# The 5 Most Important Sessions for IRONMAN: What to Prioritise in the Last 12–16 Weeks | Ep 586

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 15 Apr 2026, 26 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO4426627057.mp3

With 12–16 weeks to go until race day, most athletes know roughly what they should be doing. But when life gets in the way, which sessions do you actually protect? In this episode, Coach Rob walks you through the five most important training sessions for IRONMAN preparation, ranked in priority order. So when work, family, or travel forces a choice, you know exactly what to keep and what can wait. You'll learn: • Why the long ride is your single most important session, and the exact intensity targets to hit (whether you're a faster or slower athlete)... • How to structure your long run to build durability without wrecking the next two days of training... • What your endurance swim should actually look like at this stage of training... • The role of other bike & run sessions in a time-limited week... • How to structure race simulation weekends that will give you genuine confidence heading into taper * * * * * * * 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.
[0:07] We're brought to you every week with our sponsors, Precision
[0:10] Fuel and hydration.com. You can get 15% off your first
[0:14] order with the code OXYGEN 25. Welcome to the show everybody.
[0:18] I'm your host coach Rob Wilby from Team Oxygen Addict
[0:20] Triathlon Coaching, and every week I'll bring you an episode
[0:23] of this podcast to help motivate, educate and inspire
[0:27] you. I hope you're having a fantastic
[0:29] day today. I hope you're enjoying the fact
[0:31] that springtime feels like it's on the way.
[0:33] Certainly here in the UK we're having some some sunnier days
[0:36] and sunnier mornings and hopefully people are starting to
[0:39] get out and get more of their training done outdoors.
[0:42] So with the weather being like this, our thoughts turn towards
[0:46] racing this summer. And it's usually the point where
[0:50] people realise sort of that the middle of April, we realise that
[0:54] we're 16 to 12 weeks out from our perhaps our only race of the
[1:00] year, our only big race, perhaps our first day race.
[1:03] And so I'm putting this episode together today to talk about the
[1:07] the five really most important sessions that you need to be
[1:12] putting together in your training week on week over the
[1:15] last 12 to 16 weeks of your training as you build up to your
[1:18] A race. And I'll talk through the way
[1:21] you need to prioritise these sessions, why they're important,
[1:24] how to do them, so that when you arrive at your Iron Man, you're
[1:27] going to be in fantastic shape. Like I recognise that not
[1:30] everyone has got the opportunity to train every day.
[1:33] Not everyone's got the opportunity to train twice a
[1:35] day. And the biggest challenge that
[1:38] athletes have when they come to us for coaching, it's more
[1:41] around how do I fit stuff in when I've got a time limited
[1:45] week rather than like everybody knows what that perfect week
[1:48] should look like. Everyone knows that they should
[1:50] be working towards this idea that they should be managing to
[1:53] get a training session done every day or perhaps in some
[1:56] cases 2 training sessions done in a day.
[1:58] But what do we do? How do we prioritise when life
[2:01] gets in the way? We've got travel plans from
[2:03] work, throws A curveball when we've got family things going on
[2:07] at the weekend. How do we prioritise those
[2:10] sessions? So I'm going to talk you through
[2:12] that today. So before we kick off, there's a
[2:14] couple of quick things you could do that would really help us.
[2:16] If you enjoy this episode, please follow us on Spotify, our
[2:19] upper podcasts. We've got somewhere in the
[2:22] region of 30% of the people who listen on a regular basis are
[2:27] actually subscribers. That's what our stats show.
[2:30] I'd love it if you guys would become subscribers.
[2:32] I'd love it if you would leave us a positive review.
[2:35] The reason being all of this stuff helps us get shown in a
[2:38] Spotify feed or an Apple podcast feed to new potential listeners
[2:42] and that helps us grow the show. It helps us keep this show for
[2:45] free. Secondly, if you're looking for
[2:47] help training for your first Iron Man, please check out the
[2:50] coaching memberships over at teamoxygenedit.com.
[2:53] I give a tonne of free information away here and if you
[2:56] like what you hear and you're looking to get coaching, I
[2:57] honestly think I've got the most comprehensive triathlon coaching
[3:00] programme that's been specifically designed and built
[3:02] from the ground up for busy age groupers, people with jobs,
[3:06] people with families, people who absolutely love Iron Man.
