# How to Beat the IRONMAN Cut-Off Time | Ep 499

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 24 Jul 2024, 20 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/89580848/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2024-6-23%2F383716027-44100-2-89ad97e1a40b6.mp3

In this episode, Coach Rob Wilby dives into the crucial strategies to ensure you meet the cutoff times in Ironman races - especially tougher races like Ironman Wales. He outlines five key tips spanning swimming, biking, running, transitions, and equipment. These actionable tips are designed to help athletes manage time effectively and tackle challenging courses. Rob emphasizes the importance of preparation, the benefits of drafting, optimizing your gear, and the necessity of pacing yourself throughout the race. He also highlights the potential pitfalls and how to avoid them to ensure you cross the finish line within the cut-off time. * * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * Like what you heard in this show? Join hundreds of other age group triathletes making the most of their limited training time, training with Team OxygenAddict! http://team.oxygenaddict.com - The most comprehensive triathlon coaching program for busy age groupers. Join the Team Oxygenaddict waiting list and be the first to find out when a space becomes available: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/waiting-list * * * * * * * * * * * * precisionfuelandhydration.com Precision Fuel & Hydration help athletes personalise their hydration and fuelling strategies for training and racing. Use the free Fuel & Hydration Planner to get a personalised race nutrition plan for your next event. And then book a free 20-minute video consultation with a member of the PF&H Athlete Support Team to refine your strategy. Listeners get 15% off their first order of fuel and electrolytes with Precision Fuel & Hydration. Simply use this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:02] Hello and welcome to the Oxygen Addict podcast.
[0:05] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors, Precision Fuel
[0:08] and hydration.com. You can personalise your
[0:11] fuelling and hydration strategy so you perform your best with
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[0:18] fuel. The code Oxygen 24 at Precision
[0:21] Fuel and hydration.com. Welcome to the show, everybody.
[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
[0:29] motivate and inspire you for your triathlon goals for this
[0:32] season. Listen, a couple of quick things
[0:35] you could do for us before we jump into today's episode.
[0:38] If you do like this episode, please consider following us on
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[0:56] appreciate that. And secondly, if you're looking
[0:59] for help and advice with your triathlon training, please
[1:02] consider getting in touch with us.
[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] OK, so on today's edition, I'm going to be talking to you about
[1:26] five ways that you can guarantee that you're going to beat the
[1:29] cut off in an Iron Man. This is a topic that's come up
[1:33] recently for a lot of our athletes.
[1:35] We, we're about, as I'm recording this, we're about 10
[1:37] weeks away from this year's Iron Man Wales.
[1:40] And Iron Man Wales is a great example of a course where prior
[1:44] planning is really going to affect your success on race day.
[1:48] And the reason for that is although, and and I've often
[1:51] said this before, people have heard this before, although
[1:54] every Iron Man is the same distance, they're not all going
[1:57] to be the same physical challenge and they're not all
[2:00] going to take the same relative amount of time.
[2:03] OA faster bike course is going to mean that you're finished on
[2:06] the bike course obviously much quicker than you are on a very
[2:09] tough, very hilly bike course like Iron Man Wales.
[2:13] And the challenge that this brings U for people is that Iron
[2:16] Man have got a or Iron Man events have got a standard 17
[2:20] hour cut off. Now there's varies from event
[2:22] events. So make sure that you check with
[2:24] the event that you're doing, you know the exact cut off.
[2:27] But the added challenge for a really difficult challenging
[2:30] bike course like the one Iron Man Wales is that for an athlete
[2:34] who might take 5 1/2 hours to do one of the faster courses, it
[2:39] can easily take 6 1/2 to 7 hours to do the bike course of Iron
[2:43] Man Wales. And that additional time knock
[2:46] on gets greater the slower the athlete is.
[2:50] And so in a lot of cases we don't really have to worry about
[2:55] our athletes coming up against the time cut offs.
[2:58] But in the really tough challenging courses like I'm on
[3:00] Wales, athletes who usually we'd consider to be completely safe
[3:04] and being anywhere near the cut offs, all of a sudden that's
[3:07] going to come into play. And it's simply down to the
[3:10] nature of the really challenging, hilly, difficult
[3:13] nature of the bike course and the slower roads, meaning many,
[3:17] many more people are up against the cut off than you would
[3:19] expect to. And this extends to athletes who
[3:22] are experienced iron men who have done multiple events
[3:25] before. They're very often surprised by
[3:28] how close to the bike cut off they're going to end U being.
