# Training in Bad Weather, FTP Testing, TSS Explained: Listener Q&A| Ep 582

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 18 Mar 2026, 31 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO4641876278.mp3

Rob answers listener questions covering the most common real-world training challenges for busy age-group triathletes. This week: -> How to handle training when bad weather makes outdoor riding impossible... -> Why the 20-minute FTP test beats ramp tests every time... -> How to structure an FTP block versus IRONMAN-specific training... Rob also breaks down Training Stress Score — what your TSS should actually be on a long ride and what a sky-high number is actually telling you. Plus, why your current FTP matters far less than the months of training still ahead of you. * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * Thinking about your first Ironman or 70.3 in 2026? At Team Oxygenaddict, we specialise in helping busy professionals fit high-quality training around demanding jobs and family life. We’ve just reopened for new athletes with only a handful of slots available. Book an application call today to find out if you'd be a good fit for Team Oxygenaddict for the coming season here: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/consultation-call/ * * * * * * * * * * * * precisionfuelandhydration.com Precision Fuel & Hydration help athletes personalise their hydration and fuelling strategies for training and racing. Use the free Fuel & Hydration Planner to get a personalised race nutrition plan for your next event. And then book a free 20-minute video consultation with a member of the PF&H Athlete Support Team to refine your strategy. Listeners get 15% off their first order of fuel and electrolytes with Precision Fuel & Hydration. Simply use code OXYGEN26 at checkout to claim your 15% discount * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:04] Hello and welcome to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon Podcast, and
[0:07] we're brought to you every week by our sponsors, Precision Fuel
[0:10] and hydration.com. You can get 15% off your first
[0:13] order with the code OXYGEN 26. Welcome to the show everybody.
[0:17] I'm your host coach Rob Wilby from Team Oxygen Addict
[0:19] Triathlon Coaching, and every week we'd bring you an episode
[0:22] of this podcast to help educate, motivate and inspire you.
[0:26] On this week's podcast, I'm going to be continuing answering
[0:29] some of the questions that have been sent in from our listeners
[0:31] and viewers on YouTube. So please keep sending those in.
[0:35] I really appreciate you guys engaging with the show so much
[0:38] and send them the questions in. And as always, I'm really happy
[0:41] to answer these questions. It forms great basis for real
[0:44] world questions to go on the podcast and also honestly, I
[0:48] struggle for time to answer all of the emails personally these
[0:51] days. So I will try and answer as many
[0:54] of them as I possibly can, but I'll do it here on the podcast.
[0:57] So before we kick off this week's episode, firstly, I hope
[1:01] you're well. I hope you've had a great
[1:02] training week. I hope you've had a great safe
[1:05] racing week if you've managed to race weather here in the UK.
[1:09] It's a little bit changeable at the moment, I think it's fair to
[1:11] say. I spent the weekend up in the
[1:12] Lake District and we had a beautiful sunny day on Saturday
[1:16] when we managed to get out for a great walk in the hills.
[1:19] And then by the time we got back to our accommodation in the
[1:22] evening it was sleeting and hail stoning on us and the next day
[1:26] was just black clouds and driving rain and just torrential
[1:30] weather. So for those of you who are busy
[1:33] trying to train for an early summer.
[1:35] Iman or 70.3 based in the UK like it's just to say I feel for
[1:40] you. I understand how difficult it is
[1:43] and I think it brings me to my my first and my most important
[1:47] point this week, which is whether you're following a
[1:51] structured training plan and whether you're following a
[1:53] coached training plan. I think you have to be realistic
[1:56] about the demands of the weather and what you can do around the
[2:01] weather conditions that you've got at the time.
[2:03] Whether it's cold and rainy or icy like we've got here in the
[2:06] UK. Whether like some of our
[2:08] athletes who are based out in the centre of America or Central
[2:12] America or down in Australia or in the UAE states where it can
[2:18] be so hot that people physically can't train outdoors during the
[2:22] daytime for six months of the year.
[2:25] I think you have to be realistic about what you can do in the
[2:28] conditions that you've got and then you have to make the next
[2:31] best use of the time and the ability and equipment that
[2:35] you've got. So what I mean by this is if
[2:37] you're planning a long ride and you're based in the UK and it's
[2:40] too cold to go outside or it's too rainy and wet and dangerous
[2:44] to go outside, get that ride done indoors and do that knowing
[2:48] that you're getting 95% of the benefit of doing it outdoors.