[3:09] They want to fit it in around the life but they don't know
[3:11] how. So if you're interested in
[3:12] having a coach in your corner who understands that, there's a
[3:15] link in the show notes to book a membership call with me.
[3:18] I'll have a chat and work out what's going on in your life.
[3:20] I'll talk you through how we train and coach people and we
[3:23] can go from there and if you're a good fit for joining the team
[3:25] and I've got opportunity to let people join at that time, then
[3:28] I'll either let you join and we'll pop you on the waiting
[3:30] list. So I'd love to hear from you.
[3:32] It's that time of year when often we get people contacting
[3:35] and saying look I've only got 3 months until my Iron Man.
[3:38] Can you work with people in that period of time?
[3:40] Can you make a difference in that period of time?
[3:43] And the answer is yes, we can make a massive difference to
[3:45] people in the last three months leading up to the race.
[3:48] I'm more than happy to work with people during the summer on that
[3:51] limited basis if we've got spaces available.
[3:53] So as things stand, we've got a couple of slots available this
[3:56] month. We have turnover of athletes all
[3:58] the time of, you know, I think somewhere in the region of 90%
[4:01] of our athletes are working on a, an annual coaching plan.
[4:04] And every week we have somewhere in the sorry, every month we
[4:07] have somewhere in the region of between 4:00 and 8:00
[4:09] memberships become available. As people come to the end of
[4:12] those memberships, sometimes people roll on into year 2, year
[4:15] three-year 4 with us. Often they've done the Ray race
[4:18] for the year and they're done and they're off to do a
[4:21] different sport. So if you're interested, just
[4:23] hit that link in the show notes and we'll have a chat.
[4:26] All right, so let's jump right in then.
[4:27] So I'm not going to frame this as these five sessions that I'm
[4:32] going to talk about today are the only thing that you need to
[4:34] do in training. There's there's genuinely more
[4:37] to a well stretched diamond training week than just getting
[4:40] four or five sessions done. But if you've got a decent build
[4:44] and block of consistent training behind you, these are the five
[4:48] most important sessions. I'm going to talk through them
[4:51] in priority order. I think we'll go through why
[4:53] they're important and we'll also go through what not to do.
[4:57] So for Ironman, priority #1 is going to be your long ride, your
[5:03] long endurance ride. The reason for this being, look,
[5:06] firstly, it's going to be where you spend the longest amount of
[5:09] time on race day. You're going to be out there for
[5:10] between 5:00 and maybe 7 and a half, eight hours for most
[5:15] Ironman to athletes, it's where you've got the most to gain in
[5:19] terms of the fitter you get on the bike, the shorter a period
[5:22] of time you're going to be out there on race day.
[5:24] Most people fall into the trap of thinking that that ride
[5:28] should be hard and it shouldn't. The idea of the session is to
[5:32] build your aerobic endurance and your body's ability to burn fat
[5:37] efficiently when exercising for a long period of time.
[5:39] And honestly, that's the number one limiter on race day.
[5:43] It's your ability to keep going for the duration of the event.
[5:46] It's never going to be your top end power on the bike or your
[5:50] top end running speed. You will hear people talking
[5:53] about doing these sessions, but crucially, if you watch pro
[5:56] triathletes on Instagram or wherever, you'll only ever see
[6:00] them posting their sexy hard sessions.
[6:03] You'll only see them posting hard track sessions or uphill
[6:07] intervals that they're doing. And honestly, it's of extremely
[6:12] limited value, sessions like that to an age group athlete,
[6:17] the most important bread and butter is going to be these
[6:20] long, steady sessions. The reason they don't get posted
[6:23] about is that they're not very interesting to post about on
[6:25] Instagram, but they are the most important.
[6:28] So that ability to go for a long period of time and the ability
[6:32] to teach a body to burn fat more efficiently, it's only going to
[6:35] come from time in the saddle at the right intensity.
[6:38] So we're looking at somewhere between 60 to 70% of FTP if
[6:43] you're riding on the flat for most age groupers.
