# IRONMAN Bike Training: Your Questions Answered | Ep 535

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 16 Apr 2025, 30 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/101257786/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-3-14%2F4cba8460-405d-e257-19c6-7f657e1aaf0e.m4a

ATTENTION First Time IRONMAN / 70.3 Athletes: 🚀 Join Team Oxygenaddict's FREE IRONMAN Accelerator webclass and learn how to dominate your first IRONMAN in as little as 6-8 hours training per week: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/ironman-accelerator * * * * * * * * In this week's episode... Coach Rob answers 10 athlete questions about improving your biking performance for 70.3 and Ironman races. Including: When & how to include high-intensity training... Adapting to a TT bike position... Balancing indoor and outdoor training for hot races... The best ways to build leg strength for hilly courses... Pacing strategies for long rides... Maintaining bike fitness while focusing on running... Managing saddle discomfort. * * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * Like what you heard in this show? Join hundreds of other age group triathletes making the most of their limited training time, training with Team OxygenAddict - the most comprehensive triathlon coaching program for busy age groupers. Book an application call to see if you'd be a good fit for Team Oxygenaddict for the coming season here: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/consultation-call/ * * * * * * * * * * * * precisionfuelandhydration.com Precision Fuel & Hydration help athletes personalise their hydration and fuelling strategies for training and racing. Use the free Fuel & Hydration Planner to get a personalised race nutrition plan for your next event. And then book a free 20-minute video consultation with a member of the PF&H Athlete Support Team to refine your strategy. Listeners get 15% off their first order of fuel and electrolytes with Precision Fuel & Hydration. Simply click this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Team Oxygenaddict on YouTube Team Oxygenaddict on Spotify Team Oxygenaddict on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:04] Hello, and welcome to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon podcast.
[0:07] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors, Precision Fuel
[0:09] and hydration.com. You can get 15% off your first
[0:12] order with the code Oxygen Fuel 25.
[0:15] Welcome to the show everyone. I'm your host coach Rob Wilby
[0:17] from Team Oxygen Addict, and every week we bring you an
[0:20] episode of this podcast to help motivate and inspire you.
[0:23] On this week's episode, it's Ask the Coach.
[0:26] I've got 10 questions on improving your biking.
[0:28] These are real world questions that have been sent in my the
[0:32] listeners to the show viewers on YouTube or in some cases are
[0:35] real world coached athletes. And I really think these
[0:38] questions and the answers to them are going to help you
[0:40] improve your bike training and hence improve your performance
[0:43] in your 70.3 or your Ironman. Now, before we start, two things
[0:47] you could do to help us please #1 if you like this episode,
[0:51] please follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
[0:54] It really helps the show get shown to new people.
[0:57] And secondly, if you've got a big Iron Man goal this year and
[1:00] a crazy schedule, our new free web class could help change
[1:03] everything for you. We'll show you how Team Oxygen
[1:06] Addicts Iron Man Accelerator Rogram is enabling busy
[1:09] rofessionals. That's people with kids, careers
[1:12] and real lives. It's average 8 hours or less of
[1:14] training a week and still cross the Iron Man finish line.
[1:17] It's often not about training harder, but it's about training
[1:20] smarter. You can watch our free coaching
[1:22] webinar, the links in the show notes.
[1:25] All right, let's jump right in then to today's bunch of
[1:28] questions. So firstly, should I include
[1:31] high intensity bike sessions when I'm already doing regular
[1:35] sweet spot intervals? So it's a really common
[1:38] question. This, the training that I give
[1:40] to my athletes doing 70.3 and Iron Man, they'll have their
[1:43] long endurance ride, they'll have a session that's focused on
[1:47] improving leg strength and producing force, and they'll
[1:49] have a sweet spot interval session.
[1:52] And the sweet spot session is the highest intensity work we're
[1:54] going to do while we're in the specific phase of training for
[1:57] Iron Man or 70.3. I know there's lots of different
[2:00] coaching processes out there and people have different ideas.
[2:03] And there are some people who swear by doing really, really
[2:06] high intensity hill reps or VO2 Max intervals on the bike and
[2:11] those have their place at a specific time of year.
