# The #1 MUST-DO Training Session Before Race-Day | Ep 488

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 8 May 2024, 16 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/86418879/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2024-4-7%2F376814972-44100-2-f7e5d93274c33.mp3

Did you know almost everybody's power numbers are different outdoors when compared to indoors? Often there's as much as a 5-10% difference, with the more "favourable" numbers from training indoors. I've spoken to dozens - probably hundreds - of IRONMAN athletes who assumed their indoor power numbers were directly transferable to outdoor riding, resulting in them riding at too high an intensity during their bike leg, and REALLY suffering on the run as a result. Thankfully there's a relatively straightforward way in training, to avoid this catastrophic mistake on raceday and in this video, I walk you through the what, why, how and when. * * * * * * * * 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! http://team.oxygenaddict.com - The most comprehensive triathlon coaching program for busy age groupers. Join the Team Oxygenaddict waiting list and be the first to find out when a space becomes available: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/waiting-list * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 use this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:03] Hello and welcome to the Oxygenating Podcast.
[0:05] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors Precision Fuel
[0:08] and hydration.com. You can personalise your
[0:11] fuelling and hydration strategy so you perform your best with
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[0:19] 24 at Precision Fuel and hydration.com Welcome to the
[0:24] show everybody. I'm your host, Coach Rob Wilby
[0:26] and every week we bring you an episode of this podcast to help
[0:29] motivate and inspire you for your triathlon goals for this
[0:32] season. Listen a couple of quick things
[0:35] you could do for us before we jump into today's episode.
[0:38] If you do like this episode, please consider following us on
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[0:55] so we'd really, really appreciate that.
[0:58] And secondly, if you're looking for help and advice with your.
[1:00] Triathlon training. Please consider getting in touch
[1:03] with us. You can read all about what we
[1:05] offer at Team Oxygen. Addict.com.
[1:07] And then you can e-mail us. At help@oxygenaddict.com.
[1:11] Or there's a link in the show notes to book a call with me or
[1:14] one of the coaching team. We can discuss how we can best
[1:17] help you out with your triathlon goals for this season.
[1:21] OK. On this episode of the show,
[1:24] we're going to be talking about what I think is the most
[1:27] important training session that you're going to do in the lead
[1:30] up to an upcoming race. Kind of a controversial thing to
[1:34] say, but you're going to find out why I think it is.
[1:36] And that session is the outdoor FTP test.
[1:41] So there's probably lots of people out there right now
[1:43] questioning why. Why do we think a test is the
[1:45] most important thing to be doing in the run up to an upcoming
[1:48] race? O the reason that the outdoor
[1:51] FTP test is so, so important for the majority of athletes and for
[1:56] every single athlete that's racing with the power metre
[1:59] certainly is. It's the session that is going
[2:03] to set the benchmark relative to which you're going to then be
[2:07] able to race to O first U. Why does it have to be an
[2:11] outdoor FTP test? Well, the reason for that is
[2:15] it's threefold. Essentially, the 1st is almost
[2:19] everybody's power numbers and their ability to produce power
[2:23] are different outdoors to indoors.
[2:26] And so if you're like the vast majority of the athletes in the
[2:30] Northern hemisphere, the Western Hemisphere, training through the
[2:33] winter, indoors on the trainer all through the winter, as
[2:37] you're transferring to race outdoors, it's very tempting to
[2:40] think, well, a power metre is accurate.
[2:43] I'm happy that my power metre off my kicker, or even the
[2:46] powered numbers coming from my indoor power metre, but on the
[2:50] trainer indoors are going to be the same as I'll put out
[2:53] outdoors. But in our experience coaching
[2:55] athletes, we've been doing this for 10 years now, coached close
[2:59] to 1000 athletes through Ironman and 70.3.
[3:02] Almost nobody has the same FTP outdoors as they do indoors, and
[3:08] it's impossible, afraid for me to tell somebody whether you're
[3:11] more likely to have a higher power number outdoors or
[3:14] indoors. It varies from person to person
[3:17] and that's the first reason it's so important that you go and do
[3:20] outside FTP test because you need to be sure that you're
[3:24] riding to a percentage of your FTP that essentially is accurate
[3:29] and it's accurate for you in the environment that you're going to
[3:32] be riding in. So power metres are very
[3:37] accurate and repeatable, but that's relative to the
[3:41] environment that you use them in.
