# IRONMAN Bike Pacing: Power Guidance, Your TSS Budget, Outdoor FTP & Gearing for a Strong Run | Ep 595

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 17 Jun 2026, 28 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO5127124585.mp3

How hard should you actually ride the IRONMAN bike leg? The answer is more nuanced than simply copying the pros. And getting it wrong often leads to a long walk in the marathon. In this Q&A, Coach Rob Wilby breaks down the numbers behind smart bike pacing so you finish the bike with enough left to run well. In this episode: • Why your FTP percentage has to drop the longer you're on the bike (and why backwards-engineering a pro's 82% will blow your race apart) • The TSS budget cap that holds true whether you ride 4:30 or 8:00 (plus theequivalent for 70.3). And why it only works if you're properly race-fit • Normalised power vs. average power: how spiking out of corners and standing up short hills burns matches you need for the run. • Why the first 60-90 minutes on the bike should feel like the easiest of the day • Why you MUST do an outdoor FTP test and why it must be done in race position, in race kit, on a flat out-and-back. • "My race-sim TSS came back way over 280, should I worry?" • How to check your FTP setting and use Best Bike Split to model a realistic, run-friendly pace • Gearing for hilly races: why going to a 36-tooth cassette (or even a 1:1 ratio) saves your legs - especially on hilly on courses like Wales. • Why all IRONMAN bike courses aren't equal and how to make your long rides mirror your race day terrain, descents and corners included * * * * * * * * 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

## Transcript

[0:04] Hello and welcome to the Oxygenetic Triathlon podcast
[0:07] that we're brought to you every week by our sponsors, Precision
[0:10] Fuel and hydration.com. You can get 15% off your first
[0:14] order with the code Oxygen 26. Welcome to the show everybody.
[0:18] I'm your host coach, Rob Bilby from Team Oxygenetic Triathlon
[0:21] Coaching, and every week I bring you an episode of this podcast
[0:24] to help educate you, motivate you and inspire you for your
[0:27] 70.3. And I'm on goals.
[0:29] I love Iron Man, I love 70.3, I love helping people to achieve
[0:33] this. So if you're a new lesson to the
[0:36] show, if you just stumbled across those via Spotify or
[0:39] Apple Podcasts, then welcome. You're in the right place.
[0:42] Hopefully what I try and do here is use my knowledge and
[0:45] experience from 15 to 20 years of coaching age group athletes
[0:50] to help you put together your own training plan to help you
[0:52] put together your own racing plan to make sure that first you
[0:56] get into great shape for your race.
[0:57] And then secondly, you actually get out there and deliver the
[1:01] race that you are capable of delivering.
[1:04] So I've had a bunch of questions sent through from listeners and
[1:07] what I've done for this episode is I've I've kind of combined
[1:10] them over time. So there's no specific questions
[1:13] here from specific listeners like there are in some episodes.
[1:18] Thank you very much. You've sent questions through.
[1:21] I encourage you to do that. If you've got any questions
[1:23] about today's episode or others, you can send it through to help
[1:25] Oxygen edit.com and I'll do my very best to answer your
[1:28] question for you. What I've done with this one is
[1:31] I've pulled a bunch of themes that have come through from
[1:34] similar questions, and today I'm going to be talking about
[1:36] answering some broad athlete questions about bike training
[1:39] and specifically FTP and TSS for Iron Man.
[1:43] So you know what that means. FTP is essentially how much
[1:46] power you can produce riding for an hour flat out in a time
[1:50] trial. It's kind of an overall measure
[1:52] of bike fitness. And TSS stands for Training
[1:55] Stress Score, which is a way of kind of budgeting out your
[1:58] energy on race day or in training.
[2:01] So you spend the right amount of energy across the right amount
[2:05] of time. And for race day in particular,
[2:07] we can really use that in a way that allows you to be certain
[2:10] you can get to the end of the bike leg and still have enough
[2:13] energy and fitness left to have a really good run leg.
[2:17] I'm going to answer all of those questions for you.
[2:19] But before we do that, there's a couple of quick things you can
[2:21] do to help us out for free. Firstly, if you like this
[2:24] episode, if you enjoy it, please follow us on Spotify.
[2:27] Give us a like like us on our podcasts, give us a follow on
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[2:43] more people, which is great for the growth of our show.
[2:46] Obviously it means I can help more athletes out, which is
[2:50] really great from my point of view.