[2:14] But if you are within certainly 8 to 16 weeks of your goal race
[2:19] this year, I think the trade off of the higher intensity work in
[2:24] terms of how much fatigue it's going to produce isn't worth the
[2:27] the gain of how much fitness you're going to actually
[2:31] increase. And also, it's not particularly
[2:34] specific fitness improvement relative to a 70.3 or an Iron
[2:39] Man. And what I mean by that is if
[2:41] you're training at the very, very high end of your fitness
[2:43] ability, if you're trying to increase your VO2 Max, that is
[2:47] an increase in fitness. But it isn't particularly
[2:49] specific to how you're going to be using fitness on race day for
[2:53] a 70.3 and definitely not for Iron Man.
[2:56] It's not the people who've got the biggest VO2 Max's who are
[2:58] going to do the best Iron Man because it's a long endurance
[3:01] event. So my advice to you is going to
[3:03] be to spend your limited training time training in a way
[3:06] that you get tired the right way.
[3:09] Train in a way where you're using the energy you've got
[3:11] available in a week to specifically improve your
[3:15] endurance. At that point.
[3:16] That's going to be the thing that helps you most on race day.
[3:21] It's never who's got the biggest VO2 Max is going to make the
[3:24] difference at the end of an Iron Man for everyone except the
[3:26] very, very pointy end of the pro field.
[3:29] It's going to be who's got the best endurance and who can keep
[3:32] on going at a relatively low percentage of their overall
[3:36] their overall fitness levels. OK, question 2.
[3:40] What's the best way to get used to a new TT bike position
[3:44] without compromising comfort or performance?
[3:47] So if you've recently bought yourself a TT bike and you're
[3:51] transitioning over from a road bike, or if you've had the TT
[3:56] bike for a while, perhaps you haven't ridden it much during
[3:58] the winter and it's now approaching race season and
[4:01] you're thinking about getting back onto the TT bike.
[4:03] There are a couple of things to be aware of.
[4:06] The first thing is the comfort of the position is going to need
[4:11] some adapting to. So riding down on a relatively
[4:14] low position in the arrow bars, you're going to find that even
[4:17] going out for an hour the first time out, there's a specific
[4:21] kind of fitness that your neck muscles, your upper back
[4:23] muscles, your lower back muscles, even your shoulders and
[4:26] your arms need to hold that TT position.
[4:30] It isn't initially as comfortable as riding sitting up
[4:34] on a road bike. Now that's not to say you can't
[4:36] train yourself into the position and become very comfortable in
[4:40] it, because you absolutely can. But the key is here, it will
[4:43] take training to get used to being in that position.
[4:46] And so often for athletes who have done multiple seasons of
[4:51] races on the TT bike, we tend to forget that if we don't train in
[4:56] this position, we lose the ability to ride in this
[4:59] position. And if you've spent some time in
[5:01] the offseason riding your road bike and not riding any TT bike,
[5:04] what you'll find is when you get back into it, it can often be
[5:07] quite a shock how difficult it is to ride in that in that TT
[5:11] position and hold any kind of reasonable power.
[5:14] But more than that, hold any kind of reasonable comfort and
[5:16] be able to see where you're going down the road, to be able
[5:20] to hold your head in the position just down in the arrow
[5:23] tuck. So it will take time for you to
[5:26] adapt back to that. And we forget that it took time
[5:28] to adapt the first time through as well.
[5:30] And I can remember from my own career, I can remember the start
[5:33] of a new season and transitioning to riding outdoors
[5:36] on my TT bike again. I'm remembering the season
[5:39] before having been more comfortable on my TT bike for
[5:42] five hours than I was riding a road bike for five hours,
[5:46] because I'd done all of my training in that position.
[5:48] Once I spent a winter ride in the road bike, lo and behold, it
[5:52] was really uncomfortable to get back on the TT bike.
[5:55] So it will take some time. So the way to approach getting
[5:58] back into or getting into TT bike fitness shape, if you like,
[6:03] is to approach it as interval training for the position.