[3:31] We sent a lot of time with our athletes over the last few weeks
[3:34] talking about this with specific athletes, in a lot of cases
[3:38] directly related to Iron Man Wales and talking about ways we
[3:42] can plan around that with, as I've said at the moment, we've
[3:45] got 10 weeks to go to the race time.
[3:48] It gives you a chance to make some changes and do some
[3:51] planning that's really going to help play into your best chances
[3:55] of making those cut offs. So that's where this episode is
[3:58] coming from. It's not for the athletes who
[4:00] are thinking about qualifying for Kona.
[4:02] It's our athletes at the other end of the scale who are much
[4:05] slower, for whom we really are concentrating on getting you to
[4:09] the point where you can be really confident with a, with a
[4:12] high level of confidence that you're going to meet these cut
[4:15] offs. So I've got 5 tips for you.
[4:17] The five are going to be related to one each to swim, bike, run,
[4:21] one for transitions and an additional one for kit tips,
[4:25] things that you can do that are going to make you faster.
[4:27] So we'll go through them one by one.
[4:29] But first up, let's define the scope of the challenge for
[4:32] athletes. As we've said, it's a 17 hour
[4:34] cut off Iron Man Wales. It's the same at lots of other
[4:37] races, but make sure you check if you're doing another race.
[4:40] We use Iron Man Wales as an example.
[4:43] We've got this 17 hour overall cut off and that breaks down
[4:47] further to individual cut offs for each of the legs.
[4:50] There's a two hour 20 cut off at the end of the swim, There's a
[4:54] ten hour 30 cut off at the end of the bike and that's from the
[4:58] start of the event. So total cumulative swim and
[5:01] bike time of 10 1/2 hours. And then there's a cut off at
[5:06] the end of the run of 17 hours. So we can work backwards from
[5:10] this. If an athlete has done a two
[5:12] hour 20 swim, they're then going to have until 10 hours 30 to
[5:17] complete the bike leg. So it's left them 8 hours, 10
[5:20] for the bike leg and if they then just make the cut off on
[5:24] the bike leg, it then is going to leave them about 6 1/2 hours
[5:28] to do the run. So we can do our maths based
[5:30] around this. For some of you, you're going to
[5:33] be faster swimmers than a two hour 20 swim and that's great.
[5:36] That's going to give you more time budget on the bike.
[5:40] For everybody, there's going to be that minimum of 6 1/2 hours
[5:43] on the run because if you just beat the bike cut off, you're
[5:46] going to have at least 6 1/2 hours to complete the run.
[5:50] And if you're a little bit faster than that, cumulatively,
[5:52] you're going to have even more time.
[5:54] So we're going to do our maths based on this.
[5:57] So first up, how can we guarantee that you're going to
[6:00] beat the cut off on the swim? So the 1st place to start with
[6:04] this is know the kind of swimmer that you are, know the kind of
[6:07] paces that you swim. With our athletes, we work on
[6:10] the basis of doing regular CSS tests.
[6:13] And if you don't know what that is, you can go away and look
[6:15] that up on Google. The CSS test gives you a really
[6:17] reliable measure of your, if you like your threshold speed on the
[6:21] swim. And then we can say to our Iron
[6:25] Man swim time, it's usually somewhere in the region of CSS
[6:28] pace plus 8 to 12 seconds per hundred.
[6:33] So as an example of this, if you CSS pace is 2 minutes per
[6:36] hundred, your Iron Man swim time is going to be around two
[6:40] minutes, eight to two minutes, 12 per 100.
[6:43] That gives you a really good feeling for how long the swim is
[6:46] likely to take you as a as a rough ballpark.
[6:49] And you can then get a feel for whether you're going to be close
[6:51] to the cut off there. There are then some things that
[6:54] you can do that are greatly going to increase your chance of
[6:57] meeting the cut off. We're not going to talk about
[6:59] training here specifically because we've done tonnes of
[7:01] episodes about training, but in terms of the Gamesmanshi of race
[7:06] day, the two things that I think you can practise to improve your
[7:09] swim are drafting off of the swimmers and improving your
[7:13] sighting so that you're sure you're swimming the shortest
[7:16] possible route. O first U drafting either
[7:19] directly behind another swimmer or on the hip of another swimmer
[7:22] is a skill that's going to save you.