[3:43] OA Lost Fuel have heard us talk before about the importance of
[3:46] calibrating a power metre before every ride.
[3:48] Essentially most power metres are a strain gauge and the
[3:51] strain gauge will will change depending on several factors,
[3:55] one of which is the ambient temperature on the day, which is
[3:58] why it's so important to do that calibration every single day
[4:01] anyway. But if you're.
[4:02] Moving from. Indoors to outdoors, the heat
[4:04] can play a part in it, but there are other factors that can play
[4:07] a part in it as well. So the first one is, even if
[4:11] your power metre is on your bike and you're transferring from
[4:14] riding that same bike with that same power metre to outdoors on
[4:18] the same bike in the same power metre, still absolutely
[4:22] essential that you performed the outdoor FTP test.
[4:25] And it might find that you are putting out 20 watts 40 watts
[4:28] more, or 20 watts 40 watts less outdoors than you were indoors.
[4:34] That would massively skew your numbers that you're trying to
[4:37] race accurately to. And when I'm gonna interject at
[4:41] this point, it's tempting, and it can be.
[4:46] It can be a challenge for the athletes who put out less power
[4:49] outdoors to kind of see that as a failing, to kind of think,
[4:53] well, you know, something's almost something's going wrong
[4:57] outdoors. Why am I not putting as much
[4:58] power out outdoors as I am indoors?
[5:01] There's a variety of reasons for this.
[5:03] The good news is it isn't a like for like comparison.
[5:06] So think of whatever your FTP number is as 100% of your FTP
[5:12] outdoors and indoors. There might be different, and
[5:15] that's OK, but the important thing is you have an accurate
[5:18] number to write to. O it really doesn't matter.
[5:22] It's bragging rights if you've got a really big FTP outdoors
[5:26] doesn't really matter though. What matters is that it's
[5:29] accurate relative to what you are doing and what your power
[5:32] metre is reading O years ago I had an athlete come to me from a
[5:36] different coach. He had changed coaches and and
[5:39] he was completely baffled because his training had gone
[5:42] really well. He came to race day, it was an
[5:45] Iron Man distance race and, and this is part of it, this becomes
[5:48] much more important and much more important the longer the
[5:51] race goes on. And his race had gone horribly.
[5:54] He finished the bike leg. He could barely run, he was
[5:58] absolutely exhausted. And so the first thing I checked
[6:01] was what percentage you FTP did you write to.
[6:03] The FTP percentage looked fine. The next thing we checked was
[6:07] had you done an out there FTP test?
[6:09] And he said well no. I did all my training indoors on
[6:12] a Watt bike and then I did my race outdoors and my race bike
[6:15] in a different bike in a different position with a
[6:17] different power metre. Like there's the three sides of
[6:21] the triangle of disaster right there.
[6:23] And that was why the number he was trying to work to outdoors
[6:27] wasn't his own outdoor FTP number, it was his indoor FTP
[6:30] number on a different power metre.
[6:32] So it was completely irrelevant. And so that's the first thing I
[6:35] want you to get into your head. Just having a set of power
[6:39] numbers, they're not transferable from one power
[6:42] metre to another and they're also not transferable from one
[6:45] position to another, and they're also not transferable from one
[6:48] power metre to another. So there's three very important
[6:52] things there if you're training indoors on a different bike in a
[6:55] different position. So the outdoor FTP test, how
[6:59] would we go about doing this? Well, what we need to do is to
[7:03] do the test outdoors on a reasonable course.
[7:07] We'll talk about that. We're going to do it with the
[7:10] power metre you're going to race with on the bike you're going to
[7:13] race with in the position that you're going to race in O1.
[7:18] End of the story here. We're going to have an athlete
[7:20] who has the same bike, the same power metre, the same position,
[7:23] just takes it outside. That's a relatively easy test to
[7:27] do for some people. They'll be changing from having
[7:30] one particular bike indoors or a, you know, a kicker bike
[7:33] indoors, to riding outdoors in the aero position, or even
[7:37] outdoors in a specific TT Tri bike in the aero position.
[7:43] All of these things are going to play a part of how much power
[7:46] you can put out right now O to do the test.
[7:49] What we're going to need you to do is find a quiet, safe Rd.
