What is a good method to determine how hard to pace the bike/run?
by Thom Richmond
That is a great question and one I get all the time. Typically this question arises after a race where the athlete has had a good bike but a bad run or their legs locked up out of T2. To answer this question we need to perform a baseline test to determine the best pacing strategy.
5-10 PERCENT. For the purposes of this exercise, we will look at an Olympic Triathlon gold medalist Alistair Brownlee. Alistair and his brother Jonathan are absolute freaks. Alistair is a crossover athlete and raced on the track at the 10,000 meter distance. He ran a 28:32 at Stanford in 2013. As a comparison, he ran a 29:30 at the San Diego World Triathlon Series as part of a 1:47.16 Olympic distance triathlon and this included a lot of high fives down the finishing shoot. There is a 3% difference when comparing his standalone 10K time and his 10K time as part of an Olympic distance triathlon. The assumption is that this is as good as it gets and for us mere mortals we would target a 5-10% decrease in our run time as part of a triathlon.
TESTING IT OUT.
- Run a 10K at race pace and record that time.
- Race a 40K distance and run the same 10K and record the 10K run time.
- Step 3. Compare the results from Step 1 and Step 2.
ANALYSIS. For the purposes of this example, lets assume Step 1 [10K Only] is 50 minutes. You should expect that Step 2 [40K bike + 10K run] is 52.30 – 55:00 minutes or a 5 – 10% increase. If your 10K time as part of the 40K + 10K test is 60 minutes or 20% more than your standalone 10K time, you should look at easing up a bit on the bike to leave more for the run. The opposite is true. If you see no change in your run time than you would want to work a bit harder on the bike you sandbagger.
FINAL TIP. It takes our muscles a bit of time to transition from the bike to the run. I typically recommend adding 30 seconds to your run pace for the first mile to allow the body to get rid of that brick feeling. Better to give up 30 seconds than to have your legs lockup a couple miles down the road.