[2:51] You're not going to be getting the bike handling practise.
[2:55] That's true. You're not going to be getting
[2:57] the benefit of getting yourself used to riding in that weather
[3:01] and all of the the learning which clothes you need that part
[3:04] of. It's true as well.
[3:05] And I think that is worth remembering in the run up to
[3:07] your race day that if it's cold and rainy on race day and you've
[3:10] never trained outdoors in the wet and the cold, you're not
[3:13] going to know what to wear. But I think for the vast
[3:16] majority of people, the vast majority of the time, the thing
[3:19] to remind yourself is get the training done in any manner that
[3:23] you can. Give yourself the break that you
[3:26] know, I got a message from one of our athletes who said I feel
[3:29] like I've let you down and I had 120 K ride to do this weekend.
[3:32] It was just too cold and wet and I did it indoors.
[3:34] I know that's not as good as doing it outdoors, but at least
[3:37] I got it done. And and to that person I say,
[3:39] look, give yourself a break. You got it done.
[3:42] It's 95% of the way there. My only concern is for a person
[3:45] who has to ride indoors all the time and isn't going to get the
[3:48] chance to ride outdoors simply because of those weather
[3:51] conditions. You need to be confident and
[3:54] competent enough and bike handling outdoors to be able to
[3:58] get around your goal event. If that's the case, and you're
[4:00] confident that that is the case, then there's no drama at all
[4:03] getting that long ride done occasionally or even frequently
[4:06] indoors. But for the athlete whose
[4:09] Achilles heel is the outdoor ride, for the athlete who has
[4:12] never really ridden much, especially if you're one of
[4:14] these athletes for whom you're relatively new to biking, accept
[4:19] that there is going to need to be a time that you spend that
[4:21] time learning to handle your bike outdoors.
[4:24] But find a time to do that initially when when it's less
[4:27] threatening. Don't go outside in a rainstorm
[4:29] and high winds. The first time you're trying to
[4:31] get used to doing this. I think you can say really,
[4:33] really fit indoors on bikes using a Yahoo Kicker or whatever
[4:38] indoor bike setup you've got these days.
[4:40] Things have moved on so much in the last 10 years.
[4:43] You can say really, really fit. Just know that you've got to be
[4:46] able to go outside and do that time to get used to the bike
[4:48] handling in the run up to your event.
[4:50] So that being said, well done if you managed to get yourself
[4:54] outdoors in those conditions and well done if you're one of the
[4:57] people who has been racing early season.
[4:59] I know we had some athletes racing in in Iman, New Zealand a
[5:02] couple of weeks ago. We had a couple of athletes
[5:05] racing at 70.3 Texas this weekend.
[5:07] I know the weather there was terrible and the swim was
[5:09] cancelled. So you managed to get yourself
[5:11] around those events, then give yourself a pat on the back.
[5:14] Always very, very frustrating when the weather means that one
[5:17] of the legs is cancelled like that, but I think you've just
[5:20] got to take it on the chin. Be grateful that you were safe.
[5:23] Be grateful if there was some kind of event that went on that
[5:26] you could do, chalk up to experience and move on.
[5:29] So well done if you've got yourself out there this weekend.
[5:32] Now, before we kick off into athlete questions this week,
[5:36] there's a couple of quick things you could do for us.
[5:37] Please, if you like this episode, if you enjoy this
[5:40] episode, please consider giving us a like and a follow on
[5:42] Spotify or upper podcasts. Really helps us get shown to new
[5:46] potential athletes who might not have heard of the show before.
[5:48] There are a gazillion podcasts out there these days and the
[5:53] recommended for you function, especially in Spotify, is a
[5:57] surprisingly, I shouldn't say surprisingly, I guess it does
[6:00] the job it's meant to. It gets our show out in front of
[6:03] new people who've never heard of us.
[6:04] So if you're new to listening to the show, welcome.
[6:07] I've been putting the show out now every week for over a decade
[6:11] at this point. So dig in, jump into the back
[6:13] episodes and if you've got any questions, you can send those
[6:16] over to help@oxygenaddict.com. I'm happy to answer those
[6:20] questions on the show. And the second thing that you
[6:22] can do is if you're looking for help training for your first
[6:25] time, man O 70.3, check out the coaching memberships over at
[6:28] teamoxygenaddict.com. That's my company.