[6:07] The first time you go out, ride 5 minutes down in the arrow
[6:11] position and 5 minutes sitting up. 5 minutes back in the arrow
[6:14] position, 5 minutes sitting up. You will find that those micro
[6:18] breaks that you're taking are really going to help you be able
[6:22] to hold the position for longer. And then across time, you can
[6:25] reduce the amount of time that you've got sitting up.
[6:28] You can extend the amount of time you've got in the arrow
[6:30] position, and that will help you transition to being really
[6:33] comfortable in that position for longer periods of time.
[6:36] But it will take time to transition.
[6:38] So know that give yourself a period of, you know, 4 to 6 to 8
[6:42] weeks to really get comfortable in that position, especially for
[6:45] you athletes who are racing Iron Man.
[6:47] If you're going to be down in that position for, you know,
[6:50] between let's say 4:45 for a top age group isn't anywhere up to 8
[6:54] or 9 hours. That's a long time at either end
[6:58] of the spectrum to be in that position.
[6:59] So it's going to take time to get used to it.
[7:03] OK, question 3. How do I balance indoor and
[7:07] outdoor bike sessions when I'm preparing for a race in hot
[7:11] conditions? So this is the question that's
[7:14] specifically aimed to think at when you're going to race in a
[7:17] place that is much warmer or much hotter than you are used to
[7:21] riding in your current climate. So there's a couple of parts to
[7:27] this. I think it's really important,
[7:29] especially for Iron Man athletes, that you you spend the
[7:32] time outdoors riding the bike you're going to ride on race day
[7:36] in the position you're going to ride on race day.
[7:38] So off the back of our questionnaire about TT bikes, if
[7:41] you're going to be riding in ATT position on race day, you need
[7:45] to be doing that in training. But there's the second part of
[7:49] this, which is if race day is going to be much, much hotter
[7:52] than you're going to be used to, how do you get used to the
[7:55] change in temperature? Is there anything that you can
[7:57] prepare to do in advance of this?
[8:00] Any heat acclimation work you can do?
[8:02] And the answer is yes, there is work that you can do,
[8:05] absolutely. And that's best done indoors.
[8:08] So it's great to go back to look over our episodes we've got out
[8:12] there on the heat training protocol.
[8:15] There are several things that you can do.
[8:17] Some of them might involve riding indoors on your bike
[8:21] wearing clothes. Some of them might involve
[8:24] riding indoors in hotter conditions.
[8:26] And we'll talk about ways you can do that.
[8:28] But the real way to do this is to separate out the the bike
[8:32] riding aspect from the heat acclimation aspect.
[8:36] And the two ways you can go about heat acclimation really
[8:39] are through the sauna protocol or the hot bath protocol.
[8:44] And in brief, both of those involve you spending time either
[8:48] in the sauna or in the hot bath as soon as you have finished a
[8:52] training session when you're already hot.
[8:55] And it's those heat acclamation things that are going to make
[8:58] the biggest difference in terms of you preparing for hot
[9:02] conditions on race day rather than necessarily thinking about
[9:06] doing the majority of your bike riding indoors.
[9:09] Because that's what this question is getting as I think
[9:11] it's should I do my training indoors with clothes on, with
[9:15] the fan off so I get used to being hot on the bike.
[9:19] I don't think that's effective as training specifically for the
[9:22] demands of the environment. You know, the demands of the
[9:25] race outdoors and training for the demands of the temperature
[9:29] environment through a heat acclamation protocol.
[9:33] Question 4. Should I still complete an FTP
[9:36] test if I've been unwell recently or if I'm returning
[9:40] from illness? So this has come up a lot for
[9:44] our coached athletes recently. We've got FTP tests scheduled in
[9:47] either at the end of a block or we've got outdoor FTP tests
[9:50] scheduled in because they're now transitioning to riding outdoors
[9:54] and they want to make sure their outdoor numbers are accurate.
