# Power Meters, Double Run Days & Swim Speed: Your IRONMAN Questions Answered | Ep 578

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 18 Feb 2026, 38 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO5760297659.mp3

This week Coach Rob digs into listener emails, answering questions from athletes building toward their first Ironman. He covers whether a single-sided power meter is enough... Whether splitting your long run into two sessions is a good idea... How offshore workers with limited pool access can still make progress in the swim. Plus, Rob shares a real example of two athletes dropping 20 seconds per 100m in a single session through one targeted drill and explains why fitness alone won't make you faster in the water. Along the way, he reflects on why the advice you take matters just as much as the training you do, and why longevity in the sport should always come before chasing marginal gains. If you're a first-timer figuring it all out, this one's for you. * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * Thinking about your first Ironman or 70.3 in 2026? At Team Oxygenaddict, we specialise in helping busy professionals fit high-quality training around demanding jobs and family life. We’ve just reopened for new athletes with only a handful of slots available. Book an application call today to find out 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 use code OXYGEN26 at checkout to claim your 15% discount * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen 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
[0:10] and hydration.com. You can get 15% off your first
[0:13] order with the code oxygen 26. Welcome to the show everybody.
[0:17] I'm your host coach Rob Wilby from team Oxygen Addict
[0:20] Triathlon Coaching, and every week I bring you an episode of
[0:22] this podcast to help educate, motivate and inspire you.
[0:26] If you're Iron Man and 70.3 dreams for this year and on this
[0:30] weeks episodes, I've got a slightly, slightly different
[0:34] episode to some of the ones I've done recently.
[0:36] Actually. I've been collating a bunch of
[0:38] athletes emails and questions and comments that have come in
[0:42] over the last month or so and it's been great.
[0:45] Actually. We've had, we've had a bunch of
[0:47] people sending questions through and it really feels like things
[0:51] have changed recently. We've got much more interaction
[0:55] with our listeners over the last year, particularly over the last
[0:57] couple of months. The last couple of weeks, as I
[0:59] said, I've had this bunch of questions come through over
[1:02] e-mail. Now, usually I get inspiration
[1:04] from my questions that I answer on the podcast, either from the
[1:08] athletes that I'm working with, questions they've genuinely sent
[1:11] in in our private coaching app, or sometimes comments people
[1:15] have left on our YouTube videos or comments people have left on
[1:17] podcasts. So we've got this bunch of
[1:19] e-mail questions that have come through and I thought they'll
[1:22] make a really nice episode to wrap them all up together.
[1:25] Usually what I've done in the past is send people e-mail
[1:28] replies. As things are getting busier
[1:30] with the business, it's getting harder and harder for me to
[1:32] individually reply to these emails that are coming.
[1:35] So I apologise to these athletes here that I haven't personally
[1:39] replied to the emails, but I thought it'd make a really great
[1:42] episode to answer these questions on this.
[1:43] That's what we're going to do. We've got a bunch of questions
[1:45] regarding swim, bike, run, equipment training for Iron Man
[1:48] training for 70.3. And I think I'll make a really
[1:51] good interesting episode for people to listen to.
[1:54] And I think it's worth remembering as well.
[1:55] If you're an athlete listening to this who's more experienced,
[1:59] the kind of questions that commend sometimes.
[2:01] A friend of mine was saying to me the other day we were at for
[2:03] ride and and they said to me, you know, a lot of these
[2:06] questions are they're really quite basic, aren't they?
[2:08] You think that the answer to this is obvious and I'd said,
[2:12] well, we have to remember that answers are only obvious when
[2:15] you know what the answer is. So remember that there's a lot
[2:19] of people around you in your club that you train with that
[2:21] might not know the answer to these questions that are
[2:23] seemingly obvious to you. And my ethos has always been
[2:28] share as much information as I can, share as much information
[2:32] as we can, help people out as much as we can.
[2:35] When I first started out in Iron Man, when I did my first one and
[2:38] I was training back in 2002 down in Australia, I was super lucky
[2:41] that I came across a couple of local guys and one guy who
[2:45] actually phoned me through a triathlon forum, shared loads of
[2:49] information about training. I was trying to figure it out
[2:51] and piece it together and it was, you know, it wasn't so new
[2:56] back in the day. I mean, obviously Iron Man
[2:58] started back in 7879, but even back in 2002 there wasn't an
[3:03] Iron Man in the UK. I'd gone away, travelling to
[3:06] Australia and I wanted to do my man as part of my kind of
[3:09] sabbatical year. But even amongst the clubs that
[3:12] I was training with in Australia, there was this real,
[3:16] there's a real feeling of Iron Man, if if not necessarily Iron
[3:20] Man is for the elite athletes, the elite triathletes.
[3:23] Definitely Iron Man is there for the most experienced triathletes
[3:28] And you know, you've got to kind of, you've got to put your time
[3:31] in before you can go and enter an Iron Man and before you can
[3:33] do an Iron Man. I remember really clearly having
[3:35] a conversation with a guy at the local bike shop as he was
[3:39] helping me get new tyres and he said to me, listen son, I think
[3:43] you've been enough, far more than you can chew.