[6:45] And again, cap that at between 75 to 85% on climbs.
[6:50] Faster athletes at the higher end, because you're going to be
[6:52] finished sooner. Slower athletes at the lower
[6:55] end, you're going to be out there longer.
[6:56] So you need to be exercising A relatively lower percentage of
[6:59] your FTP. So make sure those targets are
[7:03] relative to your outdoor FTP, not just your indoor FTP because
[7:08] those tend to be different for people.
[7:10] OK, what we'll do usually with an athlete is we'll have you do
[7:15] 3 weeks worth of long rides and then in the 4th week we'll have
[7:18] a shorter long ride. So it's like a recovery week.
[7:21] So typically that 4th week, the long ride will be down in the
[7:24] duration area of an hour to 90 minutes for the three weeks
[7:29] we're building, we're going to build, it's about 30 minutes a
[7:32] week. So if your, if your long
[7:34] endurance ride at the moment is 3 hours, you'll go 3 hours, 3
[7:37] 1/2 hours, four hours, then cut back to the hour and a half and
[7:41] then four and a half, 55 and a half.
[7:44] You can see with that kind of structure over an 8 week period,
[7:47] you can build from comfortably riding your bike for three hours
[7:50] to comfortably riding your bike close to six hours over the
[7:54] eight week build. And that's sensible.
[7:56] There's no risk of injury or there's very little risk of
[8:00] injury from overuse there. And it's a sensible build in
[8:03] terms of that half an hour additional every week for some
[8:07] athletes who've got a longer endurance history.
[8:10] If you've done multiple years of training, it might be that you
[8:12] can increase your long ride by up to an hour.
[8:15] But if you're a first timer, I'd stick with that policy of
[8:19] increasing it by 30 minutes. OK, I'm going to stress this
[8:23] again. That's the most important
[8:25] session to keep in week in, week out.
[8:28] You'll arrive at race day knowing your body can handle the
[8:31] duration of the long ride and that's the most important thing
[8:33] mentally. If that ride keeps getting cut
[8:36] on a week by week basis, no amount of shorter ride is going
[8:39] to make up for it. And often the questions that get
[8:42] sent through to me via our e-mail or via social media,
[8:46] along the lines of I haven't got time to do this long ride.
[8:50] Can I cut it up into chunks? Can I do 2 rides over 2 days or
[8:53] can I do 5 or 6 rides over 5 or 6 days?
[8:56] Look, that's going to be all right once in a blue moon.
[8:58] But you've got to be honest with yourself.
[9:01] The demand of an Iron Man is a long for most people.
[9:04] It's going to be, you know, let's say best case, 10 hours
[9:08] through to 17 1/2 hours. You've got to scratch your
[9:12] training around being out there training consistently for long
[9:15] periods of time, and if you haven't got the time to do that
[9:19] honestly in your daily life, you need to be looking at a
[9:23] different event to do. It's going to be more honest
[9:25] advice to you. You need to be putting the time
[9:27] aside to get those long continuous sessions done every
[9:31] week session #2 On our priority list is your long run.
[9:35] Now, I will typically structure a week so that an athlete has
[9:38] their long ride at the weekend because that's when they tend to
[9:41] have the most time. And I'll split the long run into
[9:43] the middle of the week and typically put it on a Wednesday
[9:46] or a Thursday. The reason being the long run is
[9:49] the time when you're at most risk of picking up a niggle or
[9:53] an injury if you're doing it on tired legs.
[9:55] So you want to be doing it on fresh legs.
[9:58] There'll be one or two race simulation weekends which I'll
[10:00] talk about later on, where the long run will sit the day after
[10:04] the long ride. But for the rest of the weeks we
[10:06] want to try and split split these two up.
[10:09] If you have to do both of them the weekend, I'd advise doing
[10:13] the long run on the Saturday and the long ride on the Sunday and
[10:16] then you're running on fresh legs and you're riding on tired
[10:19] legs and that way you can try and minimise that risk of injury
[10:23] and soreness. The pace for this right at this
[10:27] run is going to be somewhere in your E pace range.
[10:30] So if you're not sure what that is, you can Google Jack Daniels
[10:33] run calculator, run pace calculator.