[9:56] So having scheduled men, what do we do if you then have a period
[10:00] of illness that's thrown into the mix and we can see we're
[10:03] getting better from the illness, but we've got that test on the
[10:06] horizon. So a few bits of guidelines here
[10:08] for you athletes. I like to give it about 5 days
[10:13] worth of training before you even consider doing any kind of
[10:16] high intensity work, let alone testing after you've been ill
[10:20] and to be more cautious than that if you've been seriously
[10:24] ill. So if you're coming back from a
[10:25] cold, I think you can, you can generally say within sort of two
[10:29] to three days, you're going to be back feeling normal and
[10:32] you're ready to train normally. If you've had anything more than
[10:34] that, if you've had anything approaching flu or vomiting or
[10:37] things like that, I think it's worth taking a full week to ease
[10:41] back into training before you think about doing any kind of
[10:44] intensity. So the idea is that it's that
[10:46] that full seven days really. So what we'll do with our
[10:50] athletes is we'll move the ref TP test back by a full week and
[10:54] allow them a full week of training before they jump into
[10:57] that test. And the reason is twofold.
[10:59] If you do a test as your first session back after any kind of
[11:03] break, it's probably not going to give you a representative
[11:06] number of what your fitness actually is.
[11:08] It'll give you a a snapshot of that day.
[11:11] But it takes you that week to get back to the point where your
[11:14] body's systems are firing on on all cylinders, as it were.
[11:18] So give yourself that gap. Don't feel you've got to be a
[11:21] slave to a plan. Like I said with our coached
[11:23] athletes we're always happy to move those tests for athletes
[11:26] and advise our athletes. If you're a self trained athlete
[11:29] you've just got to have the confidence.
[11:31] Even if a plan says to do a test at this point you have to be
[11:34] flexible and move it back and recognise what's happening with
[11:37] your body as you return back from illness.
[11:41] OK question 5. How can I keep my bike fitness
[11:44] high whilst also focusing on improving my running?
[11:48] OK, it's a really great question that the dual challenge of an
[11:52] athlete wanting to improve their running but also want to keeping
[11:56] the fitness high. It's something that comes up in
[11:58] our coaching group at least once a week.
[12:00] So I think the way to separate this out is to think firstly,
[12:04] you're training like a triathlete, you're not training
[12:07] like a runner or a cyclist or both.
[12:10] You're training like a triathlete.
[12:12] And what I mean by that is we talk about the Halo effect of
[12:16] your bike fitness having a big knock on effect onto your run
[12:20] fitness. So just by completing your
[12:23] structured bike sessions, that's going to be helping to improve
[12:26] your running. It's, it's tempting to ask how,
[12:29] but the way that that happens is if you're thinking about the
[12:33] fitness of your body system in general, your heart, your lungs,
[12:37] your blood, the blood vessels, oxygen transfer that's happening
[12:40] between the blood and the muscles.
[12:42] Those muscles genuinely don't know whether you're on the bike
[12:45] or whether you're on the run. The oxygen transfer that's
[12:48] happening, the efficiency improvements that happen are
[12:51] going to be the same on the bike and the run.
[12:53] And it's going to mean that a large part of the aerobic
[12:56] fitness development that will help your long term running will
[12:59] come from the bikings that you're doing.
[13:02] What that means is the run improvements you can focus on
[13:06] making. They don't necessarily need to
[13:08] be the kind of training sessions that a runner would do where
[13:12] they'll say, right, I need to do 2 interval sessions in a tempo
[13:14] run every week. You're already doing that hard
[13:17] work on the bike. What you can focus on in your
[13:20] runs is #1 being consistent in the frequency of your running.
[13:24] So aim to be running at least three times a week consistently.
[13:29] That's the first part that's really going to help you to your
[13:31] ability. That's really going to help
[13:33] protect you from any kind of run injuries.
[13:35] And that's probably the number one thing that will help a
[13:38] triathlete improve the running. The second thing that you can do
[13:41] is you can look at incorporating very subtle run form drills into
[13:46] the run training that you're doing.
[13:47] And you can have a have a nosey on YouTube.
[13:50] You can look for the the run form drill videos that I've got
[13:53] up on there, which will show you some really simple things that
[13:56] you can do with your head, with your hands, with your shoulders,
[13:59] with your chest position. And if you just focus on doing
[14:02] those as you're running, you don't even have to do them as
[14:04] specific drills like you would swim drills in a pool.