[3:45] You've told us, you know, you've only started Iron Man back in I
[3:49] think it was, it was three months ago that starts training
[3:52] for my first 70.3 and I did a 70.3 as was at the time half
[3:57] Ironman UK and Lamberis and then I went abroad and Ironman
[4:00] Australia was in April. He said you need to put years in
[4:04] before you can do an Ironman. I really think you're bit enough
[4:07] more than you can chew. You're not going to be able to
[4:09] train as much as and he named some of the local athletes who
[4:12] are also training for Ironman Australia.
[4:14] And they were a lot fitter and a lot stronger than me and they
[4:16] were putting together much, much bigger training hours than me.
[4:19] Part of the challenge I had at the time was then thinking well
[4:23] do I need to go and replicate the training that these guys are
[4:27] doing? It became immediately obvious to
[4:28] me if I was to go and try and do a 2530 hour training week I was
[4:33] just going to ruin myself and injure myself.
[4:35] And even as it was my experience of the time was trying to build
[4:39] up to do the Iron Man, I got a lot of those classic challenges
[4:43] that people get when they're trying to build volume to
[4:45] quickly. I had really bad ITB syndrome in
[4:48] one knee that was really painful.
[4:50] And as anyone knows who said this, it isn't an inverted
[4:53] comers a serious problem, but it definitely feels like it.
[4:58] It feels world ending. You can't walk.
[5:00] It feels as though you've been stabbed in the side of the knee
[5:02] with a knife all the time as you as you're walking, even once
[5:05] it's flared up. And those issues came about and
[5:08] tend to come about because of overuse, because of doing more
[5:12] than you're used to, because of trying to ramp the volume faster
[5:16] than you really should do it faster than your body is capable
[5:20] of. And I was going from the point
[5:21] of, you know, not really having been a swimmer or a bike or a
[5:24] dog. I've done a fair bit of running,
[5:26] but I'd obviously tried to ramp my cycling up far too fast and
[5:30] done a really long bike ride one day and my knee just flared up
[5:33] because of it. So my role now as a coach 20 odd
[5:38] years later, it's to help and advise people to avoid those
[5:41] situations. We often don't know what we
[5:44] don't know. We often can be drawn into
[5:46] thinking, well if I'm doing an Iron Man and the Iron Man bike
[5:49] leg is 112 miles, I need to get myself to riding 112 miles as
[5:53] quickly as possible. Maybe we follow the advice of
[5:56] somebody who he was advising from their point of view, not
[6:00] necessarily from the point of view of what do you as a
[6:03] beginner need. So a lot of people do mean well,
[6:08] but often in the advice they give you will give you advice
[6:11] from their point of view and not necessarily from that, the point
[6:15] of understanding what you and your position need.
[6:19] And so if you're a a smaller athlete, if you're from a
[6:21] running background, if you're female and you're taking advice
[6:25] from a young, strong, actually male athlete, often there's a
[6:29] conflict. And I saw this a lot when I was
[6:33] tutoring trainee coaches for British triathlon over the
[6:37] decade that I did that often the hardest, the hardest candidates
[6:42] to work with were young, I'm not going to say arrogant, but
[6:46] young, very self confident males aged between 20 and 30 who were
[6:52] very fast athletes for whom, you know, they were classic sport
[6:56] billies for whom the sport had come easy to.
[6:59] Their genetics meant that they could do a lot of training and
[7:01] recover from it. And their advice for what they
[7:05] initially thought other athletes should do was entirely based
[7:08] around their own experience. And it was very hard to get them
[7:12] to see, well, that's your experience, but it isn't going
[7:15] to be the experience of other people.
[7:18] It definitely isn't going to be the experience of the majority
[7:20] of people. And getting them to understand
[7:23] that they've won that genetic lottery.
[7:24] If they've got a body that can do a really hard long session
[7:27] and recover ready to do another 1-3 hours later, that not only
[7:33] is that unusual, but that most people can't do that.
[7:36] And if you give them those sessions, you're going to break
[7:39] them. I came across in the early days
[7:42] of of coach education, other people who were getting into
[7:45] coaching and in some cases were simply selling on the training
[7:49] plan that they were given by another coach to other athletes
[7:53] as a way to kind of cut down the workload.
[7:55] I don't think they were doing it for a nefarious reason.
[7:57] I don't think they were trying to take advantage of people, But
[7:59] they genuinely hadn't considered the training plan that had been
[8:03] given to them as a young, strong, fit male athlete wasn't
[8:07] going to be suitable at all for other athletes who'd asked them
[8:11] to coach them. It might be remember really
[8:13] clearly talking with a a young female want to be pro who'd been
[8:17] given a training plan by a young male want to be pro.
[8:21] And the plan was completely inappropriate for her.
[8:23] And we talked through why this plan wasn't right for her and
[8:27] she could see that the plan wasn't right for her, but she
[8:29] was driven by this desire of the person coaching me has got to be
[8:33] better than me at the sport because that's what I need to
[8:36] get me further forward down line.
[8:38] And in my opinion that was completely misplaced.
[8:41] It wasn't the plan that she needed to improve her and and in
[8:45] this particular athletes case, she wasn't a very strong swimmer
[8:49] and the athlete coaching her was a very strong swimmer.
