# Mastering Hilly Ironman Races: Essential Tips and Strategies | Ep 498

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 17 Jul 2024, 20 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/89301252/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2024-6-16%2F383307492-44100-2-886f9e325cee8.mp3

Preparing for a hilly Ironman or half Ironman? Learn the best strategies to tackle challenging courses like Ironman Wales. This episode covers essential tips on controlling power, equipment adjustments, specific training exercises, and on-site course preparation. Discover how to protect your legs for the run and optimize your performance on race day.

## Transcript

[0:02] Hello and welcome to the Oxygen Addict podcast.
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[0:24] I'm your host, Coach Rob will be.
[0:26] And every week we've been you an episode of this podcast to help
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[1:03] You can read all about what we offer at teamoxygenaddict.com
[1:07] and then you can e-mail us at help@oxygenaddict.com or there's
[1:11] a link in the show notes to book a call with me or one of the
[1:14] coaching team. We can discuss how we can best
[1:17] help you out with your triathlon goals for this season.
[1:21] On this episode, I want to talk about the best way that you can
[1:25] prepare for a hilly half Iron Man or for a hilly Iron Man.
[1:30] It's a question we've been getting a lot recently on social
[1:32] media, questions we've been getting from our athletes, which
[1:36] is it's one thing to enter a half Iron Man or a full Iron
[1:39] Man, but it can be a whole of the challenge if the Iron Man is
[1:43] extremely hilly. So something like Iron Man
[1:45] Whales, for example, there's this additional challenge of
[1:49] it's not just riding your bike for 180 kilometres, it's
[1:53] measuring your effort and learning to control your power
[1:56] over what can be a very challenging and additional extra
[2:00] stress of the hills that you've got to cover.
[2:03] So first up, there's nothing to worry about here.
[2:06] I'm on. Wales in particular is a
[2:08] fantastic race and I think the nature of the course actually
[2:12] adds to the experience of the athlete.
[2:15] The fact is so challenging, the fact that you'll have amazing
[2:18] support on the climbs. All of these things are
[2:21] positives that you get with a hilly course, but they also come
[2:25] with this. Not this drawback, but the extra
[2:28] stress that you have to prepare properly for the hilly nature of
[2:31] the race. And then you also have to make
[2:34] sure you execute on the day in a way that you measure your
[2:38] efforts and you use your fitness in a way that's most appropriate
[2:41] to protect your run for later on.
[2:44] So the example I always use when thinking about a hilly Iron Man
[2:48] is most people's experience of watching cycle sport on hills on
[2:54] TV is watching the Tour de France.
[2:57] It's watching the leaders of the Tour de France attack each
[3:00] other, try and Sprint away up hills.
[3:03] A lot of people's experience of group rides in Tri clubs or
[3:06] cycling clubs is very similar. We get to a hill, the group
[3:10] doesn't slow down, the fittest person usually goes to the
[3:13] front, the fittest person usually pushes the pace and
[3:17] everyone else has the pace dictated to them by that
[3:20] stronger rider. And that's understandable and
[3:23] it's great fun and everyone loves going out and getting
[3:25] involved in those kinds of rides.
[3:28] But I'm going to put it to you, it's not the best way to prepare
[3:30] for your Hilly Iron Man or Hilly 70.3.
[3:34] So we've defined the challenge, and the challenge is riding a
[3:39] hilly course in a way that best protects your legs for the run.
[3:43] And the way to best protect your legs for the run is not to have
[3:46] massive variations in power. It's not to have huge power
[3:50] spikes. It's not to have minutes and
[3:53] minutes working really, really hard at or above your FTP or
[3:58] even your VO2 Max. What sometimes it's to learn to
[4:01] use your equipment and learn to use your brain so you can
[4:05] control the power. Yes, that's going to mean going
[4:07] up the hills slower than you would ideally like, and probably
[4:11] it's going to mean going up the hills slower than the people
[4:14] around you. But I think what you have to
[4:16] remember is most people in an event are going to be giving you
[4:20] negative feedback if you like. They're probably going to be
[4:23] making mistakes, they're probably going to be going too
[4:26] hard. So you can't really pay too much
[4:28] attention to the people around you.