[7:25] I'm going to say between 4:00 and 8:00 seconds per 100 metres.
[7:29] In terms of time saved, it means you can either swim on the feet
[7:33] of a faster swimmer and travel faster for the same effort, or
[7:37] you can swim on the feet of a swimmer going the same pace as
[7:40] you and go for much, much less effort.
[7:43] For most people, we want someone in between those two areas.
[7:46] So you're going a bit faster than you would be able to swim
[7:49] on your own and you're saving some of the effort as well.
[7:52] But by going faster and by saving some energy for the rest
[7:55] of the day, you are going to reduce your swim time and you're
[7:59] going to reduce the overall amount of energy it's going to
[8:01] take you. The second thing we mentioned
[8:04] there is practising sighting and open water swimming.
[8:07] But this is really important. Typically in Iron Man swim legs,
[8:11] there's a long distance between the boys.
[8:13] It's not unusual for there to be 500 metres between boys where
[8:17] you're going to turn around and often there's nothing in between
[8:20] them. If you can practise and learn to
[8:23] swim in a straighter line, if you can get those skills of
[8:26] learning to sight on a boy and having something in the
[8:29] background as a transact to sight against, you can make sure
[8:33] that you swim the minimum amount.
[8:35] And again, it's really common. An athlete will come to us after
[8:38] the event and say the swim was really long.
[8:40] You know, it was meant to be 3800 metres.
[8:43] I swam 4404 thousand 500 metres on my Garmin.
[8:48] Often other athletes in the same race have swim a much shorter
[8:51] distance and often is down to a sighting problem and it's down
[8:55] to not swimming at the Direct Line.
[8:57] So practising this in training is something that's really,
[9:01] really going to help you. If you're already not a
[9:03] particularly strong swimmer, you have definitely got the time to
[9:07] practise the skill of improving your sighting, even without
[9:10] necessarily needing to improve your your swim fitness to cut
[9:14] down the time. OK, onto the bike then we're
[9:19] going to come up with a time budget on the bike of how long.
[9:22] Firstly, how long is your swim going to take you and backwards
[9:26] work that by removing the amount of time you've taken from the
[9:30] swim from the overall bike cut off.
[9:32] So let's say you are a two hour 20 swimmer.
[9:34] We take two hours 20 away from 10 hours 30.
[9:38] We're left with eight hours 10. That's your time budget for you
[9:41] to complete the bike on race day.
[9:44] Now, in previous episodes, you'll have heard me talk about
[9:47] having a training stress score limit on the bike score to
[9:50] ensure that you can then run. Well, that still holds true, but
[9:56] there's a certain subset of people here.
[9:58] If you're up against the cut off in an Iron Man, you're going to
[10:03] have to do whatever you have to do in terms of training stress
[10:06] score to get yourself to the bike leg finish inside the cut
[10:10] off. And so preparation and knowing
[10:14] what this is likely to be is the key part of how this is going to
[10:17] go for you. So for some of you, you are
[10:20] going to have to ride harder than I would ideally like you to
[10:23] do. You're going to have to ride
[10:24] harder than what I would consider to be a, a safe level
[10:27] of training stress to ensure a really good run in order to
[10:30] ensure you even make it onto the run.
[10:33] And that's something that you some of you are just going to
[10:35] have to accept, unfortunately. So we'll talk about a time
[10:39] budget. If you know that that bike leg
[10:43] is going to take you 8 hours, 10, you can work backwards from
[10:46] that and workout what the average seed is that you're
[10:48] going to need to be maintaining on the bike.
[10:50] I would then highly advise that you go to bestbikesplitcom, use
[10:55] the free software that's available, and it's got the
[10:58] option there to reverse engineer how fast and how much power
[11:03] you're going to have to put out on each section of the course
[11:05] for you to complete the bike in that time.
[11:08] And that's going to be really useful to you.
[11:10] You can download a CHEAT SHEET with power targets on.
[11:13] You can download the CHEAT SHEET into your Garmin and have power
[11:16] navigation actually on the screen as you're riding.
[11:19] But what that's going to do is it's going to prevent you from
[11:22] riding too hard too early, but it's going to give you a really
[11:25] good level of confidence that the power level, the speed
[11:28] level, the pace level that you're riding at is appropriate
[11:31] for you to be able to get to the end of the bike leg and still
[11:34] beat the cut off. So again, the caveat here is I
[11:37] would always usually try and say to people, look, let's make sure
[11:41] we're saving energy for the run here.