[8:52] And the plan that athlete had been given by a very experienced
[8:55] coach was obviously for a very experienced and strong swimmer,
[8:59] there was far too much swim volume.
[9:01] There was far too much hard swim volume.
[9:03] And it ended up making this athlete really, really overtired
[9:06] and on the verge of sick. And she ended up leaving the
[9:09] sport and unfortunately, she she couldn't see, I don't think that
[9:13] that training plan wasn't right for her.
[9:16] And she needed to break away from that coaching relationship
[9:19] and work with someone who was going to give her the coaching
[9:22] that she needed. And I think underneath that was
[9:24] possibly the feeling on her part that I think she felt she needed
[9:30] to be given the kind of training plan that other pros were doing.
[9:34] She needed to be able to do that if she wanted to compete at the
[9:37] highest level. And she couldn't reconcile the
[9:41] idea that what she needed right now wasn't what that plan was
[9:46] right now. And it it might have been in the
[9:48] future. It might have been in a year or
[9:50] Two's time. But right now, I didn't think it
[9:52] was what was right for her. And I think it was backed up by
[9:55] her experience of getting really overtrained, getting burnt out
[9:59] and ending up leaving the sport, which I think was really sad
[10:02] because I've said before on the show, my, my driving principle
[10:05] for this show is I want athletes to be in this sport forever.
[10:11] I want you to be in for the long term.
[10:13] I want swim, bike, run, strength training.
[10:15] I want our athletes and the population in general actually
[10:19] to be fit, to be healthy, to enjoy exercise for the rest of
[10:23] your life. I don't want you to trade off
[10:25] your ability to exercise as a 60 year old, as a 70 year old.
[10:30] Don't trade that off for the potential to go a little bit
[10:33] faster now or the thought in your head at least that you
[10:37] might be able to go a little bit faster now because in almost all
[10:39] cases you do not. You do not need to train and to
[10:44] trade off longevity for current day performance.
[10:50] I think that's leading you down the wrong path.
[10:53] And I'll always remember there's an athlete we coached a couple
[10:55] of years ago who wrote to me, said I've decided to leave your
[10:58] coaching, Rob, I've listened to your ethos for years.
[11:01] I understand that you're saying what I want for you is to be in
[11:04] the sport for, you know, for decades, even if that's at the
[11:08] expense of a couple of percent of performance right now.
[11:12] And he said, I'm leaving because I want that performance right
[11:16] now as a 45 year old. I want to push my limits.
[11:19] I want to go to the very edge. I want to see what I can do if I
[11:22] really push myself, if I really do very top end fast track
[11:27] training sessions, train really, really, really hard and fast on
[11:31] the run, see if I can push myself to get the extra 20
[11:34] seconds on my 10K runtime, that's where I want to go.
[11:38] And if that's at the expense of longevity and I have to leave
[11:41] the sport, then so be it. And I thought that was really
[11:44] sad. I thought that the short
[11:46] sightedness of that to trade off potentially the ability to do
[11:51] this sport day in, day out, pain free to be able to have all the
[11:55] benefits of being involved in sport forever for the sake of
[11:59] going 20 seconds faster maybe on A10 Ki thought was really sad.
[12:03] And unfortunately, I've heard through the Grapevine that
[12:05] athlete has picked up injuries that have meant that they've
[12:08] ended up losing that long term consistency.
[12:11] And you know, I can only speak from my point of view.
[12:14] I, I think that that's sad that an athlete doesn't get to see
[12:19] the long picture that the athlete potentially now has to
[12:21] deal with months or years of rehab to try to even get back to
[12:25] the point they can just go out and enjoy a run.
[12:28] I think that's what's most important to me as a coach.
[12:31] So in today's episode, this is what I want to do and I want to
[12:34] be answering the questions that have been sent in, but from the
[12:37] point of view of saying to athletes, firstly, I want you in
[12:41] the sport for a long time and enjoying it for a long time.
[12:43] Secondly, if you're a first timer wanting to do your first
[12:47] Iron Man, you absolutely can build up to it in your first
[12:50] year as long as you train correctly, as long as you get
[12:53] the build correct. But be aware of the fact there
[12:56] are a lot of pitfalls along the way, so don't be tempted to do
[12:59] too much too soon. And thirdly, just remember that
[13:02] the advice you take from people is really important.
[13:04] Make sure that the advice that you're taking is from someone
[13:08] who has got your best interests at heart, but that also has got
[13:12] the experience to understand what that means and that they've
[13:15] got experience working with people like you, not just the
[13:18] experience of working with people like them and their
[13:22] experience. So if you are from one of those
[13:24] groups I've mentioned, if you're an older athlete, if you're a
[13:27] female athlete, if you're new to one of the three sports, the
[13:31] advice of someone at your club who is a rock star might not be
[13:35] what's right for you. And again, I'm going to just say
[13:38] this, I'm going to issue caution around the idea of working with
[13:42] extremely self confident young fast coaches who are getting
[13:47] into coaching. Kind of with that, that tagline
[13:51] of I'm doing this as a side hustle.