[2:52] And also we run a triathlon coaching company.
[2:55] And if you're looking for help training for your first Iron
[2:58] Man, check out the coaching memberships over at
[2:59] teamoxygenetic.com. I think I've put together the
[3:02] most comprehensive triathlon coaching programme that's
[3:05] specifically designed to solve the problems that busy age group
[3:08] has faced. So if you're trying to train for
[3:10] your Iron Man at 70.3, you've got long hours at work, you've
[3:13] got a busy family life, you've got friends you want to see, and
[3:16] you're trying to balance all of that around training for this
[3:18] awesome event. I'm going to make that process
[3:21] much more simple for you. So you can essentially outsource
[3:24] the worry of what training to do and when.
[3:27] All you have to do is wake up in the morning and do the training
[3:29] that we've given you and you'll learn to put race day in great
[3:32] shape, tapered, fresh, ready to race.
[3:35] And most importantly, you'll understand how to make the most
[3:37] of your your fitness. So if you're interested, there's
[3:40] a link down in the show notes, the book, a membership call with
[3:42] me, we'll have a chat and we'll see if you'd be a good fit for
[3:45] joining the team. And I'll explain how the
[3:46] coaching works and how we can help you out.
[3:48] All right, let's get into this week's episode then.
[3:51] So first question, how hard can I ride my bike in the Iron Man
[3:56] bike leg? And it's a much more complicated
[3:58] answer than you think it might be.
[4:00] So that the new answer to this is the longer that your expected
[4:04] bike split is going to be, the lower the percentage of your FTP
[4:07] you're going to have to ride out.
[4:08] So if you compare 2 athletes, if you've got one athlete who's
[4:12] going to be completing the bike leg in eight hours and one
[4:15] person who's a pro who might be finished off the bike in four
[4:18] hours because there's such a variance in how long they're
[4:22] actually going to be riding the bike for, you can't ride the
[4:25] bike at the same intensity. So one of the mistakes we often
[4:28] see age groupers make is they read stories, Instagram stories,
[4:33] they watch videos of pro triathletes racing and they
[4:36] might hear, you know, this particular pro athlete rode the
[4:39] bike leg at 84% of FTP, 82% of FTP and then assume that they
[4:46] can backwards work that say, right, well, if this pro athlete
[4:50] that I really admire rides at 82% of FTP, then I should be
[4:53] able to ride about the same thing.
[4:55] And the challenge is they're finished with the bike like
[4:57] much, much faster. So they can afford to work at a
[5:00] relatively higher percentage of their fitness.
[5:02] If you're out there for much longer, you've obviously got to
[5:05] ride a relatively much lower percentage of your fitness in
[5:09] order to be able to run well off the bike still.
[5:11] Now the way we sum all this up, there's a number we can access
[5:15] in training peaks called TSS or Training Stress Score.
[5:18] And all that does is it normalises how tired you get
[5:22] across a period of time. Essentially it looks at how long
[5:26] you are working out for and how hard you are working out for
[5:29] relative FTP and it gives you a kind of standardised score.
[5:34] And essentially, if you were to ride your bike for an hour at
[5:37] 100% of FTP, you'll score 100 points.
[5:40] If you were to ride your bike really easily outdoors,
[5:43] conversational pace, you'd probably score about 50 points.
[5:47] So that gives you a kind of feeling for how the training
[5:51] stress score works. Essentially, it's a score out of
[5:54] 100. If you ride your bike at 100% of
[5:58] FTP for an hour, in theory, you're completely done after
[6:01] that hour and you need to stop and lie down and have a rest.
[6:04] See, that's no good to you if you're doing a Iron Man bike leg
[6:07] and you need to be out there. Anywhere between, let's say 4
[6:10] 1/2 hours for our faster age group is all the way through to
[6:12] perhaps 8 hours. The people at the other end.
[6:15] And we need to have this budget. And what we've seen across time
[6:18] is that #280 is really useful, no matter, no matter how fit and
[6:25] fast you are, that's the budget you're working with so that you
[6:29] can still run well off the bike. So obviously our pro athlete
[6:32] that we mentioned might be done in the bike, like in four hours,
[6:36] they might be riding 80 plus percent of FTP, but they're
[6:39] still going to accumulate around that 280 TSS score all the way
[6:43] through to the athlete who's taking 8 hours on the bike leg
[6:46] have obviously got to, you know, they're going to be accumulating
[6:49] many less points in the hour than the pro athlete is, but
[6:53] they're still working within the same budget in order to be able
[6:56] to run well off the bike. So all of these numbers are
[7:00] assuming something important and I'm going to address this
[7:03] directly. This is something that's often
[7:05] misunderstood when I make videos about this on YouTube.
