# Ask The Coach: Ironman Bike Pacing, Power Guidance, Equipment Selection, Training for Hills and more! | Ep 551

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 13 Aug 2025, 26 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/106785286/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-7-12%2F3334650d-ca3f-f535-76ee-b3bfd6d33db3.m4a

This week we have an "Ask the Coach" episode. Coach Rob answers listener questions on: -> Pacing with power meters or heart rate monitors... -> Effective training for hilly courses... -> Getting acclimated to the aero position... -> Gear choices for different courses... -> Hydration & nutrition planning... -> Race-day pacing... -> Riding with power versus by feel... ...and much more! * * * * * * * * 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. 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/ Register to watch our 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 * * * * * * * * * * * * 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. * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 Fuel 25.
[0:16] Welcome to the show everybody. I'm your host coach Rob Willby
[0:19] from Team Oxygen Addict Triathlon Coaching and every
[0:22] week I'll bring you an episode of this podcast to help educate,
[0:25] motivate and inspire you. On this week's episode, going to
[0:29] be doing an episode of Ask the coach.
[0:31] I've got some questions that have been sent through regarding
[0:34] Iron Man bike pacing, power and training tips.
[0:37] And I'm really hoping that the answers to these questions are
[0:39] going to help you out in the quest to improve your Iron Man
[0:43] bike leg 2 quick things you could do to help us out, please.
[0:45] Before we get started, if you like the episode, please
[0:48] consider following us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
[0:51] If you're looking for help training, if you're first Iron
[0:53] Man or 70.3, you can check out the coaching memberships over at
[0:57] teamoxygenaddict.com. We've just reopened for our new
[1:00] intake. As we head into what we, you
[1:03] know, we think of it as the 2026 season starting in August of
[1:07] 2025. Athletes who are going to train
[1:09] with us for a whole year, aiming at a summer Iron Man or 70.3.
[1:14] So we've just reopened and we've had some athletes believe at the
[1:17] end of the season after doing the races, so we've got some
[1:19] slots come available. I honestly think we've got the
[1:22] most comprehensive triathlon coaching programme that's
[1:24] specifically designed for busy age groupers.
[1:27] If you're interested, there's a link in the show notes.
[1:29] You can book a membership, call with me and we'll have a chat
[1:31] and we'll see if you'd be a good fit for joining the team.
[1:35] Right, let's get started on these questions.
[1:39] How do I work out my target power for the bike leg of an
[1:43] Iron Man? OK, so if you're riding with a
[1:45] power metre, this is really easy.
[1:46] You're going to be somewhere in the region of 65 to 75% of your
[1:51] FTP on average for the whole bike leg.
[1:54] Slower athletes are going to be at the lower end of that, faster
[1:58] athletes are going to be at the higher end of that.
[2:00] And the reason that the different is you've roughly got
[2:03] the same amount of training stress to spend on that bike leg
[2:07] in order to ensure that you run well regardless of whether
[2:10] you're going to be on the bike for four hours or on the bike
[2:13] for 8 hours. But obviously if you're on the
[2:14] bike for four hours, you can afford to spend that energy much
[2:19] quicker and go faster. If you're going to be out there
[2:21] for longer, you've got to relatively do a small percentage
[2:25] of your FTP. So somewhere between that 65 to
[2:28] 75% of your FTP. If you haven't got a power
[2:32] metre, firstly, I'd strongly advise you go and invest in one.
[2:36] It's one of the best things that you can do, honestly, in terms
[2:39] of I mean, they're not sexy, they don't look like carbon
[2:41] wheels or they don't look like new bikes or skin suits.
[2:44] But in terms of the effect, they'll have a new ability to
[2:48] ride well, ride within your fitness limits and allow you to
[2:52] deliver a really good marathon. It's the best thing that you can
[2:55] spend your money on, bar none. If you're riding with a heart
[2:59] rate monitor, you're going to be somewhere in your zone 2 heart
[3:03] rate. And by that I mean you're going
[3:04] to have to go and look up the Joe Freel heart rate zones.