[11:43] If you're really up against it in terms of the bike cut off, I
[11:46] would much prefer that you beat the bike cut off and get to go
[11:49] onto the run and your legs are a bit more tired than than you'd
[11:52] ideally want. Then you completely missed that
[11:54] bike cut off OK, so we've worked out your time budget for the
[11:58] bike. We can reverse engineer it using
[12:01] best Bike Split and you can then download that power profile into
[12:06] your Garmin and have a really high level of confidence that
[12:08] it's actually going to get you there.
[12:11] OK, our third tip is going to be talking about the run.
[12:16] And my advice here is going to be to train your run to be the
[12:20] kind of speed that you're going to run on race day within your
[12:25] kind of if you like your, your runtime budget.
[12:29] So if you know you're going to be pushing right up against the
[12:32] bike split cut off, it's likely you're going to be pretty tired.
[12:36] It's likely you're not going to have your best ever run.
[12:38] And this is a common problem that some athletes find if they
[12:41] have over biked, they can't run to anywhere near the same
[12:45] standard that they would expect to on race day because
[12:47] effectively they've blown the legs apart on the bike.
[12:50] So there's undeniably an element of preparing for a decent run in
[12:56] this, but also I would advise you, if you know that you're
[12:59] going to take longer than you ideally think you're going to on
[13:02] the run, I would actually advise you to practise doing some runs
[13:05] in training at a slower speed. See, buddy gets used to the kind
[13:09] of run cadence that you're going to be doing actually on race
[13:12] day. So it's less than ideal.
[13:14] But I've done the maths and worked out here that if you are
[13:18] going to do a say a six hour 30 marathon, for example, that's
[13:24] going to be a 915 per kilometre or 15 minute mile.
[13:28] Now I, I would guess that most of the people listening to this
[13:32] would never go out and try and do a run at that kind of speed.
[13:35] But if that's what you're going to do on race day, it would be
[13:38] well within, it'd be really sensible, I think, for you to go
[13:41] out and practise doing some runs at that kind of slow pace to
[13:45] feel what it feels like to get your body used to going at that
[13:48] kind of slow pace. There's undeniably going to be
[13:50] long periods of walks involved in completing this marathon if
[13:54] you're up against the cut off. So I'd advise you to get out in
[13:57] training and do some long hikes. It's really, really good
[14:00] training. If you've never been out on your
[14:03] feet for six hours without sitting down, it's going to be
[14:06] really challenging to do that on race day.
[14:08] Even if you're walking, remember you're going to be walking on
[14:11] tired legs. So long hikes outdoors in
[14:14] training in addition to your run training sometimes or even
[14:17] sometimes swapping out one long run for one really long hike can
[14:21] be really good at getting your body used to being on your feet
[14:25] for that period of time. As long as you remember a
[14:27] college professor of mine saying one of the challenges of the
[14:31] marathon is most people in everyday life don't even stand
[14:35] up on their feet for three or four or five hours without
[14:38] having to sit down. And yet they expect to be able
[14:40] to do this on on race day. Let's prepare for the challenges
[14:43] of the event that are coming up. OK.
[14:46] The 4th tip that we've got for you is around equipment.
[14:49] There are equipment changes that you can make that are vastly
[14:53] going to increase the speed you'll ride the bike.
[14:55] And it is particularly on the bike it's going to make the big
[14:58] difference. O I'd advise you again go into
[15:00] best bike slit. There's all manner of different
[15:03] dropdowns you can play with in best bike slit where you can say
[15:06] right. If I change my tyres to a race
[15:09] tyre, what effect will this have on me on racing?
[15:12] See the time saving. If I change to race wheels, what
[15:16] effect will it have on me? If I add arrow bars?
[15:19] If I rode a time trial bike, If I had on a skinsuit instead of
[15:23] cycling kit, if I wore an arrow helmet instead of a normal
[15:26] helmet, if I lost a few kilos of body weight, what effect would
[15:30] it have? Play with those sliders and if
[15:32] you can afford to, spend the money on upgrading your kit to
[15:36] ensure you're going to meet the cut off here.