[13:53] I'm doing this to make a bit of money on the side to pay for
[13:55] triathlon, which is quite a common thing that people say.
[13:58] Be aware of that because that athlete might not have the
[14:02] experience and might not have the knowledge and background to
[14:05] help you out in your position. OK, just before I jump into
[14:09] these questions, there's two things you could do that would
[14:11] really help us out, please. Firstly, if you like and enjoy
[14:14] this episode, please follow us on Spotify.
[14:16] Our upper podcasts leaves a like on there, leave us a thumbs up,
[14:20] leaves a decent review that goes a long way and helps other
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[14:25] you could like and subscribe, it's a really easy thing to do
[14:28] that really then helps you know, we've seen unbelievable effects
[14:32] of the videos where people have left us a whole bunch of likes
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[14:37] that video to more people on the home screen and more people
[14:39] watch it and then it gets shown to more people and it really,
[14:44] really helps us continue to make these videos and these podcasts
[14:49] for free. Essentially, I do this because I
[14:51] want to get the advice out there and I want to help people, but
[14:53] also obviously it supports our coaching business.
[14:56] And the more people who can get shown the podcast or get shown
[14:59] the video, we can reach more people.
[15:01] And then essentially just by word of mouth, we can, we can
[15:06] keep getting athletes into our coaching programme and, and that
[15:09] works really well for us. It means we don't have to have
[15:11] tonnes of sponsors on the show and on the YouTube channel.
[15:14] So if you're looking for help training for your first die man,
[15:17] please go over and check out the coaching memberships at
[15:19] teamoxygenaddict.com. I really believe we've got the
[15:22] most comprehensive triathlon coaching programme that's
[15:25] specifically designed for busy age groupers with busy families,
[15:30] with busy jobs, people who are in middle age, and you've got a
[15:34] lot of things to balance and triathlon has got to fit in a
[15:37] compliment with that, not work against it.
[15:40] So if that's you, you may be entering your first Iron Man and
[15:43] you want help planning all of this out, we'll get the right
[15:46] training plan in place for you. We'll give you the feedback and
[15:49] the coaching advice to help support that and take away all
[15:53] of the worry essentially. So all you've got to do is show
[15:55] up and do the training session that you've been given that day.
[15:58] There's a link in the show notes.
[15:59] Let's book a membership call with me and see if you'd be a
[16:01] good fit for joining the team. If you click on that, we can
[16:03] have a chat and we can go from there.
[16:06] Right then let's head over to these questions then and then
[16:09] let's see if we can help a bunch of people out.
[16:11] So first up, question here from Abby Duffner.
[16:16] I'm looking to get power pedals. I don't have any major left and
[16:20] right leg imbalances or injuries.
[16:22] Would getting a single sided set be enough for my second iron
[16:26] distance? I'm not looking to be highly
[16:28] competitive, just improve my performance.
[16:31] Any input would be greatly appreciated.
[16:33] All right Abby, so thanks very much for the question.
[16:36] Yes, I would always advise athletes who are starting out in
[16:39] power and in fact athletes in general.
[16:41] The single sided power metre is going to be enough for 99.9% of
[16:47] age group athletes. As you've mentioned, people who
[16:50] have had a major injury to one leg, if they've got a right leg
[16:54] left imbalance, it can help to see that.
[16:57] It can be interesting to look at it.
[16:58] But the thing to realise is if you've got a double sided power
[17:02] metre, you'll get an extra metric that kind of gives you a
[17:04] percentage balance between left leg and right leg of which leg
[17:08] is putting out more power than the other, if you like.
[17:11] If there is that imbalance, even in athletes who don't have any
[17:16] kind of history of injury, we often see an imbalance of 47 to
[17:22] 5346 to 54. That often really surprises
[17:27] people. And the athletes who bought
[17:29] these double sided metres come to me and often say, look,
[17:32] something needs to change here. I need to do some single leg
[17:34] strength work because there's this massive imbalance.
[17:37] And from what we've seen that isn't a massive imbalance,
[17:39] that's just how bodies are and it it fades and changes from
[17:43] day-to-day and week to week. So you don't need to be
[17:45] concerned about it. I think the power metre is the
[17:48] best investment that you can make, especially if you're
[17:51] racing Iron Man distance, because it's almost like
[17:53] cheating. It's going to tell you exactly
[17:57] where your fitness is on the bike.
[17:58] In training, you can train to exact power percentages relative
[18:03] to your own personal threshold and so you can be sure that the
[18:06] training sessions that you're doing are bringing about the
[18:10] biggest possible fitness change in the least possible time.
[18:13] So that's the first thing, it takes all the guesswork away.
[18:16] The power changes immediately relative to your change in
[18:19] effort, whereas if you're using a heart rate monitor, there's
[18:22] often a lack of about a minute between you changing effort and
[18:26] seeing that change in the heart rate.
[18:28] So it's much, much more accurate.
[18:29] But the real benefit is in using it on race day.
[18:33] You can you can ride on race day and ride exact percentages of
[18:38] the power that you need to on the flats, on up hills, on steep
[18:42] up hills, on tailwinds with headwinds.