[3:07] It's no good looking at a Garmin because honestly the numbers
[3:10] there are based on, I don't really know what they're based
[3:13] on. They seem like guesswork A lot
[3:15] of the time. The Joe Freel heart rate zones
[3:18] based on a functional threshold power test somewhere in that
[3:22] zone 2. And again, if you are a faster
[3:24] athlete, you can be at the top of your zone 2.
[3:27] If you're a slower athlete, you're going to have to be at
[3:29] the middle or even down towards the bottom of your zone 2.
[3:32] And that just reflects how long you're going to be out there on
[3:35] race day for. Should I use a power metre or a
[3:39] heart rate monitor or just ride by feel on race day?
[3:42] Now I've, I've gone into the answer to this already.
[3:46] If you can afford it, if you can stretch your, your available
[3:49] budget to getting a power metre, even a second hand one, I
[3:53] honestly believe that they're as good as cheating at Iron Man if
[3:57] used correctly. If you've done the right test
[4:00] beforehand and you know it, your numbers are accurately.
[4:03] It's simply a matter of riding at the number that you need to
[4:06] ride at on race day and you'll get to the end of the bike leg.
[4:09] Firstly, really confident that you're going to get there within
[4:13] the cut off, but secondly knowing that you've only used
[4:18] enough energy to allow yourself the budget to run really well
[4:22] off the bike. Plenty of stories of people
[4:25] who've done fantastically fast bike legs and then their runs
[4:28] have been mostly a walk and in some cases the run split is
[4:31] longer than the bike split was. Now there's no such thing as a
[4:35] good bike split and a really bad run split when it comes to Iron
[4:39] Man performance. If that's happened.
[4:42] If you hear people saying I had a really fast bike but then my
[4:44] run fell apart, what that tells you is that their pacing wasn't
[4:48] correct during the bike. Like it's as simple as that,
[4:50] that if you've paced the bike correctly, you'll be able to run
[4:54] a really strong marathon at the end of it.
[4:56] And if you can't run a really strong marathon, the 1st place
[5:00] to look at is your pacing on the bike.
[5:03] Now, if you can't stretch that heart rate monitor.
[5:05] So if you can't stretch to the power metre, the heart rate
[5:08] monitor is the next way to go. Again, you're going to have to
[5:11] know how to use it. You're going to have to have
[5:13] done accurate tests and you're going to have to be sure that
[5:15] your threshold heart rate is accurate.
[5:17] But if you've done that, then you know what the numbers are
[5:21] meant to be. You can practise that in
[5:23] training and you can try and control that on race day.
[5:26] Now one word of of a caveat here with this.
[5:29] Heart rate numbers are affected by a range of things that can
[5:35] skew the numbers. So if you get very excited, your
[5:37] heart rate can go up 10 or 15 beats a minute.
[5:41] And that's not because you're riding harder, it's because
[5:45] you're excited. And so often the heart rate
[5:48] numbers are not accurate compared to how they would be in
[5:51] training because of the effect of adrenaline and the crowds
[5:55] making you excited. So heart rate monitors can be a
[5:58] little bit misleading, but they're certainly much better
[6:01] than nothing. If you don't have any of these
[6:03] and you're just going to ride by feel on race day.
[6:06] Well, my strong advice to at this point is to buy one of
[6:10] those two things that we've already said and learn to use
[6:12] them before race day. Because riding by feel, you will
[6:16] almost certainly, and I'm going to say almost certainly you will
[6:20] certainly ride too hard on the bike, certainly at times in that
[6:24] bike leg, just because of the excitement of race day and, and
[6:27] the crowd's cheering you on. So I don't feel that riding by
[6:30] feel is a very effective way of going and doing it.
[6:33] And you might see videos of people saying that they've
[6:35] ridden by feel often. I think what you'll find is
[6:39] they're trying to justify some kind of result after the event.