[4:31] So in an ideal world, I think what we'd have, and it's
[4:35] impossible to do this on the hilly course, but in an ideal
[4:38] world we would have you ride the entire bike leg with a very flat
[4:43] power profile. So without lots of highs and
[4:46] without lots of lows. Now obviously the challenge
[4:49] comes when you get to a hill, regardless of whether it's a
[4:51] long shallow hill or a short, sharp, steep hill, it's quite
[4:55] hard to control the power because our brain uses the
[4:59] feedback around us to say I'm judging how fast and how hard
[5:02] I'm going based on how fast the scenery is coming by me.
[5:06] Basically our brain only uses speed as its as its measure of
[5:10] how hard you're going. So when you slow down on the
[5:12] hill, your brain sort of says to you what we're slowing down, we
[5:15] need to make more of an effort. We need to keep our speed up.
[5:18] Often times the next thing we use as our gauge of effort is
[5:22] the cadence, which is why when you get to a hill, people often
[5:26] they don't change into slightly easier gears.
[5:28] They try to keep the cadence going and that's going to result
[5:32] in an increase in power. So we have to learn to control,
[5:36] if you like, the natural, the natural human nature of of being
[5:40] a person who wants to be competitive, we have to learn to
[5:43] control that. So in order to try and control
[5:47] those power spikes and in an ideal world really limit the
[5:50] power spikes so so they're not there, what we have to do is we
[5:53] have to learn to firstly change up gears when we get to hills,
[5:56] make it easier and we have to make sure we've got the correct
[5:59] gearing. So as a rough rule of thumb,
[6:02] when we come to a hill, no matter how steep it is, I get
[6:05] people to change up at least one gear at the back.
[6:09] As soon as the hill starts. If the hill is anything that
[6:13] starts to look relatively steep to you, we immediately change
[6:16] it. 123 gears. And that's going to mean your
[6:19] cadence does speed up, but immediately you've taken 3 gears
[6:23] off the load you were pressing and it's going to be much, much
[6:26] more manageable. And then you have to use your
[6:28] power metre, you have to look down.
[6:30] You have to look and think, right.
[6:31] If I was riding at 150 watts on the flat and I'm now riding at
[6:35] 220 watts, I need to keep moving up the gears until my
[6:40] comfortable cadence going up the hill matches the power that I
[6:44] had before. And so we've got these two kinds
[6:47] of hills to think about. We've got long, shallow hills,
[6:51] and we've got really short, sharp, steep hills.
[6:54] And obviously there's everything in between.
[6:55] But if we take those two examples, the long, shallow
[6:59] hills are great because you can control it.
[7:02] So you can use the hill as if it was just a headwind.
[7:04] You can change up the appropriate number of gears so
[7:07] that your power stays in the power band around the same
[7:10] wattage that you wanted it to be.
[7:12] And you can just ride up the hill, try and keep your cadence
[7:15] about the same as it was before, try and keep your power about
[7:18] the same. And then that way what we're
[7:19] doing is we're controlling the amount of power spikes that
[7:22] happen. We're controlling the amount of
[7:24] extra fatigue our legs experience, we're controlling
[7:27] any potential muscle damage, and we're protecting our run.
[7:31] When we get onto the shorter, sharper, steeper hills, the same
[7:35] principle holds true. We ideally want to keep the
[7:37] power to the same level it was at before, but it comes with
[7:40] this caveat. On really steep hills, there's
[7:43] sometimes nothing you can do. When hills get above a certain
[7:46] steepness, all you can do is try to get up the hill without
[7:51] stopping, and if that necessitates getting out of the
[7:54] saddle to power your way up it. But that's what you have to do
[7:58] and this is where the training comes in.
[8:00] You're going to have to practise going out on those kind of
[8:03] short, sharp, steep hills. You're going to have to
[8:05] discipline to change down into your lowest possible gear.