[7:53] Ideally that's flat. Ideally that's got some kind of
[7:57] turnaround points at the halfway point and we need it to be about
[8:01] 20 minutes long. So a really easy way to find
[8:04] this for most people is to do a 10 mile time trial and the local
[8:09] time trial organisations will have done a lot of the heavy
[8:11] thinking here for you. They'll have found the best
[8:14] roads to time trial on, They'll have found an out and back Rd.
[8:17] They'll have found a Rd, it's relatively quiet, They'll have
[8:20] found a road that's got probably around about at the end that you
[8:23] can go around and I would advise you if you possibly can, do your
[8:27] outdoor FTP test as part of a time trial organised by somebody
[8:30] else. The reasons for this are you'll
[8:33] have marshals along the course warning the drivers that there
[8:35] are riders along, You'll have other riders doing the course at
[8:38] the same time. So drivers are going to be
[8:40] aware. All of these things are going to
[8:42] play into how safe you feel along the way, and that is one
[8:47] of the big challenges for people doing out their FTP test.
[8:50] The world can come at you very quickly, especially if you're an
[8:53] athlete who's trained a lot of the time indoors, and especially
[8:57] if you've got a good aero position, you'll be going
[9:00] relatively quite fast relative to how you're expecting to do
[9:04] for the same sort of power on a road bike.
[9:07] So in my particular case, I would go from riding maybe, I
[9:10] don't know, 3031 K an hour to 363738 K an hour.
[9:15] The same sort of power swapping from my road bike to my Tri bike
[9:19] outdoors with full kit, aero, helmet, skin suit.
[9:22] The whole deal on the world comes at you much, much faster
[9:25] than you expecting, and also in your full error position you're
[9:29] not going to have exactly the same ability to see down the
[9:32] road if you're riding in a full aero tuck.
[9:35] So all of these things, it's going to be in your best
[9:37] interest to practise along the way.
[9:40] OK. So we want to do it ideally on a
[9:43] flat piece of Rd, ideally on a road that's got a roundabout or
[9:47] at least a safe turn around point halfway.
[9:50] We want to go out and back ideally.
[9:51] So any effect of a headwind or tailwind are going to cancel
[9:54] each other out along the way or go a long way to doing that.
[9:58] And ideally we want it to be on a really safe quiet piece of Rd
[10:02] so that you feel really safe and and out of all of these things,
[10:05] the safety is the key part of this.
[10:07] I want to make sure that athletes feel really safe and
[10:10] they're not putting themselves in the situation where they feel
[10:12] unsafe. Even some of our athletes we
[10:14] coach go down and do their outdoor FTP tests on and
[10:19] dedicated cycle tracks. O Hern Hill or places like this
[10:23] have got bike only bike roads. You can go around with no
[10:26] traffic on whatsoever. So that can be really really
[10:28] useful. One tip that I'll give for you
[10:32] for doing the outdoor FTP test, in fact for all riders all the
[10:36] time wherever you are in the world.
[10:38] If you invest in a Garmin Varia which is that the rearward
[10:42] facing light with a built in radar in it, that's got two
[10:47] functions. Firstly the light and the varier
[10:50] will flash and it will flash faster and brighter if a car
[10:54] approaches behind you. So that's good from the point of
[10:56] view of being seen. The radar within the unit itself
[10:59] will give you a warning and send a warning to you on your Garmin
[11:03] head unit to tell you that this traffic coming up behind you,
[11:06] it's got a really clever system where a car that's approaching
[11:09] turns the screen orange. If it's approaching really
[11:12] quickly it turns the screen red. So you can at the very least get
[11:15] an idea of traffic coming up behind you as you're riding
[11:18] along. I found that super useful in the
[11:22] aero position with an aero helmet on.
[11:24] When you're sensors have you know, you haven't got as much
[11:26] awareness of what's going on around you as you would ideally
[11:29] like, certainly as you would on a road bike, but I use mine all
[11:33] the time now. I'm not sponsored by them.
[11:35] I don't have an affiliate with them, but I think it's a
[11:37] fantastic piece of kit and everyone I know who's tried one
[11:40] of these absolutely raves about it.
[11:43] OK, so we get you to do your outdoor FTP test.
[11:47] Ideally we'll have you do this as soon as it becomes
[11:51] appropriate to do so in the calendar year.