[6:43] The scientific numbers that you can get back from either heart
[6:46] rate or power metres are really, really going to help out every
[6:50] single person who uses them. Next up, what's the best way to
[6:55] pace the 1st 30 minutes of the bike after the swim?
[6:59] I think the answer to this one is going to be really obvious.
[7:02] You're going to come out of the swim, you're going to go through
[7:04] T1, you're going to run to your bike, you're going to be
[7:07] surrounded by people and crowds and music and the announcers.
[7:10] You are going to be very excited and your body's going to release
[7:14] adrenaline. You will feel almost no pain no
[7:17] matter how hard you ride for the 1st 30 minutes on the bike.
[7:21] So the thing you've got to do is you've got to ride consciously a
[7:25] lot more easily than you think you can.
[7:27] I've had athletes say to me I was convinced that my power
[7:31] metre was broken because the numbers were coming so easily to
[7:34] me in the 1st 20 minutes. Now nobody has a magic day on
[7:39] race day when all of a sudden they've got an extra 40 watts
[7:41] available to them. It might feel like that for the
[7:44] 1st 20 minutes but an Iron Man bike leg is going to be at the
[7:49] very fast end. 4 hours and for most age group is 5 or 6 or 7 or
[7:53] 8 hours. The 1st 20 minutes are not
[7:56] accurate of how it's going to feel at hour 5 or hour 6 or hour
[8:01] seven. So the best way to paste that
[8:03] first 30 minutes is to consciously think I'm going to
[8:06] ride well within myself. If you've got the power metre
[8:09] on, write your power numbers. If you've got the heart rate
[8:12] monitor on and no power metre, what you might find is that the
[8:16] heart rate is much higher than you're expecting it to be
[8:19] because of the adrenaline and that's OK.
[8:22] You're just going to have to consciously back off.
[8:24] It's another reminder to back off and ease off a little bit.
[8:28] Now this advice holds true for everybody, even the people who
[8:33] are going to be fighting the cut off.
[8:35] The time you want to be really pushing yourself on is in the
[8:38] last third of the bike leg, not the first third of the bike leg.
[8:43] Next question, how can I stop my legs from feeling heavy when I
[8:47] start the run? OK.
[8:49] So a really good tip that I've got for you here is in the last
[8:53] 15 minutes of the bike leg change into a consciously more
[8:58] easy gear where your legs are going to turn over a little bit
[9:01] faster. And those last 15 minutes are
[9:04] going to, if you like, they're going to get your legs used to
[9:06] going a cadence that's a lot more like running.
[9:10] So most people that they're riding cadence is going to tend
[9:13] toward being 10 or maybe 20 Revs a minute slower than the ideal
[9:19] run cadence. So we might be riding at 75 to
[9:22] 80 reps a minute on the bike and ideally we want to be running at
[9:26] 90 to 95 steps per minute. And so because of that, if we
[9:31] want to stop our legs feeling heavy, it's going to have two
[9:34] effects. The first one is you're going to
[9:36] get used to turning the legs over faster, which is is going
[9:39] to help you get into the idea of the cadence you need for the
[9:42] running. But also by changing into a
[9:44] slightly easier gear, you're going to reduce the load on your
[9:48] leg muscles. And you're going to shift the
[9:50] load a little bit onto your heart and cardiovascular system
[9:53] so you don't have to push with as much force.
[9:56] Which means those legs, if they are starting to feel tired, are
[10:00] going to start to feel a little bit like they've recovered.
[10:02] So increasing the cadence very slightly up towards 90 or 95 is
[10:07] really going to help that. And Next up, what's the best way
[10:12] to get used to the arrow position before Iron Man race
[10:15] day? OK, so really big question.
[10:19] It's going to take you training in the arrow position for a
[10:23] considerable amount of your training time in order to get
[10:26] used to it. You can't expect to buy arrow
[10:29] bars the day before a race and put them on your road bike and
[10:32] be able to ride in that position comfortably for six hours.