[8:08] You have to get out of the saddle, but then try and control
[8:11] the power and keep it limited. So it's kind of a game of you
[8:16] have to do what you need to do to get up the hill, but at the
[8:19] same time you need to try and protect your legs for later on.
[8:22] And if we take really extreme examples, if you go to the Lake
[8:25] District and you ride the Fred Wit and sporty, then you go up
[8:28] hard, not pass the hill. There gets to one in three at a
[8:32] certain point. And everyone I know on any kind
[8:36] of road bike with any kind of gearing, even if they've got the
[8:39] latest 1 to one ratio, you're out of the saddle and you're
[8:44] pretty much working as hard as you can for a few minutes just
[8:47] to keep the bike moving up the hill and to stop from falling
[8:50] over. And if that's what you have to
[8:52] do, well, that's what you have to do.
[8:55] But there are some tricks that you can make your life a lot
[8:58] easier for yourself. So first up, let's talk about
[9:02] the correct equipment for the course.
[9:04] For most people, the first bike that they buy is not going to
[9:08] have the appropriate gearing on for riding a really steeply
[9:12] hilly course. So the thing we have to do is
[9:14] prepare well in advance and we have to change some of the
[9:17] equipment on there. So first up, you can change the
[9:20] cassette on the wheel of your bike.
[9:22] You can make that cassette much, much bigger.
[9:24] That might also necessitate changing the rear neck on your
[9:28] bike and also changing the chain.
[9:30] But if you don't have a big cassette on the back of your
[9:34] bike, and these days modern bikes can go to 36 teeth on the
[9:38] back. If you've currently got a 25 on
[9:40] the back and you want to go and do Iron Man Whales, well, I'm
[9:43] not saying you can't do it with that gearing, but you will have
[9:46] a much easier ride if you change to a much bigger cassette on the
[9:50] back and the appropriate chain and the appropriate, the
[9:54] appropriate rear Mac be much, much easier for you.
[9:57] So it's well worth thinking about spending that money when
[10:00] you've already invested hundreds, maybe thousands of
[10:02] pounds on doing the race. Spend the extra 100 lbs,
[10:06] whatever it might be to get the gearing, get the cassette, get
[10:10] the rear Mac all sorted out. Similarly, if you don't have a
[10:14] compact 34 on the front on your your front, your front COGS,
[10:21] then you definitely want to consider changing that as well.
[10:24] So again, it might be an expense, but it will pay you
[10:28] back to change the chain set on the front and have the the
[10:31] smallest chain set you can have on the front working with the
[10:33] biggest cassette you can have on the back to give you those
[10:36] options of gearing. Now recently I changed to a 34
[10:40] on the front to 35 on the back set up or 36 on the back set up.
[10:44] The difference it's made on really steep hills is absolutely
[10:47] phenomenal. It's it's almost like riding a
[10:49] mountain bike. I honestly feel I can climb
[10:51] anything and the comparison to that before was feeling I had
[10:55] big gears on, but I think I was 36 on the front and maybe a 30
[10:58] on the back. Again on those really steep
[11:01] hills like hard nut pass, it really was out of the saddle and
[11:04] doing everything that I could to even get up the hill.
[11:07] So first up, check that you've got the equipment right for the
[11:10] event that you want to go and do.
[11:12] Go and talk to your local bike shop.
[11:14] They'll be able to advise you on what combinations you can put on
[11:17] your bike. Now next point #2 training for
[11:21] doing really hilly events. In an ideal world, you're going
[11:25] to go out and you're going to do your rides on the same kind of
[11:28] roads on the same kind of terrain that you're going to
[11:31] face on race day. And so that means you need to
[11:34] know what you're going to face, check out the course, speak to
[11:37] people who've done it, watch YouTube videos and go out and
[11:41] train on a similar course as much as you possibly can.
[11:45] If you live in a very, very flat area, as an extreme, if you live
[11:48] on the fence and you're going to do a really hilly Iron Man, you
[11:51] are going to have to drive and go to a place where you can do
[11:54] hilly rides in order to prepare. That's going to be the best way
[11:57] to prepare for this race. Some other kinds of workouts
[12:00] that you can do well, you can use the indoor trainer and you
[12:04] can do big gear workouts. Now what we're typically looking
[12:07] at here is not necessarily doing a big power interval.