[10:36] It give you a range there for your endurance run, your E pace
[10:40] run. That's going to be based on you
[10:43] plugging into his calculation table, a recent estimate of a
[10:48] 5K10K half marathon, whatever. And that will give you a range
[10:52] to run in. And I'm going to say this to
[10:54] you, for almost all age group athletes, your best case
[10:57] scenario on Iron Man race day is going to be running at the fast
[11:01] end of Jack Daniels E pace. Now on paper that's going to
[11:05] look slower than you probably hope you can go, but that's been
[11:08] the reality for the thousands of athletes I've coached towards
[11:11] Ironman. So again, let's be specific.
[11:14] There is extremely limited upside in you training your runs
[11:18] faster than that pace. You might see on social media
[11:21] people advocating that you do that, talking about threshold
[11:25] runs and even VO2 Max runs. There is very, very limited
[11:29] upside and you're running faster than Jack Daniels E pace in
[11:31] training because that's the pace you're going to be running out
[11:34] on race day. All of the hard work and the
[11:37] heavy lifting is going to be done on the bike.
[11:39] It's going to free you up to do your running.
[11:42] It's really easy, it's really enjoyable, fantastic.
[11:45] The second thing I'm going to say about long run is we're
[11:47] going to split this up into a run walk.
[11:50] Even for our most experienced athletes, you're going to run
[11:52] for 9 minutes and walk for a minute.
[11:55] That is going to have two effects.
[11:56] Firstly, it means that you are going to be much less sore the
[12:02] day after a long training run than you would expect to be if
[12:05] you've been out doing a 2 hour continuous run.
[12:08] That walk break shift your running gait entirely.
[12:11] It helps your legs recover mid run, it massively limits the
[12:15] amount of muscle damage and it helps improve your run
[12:18] durability. I've been reading lots of
[12:20] articles online at the moment about how you know Runners World
[12:24] and various coaches are pushing the idea that durability is the
[12:27] most important thing for marathon, not VO2 Max and not
[12:30] run pace. And it's great to see people
[12:32] come around to my way of thinking.
[12:33] I think it's really long overdue that durability, your ability to
[12:37] just keep going and not fatigue over a long period of time is
[12:41] the thing that's going to make the biggest difference to either
[12:44] a marathon performance, but specifically a marathon
[12:46] performance on Iron Man race day.
[12:48] OK, so those micro recoveries will really help you maintain
[12:52] form. The second thing it's going to
[12:54] help you do here is on your Iron Man race day, there's going to
[12:58] be an aid station every couple of kilometres.
[13:00] You're going to have to walk through this aid station.
[13:02] So you're going to be practising what you're going to be doing on
[13:05] race day. You walk through the aid station
[13:07] so you have the opportunity to eat and drink.
[13:09] You don't spill stuff all over your shoes and hands, so
[13:12] replicate that in training. The long runs are going to build
[13:15] durability and time on your feet, and they're not going to
[13:18] wipe you out for the next two days.
[13:20] And again, I'm going to stress that in Iron Man training,
[13:23] that's super important. You need to be ready to train
[13:25] again the next day. And consistent daily training is
[13:28] the thing that's going to keep moving the needle towards you
[13:30] having that fitness to do an Iron Man.
[13:33] You can't afford to do a really long run and then have to take
[13:35] two complete days off training. OK, session #3 is your endurance
[13:40] swim now 12 to 16 weeks out from your race?
[13:43] You've already done a solid block of technique work in the
[13:46] pool, or at least I'm hoping you have.
[13:48] If you've been following these podcasts, you will have done,
[13:50] you are more confident, more efficient swimmer than you were
[13:53] six months ago. Your stroke will have improved.
[13:56] And the swim on race day is not going to be about pace.
[13:59] It's not going to be going all out.
[14:01] It's not going to be going fast, it's going to be about
[14:03] conserving as much energy as possible.
[14:05] Honestly, think of it as a warm up for the rest of your day.
[14:08] The skill of swimming at Iron Man race pace needs practising.