[14:08] There are things that you can focus on in terms of how you
[14:11] keep your arms bent, how tightly you clench your hands, where
[14:15] your hands are relative to your rib cage.
[14:17] All of those are covered in our video.
[14:19] But if you go and check that out, you can then treat each run
[14:23] as a way to improve your run efficiency, which will mean
[14:26] you're going faster for the same effort.
[14:29] OK, at this point, it's a great time to interject a sponsor
[14:32] shout out. So we're going to say thanks to
[14:34] Precision Fuel and Hydration for supporting the show.
[14:37] You can use their free fuel and hydration planning tool to
[14:40] receive a personalised strategy for your next race.
[14:43] The planner will help you understand your own
[14:45] carbohydrate, electrolyte and fluid needs and you can even
[14:48] book a free one to one video consultation with PF and HS
[14:52] athlete support team. If you're doing a 70.3 or Iron
[14:55] Man. I genuinely, I genuinely mean
[14:58] this, the aspect of getting hydration, fueling electrolytes
[15:03] and carbohydrate correct on race day and having practised them in
[15:07] training, they're as important as the fitness that you're
[15:10] building for race day itself, especially Iron Man, it's a,
[15:14] it's a fuel limited event, much more so than a fitness limited
[15:18] event. So you have to pay attention to
[15:20] this stuff and get it right. So head on over, take that
[15:23] online fuel and hydration planning tool, it's free to do
[15:27] and it'll give you all the information that you need so you
[15:29] can build your own personalised strategy.
[15:32] OK, let's go back over to the questions number six.
[15:36] What's the best way to build leg strength for hilly bike courses?
[15:41] OK, so really simple answer here, the best way to build
[15:43] specific leg strength for hilly bike courses is to ride hilly
[15:46] bike courses in training. Now there's other things that we
[15:49] can do as well that are going to compliment it, but the most
[15:54] important thing you can do is get yourself to ride really
[15:57] frequently on the kind of course that you're going to be racing
[16:01] on. So this is going to throw up
[16:03] some challenges for some people. If you live in a very flat area
[16:07] and you've entered an extremely hilly Iron Man like Iron Man
[16:10] Wales, or even one of the extreme ones like one of the
[16:13] Norseman, let's say, or one of the ones in the French Alps.
[16:16] If you live in a very flat area and if you then can't get, you
[16:21] know, to any hills at all within within an hour or an hour and a
[16:24] half's drive of where you live, this is going to be a real
[16:27] challenge for you. If you've already entered, I'm
[16:30] going to give you a couple of ideas for what you can do.
[16:32] But the bigger picture here is to pick a course that suits you
[16:36] and suits the way that you can train.
[16:38] Because you'll do yourself a lot more favours entering a
[16:41] relatively flatter, faster course that you can train for on
[16:45] the terrain that's around you than picking a course where you
[16:48] just don't have the option anywhere near you to do any kind
[16:51] of the right training. So that being said, assuming
[16:55] that you do have access to some kind of hills around you, we're
[16:58] going to get you out there and riding on the hills.
[17:00] That's the first thing. You don't need to overthink it.
[17:04] Then in terms of specific things you can do that are going to
[17:07] build leg strength specific for the ride, you're going to be
[17:10] doing. Well, the first thing is often
[17:13] we see with cyclists that form fits function.
[17:16] There's no right way or wrong way to ride the hills, but we
[17:19] can see specific trends. If you are a smaller, slimmer,
[17:23] less muscular athlete, you're almost certainly going to be
[17:28] more efficient riding the hills at a slightly higher cadence,
[17:32] pushing a slightly easier gear if you like.
[17:36] If you are a bigger, more muscular athlete, you're
[17:38] probably going to be more efficient pushing a slightly
[17:41] bigger gear at a slightly lower cadence.
[17:44] So they're the things that you need to train, train the way
[17:47] that you're going to ride on race day.