[6:30] We've got the most comprehensive triathlon coaching programme
[6:33] designed that's specifically built to train and coach busy
[6:36] age groupers. That's people who are not pros,
[6:39] people who got busy family lives, busy work lives, love
[6:43] triathlon, love being fit, love weaving it into their lives but
[6:46] don't want it to take off their lives and don't want to end up
[6:49] injured or sick or I'll by trying to do too much.
[6:52] It's not a retrofitted pros training plan if I'm trying to
[6:56] squish into your life. It's written specifically like
[6:59] people like you who've got the full time job, the 4050 sixty
[7:03] hour weeks of work and the full time family life and whatever
[7:06] other challenges are going on. We'll find a way to help you
[7:09] make the best use of the time that you've got going on at the
[7:12] moment. OK, so if you're interested,
[7:14] there's a link in the show notes to book a membership call with
[7:16] me, see if you'd be a good fit for joining the team.
[7:19] Like I said, if you're new here, go back through the archives of
[7:21] all of the, you know, I think we've got close to 1000 episodes
[7:25] on Spotify at the moment, tonnes of stuff on YouTube as well.
[7:29] If you've not been over onto YouTube, it'd be wonderful if
[7:31] you could go onto YouTube and give us a like and subscribe on
[7:34] that platform in particular. I'm educating myself around this
[7:38] and the YouTube algorithm is is the kingmaker.
[7:43] It's baffling. Some weeks we put a video out
[7:45] that I think is really good and we get maybe 4 or 5000 views.
[7:50] Some weeks we put a video out and we get 30 thousand 40,000
[7:53] views. Something that I've been told
[7:55] makes a real difference is if it gets shown on your feed, if you
[7:59] watch it, even if you put it on mute and leave it running in the
[8:02] background. Apparently YouTube's algorithm,
[8:05] what it does is it tests it by showing it to a small number of
[8:08] subscribers and if you scroll past the video, then it thinks
[8:12] the people who usually watch this aren't aren't particularly
[8:14] interested in this this week. So it doesn't then go on to push
[8:17] out to bigger audiences. If, however, you stop and you
[8:20] click watch and you start watching the video, that sends a
[8:23] signal to YouTube apparently, that people who subscribe to
[8:26] this channel have liked and enjoyed this episode, and it
[8:29] will then push it out to more people around the world.
[8:32] So it's really weird how you can put all this time and effort
[8:34] into doing something and you're completely at the mercy of
[8:38] whether one of your regular subscribers happens to flip open
[8:41] the YouTube app when they're in the toilet first thing in the
[8:43] morning and thinks, oh, I'll watch that later on.
[8:45] And then what happens is YouTube just puts it in a backroom so my
[8:48] people never see it. So like I said, if you're
[8:51] interested in watching me put some different stuff out on
[8:54] YouTube, I'd love you to go over and check it out and see if it
[8:57] helps you out. All right, let's jump in then
[9:00] and let's talk about these questions that people have sent
[9:02] through to us. So first up from Ben S Hi Rob.
[9:07] I'm 19 in training for my first Iron Man, currently working.
[9:10] A weird schedule but I leave my house for work at 5:00 AM.
[9:14] So swimming before work is out of the question, but I get off
[9:17] work early in the day. I'm wondering if you would
[9:20] advise getting a proper swim workout and bike or run after
[9:24] the swim. So basically to do 2 workouts
[9:27] almost back-to-back but then but I do have time to do the full
[9:32] sessions. So that's a great question.
[9:34] Ben, I think in your case, when you're leaving the house at 5:00
[9:37] AM already, there's no way you're going to get 2 sessions
[9:39] and then the day with one before work and one after work.
[9:41] So you've got two ways of approaching this.
[9:44] And actually the way that you've described, I think is the best
[9:47] way to do a swim and then to do another workout, either a bike
[9:51] or a run can work really, really well because guess what, on race
[9:54] day, you're going to be biking and swimming, biking and running
[9:59] after you've already swung. So it works out great to stack
[10:02] your sessions that way. I would say in the early days of
[10:06] your training plan, it's definitely not imperative that
[10:09] you rush from the swim to get on the bike or rush from the swim
[10:12] to get onto the run. Feel free to come back in the
[10:15] changing rooms, get yourself, get yourself dried off, take a
[10:17] few minutes, have a snack and then go.
[10:19] I don't think you need to hammer it back-to-back and really pile
[10:22] out there and do it, but it makes good practical use of the
[10:25] time slot that you've got to, to go straight from the swim, maybe
[10:28] onto the gym, bike at the gym, get the bike done or go straight
[10:32] onto a treadmill or even outside for a run.