[18:45] All of those are going to need a different power number, but you
[18:47] can prepare for it specifically with our athletes, we work with
[18:50] them so that we use a, a package called best bike split and
[18:54] you'll have actual numbers to work to.
[18:56] So it might say, you know, on the flats, 160 watts going up a
[19:01] shallow hill, 170 watts with a tailwind, you know, dot dot dot
[19:05] like this. So there's a CHEAT SHEET.
[19:07] There's also very specific power guidance you can download if you
[19:11] want to go into the weeds like that.
[19:12] But the key thing here is how it feels on race day.
[19:15] When you're racing Iron Man and you're excited and you've got
[19:18] the adrenaline going, how it feels then is very, very often
[19:22] not how it is on race day. The effect of adrenaline is is
[19:27] like an anaesthetic and you can be pushing really hard and not
[19:30] realise it genuinely. And if you push much harder than
[19:34] you want to and mean to for the first hour or two on the bike,
[19:37] then you're going to fade really badly for the last hour or two
[19:40] on the bike and then crucially have a massive knock on effect
[19:45] until you run essentially. So like I said, the power metre
[19:48] can be like a cheat code. You can dial up those exact
[19:51] percentages that you need. You can ride often.
[19:54] It's going to feel like you go much, much too easy on the bike
[19:57] in the first couple of hours. And that's because you're going
[20:00] at the correct intensity. I'm as a really long day, you
[20:03] can't be pushing hard. And if you are feeling that
[20:06] you're pushing hard, frankly, you're going too hard.
[20:08] That's a real good. Measure of what's going on
[20:12] within your body. So be super, super aware of
[20:15] that. Abby, for you, the single sided
[20:18] power metre is going to be perfect.
[20:21] There's there's no trade off there.
[20:22] Get the single sided power metre either.
[20:25] The Garmin rally is a great option.
[20:27] If you get the option of second hand Garmin Vector 3S, that's a
[20:31] great option as well. They are bomb proof and really
[20:33] reliable. You've got the option of Asioma
[20:37] pedals as well. Some of our athletes use those
[20:39] and rave about them. Personally I'm a bigger fan of
[20:41] the garment but that's just because I like keeping
[20:43] everything within the same ecosystem.
[20:45] The other option you've got is to look at single sided crank
[20:49] based power metres like the four I power metre or stages power
[20:55] metre. Now within our team coached
[20:57] athletes, we've got a nice sponsorship deal with 4I crank
[21:00] power metres. We get 20% off those and they're
[21:04] wonderful as well to do a great job.
[21:06] They're very cost efficient. They're even cheaper than buying
[21:08] the pedals and with the 20% discount that our team members
[21:12] get, it makes them even more efficient as well.
[21:14] So there's a couple of options there for you.
[21:17] I think power metre pedals are a little bit more handy and that
[21:20] you can easily take them off and swap them onto another bike.
[21:23] Or if you go and travelling or on a training camp, you can
[21:25] stick them in your luggage and take them with you if you're
[21:27] using a rental bike. With that being said, I rode for
[21:30] three whole seasons with a with a four eye power metre on the
[21:33] crank and swapped that between bikes for training rides.
[21:36] When you get used to doing it, it's a couple of minute job with
[21:39] an L and key. So it is possible to do that.
[21:42] I think it's just a bit easier with pedals.
[21:44] So there's a couple of options there for you.
[21:45] OK, next question then from Lee Rushworth.
[21:49] Hi Rob, love the content you're producing and I love the ethos
[21:53] of sharing your information via your podcast for those who you
[21:56] don't coach well. Thanks for that, Lee.
[21:57] I appreciate that. I'm building up to my first Iron
[22:00] Man in Leeds this year. And I've got a question about
[22:03] split training. In the past I've seen that I
[22:07] don't have to do my long run to complete it on a particular day.
[22:12] If you either don't have the time or you want to limit
[22:14] fatigue build up, you can in fact split it in half and do it
[22:17] in the morning and then the rest in the afternoon after work.
[22:20] The fatigue build up I feel will still be enough to build
[22:24] fitness. What are your thoughts on this?
[22:27] And would you say this is also true for long bike rides?
[22:30] OK, so this is a theory that's come over from single spot.
[22:36] The idea of the split run, the double run day.
[22:39] I'm going to give a really simple answer to this.
[22:41] I'm going to say no, I am not a fan of the split long run.
[22:44] And the reason for this is that you need to be preparing
[22:48] specifically for the demands of your Iron Man and your Iron Man
[22:52] is not going to have a split run.
[22:54] And so you need to be doing these long runs in a continuous
[22:56] way, so your body gets used to the need to do that.
[23:00] If on a single isolated training week you just can't get that
[23:06] long run in this week, is the split run better than nothing?
[23:10] Yes. But arguably I would try to
[23:13] reorganise your training plan over several weeks so that that
[23:16] week where you can't get the long run done becomes a recovery
[23:19] week and you do the long run, the continuous run.
[23:22] And by that I mean all in one go.
[23:25] Do that the next week. All of the long runs I advise
[23:29] our athletes to do, I advise them to do as a nine one run
[23:32] walk and I advise them to do that on race day as well.
[23:35] And that's a really good way of managing the fatigue that
[23:38] athletes typically feel from a really long run.