[10:35] It might sound absurd to you. I've had athletes do that and
[10:38] question that and, and I've I've heard people say that they've
[10:41] done that. They've bought arrow bars from
[10:43] the Expo the day before, decided they're going to use them for
[10:46] the first time on race day. You are going to have to train
[10:49] for probably 8 to 12 weeks to get used to your arrow position
[10:53] and it will definitely be faster, but only when you're
[10:57] used to it. I've had a very interesting
[10:59] experience of standing on the sidelines of dozens of Iron Man
[11:02] events at this point. And we used to go into port on
[11:05] the Ironman UK port at about the 90 mile mark.
[11:09] And the number of people who would come riding by us riding
[11:12] expensive time trial bikes, but they're not in the arrow
[11:15] position at all. They're sitting up on the the
[11:18] bullhorn extensions. That expensive time trial bike
[11:21] is no good to anybody if you're not in the arrow position.
[11:25] And so you have to train to be in that position.
[11:28] So my advice here is treat it like interval training.
[11:30] When you're first getting started, start on the bike
[11:34] trainer to start with so you get used to how that feels.
[11:37] Go outside onto quiet roads and get used to riding a little bit
[11:40] on the quiet roads. And then when you're confident
[11:42] that you can ride comfortably in the arrow position, you're going
[11:46] to treat it like interval training.
[11:48] So you're going to get down for 5 minutes in the position,
[11:51] you're going to sit up and ride normally for 5 minutes, and then
[11:54] you're going to extend that to 10 minutes and then to 15
[11:57] minutes and then to 20 minutes. When you're doing sections of 20
[12:01] minutes, you can then reduce that 5 minutes sitting up period
[12:05] so it goes 54321. And eventually what you'll find
[12:08] is you can ride for 20 or 30 minutes at a time before you
[12:12] need to sit up and take a little break.
[12:14] Now even our best riders will take a little break at some
[12:17] point, even if it's just to go through an aid stage or even if
[12:20] it's just to go up a hill. So you don't have to be able to
[12:24] sit in that position for four or five or six or seven or eight
[12:27] hours continually. In fact, I'd advise you not to
[12:30] do that because your body is going to need a break.
[12:33] But if you train yourself into that over an 8 to 12 week
[12:37] period, you'll be a fantastic position come race day.
[12:40] So you can hold that for extended 20 or 30 minute periods
[12:45] and especially if you're riding into a headwind, you can then
[12:48] hold the arrow position, be really arrow and get all the
[12:52] benefits of going faster for the same power.
[12:55] OK, this is a great spot for me to stop and give a sponsor shout
[12:59] out to our sponsors Precision Fuel and Hydration.
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[13:12] fluid needs and you can also book a free one to one video
[13:16] consultation with PF and HS athletes elite support team.
[13:19] I honestly believe that getting your carbohydrates, your
[13:22] electrolyte and your fluids correct is as important to your
[13:26] success on race day as actually getting the training has been
[13:29] done. We've seen loads of examples of
[13:32] people who trained really well haven't got the carbs right or
[13:35] haven't got the fluid right or haven't got the electrolytes
[13:37] right and their race has just fallen apart and it's such a
[13:41] shame because it's so easy to take care of.
[13:44] If you head over to their website, there's tonnes of free
[13:46] information and they've also got what I believe to be the best
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[14:09] What's the best way to train for hills on an Iron Man course if I
[14:12] live somewhere flat? Well, this is kind of a loaded
[14:16] question. You're going to have to train in
[14:19] a way that suits the course that you're going to have to race.
[14:23] And if you've entered a really hilly Iron Man and you haven't
[14:26] got any hills nearby, there's only a few things you can do to
[14:29] help a little bit. But the main one is you're going
[14:32] to have to spend some time driving with your bike in the
[14:36] car to get to a place that's got hills and ideally doing your
[14:39] long rides on a course that is as close to the demands of race
[14:44] day that you're going to face. So a few of the things that we
[14:47] can also do in training that might help.