[10:34] Get those done back-to-back, but I don't think it's necessary to
[10:37] have to do them back-to-back. I think if you want to take a
[10:39] break, go away and do something else and do your second work out
[10:42] later in the day, that would be absolutely fine as well.
[10:46] But I am a big fan of doing the swim as your first work out of
[10:50] the day. And the reason for that is we
[10:52] see a lot of athletes who struggle with cramp.
[10:55] If they do a bike or run first thing and then they try and swim
[10:58] later on. It's a real problem for me.
[11:00] I think there's about 10% of athletes really struggle with
[11:02] this, getting really bad cramps in their calves or their feet if
[11:06] they're doing the swim as the second workout of the day.
[11:09] So I would advise trying to do that swim workout as the first
[11:12] one that you do. Yep, second question here from
[11:16] Ben. He says my second question is
[11:18] that previously I was a baseball player and all my training was
[11:21] focused on short, powerful motions.
[11:24] My body is better at those. During a 20 minute FTP test, I'm
[11:29] able to pretty easily hold 260 watts, but when biking I can't
[11:34] feel there's any way I can hold 250 for an hour.
[11:37] Maybe it's just my brain telling me that.
[11:39] Do you think I should do an hour long FTP test to get a better
[11:43] idea since I'm able to put out the power well but I have
[11:46] trouble sustaining it? And there's another part of this
[11:49] question later on. So First things first, the the
[11:53] best and most effective test of the FTP test is if you want to
[11:57] do it the classical way is to ride for an hour in a time trial
[12:00] as hard as you can. See what you can hold now,
[12:02] because most people can't do that and it's extremely
[12:05] challenging. The most commonly done FTP test
[12:09] is to do 20 minute tests, so 20 minute maximal effort as an even
[12:14] pace and an even wattage, and then take 95% of that number.
[12:18] So if you can hold 200 and 6095% of that would be about 147
[12:25] watts, could you hold that for an hour?
[12:28] What Ben's experiencing here is, I think not uncommon.
[12:32] There are some people who find that they can.
[12:35] There are some people who their body is skewed more towards
[12:38] shorter efforts and they feel that there's nowhere that they
[12:40] could hold that power for an hour long.
[12:42] And what that's telling you is actually a gift.
[12:44] It's telling you that that's where the gap is in your fitness
[12:47] and you need to work on that. I think for most people, most of
[12:51] the time, you should be able to hold an hour at 95% of your 20
[12:56] minute test number. But remember that the key to
[12:59] this is you can hold it for an hour in race conditions.
[13:03] That's very different to how most people experience trying to
[13:06] ride. If you're trying to do this on
[13:08] your own in a gym for an hour, there's almost certainly no way
[13:11] you could do this. So I think what you'd find, Ben,
[13:13] is if you went and entered a road race or a time trial,
[13:16] probably could hold 95% of that number in a highly motivated
[13:20] situation with other people around you.
[13:22] It's just very, very hard to do it on your own.
[13:25] And similarly, while we're on this, this is one of the reasons
[13:27] I'm not a fan at all of, as the people who've written on the
[13:31] Sofa festival have seen this like the the four dimensional
[13:35] power test where you either do a ramp test or you do a much
[13:38] shorter 8 minute, 8 minute version of the FTP test.
[13:42] My belief is my understanding is the further away from the hour
[13:47] you move, the more the most of margin for error that there is
[13:51] there and the more an athlete who's powerful like you, Ben,
[13:55] will skew the numbers away from what their true FTP is.
[13:58] So I'm going to say for for 99% of people, I'm really confident
[14:01] that that 20 minute FTP test is what you need to work out the
[14:04] number. But the shorter ones I think
[14:07] there's a real problem with. So definitely stay away from
[14:10] those. His next part of the question
[14:12] says, should I focus most of my training on longer sustained
[14:16] efforts as opposed to doing still shorter and higher
[14:20] intensity interval training? The context is I'm preparing for
[14:23] Ironman Cozumel in November on a long flat course.
[14:27] There's two parts to this question, I think.
[14:29] Break your training into two chunks, Ben.
[14:32] The first chunk of your training is going to be specifically
[14:35] focused on making your engine as big as you possibly can.
[14:38] So take an 8 week block, do a block that's targeted at
[14:43] improving your FTP number, and we'll spend 8 weeks doing that.