[17:48] And that's going to help you build specific leg strength for
[17:52] the way that you're going to ride on the on the actual race
[17:54] day itself. Now that being said, there is a
[17:58] definite improvement able or there's a definite improvement
[18:02] that you can make to how strong your legs are and how well you
[18:06] can ride hills by starting to do some specific low cadence work.
[18:11] And what we mean by that is you can ride and push a cadence of
[18:15] 10 to 20 revolutions per minute less than what you're usually
[18:19] comfortable at either when riding on the flats into a
[18:23] headwind or when riding shallow grades going uphill.
[18:28] If you treat it like interval training and do say a minute of
[18:31] lower cadence workout of three or three minutes out of five or
[18:35] five minutes out of 10, and get used to pushing that bigger
[18:39] gear, that is a way you can increase the amount of force
[18:42] your muscles are producing. And it'll help you learn to do
[18:45] that. And you'll have the sensation of
[18:48] becoming stronger and being able to push bigger gears.
[18:51] But the key here is to do it gradually, to do it sensibly.
[18:54] Don't immediately change into the biggest gear that you've got
[18:57] and try and grind up it at 20 reps a minute.
[19:00] And it sounds like an obvious thing to say, but I've heard
[19:03] some absolute horror stories in the past of people who've have
[19:07] been treated really badly by coaches and, and been made to
[19:10] right in the biggest possible gear that they've got, even at
[19:13] the expense of developing knee pain.
[19:16] That's the thing you've got to be careful of is you don't stray
[19:19] into the part where you're at danger of producing any kind of
[19:22] knee pain because that's the part of your body that's going
[19:25] to take the extra strain of the increased force.
[19:28] So be super, super careful of any kind of increased knee pain
[19:32] when you're doing any kind of increased lower cadence work.
[19:37] OK, Question 7. How do I avoid pushing too hard
[19:42] on group rides when I'm supposed to stay in Zone 2?
[19:46] So this is a really great question that's going to be
[19:51] faced by anyone who's specifically because of the
[19:55] reference from the athlete here to Zone 2.
[19:57] It sounds like the training for an Iron Man.
[19:59] So what we're trying to do here is we're trying to go out and do
[20:02] our long ride. We're trying to do it.
[20:06] At A at an intensity that's appropriate to race day.
[20:10] So the athletes said zone 2 here, but what the meaning is an
[20:14] an intensity appropriate for Iron Man race day?
[20:17] They go out in a group ride with a bunch of friends or people
[20:19] from the club and the finding that the group goes really hard
[20:23] up the hills or the finding that the group starts to push on part
[20:27] way through the group ride and it starts straying from heart
[20:30] rate zone 2 into zone 3, maybe into zone 4.
[20:34] I think everyone who's ridden with a group or a club has
[20:36] experienced the ride that starts out really social and it ends up
[20:40] being a hammer fest with essentially the last people
[20:43] hanging on. You've got to be really clear in
[20:47] your head in the situation, why are you going out for a ride
[20:50] with the group and what your overall aim of your training
[20:54] riders. Now, most people are going out
[20:55] with the group because they want to have some company because the
[20:58] long rides can be difficult to do on their own.
[21:01] But you've got to be really clear on the reason that you're
[21:04] going out to do your long ride. And if that's to go out and
[21:08] prepare you really well for your Iron Man, well, you're not
[21:11] preparing really well for your Iron Man by going really hard up
[21:15] hills, by getting involved in sprints for Rd signs and for
[21:18] getting involved in 20 minute maximum threshold efforts on the
[21:22] way back. So you've got to have the
[21:24] courage to say, right, Maybe what I'll do is I'll go out on
[21:27] the group ride, I'll ride with them for the first hour, I'll
[21:30] explain what I'm doing and why it's different to what they're
[21:32] doing. And then I'll peel off and I'll
[21:34] do the last couple of hours, 3 hours, four hours on my own.
[21:38] I think, I think that's the way to go honestly, unless you can
[21:43] talk to a group of friends or club mates who are doing the
[21:46] same kind of ride as you, who with the same ability as you,
[21:49] who are going to go and do the same kind of ride you want to
[21:52] do, I think you're best off going on the solo ride.