[7:08] We're assuming that you are sufficiently prepared for race
[7:11] day. Now obviously people who either
[7:14] don't think that's through very clearly or are looking to start
[7:18] and hockey Mens online will say well that's, that's just
[7:22] ridiculous. I went out the other day and I
[7:23] did a four and a half hour ride and I scored 250.
[7:26] TSS point sounds knackered at the end of it and there's no way
[7:29] that I could have run a marathon.
[7:30] That's because you're not prepared sufficiently for it.
[7:33] You need to follow a structured training plan and be an Iron Man
[7:37] race shape in order for these numbers to be valid.
[7:40] That goes without saying. If I went out right now and I
[7:43] rode 180K to a 280 TSS budget, I would be absolutely wiped out at
[7:49] the end of it. There's no way I would be able
[7:51] to run off the back of it at all, let alone a marathon.
[7:54] Because I'm not prepared for an Iron Man right now.
[7:57] So all this assumes you are sufficiently prepared for the
[8:00] event that you're doing. Now.
[8:01] There's also some other numbers you can apply to this.
[8:04] If you're raising 70.3, obviously we're not going to
[8:07] halve the 280 TSS budget even though we halve the length of
[8:11] the bike ride because again, the overall event is shorter.
[8:14] So to give you a kind of ballpark figure, we're looking
[8:17] at somewhere from 170 to 180 TSS budget for the 70.3.
[8:21] So there you go. Thing to stress here that TSS
[8:24] budget, think of it as part of your whole day budget, is saving
[8:28] some of your energy for the run. And it's really important to
[8:32] understand that the TSS calculated from your normalised
[8:36] power, not your average power and normalised power takes into
[8:40] account how spiky the power changes were across the day
[8:44] essentially. So what that means is if you are
[8:47] spiking your power a lot, if you've got a lot of hills where
[8:50] you've got to go really hard up the hills and then you're
[8:52] putting 0 power out around corners or short hills and you
[8:55] accelerate hard out of those corners, basically any power
[8:59] spike is burning a match that you're going to need for the
[9:02] run. So try to keep your normalised
[9:05] power as close to your average power as you can.
[9:07] That means consciously not trying to get out the saddle and
[9:11] burn matches, going up a short, sharp, steep hill, not powering
[9:15] out of corners, trying to level out your Power Distribution
[9:19] across the time that you're out there, essentially.
[9:22] And just a little bit of guidance for how this should
[9:24] feel. Your first 60 to 90 minutes on
[9:27] the bike on Iron Man race day, you'd feel really easy.
[9:30] You shouldn't feel as though you're pushing.
[9:32] You shouldn't be out of breath. You shouldn't be digging really
[9:34] deep to try and catch a rider in front of you.
[9:37] All of which, by the way, mistakes I've made in the past
[9:39] in home and races that I've done, it's very easy to get
[9:42] excited to try and bridge up to a gap of, you know, bridge it to
[9:46] a bunch of riders in front of you.
[9:48] I'd really encourage you to have that first hour be the easiest
[9:52] hour of the day. Just get comfortable and start
[9:55] riding at the the correct power percentage for you.
[9:59] If you're wondering what those numbers are, we'll talk about
[10:01] this a little bit later on. So point #2 the question we've
[10:07] got written down here, which comes too often, is do I need to
[10:10] do a separate outdoor FTP test? Again, the comments that come
[10:14] back in the YouTube videos about outdoor versus indoor FTP test,
[10:19] amazing. It's almost like we've got a
[10:22] kind of tribe, the mentality going on.
[10:25] There are people who support the blue team and people who support
[10:28] the red team without their FTPS. I've read comments with people
[10:32] arguing, well my outdoor FTP is higher than my indoor 1 so
[10:36] therefore everybody should be. And some people say no, no, my
[10:39] outdoor FTP is lower than my indoor 1 so therefore everybody
[10:43] should be. I've seen people quoting
[10:45] scientifically referenced studies at each other to kind of
[10:48] prove their points that it's always this way.