[12:12] So we don't want you pushing huge amounts of power out, but
[12:14] we want you pushing a bigger gear than usual at a lower
[12:18] cadence than usual. So typically I advise athletes
[12:21] to go 20 or 30 Revs a minute lower than the usual and kind of
[12:27] comfortable riding cadence. So if you usually ride at around
[12:30] 80, you want to be doing these at about 60.
[12:33] If you usually ride about 90, you want to be doing them about
[12:36] 70. And you don't need to be pushing
[12:38] really hard. You can still ride in the same
[12:40] sort of wattage you were doing before.
[12:42] But just riding at a much lower cadence gives you that
[12:46] simulation of what it's going to be like when you get to a hill.
[12:49] And naturally our cadence slows down by up to 20 Revs a minute.
[12:53] So those big gear intervals are a really good way of simulating
[12:56] hills and also they're really good at helping you push greater
[13:01] force with your muscles, which is going to help create specific
[13:04] muscular strength for riding on those hills.
[13:08] And again, we've talked about the different kinds of hills
[13:11] that you'll face. The riding in your normal
[13:14] position with a lower gear than usual is great for simulating a
[13:18] shallow hill. Getting out of the saddle and
[13:21] riding as if you're out of the saddle is great for simulating
[13:24] those higher gears as well. Now you've also got the option
[13:27] you can buy the the kicker add on that raises your front wheel
[13:30] up. You can put something under your
[13:32] front wheel on your bike to simulate a change of angle of
[13:35] your bike. I personally don't think that's
[13:37] necessary. I think if you've got them,
[13:39] fantastic, but if you haven't, I think just doing the big gear
[13:43] work will really help prepare your legs for the kind of
[13:47] challenge you're going to face. And typically we'll have
[13:49] athletes start with three minutes of a big gear interval
[13:52] and a few minutes recovery. And they'll go back and forth
[13:54] and do that for like a 20 minute main set and build up to the
[13:58] point where they're doing 10 minute intervals at that big
[14:01] gear. Now the caveat here is just be
[14:04] super careful that you're not going to experience any knee
[14:07] pain. And if you do, just call the
[14:09] session immediately, go back to writing at normal cadence.
[14:12] Typically athletes who struggle with this tend to be smaller
[14:16] athletes, athletes from a running background and those who
[14:20] are not as muscular. They tend to struggle a bit more
[14:23] with the big, the big gear workouts.
[14:25] So just be mindful of that and ease into those intervals
[14:28] progressively. Now, the third thing you can do
[14:31] when you're preparing to do a really hilly course is your
[14:34] course preparation. I've talked there about doing
[14:37] your training on a similar kind of terrain that you're going to
[14:40] face on race day. There is no better way to learn
[14:43] what terrain you will face on race day than to actually go to
[14:46] visit the course you're going to race on if you possibly can and
[14:50] go and ride it. So if you're in the UK and
[14:52] you're racing, I'm on Wales, take a weekend, go and stay
[14:55] overnight, go and ride the course on the Saturday and on
[14:58] the Sunday and really get a feel for what the loops are going to
[15:02] be like, what the hills are going to be like.
[15:03] And then when you get back, you can look at what your power file
[15:07] was and you can workout the kind of athlete you are.
[15:10] You can see immediately if you've been doing massive power
[15:13] spikes and you know that you're going to have to learn to
[15:15] control that If you can't get to the course, I think the next
[15:20] best thing is watching videos on YouTube.
