How do you race?
jac
Posts: 452
in General Chat
When it comes to the bike?
Do you go all-guns blazing, TT-style or down a notch or two because you know the run is next?
I ask because I felt as though I took the bike quite conservatively the other week because of the run..
Do you go all-guns blazing, TT-style or down a notch or two because you know the run is next?
I ask because I felt as though I took the bike quite conservatively the other week because of the run..
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Personally I have found my max bike speed for each distance by training at race distance or above and at race intensity. I find it harder to slow down as the adrenaline kicks in when racing and my bike legs my best bit, so I always try a bit to hard on it then suffer in the first couples of Ks in the run.
Maybe also worth thinking about what distances your racing over, during sprints I have a bad habit of going all out and hoping I can hang on till the end .....obviously this didnt work with my first OD I bonked hard!!! during the begining of the run and the end bit was all walking!! very bad planning.
Hope thats some help
Mat
For Long distance its all about pacing and practice, lots of long bikes so you know what speed/cadence you can sustain.
For olympic, pace does come into it but not so much, I like to think of it as a 40k TT JUST below TT effort.
For sprints its all out guns blazing/pyrotechnics/dancing ladies everything I can throw at it and then just hang on for dear life for the run.
Most of my training has been LD training this year and not much sprint/speed work. However I raced Eton at the weekend (and although I had a crap swim.....) got a 1hr06min using the hang on for dear life method......
In my limited experience so far, this is me. Plus trying to swim calmly at the start.
This is also going to be me for my first OD in June. I may dial it down a tiny bit but my bike is better (less bad) than my run, so I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face, as it were. If the run takes me over an hour, I may rethink...
In a none drafting sprint, the cycling is where there are the most gains to be made.
1) Get through the swim - concentrating on technique
2) Hammer the cycle as hard as possible.
3) Hammer the run as hard as possible with whatever is left.
4) Throw up and Die.
then at the end sit down and try not to throw up while drinking some mad concoction.
Enjoy.
I was running with a couple of mates of mine who are elites (70.3 and quadrathlete),the 70.3 guy used to do oly distance when he was younger at GB level but was screwed over when they brought in drafting as he is a beast on the bike but not the strongest runner. Anyway, we were talking about this and my original thought was that in oly you would hold something back, so you could push hard on the run, but they both said that they would treat the 25 miles almost like a time trial, they would push their body almost to breaking point. They weren't thinking about saving anything for the run as such, as they knew that their bodies had been trained well enough to deal with intense sessions on the bike followed by hard running sessions. Also they had in their mind that during the 10k run they were only 30mins or less from the finish, so they had that to push them. Sometimes it didn't work and they had a bad run, but most of the time their body just got on with it.
The key is train hard and train well. Your body is an amazing thing, you can punish it for hours and it will still keep going.
I can hold 60-65min 40k for 3hours + so anything above olympic is all at this pace, this is a good pace for me... and its at my threshold so although I can go quicker I would slowly grind to a halt....
I dont race with HR or power, I go on feel, I know what it feels like at threshold.
You want to cross that finish line like your gona pass out regardless of distance.... if your not feeling that then you havent pushed hard enough and you wont have achieved the highest position/fastest time you could have achieved......
As long as you fuel your body correctly it will keep going forever.... well nearly...:)
Hard it is then.
Sick bucket added to checklist!
For me, it's a case of balls out all the way round. If I could have gone harder I might as well have stayed in bed.
also there is not a better feeling to pick you up, and keep you going than picking off people on the run.