[10:51] All I can say to you is this. My anecdotal evidence from over
[10:55] 20 years of coaching age group athletes shows that it varies
[10:59] from person to person. Some people will have a higher
[11:02] FTP outdoors than indoors and vice versa.
[11:06] And even there are some people who are the same, there are some
[11:08] people who there's very little change between their indoor and
[11:10] outdoor number. The thing that you've got to
[11:13] find out is what the situation is for you.
[11:16] So yes, you need to go outdoors and do an outdoor FTP test.
[11:21] Honestly, the numbers vary for some people by 5 to 10% up or
[11:25] down from the number they've been working at indoors on their
[11:29] indoor trainer. So as I said, like there are
[11:32] published papers that say you're outdoor FTP should be higher
[11:35] because you can stay cooler outdoors.
[11:37] Lots of our anecdotal evidence says exactly the opposite.
[11:41] I think this is especially true for the age group is who are
[11:44] riding outdoors in the time trial position because what you
[11:48] find is when you're riding at STP you can be going really
[11:50] quick and it can actually something I talked a lot about
[11:53] with Matt Butchville when I went for my bike fit years ago.
[11:57] When you get in a a good well fitted, fast aerodynamic
[12:01] position, firstly the world comes at you really quickly.
[12:05] And I saw jump in speed of about four or 5K an hour going to my
[12:09] aero position in my time trail bike relative to what I saw
[12:12] riding a road bike. And the initial position Matt
[12:15] had me in was very aggressive and the limit of me was actually
[12:19] how far up the road I could see. I discovered that my neck isn't
[12:23] very flexible. My this is going to sound very
[12:26] strange to some us, but my eyes aren't very flexible in terms of
[12:30] being able to look upwards when I'm tucked down into the
[12:33] aerodynamic position. When I talked this through with
[12:36] Matt, he can hold a really aggressive arrow position.
[12:39] He can stretch his neck back and up like a turtle.
[12:42] His eyes can look down the road. I found I couldn't see anywhere
[12:45] near far enough down the road in the arrow position I was
[12:48] initially in to be able to see potholes and obstacles in the
[12:51] road with enough time to get around them.
[12:54] And that was actually a limit of me.
[12:55] When I went outside to do an outdoor FTP test, the world all
[12:59] of a sudden was coming at me at 42 colours, it's an hour and I
[13:03] just wasn't used to going that fast.
[13:05] So there's an element of adaptation there as well.
[13:09] Now I want you to get the out there FTP test done, but it's
[13:12] important you do it in your race position and your race kit and
[13:15] it's important you do it on a flat out and back course.
[13:18] Again, I've read comments in YouTube saying, you know, I live
[13:22] in the Peak District and I go out and I do my FTP test up a
[13:25] really long hill we've got there.
[13:27] My experience has been that if you do an FTP test going uphill
[13:32] on a long, for a long gradual uphill, you can put out more
[13:36] power going uphill than you can on the flat.
[13:39] So it artificially skews your FTP up, which is great for you
[13:43] ego because you put a big number up there, but then you find that
[13:47] those numbers are not appropriate for riding out in
[13:49] the average triathlon. So let's do the FTP test on the
[13:53] flat so you get those numbers accurate there for the majority
[13:56] of what you're going to be riding in.
[13:58] Then it's really accurate for you.
[14:00] You really don't want to blow your race apart by working to
[14:03] incorrect numbers. The most important thing here to
[14:05] stress is accuracy. It's there to stop you
[14:08] accidentally going too hard on race day and blowing your race
[14:12] apart. And I'll give you another
[14:13] anecdote here from an athlete I worked with years ago.
[14:16] He came to me after working with another triathlon coach and his
[14:21] setup was he had a walk bike indoors in his in his pain cave
[14:25] in his indoor gym that he did all his training on.
[14:28] And then he had a power metre on his TT bike that he went
[14:32] outdoors to ride on and he went to do his race.
[14:36] He did his race based on the numbers he'd put out indoors on
[14:40] the what bike. And he blew himself to bits on
[14:43] the bike and he just couldn't understand why when we looked
[14:47] into it, he couldn't look, he couldn't understand at all why
[14:50] he'd blown himself to pieces when we looked into it.
[14:53] What had happened was when I got to do an outdoor FTP test in his
[14:57] actual at a road position outdoors on his TT bike, he
[15:01] couldn't put out anywhere near the power outdoors that he
[15:04] thought his FTP was at, so he ended up in the race he'd done
[15:07] before. He came to me over biking by
[15:10] about 14%, so just completely buried himself on the bike,
[15:15] Didn't feel like that on the bike.