[14:49] And we will then shift our focus entirely away from doing an FTP
[14:53] focus block to the kind of training that will then help you
[14:58] go longer at a higher relative proportion of your FTP for
[15:03] longer. So as you've said there, focus
[15:05] on doing longer sustained efforts.
[15:07] So typically what this will look like in your FTP block you'll be
[15:10] doing, you'll be doing efforts of between 5 and 10 minutes at
[15:14] between 90 to 100% of your FTP with about 1 minutes recovery
[15:18] for every 5 minutes of writing you're doing in the interval
[15:21] session. And most people here are doing
[15:23] 30 or 40 minutes of hard work within an hour session.
[15:26] If you do two of those a week, you're not going to go far wrong
[15:29] across an 8 week block. Add a long ride at the weekend.
[15:32] That's the ballpark for what an FTP block is going to look like
[15:36] as you shift into the 16 weeks plus approaching your Iron Man.
[15:42] We won't have you do any of those efforts in the 90 to 100%
[15:46] of FTP anymore. We will shift the focus to be
[15:49] your long endurance ride being the most important part of the
[15:52] week, One of the shorter rides focusing on doing big gear
[15:56] intervals to help you force production.
[15:58] If you like what used to be described as strength training
[16:01] for your legs. And there'll be 1 longer
[16:03] interval session a week where we'll keep the power at or below
[16:06] 90% of FTP, so around what would used to be called sweet spot
[16:09] training. And there we'll build those
[16:12] intervals to the point where you can do 2 or maybe even 3
[16:15] intervals of 15 to 20 minutes, 85 to 90% of, sorry, 85 to 90%
[16:22] of FTP. And those longer sustained
[16:25] submaximal efforts are what will help keep and continue to build
[16:30] your FTP. But you can recover much, much
[16:34] faster from a sweet spot effort than you will do from FTP
[16:36] session. Now you'll notice I've not
[16:38] talked out about anything at all about really high intensity
[16:41] training. Seems to be really popular at
[16:43] the moment on YouTube with influencers talking about doing
[16:47] really high intensity work on the bike, doing one minute VO2
[16:50] Max intervals or even 20 seconds batter Sprint intervals.
[16:55] Like all of these things are not new.
[16:56] They'll all come round again. There's always going to be some
[16:59] new young influencer who feels like they've rediscovered
[17:01] something and wants to push it. You'll have seen I did a video
[17:05] recently saying don't do VO2 Max intervals like that if you're
[17:09] training for Iman. And here's the reason why.
[17:11] And the reason is you want to make the most efficient and
[17:14] effective use of the training time you've got.
[17:16] So make the most efficient and effective use of it.
[17:19] Do the training that's directly going to help your Iron Man.
[17:23] And that's not to batter intervals of 20 seconds, it's
[17:26] long sustained intervals of about 20 minutes.
[17:30] And it's big gear work and it's getting out of the door and
[17:33] writing your specific Iron Man wattage for 3456 hours so that
[17:37] your body is prepared for your Iron Man.
[17:40] Now there's no way around this. There's no hack.
[17:42] There's a reason Tim Ferriss hasn't done an Iron Man.
[17:44] I should get a T-shirt made with that written on.
[17:46] You can't hack your way there. There's No 4 hour Iron Man
[17:50] training plan. You have to train in a specific
[17:53] way. An Iron Man is a long endurance
[17:54] event, so the only way to train for it is to make sure that you
[17:58] have the specific long endurance sessions ticked off in the run
[18:01] up to Iron Man in the most specific way possible.
[18:05] OK, I hope that helps Ben. That was, it was great.
[18:08] Actually. It's a long question.
[18:09] Three parts, three different parts to it and hopefully the
[18:12] different, the different parts that have really helped other
[18:15] people out as well. OK, next question.
[18:19] I've got a an anonymous one here, or at the very least I
[18:22] haven't made a mention of the person's name, so I apologise to
[18:25] whoever sent this one in on my long bike last week when I
[18:28] finished the TSS score was through the roof and I'm not
[18:31] sure why. So for those of you who don't
[18:33] know, TSS is training Peaks way of measuring training stress
[18:37] score and what they've done here is try to find a metric that you
[18:41] can compare. Ride with a ride, ride with a
[18:45] run, run with a swim. A standard metric for a unit of
[18:50] training stress. Now you can argue till the cows
[18:54] come home over there, the relative merits of trying to
[18:57] compare a bike session with a swim session.