[15:39] Because again, if I've had athletes say to me, I don't want
[15:42] to be that guy who's at the back of the pack wearing an arrow
[15:44] helmet. But the reality is the arrow
[15:46] helmet is going to save you 10 or 12 minutes off your Iron Man
[15:49] time. And that's the difference to you
[15:51] make the cut off or not. They have to accept you'd rather
[15:55] look a little bit uncomfortable than not make the bike cut off.
[15:59] So again, go to best bike split, play with the sliders and change
[16:02] things and just see what the predictions will be on how much
[16:05] time that will save you. And our last tip for you is on
[16:09] transitions. I had a look at particular in
[16:12] Ironman Wales last year and it's unique because there's a long
[16:15] transition between the swim and the bike leg.
[16:19] The fastest athlete did a 7 minutes transition in T1 and
[16:25] under a 3 minute transition in T2.
[16:28] The slowest athletes were over 20 minutes in T1 and over 12
[16:32] minutes in T2. So there's a difference there of
[16:35] about 20 minutes. If you're really up against the
[16:38] cut offs, that time is going to be a big, big, big issue for
[16:43] you. So make sure you minimise the
[16:45] amount of faffing about and slowing down that you do in
[16:48] transition. You should ideally be straight
[16:50] into transition, have just the kit that you need in your
[16:53] transition bag and be straight out.
[16:55] Again, there's no fitness elements involved in the
[16:58] transition aside for, as I've said, the the Iron Man Wales
[17:01] caveat where there's a run up the the cliffs to get to T1.
[17:06] But if you can reduce the time needed just through skill
[17:09] aspects, you can save time that might be extremely valuable.
[17:13] So for those of you going out to an Iron Man this year, do this
[17:16] lanning in advance. Don't let it be a surprise a few
[17:19] weeks before the event. Use best bike slit.
[17:22] Use the planning tools I've talked about here to workout
[17:24] what you're reasonably expected to do on the swim, the bike and
[17:29] the run. And then look at ways that you
[17:31] can save time using these tools and these techniques that we've
[17:35] mentioned today. I hope it really works for you.
[17:38] I hope we get many more people beating the bike cut off this
[17:41] year at Iron Man Wales. And we saw last year there were
[17:43] tonnes of people DNF because they didn't make that bike cut
[17:45] off. And it's heartbreaking because
[17:47] people are trained for a whole year and they don't get to
[17:50] experience that crossing of the line.
[17:52] So I really wish you all the best, but forewarned is
[17:56] forearmed. Go into this knowing what the
[17:58] challenge is and go in knowing that there are some pro tips
[18:01] here that can really help you that the best age groups are
[18:04] going to apply. That will apply to all age
[18:06] groupers and will help save you time, energy and effort across
[18:10] training and racing. OK, then that brings us to the
[18:14] end of this week's episode. So here are some discount codes
[18:17] and deals for you. Over at Precision Fuel and
[18:20] hydration.com, use the code Oxygen 24 for 15% off your first
[18:24] electrolyte order. And over at
[18:26] teamoxygenaddict.com, I think we've got the most comprehensive
[18:30] triathlon coaching programme for busy age groupers.
[18:33] If you've enjoyed what you've heard today and the advice has
[18:35] helped you out, well, great stuff.
[18:37] I hope that's helped put some of your fears at rest and I know
[18:40] from some of the calls we've had, it's helping raise the
[18:43] right questions in the minds of people as to whether their
[18:47] current coaching relationship is working for them.
[18:50] If you're looking for a change or if you're looking for high
[18:52] quality, proven coaching for Iron Man or 70.3 Triathlon this
[18:56] year, you can just check out the details of our coaching packages
[18:59] on our website at teamoxygenaddict.com.
[19:02] And then if you're interested, there's a link in the show notes
[19:05] below. You can join our waiting list
[19:07] and you'll be notified if a slot becomes available and at that
[19:10] point you'll have a chance to book a call with us and see if
[19:13] you'd be a good fit for joining the team.
[19:15] So although we don't have slots available at the moment, we'll
[19:18] make those call appointments available to people as and when.
[19:22] We do have athletes who end their coaching packages during
[19:26] the season if and when that happens.
[19:28] So remember there's links in the show notes so you don't have to
[19:30] remember them till next week. Have a great safe training and
[19:34] racing week. I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've
[19:36] been listening to the Oxygen Addict podcast.
[19:39] See ya.

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