Triathlon Pacing
In today’s post, I’ve put together a few thoughts on pacing, and about the tools you might use to help you pace your race.
Pacing A Race
Triathlon pacing. How do you pace a race?
What tools would you use to help your pacing strategy?
Do you have a pacing strategy?
There are different ways to race to get the best out of yourself and you may use a variety of the methods listed below at any one time or during the course of a race.
The important thing is to actually pace your race! Be deliberate. Know your strategy and then when the gun fires, try to stick to it!
Speed
You might plan your race pace based on your speed. This is difficult to do on the swim – no pace clock and you can hardly check your watch whilst you’re swimming.
Pace / speed can be used on the bike, but it is not a great option most of the time and can be affected by many things – terrain (hills), road surface, weather.
Speed is most reliable (and most often used) on the run. A pacing strategy of xx per kilometre / mile on the run is a common method and probably one you are already used to.
Power
If you have a power meter on your bike, racing to power can be a very useful way to pace the bike leg of the race. Usually, you would use the power meter to control your effort – and race at a certain percentage of your Functional Threshold Power (FTP).
For Ironman athletes, this tends to be around 70% (give or take). So, if you have an FTP of 200 watts, you would look to race your bike leg at an average of 140 watts.
That 140w or 70% of FTP might feel really easy (too easy?) at the beginning – but you will be grateful of the pacing later on. This is the big advantage of the power meter over RPE (see below).
Heart Rate
Heart rate can be a useful measure for both bike and run.
Your heart rate zones that you have determined in training will be useful on race day. Many people like to race Ironman in their Zone 2 range. A middle distance / 70.3 may often be based around Zone 3.
There are limitations, however.
For example, you come out of the swim, zoom through transition and your heart rate is sky high. It will take some time to come down. If you are too strict in sticking to your HR pacing strategy, you would have to come to a stop to bring it back to ‘normal’ levels.
Also, as you become more dehydrated (or overheating), your heart rate will usually increase too.
Overall though, a good metric to use.
Perceived Effort (RPE)
Racing by feel is arguably the most important metric you can use – in conjunction with data from speed / heart rate / power. It does take a bit of experience and a good knowledge of your body.
If your heart rate monitor doesn’t work, power meter has problems, your GPS watch dies, then what? A good understanding of perceived effort and an ability to pace yourself is then super useful.
Personally, I’ve had a few long distance races where the devices have failed and I was left naked, just me and my perceived effort. Or having to switch from a HR based strategy to powermeter and pacing.
Coaches often suggest covering up the watch during sessions, then ask the athlete to aim for a particular pace or power and then check the data afterwards to see how close (or not) the athlete is.
Racing
A racing pacing strategy is where you adjust your pace based on the competition around you.
It’s less of a time trial and a pacing strategy, and more of a tactical race. This usually applies if you are looking to win the race, get to the top spot on your age group podium, secure a qualification spot for the world championships or make the GB age group team … or even just to beat your mates.
You might push the swim so you are close to others when the bike leg starts, and don’t have lots of time to make up. Or you have a strong bike compared to your competition, so you go hard to put some extra time into them.
In a longer distance race, this strategy isn’t for the faint hearted and unless you have trained for this approach, I would suggest “don’t try this at home, kids”.
Sometimes, Less Is More!
There is a lot of data we can use when pacing and managing our race. It is tempting to fill our Garmin screens with many data fields, with all manner of information on there.
Sometimes, we might want less data, less distractions or temptations.
One of our athletes has just finished his first Ironman, in a time he didn’t think was ever possible. His approach?
“I took away every time pressure possible. Didn’t have the time on my bike, only distance and heart rate. Only had lap time, lap pace and heart rate on my running watch. I had no idea what my bike split was until after the race – instead prioritising how the legs felt.”
In this athlete’s case, he didn’t want the distraction and pressure of trying to ride at a particular pace, chasing an average speed or trying to beat an arbitrary bike target time. He focused on how far he had ridden, making sure his heart rate was controlled and his legs felt good.
Same on the run. He stayed in the moment, focusing on heart rate & pace within any given lap (his laps were nine minutes of running, one minute of walking) – not looking at his overall average pace and chasing a particular time.
A brave, patient and self-disciplined approach to pacing a race, which clearly worked for him.
What about you? What metrics do you use? How do you race?
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