[18:59] And what I do think it's is really useful for is getting an
[19:04] idea of how effective your long ride was in terms of preparing
[19:10] you for your Iron Man. And so if you want to think of
[19:13] it this way, if you ride for one hour at 100% of FTP, you will
[19:18] get 100 training stress score points.
[19:21] If you ride for one hour at about your Iron Man pace, you'll
[19:25] come up with about 50 training stress score points.
[19:28] And so all these points are not equal.
[19:30] You can't do the thing I just mentioned, the Tim Ferriss idea
[19:33] of. You can't just do short, hard
[19:35] training and rack up training stress points that way because
[19:38] it's a whole different kind of training and a different energy
[19:41] system. You're going to be training when
[19:42] you're going out and doing long, steady aerobic rides.
[19:45] OK, But there is a budget we can give you and that budget it's
[19:51] about 280 training stress score points for a full 180 K for an
[19:56] Iron Man and and the numbers 180 for people who are riding 70.3
[20:02] in case you're wondering. OK.
[20:03] So no matter how fast you go an Ironman race day or how slow you
[20:08] go, that's your budget? And so an athlete who is really
[20:12] fast, if you pick up, I don't know, a Lionel Sanders or
[20:15] someone who's doing a four hour bike leg, they'll rack up those
[20:18] four, those, those, those 280 training stress score points in
[20:22] four hours. And so the maths there is it's
[20:25] what is that 85 points an hour? So they can be operating really
[20:29] close to the ref TP, they can push themselves really hard
[20:33] because they're going to be finished on the bike in four
[20:35] hours. If we take another age group
[20:37] who's going to take 8 hours to do it, they've got to spread
[20:40] that 280 out across 8 hours. They've got to ride obviously at
[20:45] a lower FTP than line up, also a relatively lower FTP percentage
[20:50] because they're going to be out there for longer.
[20:52] And so you can compare your TSS score and get back from your
[20:56] long ride and do the workings out.
[20:58] And let's say you rode 180K and you got back and your TSS was
[21:01] 350 really easily. What that's told you is you've
[21:05] written too hard, you've pushed too hard, you've pushed too much
[21:08] power and you will not be able to run well off the 350 TSS bike
[21:13] leg on on race day. You're going to have to back the
[21:15] power off. The thing you might want to
[21:17] check is a was your power metre calibrated before you did the
[21:21] ride? If not, give yourself a slap
[21:23] across the chops and make sure you calibrate it before the next
[21:25] one. The other thing you want to make
[21:27] sure of is is your FTP set correctly and is it done
[21:34] relative to an outdoor FTP test? So those are the two things that
[21:38] you want to check and if the answer there is yes to both of
[21:42] them, then it just means you've ridden too hard and you have to
[21:45] ride a bit easier next time. OK, this is a great spot for me
[21:48] to just pause for a minute and give a shout out to our sponsors
[21:51] Precision Fuel and Hydration. You can use the free Fuel and
[21:55] Hydration planning tool on their website to receive a
[21:57] personalised strategy for your next race.
[22:00] The planner will help you understand your own
[22:02] carbohydrate, electrolytes and fluid needs.
[22:05] And I can't stress enough to you if you're doing your first Iron
[22:08] Man or 70.3, I honestly mean this.
[22:12] Getting the right amount of carbohydrating, staying hydrated
[22:16] and keeping your electrolyte balance right.
[22:18] Those 3 levers, they're as essential to your success on
[22:21] race day as getting the training writers in the lead up to it
[22:26] alongside getting your pacing right in race states that that's
[22:28] important. You can't do an Iron Man or even
[22:30] a 70.3 without getting the right number of grammes of carbs in
[22:35] per hour and keeping your fluids and electrolytes correct.
[22:38] So precision fuel and hydration of a fantastic company.
[22:41] I've known them and they've sponsored the show now for over
[22:43] 10 years and I approached them because they are the best in the
[22:47] business. They found the solution to help
[22:49] people initially get the right milligrammes of sodium and stay
[22:53] hydrated. Then they've come along with
[22:55] their gels that have got 30 or 60 grammes of carbs and they've
[22:58] got the flow gel solution, which is a gel that goes in a bike
[23:01] bottle and you can squeeze out. It just makes getting the right
[23:04] grammes of carbs per hour really easy when you're racing and when
[23:08] you're training. You can even book a free one to
[23:11] one video consultation with PF and HS Athlete Support Team.