[14:50] They're a little bit of a hack, I suppose, to help, but nothing
[14:53] is going to prepare you as well as getting yourself out onto the
[14:57] kind of terrain that you're going to face.
[15:00] And so that's my first question back to an athlete is if you're
[15:03] going to answer, if you're going to enter a really hard hilly
[15:05] Iron Man like Iron Man Wales, or you're going to go and do Iron
[15:08] Man Lanzarote, but you live in a completely flat area.
[15:12] What is it that's LED you to enter a course that is so
[15:15] different to the terrain that's available to you?
[15:18] Because it is possible to do this, but it isn't very easy.
[15:21] It is going to involve you spending some time driving the
[15:24] car and going for weekends away, which would be great and it'll
[15:27] be good fun, but it isn't very convenient.
[15:29] I'm not convinced that there's a very effective way to try and
[15:33] use, for example, your bike trainer to try and train
[15:36] indoors. Now kicker of got a little add
[15:39] on that that raises the front end of the bike.
[15:41] It's possible that you can try that.
[15:44] I've never been convinced it's particularly useful in terms of
[15:47] getting used to going over hills and the way that will feel in a
[15:51] really long bike ride. One of the other things that you
[15:55] can try if you're riding outdoors and you don't have
[15:58] hills available, it's using a headwinds to your advantage.
[16:01] Essentially we have to think of what's going to change as you
[16:04] going up the hill. It's very hard to replicate the
[16:07] the fact that the bike is going to be in a different position
[16:10] and leaning uphill. But what you can replicate is
[16:13] the fact that your cadence will tend to drop as you're climbing
[16:16] up the hill. So you can use a headwind to
[16:19] help you here and that you can change into a slightly higher
[16:23] gear, so maybe 2 gears harder than you would usually
[16:26] comfortably riding and roll into the headwind at about the same
[16:31] power that you would be riding at usually.
[16:33] But try and have the cadence be 10-15, maybe even 20 reps a
[16:38] minute lower than you would usually ride at.
[16:41] And that's one way you can get your legs used to pushing more
[16:45] force if you like without creating a lot more power.
[16:50] But again, I'm going to come back to say this to people.
[16:52] There isn't an easy hack for a way around how to do a hilly
[16:55] Iron Man if you haven't got access to hills to train over.
[16:59] So the big takeaway here is think really carefully about the
[17:03] event that you're going to enter and make sure that the training
[17:07] that you've got available to you is actually going to match the
[17:10] demands of the event. How can I improve my
[17:12] aerodynamics without spending a fortune on new kit?
[17:16] OK, so the way to think about aerodynamics is it's a way for
[17:20] you to go faster for the same power for the same effort if you
[17:24] like. And new entrants to the sport
[17:26] are often really not aware of the massive impact aerodynamics
[17:30] has. So even just getting yourself
[17:33] into a more aerodynamic position on your road bike, even if you
[17:37] just have clip ONS on there, means you can be going
[17:40] significantly faster for the same speed and the same power.
[17:44] So what we might be talking about here is 2 to 3 kilometres
[17:48] an hour faster for the same power.
[17:50] So the first thing that I would advise you to do is look at
[17:54] getting a skin suit, a Tri suit, some close fitting Tri suit type
[17:59] items. Even over wearing cycling kits,
[18:03] shirts and shorts and jersey is going to really reduce the
[18:07] amount of drag that you have. That's the first thing.
[18:09] The person on this bike is creating the drag.
[18:11] So having tight fitting clothing is the first first really easy
[18:15] win. The second thing that you can do
[18:18] is if you're riding a road bike, add clip on Tri bars onto that
[18:22] road bike. You will instantly find that
[18:24] you're going one to two kilometres an hour faster for
[18:27] the same power output depending on how fast you're going
[18:30] already. But the clip on arrow bars onto
[18:33] a road bike give you probably 8% of the aerodynamic gains that
[18:37] you'll get from shifting to a Tri bike.
[18:39] Now the caveat here is a Tri bike is set up differently.