[11:54] So with all our athletes, I've been saying to them around March
[11:57] time, as soon as you get the chance, get outdoors, do an
[12:00] outdoor FTP test, then you know your outdoor numbers and you can
[12:04] train accurately to them. If you haven't got around to
[12:07] doing 1 yet, now is as good a time as any.
[12:10] Find the time to schedule to go and do one.
[12:12] At the very least we have our athletes try and do a check in
[12:16] test four weeks before their first a race of the season.
[12:20] So that way we can be sure that an athlete is working to really,
[12:24] really accurate and updated numbers about four weeks out
[12:26] before their a race. And then that way not much is
[12:29] going to change. If anything in your FTP.
[12:31] Certainly if you're racing 70.3 or Ironman distance, you know
[12:36] not very much is going to change in your FTP at that point before
[12:39] race day, but it's really good to have that accurate number
[12:42] there that you can work to. So when you work out what
[12:45] percentage your power you're going to be riding to for race
[12:47] day, you can be sure it's really accurate and it's accurate you
[12:51] outdoors on the bike, you're going to race on race day in the
[12:55] position you're going to race in race day.
[12:57] And that's that's it really. It's a it's a very simple test
[13:01] that you can do. It's 20 minutes of riding and at
[13:05] the end of it you'll take 95% of the power number, of the
[13:09] normalised power number, and that's going to represent your
[13:13] outdoor FTP. But there's loads of articles
[13:15] you can read online about how to work out your actual FTP from
[13:19] this. I think the most important thing
[13:21] for people listening is to raise that in your consciousness.
[13:24] We talk about how important it is to go and do this on the way
[13:27] to a race day. And secondly to commit to doing
[13:30] it and make sure that you know you're going to commit to going
[13:33] and doing this. Because oftentimes people who
[13:35] haven't done the outdoor FTP test are the ones who get quite
[13:39] frustrated and you know the power numbers are not really
[13:43] lining up with how they feel that they should do.
[13:46] Now. One last thing, for a wrap this
[13:48] U, it can be tempting to do the outdoor FTP test going uphill.
[13:52] Don't do that. The vast majority of people just
[13:57] have the ability to put more power out riding uphill than
[14:01] riding on the flat. It's going to artificially skew
[14:04] your number higher. It's why most people put out
[14:06] their best power numbers on a really hilly ride, just because
[14:09] of the change of position. The different muscles that you
[14:12] recruit allow you to put a little bit more power out, but
[14:14] in some cases it can be up to 10% more.
[14:17] Again, that's great for bragging rights, but it's not great for
[14:21] setting your FTP in a way that's meaningful for accurate numbers
[14:24] so you can race well with it. OK, great stuff.
[14:27] Lesson. I hope this has helped you out.
[14:29] If you've got anymore questions, please fire them through to help
[14:31] at Oxygen, Adcom, or there's a link underneath the show notes.
[14:35] You can get in contact with us down there.
[14:37] OK then that brings us to the end of this week's episode.
[14:41] So here are some discount codes and deals for you over at.
[14:44] Precision Fuel and. Hydration.com Use the code
[14:46] oxygen 24 for 15% off your first.
[14:49] Electrolyte order. And over at
[14:51] teamoxygenaddict.com, I think we've got the most comprehensive
[14:55] triathlon coaching programme for busy age groupers.
[14:58] If you've. Enjoyed what you've heard today
[15:00] and the advice has helped you out.
[15:01] Well, great stuff. I hope that's helped put some of
[15:04] your fears at rest, and I know from some of the calls we've had
[15:07] it's helping raise the right questions in the minds of people
[15:11] as to whether their current coaching relationship is working
[15:14] for them. If you're looking for a change
[15:16] or if you're looking for high quality proven coaching for Iron
[15:19] Man or 70.3 Triathlon this year, you can just check out the
[15:22] details of our coaching packages on our website at
[15:25] teamoxygenaddict.com. And then if you're interested,
[15:29] there's a link in the show notes below.
[15:31] You can join our waiting list and you'll be notified if the
[15:34] slot becomes available, and at that point you'll have a chance
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[15:52] happens. So remember there's links in the
[15:54] show notes so you don't have to remember them till next week.
[15:57] Have a great safe training and racing week.
[16:00] I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've been listening to the Oxygen
[16:02] Addict podcast. See ya.

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