[15:17] That's the really interesting thing.
[15:19] It doesn't feel as though you're going too hard because
[15:22] relatively how easy you need to ride on the bike is quite
[15:25] surprising. So he felt as though he should
[15:27] have been in a good position to run off the bike.
[15:30] The numbers told a different story.
[15:32] So that's what I want you really focusing on.
[15:35] I get that outdoor FTP test done in your race position on the
[15:39] race bike. Then we might just have had a
[15:42] guest appearance there by Ruby, the triathlon dog, who has taken
[15:46] great exception to the postman. Just come to the dog from House
[15:50] of Apologies. If you can hear the dog barking,
[15:52] it set off. All right, Question 3.
[15:55] I've just done my race in, I've just done my race SIM ride and
[15:58] my TSS was way over 280. Should I worry?
[16:03] So this is a genuine real world question from one of our from
[16:07] one of our athletes. So first up, there's no need to
[16:10] worry. What gives us is a really good
[16:12] valid data point. If you've done your 180K race
[16:16] SIM ride and you've come back with ATSS, that's way over 280.
[16:20] What that's telling you is something isn't right there.
[16:23] So the first thing to check is that your FTP is set correctly
[16:27] in Training Peaks. Everything these numbers, the
[16:30] TSS is calculated relative to your FTP.
[16:33] So the first thing you need to do is check that you've got the
[16:36] up to The key point here is it may well not feel too hard
[16:47] during the racing ride itself. But if your FTP is set correctly
[16:51] relative to a recent outdoor FTP test and your DT assessments
[16:54] back at 33350, that's telling you you've ridden too hard on
[17:00] the balance of probability to be able to run well off the bike on
[17:04] race day. And you've got time to redo the
[17:06] calculations and get the right percentage of FTP to aim for
[17:10] come race day. So I've mentioned this before, I
[17:12] highly recommend using the Best Bike Split package.
[17:15] What you can do here is you can upload into Best Bikes Split one
[17:19] of your recent long rides where you've done it at about the
[17:23] intensity you think that you're going to ride at a race day.
[17:26] It will then do some backwards analysis maths.
[17:29] It'll work out things like your arrow position data and the
[17:32] amount of drag it thinks you're creating based on the power and
[17:36] the speed you went at on race day.
[17:38] And it allows it to model how fast you're likely to ride for a
[17:42] given power on race day on your course.
[17:45] You can then use those numbers to look at the expected race day
[17:49] course. You can download, you know,
[17:50] whatever it is, Iron Man Austria, Iron Man Wales.
[17:52] You can download that course into best bikes, but get it to
[17:56] model how fast it's reasonable for you to ride on race day and
[18:01] still come back with the TSS at 280.
[18:03] And it works the numbers backwards from the expected TSS
[18:07] score. So that way, no matter what the
[18:09] numbers say, you're not going to over bike.
[18:12] Now, it might be that you were hoping to ride, I don't know,
[18:15] You're hoping to ride 530 on the bike and best bikes, but it
[18:18] comes back and says, well, based on this, you're going to ride
[18:21] 550 and come in with the TSS score of 280.
[18:25] That might be a little bit disappointing to you, but I
[18:28] would really, really highly recommend recalibrating your
[18:31] numbers and your expectation based on what that says, because
[18:35] the experience you want to have is running really well off the
[18:38] bike, feeling strong relative to the people around you.
[18:41] There's no doubt in my mind that athlete in the example could go
[18:44] and deliver a 530 bike split, but they will have over biked
[18:48] relative to the current fitness and they won't be able to run
[18:50] well off the bike. And I've talked this story
[18:54] through before as well, that those 20 minutes that you've in
[18:57] inverted commas given away on the bike, you will more than
[19:00] make back relative to the you who has to walk the last half of
[19:04] the marathon. There's numerous examples of
[19:06] people who if you experience running well in the last 6 miles
[19:10] of an Iron Man marathon and you see relative to the people who
[19:13] were walking, you can gain 10 minutes per mile against the
[19:16] people who were walking. So it really is worth getting
[19:21] those pacing numbers right on the bike.
[19:24] OK, at this point I'm going to give a shout out to our sponsors
[19:27] Precision Fuel and Hydration with the title sponsor of the
[19:29] IMS 70.3 World Championships and they've got some news to share
[19:33] with you. This will be coming out before
[19:35] this is even released on social media probably.