[23:41] So typically anything over an hour and a half as a continuous
[23:45] long run really builds fatigue that you feel for two days,
[23:48] maybe more afterwards. And as you get into the long,
[23:51] long training, as you get to, you know, 215-232-4053 hours,
[23:57] that can create real massive long lasting fatigue.
[24:01] And the challenge here is you're also training for biking and
[24:04] you're also training for swimming.
[24:06] So it's, it's subtly, but different to, to stand alone
[24:10] marathon training. So while I think there's some
[24:12] benefit for marathon runners to have split runs and double run
[24:16] days when they're managing the fatigue of running every single
[24:18] day, we're not doing that as triathletes and also as first
[24:22] time Iron Man athletes. Most definitely we won't be
[24:27] managing fatigue as the most crucial thing to manage, but
[24:30] also we've got to prepare you for the demands of that race day
[24:34] specificity. So I'm going to ask you to do
[24:37] that long run as a long continuous run now is a
[24:40] challenge for those four specific long runs I've
[24:43] mentioned from 2:15 building to three hours.
[24:46] Finding the time in the day to do that can be really hard.
[24:50] So a couple of tips for you here.
[24:52] One thing is to do it after work and run home from work to home.
[24:56] If you can do it, if you can find a way.
[24:58] If you need to get a lift with somebody part of the way and
[25:00] then do that run and you end up at home, you have dinner, you
[25:03] apologise to the wife and kids and you go to bed.
[25:06] That's one way to do it. Another way to do it is to get
[25:08] it really early and do the run very first thing in the morning
[25:12] before work. Typically this works well for
[25:14] athletes who have got an office job where they can sit down all
[25:18] day for the rest of the day. So get up super early, do the
[25:20] long run, and maybe even if you can run to work, spend the rest
[25:24] of the day sitting down. That's something that can work
[25:26] for athletes. Other than that, you're looking
[25:29] at moving it to the weekend and doing it on the Saturday before
[25:32] you long ride on the Sunday. So I hope that answers your
[25:35] question. Now, Lee, I would stay away from
[25:38] those split long runs and try and find out a way you can do
[25:40] that continuously. Next questions from Piotr.
[25:44] Amen. Hi, Rob.
[25:46] I'm preparing for nine man. I work offshore, so running and
[25:50] cycling on a problem in the gym, but I don't have the conditions
[25:53] to do any swims, how to train, especially since I'm not very
[25:58] good at swimming. When I get back home, back on
[26:00] shore, I train in the pool every other day, right?
[26:03] So this is a it's a real big challenge for athletes who work
[26:05] offshore. Maybe they're working on oil
[26:07] rigs or something like this and maybe they're working on
[26:10] security detail over in in the Far East.
[26:12] I've worked with a few athletes who are in this situation.
[26:14] It's super, super, super challenging because if you just
[26:18] have no access to a pool, there's very limited exercise
[26:22] you can do that's actually going to help build your swim.
[26:25] People in the past have said I'm going to get myself a set of
[26:28] swim bands. I'm going to get on those little
[26:30] table things that lie on a new swim bands to do swim training.
[26:33] I just don't see very much training benefit in doing that.
[26:38] I think you can maybe take those swim bands and do swim specific
[26:43] strength and mobility work. I don't think there's a benefit
[26:46] to lying on a bench and using swim bands as if you're
[26:49] swimming. It's a completely different
[26:52] movement pattern and I would honestly advise people to stay
[26:55] away from any of those projects that are out there.
[26:57] I know recently there's been a company really pushing this on
[27:00] social media. I've not seen any benefit from
[27:03] athletes who've tried this, so I don't recommend it.
[27:07] Other people might have a different opinion and fine, but
[27:09] certainly the athletes of ours who bought it ended up saying,
[27:12] yeah, I gave this a punt and and it didn't work for me.
[27:15] So Piotr, in your position, it's going to be really hard to do
[27:18] anything that's going to be meaningful swim training if you
[27:21] can't actually get into the pool.
[27:23] So stick with what you've said. If you're working on a kind of
[27:26] four weeks on, four weeks off, do that swim training when
[27:29] you're back at home and you've said here you're not very good
[27:32] at swimming. The key here is to use the time
[27:34] that you've got when you're at home to improve as much as you
[27:37] can. So get some swim lessons, get a
[27:41] swim analysis done, get video of you swimming both above and
[27:44] below the water. See what your stroke flows are
[27:47] specifically work on technique so that you can then make those
[27:52] changes and you can use the swim times that you do have really,
[27:55] really effectively. Under no circumstances just get
[27:59] in the pool and swim because if you're not a very competent
[28:02] swimmer already, you're just going to embed whatever stroke
[28:05] flows you have already into your stroke.
[28:07] And essentially that training time is going to be wasted
[28:09] because it isn't improving your stroke technique.
[28:12] And that's the thing that really you've got to get into your
[28:15] head. You've got to build swim fitness
[28:17] as a by product of improving that stroke, improving your swim
[28:21] technique, rather than thinking that you can try and build swim
[28:26] fitness in inverted commas and that will magically make you
[28:29] faster. It doesn't happen the same way
[28:31] in swimming. I've used this analogy before.