[18:43] The angles are going to be different and it's going to put
[18:45] you in a more comfortable position to run off the bike.
[18:48] But if what you're looking for is saving time on the bike leg,
[18:52] those arrow bars are going to be fantastic.
[18:54] And if you're one of the athletes who's really pushing up
[18:57] against the cut off on the bike and you don't have arrow bars
[19:00] on, I would strongly advise you to look at getting arrow bars
[19:04] put on. Now you are going to have to
[19:06] spend the time training in the arrow position in order to get
[19:08] used to it, but as long as you've got 8 to 12 weeks to
[19:12] prepare yourself for your Iron Man, you've got plenty of time
[19:15] to get used to those arrow bars. How do I practise nutrition and
[19:20] hydration on the bike so that I avoid stomach issues later in
[19:24] the run? Well, there's a really simple
[19:26] answer to this. It comes down to your training.
[19:29] It comes down to practising and training what you're going to do
[19:32] on race day. So our advice to athletes here
[19:35] is we're going to start off in the region of 60 grammes of carb
[19:39] per hour, and we're going to see how your body responds to that
[19:43] on the next long bike ride. If it feels a little bit too
[19:46] much, if you feel like you're not digesting it, if you start
[19:49] at any point to feel ill, you can reduce that on the next
[19:52] ride. But 60 grammes an hour is a
[19:54] really good starting point. If that goes OK, the next week
[19:58] you're going to increase it by 5 grammes per hour, and then again
[20:01] the next week by 5 grammes an hour.
[20:04] The thinking on this has changed massively over 2024.
[20:08] It used to be that we thought 60 grammes an hour was about the
[20:12] upper limit. Now we're seeing some of our
[20:14] athletes doing 100 to 120 grammes per hour of
[20:18] carbohydrates. And that's important because
[20:21] every gramme of carbohydrate you take in is giving you energy to
[20:24] be able to ride and run. If you can digest that and
[20:27] absorb it, it's going to be used as part of fueling you moving
[20:31] forwards. But the caveat here that's
[20:33] important to understand this, it's only useful to you if you
[20:37] can absorb it. And what some people find is if
[20:39] they have too much or they're riding too hard, what's going to
[20:43] happen is it doesn't get digested.
[20:44] They end up feeling sick or being sick or having to go to
[20:48] one of the on site toilets and ending up needing to really go
[20:51] to the toilet badly. And we want to avoid that.
[20:54] So we practise in training. We get used to the number of
[20:57] grammes we can take in training. And then on race day we take in
[21:01] a little bit less than we're actually used to.
[21:03] In that way, it gives us a little bit of tolerance for the
[21:05] fact on race day we're going to be more excited and we're
[21:08] probably going to be going a little bit harder.
[21:11] Similarly for hydration and electrolytes on the bike, we
[21:13] need to practise this in training and a really good
[21:16] starting point is 500 to 750 millilitres of fluid per hour.
[21:22] See how you go with that. Most people find that's about in
[21:26] the right area, but if it's really hot one day, you're
[21:29] probably going to have to take in more, maybe up to a litre or
[21:32] more per hour. So practise this in training
[21:35] when it's hot. If you've done this in training
[21:37] on race day, you're not going to be doing anything new.
[21:41] OK, Next up, what's the most effective way to train indoors
[21:46] for an outdoor Iron Man course? OK, So a bit of a loaded
[21:50] question here. Lots of people these days don't
[21:53] feel particularly safe riding outdoors and I understand that,
[21:58] I really do. I think there's, especially some
[22:00] of our athletes in America talk about it just not feeling safe
[22:04] to ride bikes in a lot of places a lot of the time.
[22:07] So the indoor trainer can be a valid way to train if you can't
[22:12] get outdoors. But let's be really clear, the
[22:15] best way for you to prepare for your Iron Man or your 70.3 is
[22:19] going to be doing your long rides outdoors on the kind of
[22:22] terrain that you're going to face on race day.