[15:23] So watch previous Ironman whales videos, for example, and see
[15:26] what the course looks like. And then go out and try and find
[15:29] hills that look similar to that. And even you've got options
[15:32] these days with tech of riding courses on, on things like Ruby
[15:37] that will give you a really good feel for what the terrain sort
[15:41] of looks like. And it helps programme into your
[15:44] mind the kind of thing that you're going to face on race
[15:46] day. But again, I really think the
[15:49] gold standard here is if you possibly can get yourself to the
[15:53] event site, go and ride the course beforehand, that is
[15:56] absolutely fantastic. It's great preparation, it's
[16:00] great training, but mentally as well, it's also great that you
[16:04] don't have those thoughts in your head of I don't know what
[16:07] I'm going to be facing here. You really will know what you've
[16:10] got to prepare for and you can really then head out and look
[16:13] for the kind of courses that you can train on that will prepare
[16:16] you. O In summary then the things
[16:19] we're going to look at here, we need to make sure we've got the
[16:21] correct equipment, change that in plenty of time so you've got
[16:25] time to train with it. We need to train the correct way
[16:28] so we know we're doing sessions that are preparing us for the
[16:32] physical rigours of riding a course, but also that the kind
[16:35] of gamesmanship of learning to ride and controlling your power
[16:39] on that course. And also the last thing is we
[16:42] want the course preparation angle to be there as well.
[16:44] We want you to visit the course if you possibly can, and then
[16:48] you really get a feel for what is reasonable for you on race
[16:52] day. Now, one last thing to add here,
[16:54] if you've not used the software package Best Bike Split, that's
[16:58] really, really useful. You can upload the course that
[17:01] you're going to ride on race day and it's got an option where it
[17:04] can do something called power navigation where you tell it
[17:09] essentially how hard or easy you want to ride the course.
[17:12] I wanted to finish this bike leg with a certain amount of
[17:15] training stress and it will backwards work.
[17:18] The maths relative to you, excuse me, you, your weight and
[17:22] your FTP. And it will then give you power
[17:26] targets and power caps for each of the hills you're going to
[17:29] ride on. So even if you can't get to the
[17:31] course, if you run that course through best bike split, it will
[17:34] then give you this power navigation which you can look at
[17:37] and think, right, OK, I need to be limiting myself to this
[17:40] amount of power on these hills in order to have the best chance
[17:44] of a good run. I hope this has helped you out.
[17:46] Hope it's given you some things to talk about.
[17:48] The main point here is that preparation ahead of time is
[17:52] absolutely key. And the further ahead of your
[17:54] event you can get your equipment sorted and that you know what
[17:57] you're going to face, the more successful of a day you're going
[18:00] to have and the best chance you're going to have of
[18:03] protecting your legs and having a great run on race day.
[18:07] OK, then that brings us to the end of this week's episode.
[18:11] So here are some discount codes and deals for you.
[18:14] Over at Precision Fuel and hydration.com use the code
[18:16] Oxygen 24 for 15% off your first electrolyte order.
[18:21] And over at teamoxygenaddict. Com.
[18:24] I think we've got the most comprehensive triathlon coaching
[18:26] programme for busy age groupers. If you've enjoyed what you've
[18:29] heard today and the advice has helped you out, well, great
[18:32] stuff. I hope that's helped put some of
[18:34] your fears at rest and I know from some of the calls we've
[18:36] had, it's helping raise the right questions in the minds of
[18:40] people as to whether their current coaching relationship is
[18:43] working for them. If you're looking for a change
[18:46] or if you're looking for high quality, proven coaching for
[18:49] Iron Man or 70.3 trial on this year, you can just check out the
[18:52] details of our coaching packages on our website at
[18:55] teamoxygenedit.com. And then if you're interested,
[18:59] there's a link in the show notes below.
[19:01] You can join our waiting list and you'll be notified if a slot
[19:04] becomes available and at that point you'll have a chance to
[19:07] book a call with us and see if you'd be a good fit for joining
[19:10] the team. So although we don't have slots
[19:12] available at the moment, we'll make those call appointments
[19:15] available to people as and when. We do have athletes who end
[19:19] their coaching packages during the season if and when that
[19:22] happens. So remember there's links in the
[19:24] show notes so you don't have to remember them till next week.
[19:27] Have a great safe training and racing week.
[19:30] I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've been listening to the Oxygen
[19:32] Addict podcast.

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