[21:57] That leads us directly in to the next question, which is, is it
[22:01] better to ride solo or with a group when training for a long
[22:04] distance event? So the guidance I'm going to
[22:07] give here is it's really hard to do long distance training on
[22:11] your own all the time. It can get very lonely.
[22:14] But as we've just answered with the previous question, going out
[22:17] on traditional group rides or club rides often doesn't prepare
[22:20] you very well for the demands of the event you're about to do.
[22:23] So you've got to weigh up how much do you want the company and
[22:27] how much do you want the training of, the training effect
[22:30] of the workout itself. And I think the best way to go
[22:33] here is to find either a single person to ride with or a couple
[22:37] of people to ride with who are aiming for the same kind of
[22:40] events as you at the same kind of time as you who want to ride
[22:44] about the same pace as you. And you can then go out and you
[22:47] can spend some time riding and having a chat.
[22:50] But a better way to do it specific to your event.
[22:53] And I'd advise you doing this, the closer you get to the lead
[22:57] up to your actual event, certainly in the last six weeks,
[23:01] is even though you're riding together, treat it like you're
[23:03] riding in an event. Ride 10 or 15 metres apart so
[23:06] there's no drafting effect, but you practise riding at that
[23:10] legal draught distance. So there's a person in front
[23:14] pacing you, but you're not taking pace from them, you're
[23:17] riding that legal distance behind them.
[23:19] That'd be great practise for race day.
[23:22] You can then agree that each one of you is going to ride in front
[23:24] for, you know, 5 minutes or 10 minutes, whatever it might be.
[23:28] You get the sense you've got people around you.
[23:31] You can even do a a 30 minute effort and then you can all set
[23:34] up for 5 minutes and have a chat and then get back to another 30
[23:37] minute effort at your specific goal intensity.
[23:41] But that way I think you can have people to ride with.
[23:43] You don't get lonely. But also most importantly here,
[23:47] the the way that your training isn't dictated to you by other
[23:51] people. I think that's the most
[23:52] important part here. Question 9.
[23:57] How should I pace my long bike ride so I balance intensity and
[24:02] endurance? OK.
[24:04] So I think the thing to be clear on here before we answer this is
[24:09] what duration of event are you training for and what's the
[24:13] appropriate intensity for you to ride at for that event?
[24:16] And the challenge here is there's lots of information out
[24:19] there from pro athletes and that that information is going to be
[24:23] wrong for the majority of age group athletes.
[24:27] So I'm going to give a couple of broad guidelines here.
[24:31] If you're racing an Iron Man distance event, you're going to
[24:35] be looking to be somewhere in the 6060 to 70% of FTP.
[24:41] I'm going to say for the majority of athletes, maybe
[24:44] we'll see that getting up towards 75% for the very, very
[24:47] top age groupers at 70.3, we're going to be looking at 75 to 85%
[24:53] of FTP, possibly getting up towards 90% of FTP for very,
[24:58] very top age groupers. But for the majority of us
[25:01] there, we're looking at 60 to 70 for Iron Man and 75 to 85 to
[25:08] 70.3. If you then go out and you can
[25:12] do a ride where you're not spending significant chunks of
[25:16] your ride much above those zones, then you're in a really,
[25:21] really good place. The thing that's going to be a
[25:23] challenge is controlling the intensity.
[25:26] If you've got any meaningful hills or any steep hills, and
[25:29] that's the thing you can then go away and work on.
[25:31] In our early days of training, it's tempting to really hammer
[25:34] up the hills to get up them as quickly as possible.
[25:37] But you really want to avoid those power and heart rate
[25:39] spikes as you're preparing for race day.
[25:42] So get used to trying to control your intensity as you go up
[25:45] hills. And ideally on a long shallow
[25:47] hill, you're not going to be going outside of your your zones
[25:50] at all there. It's only going to be on the
[25:52] steep hills where you really have to get out of the saddle
[25:55] and push yourself to get up the steep ones where you're actually
[25:58] going. Outside of those zones I've just
[26:00] given you, it is OK for you to slow down.