[28:34] It would be like taking up golf and go down to a driving range
[28:37] and swing in the club 100 or 200 times really badly and expecting
[28:43] somehow that swinging the club badly is or practising swinging
[28:48] the club incorrectly is going to somehow lead you to swing the
[28:51] club correctly. Well, anyone who's tried golf
[28:53] knows that isn't the case. You have to have someone show
[28:56] you what to do with your body and practise that movement
[28:58] pattern and swimming is very, very similar to that.
[29:02] If you've got an incorrect movement pattern, you're not
[29:05] going to learn to improve that movement pattern by doing it
[29:07] more. You need to see what the mistake
[29:10] is and then you need to do specific drills in order to
[29:13] change the way your body moves in the water.
[29:16] And it will feel weird at first, it'll feel wrong and incorrect,
[29:19] but that means it's doing something that's going to change
[29:22] your swim stroke. I've put a video up on YouTube a
[29:25] couple of weeks ago. You can go and search for that.
[29:27] And it's it's had a lot of engagements on YouTube.
[29:30] Some people saying this makes total sense to me.
[29:32] Thanks so much. I'm going to go away and try
[29:33] this. It's talking about the first
[29:35] drill and there was somebody in the comments saying, but this is
[29:39] absolute nonsense. There's, there's absolutely no
[29:41] way. I think I used as a hook in the
[29:43] title, improve your swimming by 20 seconds per hundred just by
[29:48] using this drill. And the reason I use that title
[29:50] was it's genuinely something that we saw from 2 athletes, 2
[29:54] separate athletes on our training camp within the space
[29:57] of a week. When we went to Majorca, I gave
[29:59] these athletes the targeted drill that they needed.
[30:03] The fist rule was the one for them.
[30:04] They had that classic low elbow position under the water.
[30:07] Their arm was sliding back. They had no grip and no power
[30:10] and no force application to the water.
[30:12] And just practising this drill improved that 100 metres time
[30:18] from, you know, in the range of 215 to 220 down to 155 to 2
[30:23] minutes for the pair of them. Now, that's not because they've
[30:27] magically made this massive leap forward in their fitness.
[30:30] They were both already fit athletes, but they weren't able
[30:33] to apply force to the water. And so because of that, any of
[30:37] the fitness that they had, it wasn't producing meaningful grip
[30:40] on the water, meaningful force on the water.
[30:42] And simply by using the fist drill taught them a new movement
[30:45] pattern. They could engage all of the
[30:47] forearm against the water, grip against it.
[30:50] It stopped their arm and their elbow sliding back through the
[30:53] water and they were able to access the fitness they had, if
[30:57] you like to become more of the swimmer that their fitness
[31:01] should have allowed them to be. You know, so if you're like a 40
[31:05] minute, 45 minute 10K runner and you're swimming 2 minutes, 33
[31:10] minutes per hundred, it's telling you that there's
[31:12] something going on with your stroke doesn't tell you that
[31:15] you're not a fit swimmer. It tells you that there's no
[31:18] force application to the water. So like I said on this YouTube
[31:21] video, there was somebody there saying somebody who is a
[31:24] two-minute 30 per 100 swimmer is just a rubbish swimmer.
[31:28] They just need to get in the pool and get fit and start
[31:31] training. And it was a great example of I
[31:33] think what I talked about earlier in this episode,
[31:35] probably this, I'm going to say probably this athlete meant
[31:38] well. I don't know whether they did,
[31:40] to be honest. They were really Internet
[31:41] trolling and saying, you know, I'm calling bullshit on this
[31:44] channel. This guy doesn't know what he's
[31:46] talking about. But all they did it by saying
[31:48] this in the comments was reveal that they didn't have the
[31:51] background to understand the the challenge that an adult onset
[31:57] swimmer goes through. They mentioned later on they
[32:00] comes, they were like a 120 per 100 swimmer.
[32:04] They didn't understand what it's like to be fit on the bike in
[32:07] the run but not be able to apply that force to the water and
[32:10] access that fitness. So that's fine.
[32:14] I mean, people are going to get on the Internet and shout about
[32:16] stuff. I understand that.
[32:17] But it's great from my point of view because it allows me to
[32:20] explain actually, you're saying this, but that's not my
[32:24] experience as a coach who's worked with, you know, at this
[32:27] point, I'm going to say thousands of, but it's possibly
[32:30] 10s of thousands of athletes certainly spent thousands and
[32:34] thousands of hours on pool deck helping people improve.
[32:37] You can make these big jumps forward in Pool swimming speed
[32:41] without needing weeks and weeks. It can happen within one session
[32:45] because you're already fit enough.
[32:47] It's just you haven't got that technique to grip the water yet.
[32:50] So if that's you, if you're at the point where you know, you're
[32:55] really thinking, is this ever going to get better for me, then
[32:59] you know, just know it can get better and it can get better
[33:02] much, much quicker as well. All right, so I'm going to give
[33:06] a shout out here to our sponsors of Precision Fuel and Hydration.