[19:38] I've just had an e-mail from their team.
[19:40] There is a new PF30 watermelon flavoured tube going on sale on
[19:44] the 23rd of June. The idea here is they've
[19:48] introduced a new flavour that they're trying to help you beat
[19:52] the idea of flavour fatigue. They were developed with Rachel
[19:57] Entrekin who won the Coca Dona 250 Ultra Marathon recently.
[20:03] He used them as part of a winning new nutrition strategy
[20:06] this year. So there's a case study that'll
[20:08] be up on the PFH website can go and look at, but I think.
[20:12] It's great to have another option in your back pocket on
[20:15] race day. So they're calling it Tuesday
[20:18] spelled chapter. Very crowded out Tuesday the
[20:21] 23rd of June. They're available for sale
[20:23] online. Precision fuel and
[20:25] hydration.com. I've got some coming in the
[20:27] post. They haven't arrived yet, as
[20:29] soon as they get them you'll be the first to know and give you a
[20:31] full and honest review. We'll also get my 14 year old
[20:34] son to destroy a couple of packets and usually what then
[20:37] happens is they'll end up in his lunch box and never get to use
[20:40] any on the rides. So check that out when that
[20:42] comes have the 23rd of June, keep your eye out for that new
[20:45] flavour. You can also head over to their
[20:47] website, use the free fuel and hydration planning tool.
[20:50] That'll give you a personalised strategy for your next race.
[20:53] Honestly, getting your carbohydrate intake correct,
[20:57] your fluid intake and your electrolyte balance correct is
[21:00] as important to the success of your Iron Man on race day as
[21:03] getting the training done in the lead up to it is.
[21:07] The free fuel and hydration planning tool will help you
[21:10] learn about this. You can practise it in training
[21:13] and then you can deliver it on race day.
[21:15] It's not as simple as just jamming down as many
[21:18] carbohydrates on race day as you can do.
[21:20] The intake of carbohydrate is trainable, so practise doing it
[21:24] in training. You can use the code Oxygen 26
[21:28] for 15% off your first order if you decide to make a purchase
[21:31] there. All right, question #4 the race
[21:36] that I'm doing is really hilly and I'm really finding it hard
[21:39] to stick to my power targets. Should I change from an 11:34 to
[21:44] an 1136 cassette on the back? So absolutely, I'm massively in
[21:50] favour of age group athletes making their lives as easy as
[21:53] they can by changing cassettes and in some instances changing
[21:57] front chain rings as well to give you the easiest gear ratio
[22:01] that you possibly can have. A lot of modern bikes these days
[22:04] can have a one to one ratio, so you can have a 36 on the back
[22:07] and a 36 on the front. The difference that makes when
[22:11] you're riding on steep hills is enormous because it means you
[22:14] don't have to spike your power to A120130100 and 40% of FTP for
[22:20] a couple of minutes just to get up the hills.
[22:22] So if you're doing a really hilly Iron Man, if you're doing
[22:25] Iron Man Wales as an example, or Iron Man Lanzarote, absolutely
[22:28] you can get round those courses with whatever gear ratios on
[22:31] there and people have done going back in time.
[22:34] But the less power spikes you have, the less force you have to
[22:39] push. Pushing a bigger than ideal gear
[22:41] up a hill, the better your run legs are going to be.
[22:45] So absolutely, let's change to the biggest cassette that you're
[22:49] and Darelia will fit at the back again.
[22:51] Most of the modern ones these days will take a 36.
[22:54] Change your gear ratios at the front as well.
[22:57] Make life as easy as you can for yourself.
[22:59] When I got my Canyon and Juris, sorry, my Kenyon Ultimate a
[23:02] couple of years ago and moved to a 3636 ratio, the difference it
[23:07] made to going up steep hills was massive.
[23:10] So I'm really, really highly recommend that as well.
[23:13] And again, the thing to remember here is everything that you're
[23:16] doing on the bike in training and everything that you do on
[23:19] the bike on race day is all about learning to deliver the
[23:23] best run that you possibly can and having a positive experience
[23:26] on the run. Not I'm not bothered that I know
[23:29] I understand everyone's not looking for a really fast bike
[23:31] split. Oh, sorry, everyone's not
[23:33] looking for an A really fast run split on the day, but even if
[23:37] you're a person whose aim is to just complete their first Iron
[23:40] Man, I know a massive big deal that is for most people, just
[23:44] completing and adverting commas is the pinnacle of most people's
[23:48] sporting life achievements. You want to be feeling as good
[23:52] as you possibly can on the run. You want to save your legs as
[23:54] much as you possibly can so that you don't have to walk.