[14:12] Left your own devices, you're going to be excited on race day
[14:14] and yet almost everyone's going to swim the 1st 204 hundred far
[14:18] too fast. So we're going to practise it in
[14:20] training. So the long endurance swim is
[14:22] going to start with repeated hundreds at your goal Iron Man
[14:26] swim pace with a three to five second break.
[14:29] You're just going to programme that pace into your brain.
[14:31] It should be long, comfortable, aerobic.
[14:35] You should be breathing every 3 or 4 strokes as you do this.
[14:38] That should be the kind of effort that you're swimming at.
[14:41] Roughly here we're looking at your CSS swim pace plus about 8
[14:46] to 12 seconds per 100. So it's not a fast swim pace,
[14:50] it's just an efficient, comfortable endurance swim pace.
[14:53] We'll build that over time to forget the point that you're
[14:56] doing 4000 metres as 40 by 100 and then extend those reps so
[15:02] you do 20 by 200. Then you can do, I don't know, 6
[15:06] by 406 by 508 by 408 by 504 by 1K bill to that point
[15:14] comfortably across time. Start with them being shorter
[15:17] reps so you can maintain your swim form and gradually as swim
[15:21] form and fitness improves, you'll be able to hold those
[15:23] reps for 204 hundred up to 1000 metres.
[15:27] Personally, I'd always have you take a little break after 1000
[15:29] metres because I think it's a great way to break the swim up,
[15:32] quite frankly, and then you can shift these swims into open
[15:35] water. I think a really important and
[15:37] overlooked aspect here is firstly getting into the open
[15:41] water to swim with your wet suit and then learn how it feels, but
[15:44] also to practise those specific skills that you'll need for open
[15:48] water race day. So learning to sight in open
[15:51] water, learning to swim straight between boys, learning to swim
[15:54] with people around you, and even using the swimmers around you to
[15:58] draft either behind the feet or on the hips, all of those skills
[16:02] will help save you effort on race day.
[16:05] That's the only reason I want you doing that is so that you
[16:07] have the most direct route between the boys that you're
[16:10] comfortable swimming around other people and you can use
[16:13] other people who are about the same swim pace as you to draft
[16:16] off to save even more energy. Now usually I'll schedule this
[16:20] long endurance swim on a Friday, but honestly you can fit this in
[16:24] anywhere during the week. Now I'm going to have a quick
[16:28] break at this point to give a shout out to our sponsors,
[16:30] Precision Fuel and hydration.com.
[16:33] They are still and continue to be the title sponsor of the 70.3
[16:38] World Championships. They've just signed a deal for
[16:40] that to be extended for another three years, which is wonderful.
[16:43] I think it's great that their products are out there on race
[16:46] day at the World Championships and it's awesome to see the
[16:49] company grow into such a big company that can sponsor such a
[16:52] high profile event. Their products are also on
[16:55] course at all of the major Iron Man and 70.3 events, which is
[17:00] awesome for you because it means you can get premix precision
[17:02] hydration in bottles, takes care of all your electrolyte needs on
[17:06] race day. But specifically, I think the
[17:08] thing I want to get across to you is we're sponsored by them
[17:11] and have been for over 10 years because I approached them
[17:14] because they're a company that solved the biggest challenges
[17:17] that athletes have on race day. I've known Andy Blow for over a
[17:20] decade. He's an old friend of mine from
[17:22] the racing days, and he started Precision Fuel and Hydration as
[17:26] a way to get athletes to get enough electrolytes in because
[17:29] the electrolyte drinks of the day just weren't strong and
[17:32] concentrated enough, especially if you're a heavy sweater or a
[17:36] salty sweater. Now, I was an incredibly salty
[17:38] sweater. Almost everyone of the Iron
[17:40] Man's I did, I ended up in the Med 10 horribly dehydrated with
[17:44] hyponatremia, throwing up and needing multiple drips,
[17:48] especially if it was hot. It was just a horror show and
[17:51] having their products turned my ability to do long distance
[17:55] racing, especially in the heat around.
[17:58] So their electrolytes are fantastic.
[18:01] They moved over into doing fuel as well.