[33:09] You can use that free fuel and hydration planning tool to
[33:12] receive a personalised strategy for your first race or your next
[33:15] race and the plan that helps you understand your own
[33:18] carbohydrate, electrolytes and fluid needs.
[33:21] And crucially, you can then put those plans into place in
[33:26] training and practise them so come race day, you know what
[33:29] you're doing. Honestly, Iron Man is a fuel
[33:33] limited event before it's a fitness limited event.
[33:37] It's fuel limited because you cannot store enough energy in
[33:41] your body to complete the Iron Man at any meaningful pace.
[33:44] You have to keep eating carbohydrate along the way.
[33:47] Now, well, I suppose technically you could do it without eating,
[33:50] but you're going to be going really slowly because you've
[33:53] just got your body's fat stores to, to to draw upon.
[33:57] You're going to use all of your body stored carbohydrate within
[34:00] a couple of hours. You have to then top it up.
[34:03] Carbohydrate is how our body accesses that sort of higher
[34:06] intensity ability to exercise. And by higher intensity, I mean
[34:09] anything above about 40% of VO2 Max.
[34:13] So any kind of jogging, you are going to need some, some
[34:17] contribution from carbohydrate metabolism.
[34:19] You are going to be sweating loads, you are going to lose a
[34:23] tonne of fluid and a tonne of electrolytes and you have to
[34:26] balance those. And in order to get it right,
[34:28] you need to ractice in training. O head over to recision fuel and
[34:32] hydrationcom. You can use that online planner
[34:36] then and give you a really good lead.
[34:37] You can also have a free one to one video consultation with PF
[34:41] and HS athletes support team. They'll talk you through it all
[34:44] and you then go away with a plan for carbohydrate, electrolyte
[34:47] and fluids that you can vary from day-to-day depending on
[34:50] what the temperature's like. You can nail it in training.
[34:53] So come race day, you know exactly what you're going to be
[34:57] doing. And that going to be the end of
[34:59] today's episode. I'm going to save the other
[35:00] questions that I've got for a future for a future episode of
[35:04] the show. Just before we wrap this up, if
[35:06] you have liked what you've heard today and you're considering
[35:08] coaching, the way that I work with athletes is this.
[35:11] I'm really fortunate and that we've been doing this for 10
[35:15] years now. Almost all my coaching slots are
[35:17] full almost all of the time. And I'm at the point where we we
[35:21] don't do any advertising. We just fill the slots from
[35:24] athletes who've come to the end of their coaching membership
[35:26] with us as they open up. And as I'm recording right now,
[35:30] middle of February, it looks like I'm going to have four
[35:33] slots available from February and into March from athletes
[35:37] who've let us know that they're not going to be continuing their
[35:39] membership because they've done their races.
[35:41] So if you've been wondering about getting coaching, if
[35:45] you've been listening to the podcast for a while or watched
[35:48] YouTube and you like what you've heard, I'd love to have a
[35:51] conversation with you about how we can help you out.
[35:54] I think most of these conversations I have with
[35:56] athletes these days are people saying like, I've listened to
[35:58] the podcast for ages. So I've watched YouTube for
[36:01] ages. I really like what you've said.
[36:03] It makes sense to me. And what I need is a coach who's
[36:06] going to take away all of the thinking for the planning of a
[36:09] training plan. So all I have to do is show up
[36:12] and do the training basically. And if I've got questions I can
[36:15] ask them of you. We can have our weekly check
[36:18] INS, we can have the chat on the team video call every week if
[36:21] you want to show up to that, and we can get a bit of feedback
[36:24] face to face. But if you're an athlete who
[36:26] prefers to type, we've got our own Team OA app that you can
[36:29] leave us messages in. I'm in there every day so I get
[36:32] back to the athletes for the coaching advice every day.
[36:34] If you're, for example, tired or sick or run down or you're
[36:38] travelling with work, we can help you adjust your plan and
[36:41] adjust the plan for you so that all you need to do on a
[36:43] day-to-day basis is show up, do the training, get fitter and
[36:48] know that come your Ironman race day, you're going to be in great
[36:51] shape to go out there and have a great day.
[36:52] So if that sounds like you, I'd love to have a conversation with
[36:56] you. You can come in and get one of
[36:57] these four slots that's available in February and we can
[37:00] start working with you right away.
[37:02] So, yeah, so there's a link to book that called down there in
[37:05] the show notes. If you're looking to make a
[37:07] purchase over at precisionfuelandhydration.com,
[37:10] use the code Oxygen 26 for 15% off your first electrolyte
[37:14] order. So thanks very much for
[37:16] listening this week, everybody. I hope you have a great safe
[37:19] training and racing week. I'm looking out the window right
[37:21] now as I'm recording this. We've got the first blue sky in
[37:24] about 5 weeks. The sun's up.
[37:27] I hope you get out there and enjoy some training.
[37:29] Know that the spring is on its way, maybe the springs even
[37:32] here. And before we know it, we're all
[37:34] going to be able to do more training outside again without
[37:36] worrying about getting freezing cold or wet.
[37:38] And you can really look forward to getting the training miles
[37:41] laid down for your eye -70.3 this year.
[37:44] I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've been listening to the Oxygen
[37:46] Addict Triathlon Podcast.

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