[22:25] If ahead of entering your Iron Man, you're wondering whether
[22:29] it's going to even be safe to train outdoors on the bike, I'm
[22:32] going to be questioning whether it's the right thing for you to
[22:35] enter an Iron Man. If you live in a place where you
[22:37] can't ride outdoors, Doing long outdoor rides is going to be a
[22:40] significant part of your training.
[22:43] So really question carefully. If you do decide to go ahead,
[22:47] that's fine, but do it in the knowledge that it's not going to
[22:50] be the easiest way to prepare. O Riding the trainer indoors can
[22:54] be fine. You can use Swift or you can use
[22:57] Ruby. You can try and ride the courses
[22:59] ahead of time and get used to it and that will get your legs fit
[23:02] and your heart fit. But what it doesn't replicate so
[23:05] well is the fitness of your neck and your shoulders and your back
[23:09] and the way it feels going over potholes and getting Jarred
[23:13] around. And it certainly doesn't help
[23:15] you develop the bike handling skills that you're going to
[23:18] need. So please think really carefully
[23:21] about entering an Iron Man if you're not confident that you're
[23:24] going to be able to do your long rides outdoors in training.
[23:28] And Next up, how do I decide on the right gearing for my bike,
[23:31] especially for a hilly course? One of the things I think you
[23:35] need to look at is a ratio on the Gears of getting toward 1 to
[23:39] 1. So what I mean by that is if
[23:42] you've got a 34 as your smallest chain ring at the front, having
[23:46] a 34 as your biggest cassette cog at the back, if you can get
[23:51] somewhere close to that one to one ratio, hills should have
[23:55] very little worry for you because you've got fantastic
[23:58] gearing there. Lots of bikes are coming like
[24:02] that these days or certainly have the option to change the
[24:04] cassette and the rear Mac is is easily able to to take those
[24:09] numbers. But you need to go to bike shop
[24:11] and you need to check with them what's the biggest cassette size
[24:14] it takes at the back and whether you can change the chain rings
[24:18] at the front. A lot of our athletes who work
[24:20] with us, Fryman Leeds or Fryman Wales or Fryman Lanzarote find
[24:24] that the bikes they've got, despite looking fantastic in the
[24:28] shop, hasn't got the gearing set up and they need to change
[24:31] either or both of the front chain rings or the rear cassette
[24:35] and that's OK. It's just like a golfer picking
[24:38] a different club. But it is going to come with
[24:40] some additional additional costs.
[24:42] So it's worth looking into that if you're looking to buy a new
[24:44] bike. Does it come with that one to
[24:46] one ratio? Does it come with a 3434 or even
[24:50] some of the new canyons come with a 35 on the front and a 36
[24:54] at the back. So they've already got that
[24:56] really big ratio set up for you. So having those gears means it
[25:00] will definitely be not easier to get up the hills, but you're
[25:03] then have an easier set of gears to be able to get you up those
[25:07] hills. OK, I hope this episode has been
[25:10] useful to you. It drops a line.
[25:12] If you think some of these tips are going to help you out
[25:14] preparing for your IMR 70.3. To wrap this up, here are some
[25:17] discount codes and deals for you over at Precision Fuel and
[25:20] hydration.com. You can use the code Oxygen Fuel
[25:23] 25 for 15% off your first electrolyte order.
[25:27] And if you're looking for help with coaching for Iman and 70.3
[25:31] over at teamoxygenetic.com, I think we've got the most
[25:33] comprehensive triathlon coaching programme that's specifically
[25:36] designed for busy age groupers. If you're looking for help for a
[25:40] 70.3 or Iman this year, please get in touch.
[25:42] There's a link in the show notes to book a membership call with
[25:45] us and see if you'd be a good fit for joining the team.
[25:47] So remember everyone, there's links in the show notes so you
[25:50] don't have to remember them. And until next week, have a
[25:53] great safe training and racing week.
[25:55] I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've been listening to the Oxygen
[25:58] Addict Triathlon Podcast.

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