[23:15] And if you decide to make a purchase, use the code Oxygen 26
[23:20] and you'll get 15% off your first order.
[23:22] Like I said, I can't recommend this company highly enough.
[23:26] The people who work for the company and who started the
[23:28] company are just brilliant humans and you produce a
[23:30] fantastic product. That's a really important, it's
[23:34] a really important solution, I think for athletes who are doing
[23:37] 70.3 and 9. And you'll notice it's the only
[23:40] sponsor that we have. I'm not pushing and shilling
[23:42] stuff on you here for the sake of doing so.
[23:44] I genuinely think it's a really really good product.
[23:48] OK next question from Cara White.
[23:51] She says hi Rob, I hope this question finds you well.
[23:54] Firstly, I love you. Podcasts for a busy mum that
[23:57] works and a husband that does late shift work.
[24:00] It's nice to hear real life training advice that gives me
[24:02] encouragement to fit training in and around such a life.
[24:05] Well cheers Cara, I appreciate the kind of words Sarah and I'm
[24:07] glad it's helping you. She says I am doing my first
[24:11] 70.3 in Weymouth in September. I've never done anything like
[24:15] this before. I've been following a training
[24:17] programme and during testing week my FTP came out at 94 watts
[24:21] which seems terrible compared to constantly seeing FTPS at 200
[24:26] watts plus on good old social media.
[24:29] It's made me really doubt that I will make the cut off time for
[24:32] the distance on the bike while my power is low.
[24:35] My speed seems to keep averaging a 20 to 23 kilometre per hour in
[24:39] my zone 2 rides on the indoor trainer.
[24:42] Have you got any advice for this please?
[24:44] Should I be focused on power or speed?
[24:46] OK so the first point here is let's talk about social media
[24:50] and as you rightly said here, good old social media.
[24:53] I remember my old coach years ago saying when people talk
[24:57] about FTPS they only talk about their best ever test.
[25:01] It's always men posting, it's always the best ever result, and
[25:05] it's probably on a day when the power metre wasn't calibrated
[25:08] correctly anyway. Right, And you say you're right
[25:11] to be. You're right to be suspicious.
[25:13] There's nothing that's all wrong with a 94 Watt FTP for a lady.
[25:18] The thing to think about here is the next point you've made.
[25:21] My speed seems to average 20 to 23 KS an hour in a zone to ride
[25:26] on the indoor trainer. Now the indoor trainer is not
[25:29] necessarily going to be comparable to outdoors and they
[25:32] are a little bit notorious for sort of inflating the speed that
[25:36] you'll ride at. So the thing for you to do here
[25:38] is 2 parts. Go on an outdoor ride, go on a
[25:42] ride around, go on what you would consider to be a
[25:44] comfortable zone to ride and see what speed you get outdoors.
[25:47] See what that comes back as. That's going to give you a
[25:51] really good lead as to whether you're in the right kind of
[25:53] ballpark or not. The next thing you can do is go
[25:55] to the website for the race. Check what the cut off is for
[25:58] the race, do the backward maths and work out what the average
[26:01] speed is that you're going to need to be maintaining come race
[26:03] day. Remember there's wiggle room in
[26:05] there depending on how long it takes you to actually do the
[26:08] swim. So really look carefully at that
[26:11] because in some of the races they, you know, if you, if you
[26:14] swim, I don't know, let's say you spend 40 minutes for the
[26:16] swim and the cut offs now are 10.
[26:18] Some of the races will give you those extra 30 minutes that you
[26:21] haven't used on the swim as part of the bike cut off as well.
[26:24] So it's well worth knowing that. So you've got that element to it
[26:27] as well. And then the second part of all
[26:29] this is you've got until September to train and it's not
[26:33] the Cara White of right now in March that's going to be doing
[26:37] the race in Weymouth in September.
[26:39] You've got 6 plus months to train before that day.
[26:42] So what we'd advise here is spend a chunk of time working on
[26:46] improving your bike fitness. So as we discussed slightly
[26:49] earlier in the episode, take an 8 week block, do a focused FTP
[26:54] bike fitness build, see if you can push the FTP up and see
[26:57] where you can get to in eight weeks.
[26:59] So usually, I'm going to say that the ballpark figure is 5 to
[27:03] 8% improvement in eight weeks. But for newer cyclists, it's
[27:06] often bigger than that. It's often more like 10%, and in
[27:10] some cases we've seen 20% plus for the new cyclists.
