorry, but your day is probably done. You can’t afford to run out of money before your mid-month payday, which means you really need to think about your burn rate. 

You have to learn how to pace the swim and the bike properly. The swim can be hard, because there are few ways for you to measure your output objectively. This is one of the reason that we hate watches in the pool at Campfire: the watches record data (badly, which is another reason to skip them) and count laps for you, which allows the athlete to zone out and not really pay attention to what’s going on in their body. Stop using your watches, and learn how to gauge effort using the clock on the deck and what your body is telling you. Then you’ll know what the appropriate pace feels like during the race. Then practice that again, and again, and again until you master the skill. What’s that joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall…?

On the bike you have more tools, which should result in better outcomes, but so often that’s not the case. High on carbohydrates and competition, Broheim is going to destroy the universe. Whatever percentage of FTP or muscle oxygenation figure or on-the-bike lactate testing device you prefer to use, the best tool you have is your own expertise of effort. That expertise is honed during long hours of training and paying attention to what’s happening in your body. Want to have a good Ironman? Aim for “moderate,” which is a sensible effort given that you’ll be doing it for four-to-eight hours. If you’re desperately wanting to point at professionals you admire and “how good they are at suffering,” you’re missing the point: they suffer in training so their “moderate” is very, very fast. Want to do well at 70.3? You’re in the “moderately-hard to hard” range. Olympic distance? “Hard to very hard.” 

You want something more objective? OK, that’s fair, although things like this will get you into trouble more than help you. We know that most professionals will normalize around 80% of FTP for an Ironman, but that’s normalized power and they’re professionals. If you’re a very good amateur triathlete who trains 12-15 hours a week on the bike you could aim for 78% normalized and 75-76% average. If you don’t do that amount of training you will be below that. 70.3 is about 10% higher, but we’re not going to consider professionals here, since 70.3 is closer to an Olympic-distance event for them. If you can average between 78-88% of FTP in a 70.3, you’re probably going to be fine. But want our real advice? Ironman = 5-6/10, 70.3 = 6-7/10, Olympic distance = 7-8/10, and a sprint is pretty much as hard as you can go the whole time.

What’s the big message from these sections? Train more in the swim and bike, and slow down during your racing. Doing so will allow you to run well.

CONCLUSION

Triathlon isn’t a hard sport in terms of intensity. You’re never really going nearly as hard as a single-sport athlete. What makes triathlon hard and cool and interesting is balancing fatigue and shepherding your energy. We hope you take away these following lessons from today:

1. Build your bank through more training on the swim and the bike

2. Your run is probably fine

3. Spend less of your bank by backing off in the swim and the bike

4. You’ll really enjoy how it feels to have energy on the run; as the Aussies always said “Swim and bike for show, run for dough!”