[26:03] It's OK for you to try and control yourself.
[26:06] It's OK to try and stay in the right intensity zone.
[26:09] And you have to accept that, especially on race day, you'll
[26:13] be getting bad feedback from a lot of the people around you
[26:16] with regard to their pacing because most people are going to
[26:19] be going too hard on the hills. So if you stick with those
[26:22] pacing guidelines, I don't think you're going to go far wrong.
[26:25] A real good tip here is to head over to the best bike Split
[26:29] website and they've got some great tools on there that you
[26:31] can use to work out. You can put your own information
[26:34] in and it'll help you understand what's going to be an
[26:37] appropriate power for you to ride at, be safely within the
[26:42] cut off and also not have ridden too hard so you can look after
[26:48] your legs for the marathon. And finally, how can I deal with
[26:52] saddle discomfort on longer rides?
[26:55] OK, so there's a couple of things that we can do that's
[26:58] going to help improve comfort, but the first flag here for me
[27:02] is you shouldn't be experiencing discomfort from your saddle.
[27:07] If that's the case, there's a really good case to be made for
[27:10] you going and trying different saddles and finding one that's
[27:12] comfortable. And it might be that you have to
[27:15] try 2345 different saddles before you find one that really
[27:18] works for you. Often my experience in that of
[27:21] our athletes has been the saddle that feels comfiest sitting in
[27:26] the showroom might not be the one that's comfiest when you're
[27:29] out riding on the road and one that you sit on when you
[27:32] initially set off and you think to yourself, well, it's a bit
[27:34] firm in this saddle. That might be the one that
[27:38] doesn't get any more firm or any and you don't feel any
[27:41] discomfort as you're riding later on.
[27:44] Now that being said, let's say we're in a position where the
[27:47] majority of our listeners have got saddles that they're that
[27:49] they're happy with and on the long rides they're wondering how
[27:52] they can make them more comfortable for the longer
[27:55] distance. The first thing to think about
[27:57] here is having a really decent pair of shorts that fits you
[28:01] well and that the the chamois or the pad that's in there works
[28:06] for you. If you're experiencing
[28:08] discomfort, the shorts are the 1st place to look at after
[28:12] getting the saddle sorted and going hand in hand with that is
[28:16] to say, you have to be using chamois cream.
[28:20] It's just a non negotiable. You have to have chamois cream
[28:23] on with your shorts because that's the thing that's going to
[28:25] reduce the amount of friction that rubs between the shorts and
[28:29] your body. So often just buying that 10 or
[28:33] 15 LB pot of chamois cream can be the thing that revolutionises
[28:37] a person's ride and goes from, you know, I can manage an hour
[28:40] and a half to I can manage four or five or six hours.
[28:44] So especially for people who are now going to start doing really
[28:47] long, long rides or if you're going away on a biking holiday,
[28:50] having that shammy cream with you is not just a non
[28:53] negotiable, it could be an absolute game changer for you.
[28:57] OK, So listen, I hope that those answers to those questions today
[29:01] have helped you out. To wrap this up, here are some
[29:04] discount codes and deals for you over at Precision Fuel and
[29:07] hydration.com. You can use the code Oxygen Fuel
[29:10] 25 for 15% of your first electrolyte order.
[29:13] And over at teamoxygenaddict.com I think we've got the most
[29:16] comprehensive triathlon coaching programme specifically designed
[29:19] for busy age groupers. If you're looking for coaching
[29:22] for Iron Man or 70.3 triathlon this year, I highly recommend
[29:26] you watch our free webinar. If you go down to the link in
[29:29] the show notes underneath, there's a link there to Team
[29:32] Oxygen Addicts Iron Man Accelerator webinar programme.
[29:36] It's free to watch. There's a tonne of information
[29:38] on there that'll help inform you how you can make big changes
[29:42] that I think will really help your preparation for Iron Man
[29:45] and for 70.3. So again, links for all of those
[29:48] are in the show notes. Until next week, have a great
[29:51] safe training and racing week. I'm coach Rob Wilby, and you've
[29:54] been listening to the Oxygen Addict podcast.

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