[23:58] You can choose those walk breaks tactically, but you don't have
[24:01] to walk. Next question, does elevation
[24:05] matter when I'm planning my long distance rides in training?
[24:08] Some really simple answer to this.
[24:10] Yes, the more climbing you've got on a long ride, the longer
[24:13] you're going to be out there for it Can it can add 15 to 20% onto
[24:17] your time of riding a bike? If we look at a couple of
[24:20] examples here, I had an athlete a couple of years ago, he did
[24:24] flat Iron Man in Hamburg and road 450.
[24:27] A couple of months later he did hilly Iron Man iron on Wales and
[24:31] he rode 6 hours on the same bike fitness with the same relative
[24:34] TSS performance. So it's over an hour difference
[24:37] for the same athlete. The time that started on is is
[24:41] entirely down to the hilly nature of the course.
[24:44] So the more climbing the course has got the longer you'll be out
[24:47] there for. So all 180 K courses are not
[24:50] equal. My best advice to you here is to
[24:53] adapt your long training rides to mirror the demands of your
[24:56] race as much as you possibly can.
[24:58] If you're doing a hilly race, try and do your rides as hilly
[25:01] as possible. And if you're doing a flat and
[25:04] fast race, try and do your specific long rides over
[25:07] flatter, faster courses. Again, try and make it as much
[25:11] like the course you're going to be riding as possible.
[25:14] It's also worth pointing out, I think if you are in a hilly
[25:18] course, it's not just about the extra time it takes going
[25:21] uphill, it's the practise, descending and cornering and
[25:25] getting confident going downhill at the kind of speeds you'll be
[25:28] doing. If the course has got long, fast
[25:31] sweeping descents and if we use 7.3 Majorca as an example here,
[25:36] the sections of that that are long and fast and sweeping and
[25:39] if you're a confident descender you can make up a tonne of time
[25:43] on the athletes around you, then they'll leave.
[25:45] There are sections of that that have got severe hairpin corners.
[25:48] You need to have been able to practise those sharp corners in
[25:51] training in order to know how to take them quickly on race day.
[25:55] Or the other option is you just have to slow down to take them
[25:58] safely on race day. But the more you can make your
[26:01] training ride like your race day ride, the better prepared you're
[26:05] going to be. So I guess this is a long way of
[26:08] saying, in an ideal world, I'll have you prepare by doing 180 K
[26:13] on the bike. If you live in a super hilly
[26:15] area and you're going to be doing a very flat, fast bike
[26:19] course, the difficulty is if you're 180 K is taking you 9
[26:24] hours on the bike and on race day you're expecting it to take
[26:27] 4 hours, 45. That's an extreme example, but
[26:30] that would be the only example where I would say to somebody,
[26:33] well, let's go with duration rather than go by distance.
[26:36] I think it's much better to set yourself the goal of completing
[26:39] 180K on a similar kind of course that you're going to face on
[26:42] race day, right then hopefully this has really helped you out.
[26:46] I'm going to wrap the show up here at this point.
[26:49] There are a couple of things to talk about here.
[26:50] There's some discount codes and deals for you over at
[26:53] precisionfuelandhydration.com. Use the code Oxygen 26 for 15%
[26:58] of your first select flight order.
[26:59] Maybe get over there and check out the watermelon flavoured PF
[27:02] tubes that are coming out soon. And at teamoxygenaddict.com, I
[27:07] think we've got the most comprehensive triathlon coaching
[27:09] programme that's specifically designed to solve the problems
[27:11] that busy age group has faced. If you're looking for coaching
[27:14] for an Iron Man this year, please get in touch.
[27:16] My aim is to take away all the worry and all the thinking from
[27:20] your training plan, allow you to just get up in the morning and
[27:23] do the training that you need to do that day in order to be an
[27:26] awesome shape for the race. And to give you all the advice
[27:29] and guidance that you need that you'd be super confident going
[27:31] into it. The links in the show reps if
[27:33] you want to book a membership call with me O until next week,
[27:36] have a great safe training and racing week.
[27:39] I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've been listening to the Oxygen
[27:41] Addict Triathlon Podcast.

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