[18:02] The gels are wonderful, the flow gels, a brilliant way to be able
[18:05] to carry 300 grammes of carbohydrate in one bottle on
[18:09] the bike for you. And even if you go over to the
[18:12] website, they've got tonnes of information there so you can
[18:15] educate yourself. You can learn about what you
[18:18] need by taking the free fuel and hydration planning test and get
[18:23] a personalised strategy for your next race in terms of what you
[18:26] need for fluids, for electrolytes and for
[18:29] carbohydrates. And I'm not exaggerating when I
[18:32] say this, having the right strategy for those 3 is as
[18:37] important to your success on race day as getting the training
[18:40] correct in training has been. And you need to practise that in
[18:44] training. So get over to their website and
[18:47] if you decide you want to make a purchase, you can use the code
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[18:54] OK, the fourth session that I'm going to talk about in the
[18:57] priority order for your week here is going to be sweet spot
[19:00] intervals on the bike. Now a lot of athletes in the
[19:04] build phase will prioritise intensity of endurance because
[19:09] feeling like training harder feels like it's getting the job
[19:12] done in a shorter amount of time.
[19:14] Sometime that's the wrong way round in it's right place.
[19:19] The sweet spot session is going to really help you maintain and
[19:22] possibly even grow the FTP that you've already built whilst
[19:27] you're concentrating on the more important part of training,
[19:29] which is those long insurance rights.
[19:32] Now, sweet spot sessions typically set at 85 to 90% of
[19:35] FTP, you'll typically do an hour long session and then the
[19:39] intervals in there will be 3 by 10 minutes, 2 by 15 minutes, 2
[19:44] by 20 minutes with a three to five minute recovery between the
[19:48] efforts. So it's hard enough to stress
[19:50] your system, but not so hard that it's going to wreck your
[19:53] ability to recover. If you're limited on time for
[19:56] training that week and you're choosing between doing a sweet
[19:58] spot and then endurance rideable, it's no competition.
[20:01] Get your endurance ride done but.
[20:04] If that ride as a second ride of the week, the endurance
[20:07] intervals are great at maintaining and improving your
[20:10] FTP and great as a second bike session there in the week.
[20:13] You can do it indoors or outdoors.
[20:15] You can do it on the turbo indoors.
[20:17] If the weather's not great, you can also do it outdoors.
[20:19] It's a great way to practise riding in your arrow position
[20:23] and session #5 in terms of priority is going to be a brick
[20:27] run. Now then the brick run is
[20:31] essentially think of this more as a mental session than as a
[20:35] physical session. It's a short run straight off
[20:38] the back of your long ride. That's the way to think of it.
[20:40] Typically I'll start with these being 15 minutes long and it's
[20:45] not about your ability to run the fast off the bike.
[20:49] It's about enduring the fact that running will feel terrible.
[20:52] Your legs will feel awful for the first 3 to 5 minutes, but
[20:55] learning mentally that this will pass over time and your legs
[20:59] will go back to feeling normal. And at that point you're able to
[21:02] run as normal for as long as you want to essentially.
[21:06] So we'll start with these at 15 minutes.
[21:08] We'll build them up to be up to 45 minutes long during a race
[21:12] simulation weekend. But that's the absolute longest
[21:15] I'll have an athlete run off the bike.
[21:17] And it doesn't need to be fast. That's the thing to bat.
[21:20] So if you don't need to go hard, you're not in a, you're not an
[21:23] Olympic distance racer. You just need to run an E pace.
[21:26] And all it needs to be doing is mentally rehearsing in your
[21:29] head, telling yourself that what's going to happen here is
[21:33] your legs may feel awful for a few minutes, but they're going
[21:35] to come back. Because when I'm on race day,
[21:38] you're going to need to know that your legs are going to come
[21:40] back because those first few minutes off the bike can be
[21:43] really, really challenging mentally.
[21:45] OK, so get one of those done every week in the last 12 weeks
[21:49] in the lead up to race day. Now then the last session that I
[21:52] want to talk about here with you is going to be race simulation
[21:55] weekends. Now, we'll build these in five
[21:58] weeks before race day and two weeks before race day.
[22:01] Sometimes if I've got an athlete who's doing a 70.3 as AB race,
[22:04] they'll do that in lieu of the first race simulation weekend.