[27:14] So you're going to need to be doing 2 interval sessions for
[27:17] FTP once a week and a longer ride.
[27:19] Give yourself all the opportunities to do this and see
[27:22] where you come out in eight weeks time.
[27:23] That's the first part of it. You've still then got four whole
[27:26] months until race day so you can get outside and practise, ride
[27:30] in the hills. You might be able to get down
[27:32] and ride the course and practise the course.
[27:33] That's all part of it as well. And then the next thing to look
[27:37] at is if you're still struggling for time and power, look at some
[27:40] of the things that you can then do for yourself that are going
[27:43] to help on race day. Such as getting yourself a skin
[27:46] suit that will save a significant amount of
[27:49] aerodynamic drag. Getting yourself race wheels on
[27:52] your bike, maybe getting Tri bars on your bike, maybe, maybe
[27:55] look at an aero helmet. All of these things will add up.
[27:58] I mean, hell, even shaving your legs is worth 10 watts.
[28:01] And when you've got a 94 Watt FTP, that's 10% on your FTP
[28:06] straight away. So there's lots of things here
[28:08] you can look at. I'd encourage you to go over to
[28:10] YouTube. I've got a video on there that I
[28:12] did six months or so ago and it's it's about exactly this.
[28:16] It's about the things that you can do that will save you our
[28:19] dynamic drag. I think the thumbnails got like
[28:22] a a cyclist on them with plus 50 watts or something like that as
[28:26] the slightly click baity thumbnail.
[28:30] But you know, we back it up with the, with the numbers that came
[28:33] back from science that we looked at and find people the
[28:35] equivalent of 50 watts worth of, of aerodynamic and rolling
[28:40] resistance drag reduction. It's worth the same amount on
[28:42] your FTP. So well worth going and watching
[28:45] and having a look at. And, and if you do that and you
[28:47] enjoy it, please drop us a message, leave a comment on the
[28:50] YouTube channel to just say it's been useful.
[28:52] Because I think what I've realised more and more is
[28:56] there's no, there's no easy way for people out there to know who
[29:00] are the people who are genuinely giving training advice from the
[29:03] point of view of being trained and doing this for a living.
[29:05] And the people who are just doing it because they want to be
[29:08] on social media. Believe you me, I'm not in the
[29:10] second part of this here. I, I'm not a person who enjoys
[29:14] looking at my own face on videos.
[29:15] And I don't do it because I want to be a YouTube star.
[29:17] Believe you me, I'd do it out of well, I've been forced in to do
[29:21] it by my business partners so, so we can keep the business
[29:24] rolling, let's put it that way. But I do not enjoy being on
[29:27] video and there's a reason a lot of those graphics come up and
[29:31] cover my face. But a lot of the time, let's
[29:33] let's put it that way. But if you enjoy it, I hope that
[29:35] you find it useful and I hope it really helps you out.
[29:37] And if you need any more questions answered then then
[29:40] please pop them in there. If you just do that, if you
[29:42] focus on getting your FTP up over an 8 week block, see where
[29:45] you get to, the speed will come. Don't you worry about that.
[29:49] OK. And to wrap things up here for
[29:52] this week, thank you very much for listening.
[29:53] I've got some more questions to come for you next week.
[29:56] And to wrap this up, here are some discount codes and deals
[29:58] for you. Over at
[29:59] precisionfuelandhydration.com. You can use the code Oxygen 26
[30:03] for 15% off your first electrolyte order.
[30:06] And at teamoxygenaddict.com, we've got the most comprehensive
[30:09] training, sorry, the most comprehensive triathlon coaching
[30:13] programme specifically designed for busy age groupers.
[30:17] If you're looking for coaching for Iron Man this year, please
[30:19] get in touch. There's a link in the show notes
[30:21] to book a membership call with us and see if you'd be a good
[30:23] fit for joining the team. We'll just talk about how we can
[30:26] best help you out, show you a training plan, show you how we
[30:29] coach athletes, show our athlete communication app and our team
[30:32] calls, and go through how our coaching process works.
[30:35] So yeah, I'd love to talk to you if you're looking for coaching.
[30:38] Do you remember? Then there's links in the show
[30:40] notes so you don't have to remember them.
[30:42] And until next week, have a great safe training and racing
[30:45] week. I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've
[30:47] been listening to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon Podcast.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.