[22:08] But we'll always have you do that race simulation weekend 2
[22:11] weeks before race day. This is essentially the the peak
[22:15] of your training. You're going to do a broken Iron
[22:17] Man 2 weeks out across the weekend and you're going to
[22:21] break it up. So you do a 4K swim on Friday,
[22:24] you're going to ride 180 K on the Saturday and run 45 minutes
[22:28] off the bike. And then first thing Sunday
[22:30] morning you're going to do 2 hours run as 91.
[22:32] You're going to do it first thing in the morning and you're
[22:35] going to feel pretty tired. And again, it's a, it's a feat
[22:38] of mental endurance to get through this and it's going to
[22:40] simulate the last two hours of the Iron Man marathon.
[22:43] You will be the fittest you'll probably ever be for your race.
[22:47] Simulation weekend sounds like a lot on paper, especially if
[22:51] you're currently 12 to 16 weeks out.
[22:53] But if we structure training correctly on the way to it, when
[22:55] you get there, you'll feel fantastic.
[22:58] You'll get that done, you'll be really tired at the end of it
[23:01] and then you've got two weeks of taper to recover and you'll get
[23:04] to race day having had a boost in your fitness and knowing that
[23:07] you're ready to go. The race simulation weekend is
[23:10] the time to practise everything you're going to do on race day.
[23:12] It's the culmination of all the things you've trained.
[23:14] So you're going to do it on your race bike, in your race
[23:17] position, where in your race kit try to arrow helmet with the
[23:21] same nutrition you're going to use come race day.
[23:23] So plan all of that out ahead of time, work out all the kinks of
[23:27] this in training so that you don't have to do it on race day.
[23:31] Any mistakes that happen, fine, you've got time to learn from
[23:34] it, but go away and get this done as your priority.
[23:39] So to wrap this up then I hope I've given you an idea here of
[23:42] those key sessions that you're going to need across the last 12
[23:45] to 16 weeks and lead it to Iron Man race day.
[23:49] I think the thing to remember is your success on race day is
[23:52] going to be built day by day, not hero session, and then a
[23:57] massive recovery needed. If you can get in the habit of
[24:00] training yourself daily, you're going to do absolutely great.
[24:04] Kamaya man race day and if you can prioritise the sessions I've
[24:07] talked today in that order, you're going to do really
[24:10] welcome race day. Now obviously there's room in
[24:12] your week for more training sessions.
[24:14] I would ideally have an athlete running three times a week in
[24:17] training. I've had them ride in the bike
[24:19] three times a week and in terms of swimming, maybe you only need
[24:24] to swim once, but maybe you need to swim twice or three times.
[24:27] All of that's going to be very personal.
[24:29] But once you've got yourself to the point where you're
[24:31] comfortable, you're going to be able to complete the swim inside
[24:34] the cut off, feeling comfortable and relaxed.
[24:37] It's a time to prioritise getting three runs a week done.
[24:41] That's going to help your durability around those of the
[24:44] sessions that we've talked about today.
[24:46] So I really hope that this has helped you out.
[24:48] I hope that's it's helped you sketch out in your head what
[24:52] your week is going to look like. Again, if you've got any
[24:54] questions, I'm happy to answer your questions on this podcast.
[24:57] Please fire those in to help@oxygenaddict.com and we'll
[25:01] go through those in the next one of our athlete question
[25:04] podcasts. But to wrap this up, I've got a
[25:08] couple of discount codes and deals for you.
[25:09] Remember, you can use the code Oxygen 26 for 15% off your first
[25:13] electrolyte order at precisionfuelandhydration.com,
[25:16] who continue to be the title sponsors of the World 70.3
[25:19] Championships and at teamoxygenaddict.com if you're
[25:23] looking for help with your training.
[25:24] If you've liked what you've heard today, please get in
[25:27] touch. There's a link in the show notes
[25:29] to book a membership call with me.
[25:30] And if we've got a slot available at the time, I'd love
[25:33] to work with you and help you build towards the point you can
[25:37] have a fantastic Iron Man this year.
[25:39] Until next week, have a great safe training and racing week.
[25:42] I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've been listening to the Oxygen
[25:45] Addict Triathlon Podcast.

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