(upbeat music) - The thing about getting the
bike pacing right is that-- So it's in and around that 70 to 85%-- One leg-- Good morning train-iacs. As race is getting under way
getting a lot of questions these days about how to pace the bike, how to pace the run, but
also how to pace the bike. If you can pace the bike,
pacing the run is a lot easier. Let's talk about pacing the bike. So, here's the thing about, whoa, that, so the thing about getting
the bike pacing right is that it's damn important. You go too hard, you're
not gonna be increasing your speed that much more
because it's exponentially harder the faster you go to increase your speed. I'll explain more up there and
you're gonna toast your legs and probably have a bad run. The difference between a really good bike and a really bad bike is I
don't know like maybe 5%. The difference between a really good run and a really bad run is 20, 30%. So getting that, that
bike pacing right so that you're fresh for the
run is really critical. It takes a little bit of thought,
a little bit of practice, a little bit of testing,
a little bit of knowledge. That's what we're gonna share today. I might feel as if I lost
a hammer fight yesterday but I still got some brain
cells, just a couple. Not many. All right so two of the
best ways to figure out your race pace are FTP, which
is functional threshold power. The next best way is rate
of perceived exertion, RPE. Functional threshold power
is something that you do with a power meter on a bike. They cost anywhere from
one to 3,000, $4,000. Rate of perceived exertion is free. This is where most of the
beginner training programs that we've laid out specifically in triathlontaren.com/coaching
that coach Pat has created are based off of, because
most triathletes just getting into the sport don't have a power meter to calculate their FTP. How do you start figuring
out your race pace is by doing a test, and
typically it is a 20 minute test where you're going as fast
as you can possibly go for that 20 minutes. In the case of calculating
your FTP you take your average power from that 20 minutes,
multiply it by .95, getting you 95% of that,
and that is your FTP number. In the case of rate of perceived exertion, you take that and you just
kind of make a mental note of how hard or easy that
felt throughout the course of that 20 minutes. Start by doing that test
about three to four months out of a race and this gets
you some training zones. Around here you can get
your training zones to know how hard or slow you need
to go for an easy ride or a really hard ride. You go up and down around
that FTP as I've talked about in other videos. Same thing with rate
of perceived exertion. Let's say that your FTP
number here, in my case, it's around 240. In case of rate of perceived exertion, which is on a scale of one
to 10, you do this 20 minute test and you feel like
you can get it to a nine over the course of that 20 minutes. What you end up taking
from this is a range of about 85% at the top
end of these two numbers all the way down to around
70% at the bottom end and this range is where your
race pace is on the bike, and it's within this
range that you actually do the bike portion of your race. Now there are a few
different factors that ramp up or down where you fall
within this 70 to 85%. Something like this. As distance increases, your
race pace needs to decrease. So in the case of say a sprint
distance race you could be up here around 85 to
95% of that max effort because a sprint distance
is gonna last anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes. It's not like it's that much different than the 20 minute test. So you can go up to 85 or 95% of that. However, when you start
getting into an Iron Man or a half Iron Man, that number is closer to the 70 to 80 range. In my case, when I did the half Iron Man down in Campeche in Mexico,
my number was 75 to 80%, and 80% was just at the top end. There was no way I wanted to go over that. Now also as your fitness increases, your race pace, I'm writing this sideways, now can increase. So it's in and around that
70 to 85% that you wanna think about any use
factors like the distance of your race and your overall
fitness, your experience with triathlon, to determine
how fast you should or shouldn't be going in your race. Now this is critical to
figure out for a few reasons. In the case of the bike
the amount of effort that you're putting out to get faster it's not a straight one to one ratio that you put out one extra unit of effort and you get one extra unit of speed. Right around the 25 kilometer
an hour to 35 kilometer per hour mark you need
to put out more and more and more effort for smaller
and smaller and smaller incremental speed. So you've gotta find a
sweet spot where you're not putting out so much effort
that you're ready to blow up but you're getting close to
that maximum amount of speed. Because when you get into
say over here this is like a danger zone. This is where you get into
the 85% of your maximum effort and more, and when you
start getting into that, it's not like you're
getting that much faster. You're just toasting yourself more. Let's say a good bike
for me in a half Iron Man is around two hours and 30 minutes. A bad bike we're talking
awful here is somewhere around two 45, however, if you
talk about a good run for me in a half Iron Man 135,
but a bad run being upwards of say 155. The difference here is 20
minutes and the difference here is 15. Even my Winnipeg math knows that. But why this is so critical
to figure out is because the difference in perceived
efforts for these is immense. To do the two hours and 30 minutes I need to be killing myself. To do somewhere around 235 to 240 it feels really, really easy. Let's say 237 is what I'm going for. That's right in here where I'm not putting out a lot of effort. I'm saving myself but I'm
still going quite fast, and let's say I'm only
giving up seven minutes past the best possible
bike that I could do. If I do that because I'm going so easy I can get the run down
to around here the 135. However, I guarantee that
if I absolutely toast myself on the bike to get that
two hour and 30 minute bike I'm gonna have no legs on the run, and I'm gonna be lucky if I do a 155. It could be even more because walking slows you down so, so much. An easy bike barely slows you down at all. So I'm giving up say
seven minutes to make sure that I'm going easy on the bike, so that I've got a chance
of gaining 20 minutes on the run, gaining myself somewhere around 13 minutes overall. It's life and limb for you dudes. Figuring out your bike
pacing which tends to be a lot easier than you're capable of going is a really important part
of having a good triathlon. Go too hard and sure you
might set a land speed record on the bike, but
you're gonna have a pretty damn tough run. Go too easy, you might
give up a few minutes but you're setting yourself
up to ease on into the run and negative split it. Maybe have a personal best run, and that's where you
can gain a lot of time. It's not how fast you can go, it's how little you can slow down. Hoooooo. Wise stuff, huh? So we lost a fairly key
member of the triathlon Taren production team earlier this week that I gotta go deal with right now. I mean, it's not critical. We can make due without
this for a few weeks but certainly gonna lead
to less pretty vlogs. That is one respectable bike lock. So I don't need to be
all secretive about this but I'll show you. One leg, two legs, three
legs, fourth leg, camera. That actually happened this shot. That was ever so popular in actually the marathon swim video. The thing about gear with vlogging is that none of it's perfect. The drone, it has a tendency
to disconnect from the phone. This camera here has bad low light, as you can see by face being all yellow and grainy right now. GoPro, terrible audio. There is no perfect vlogging set up, just like there is no
perfect time to train, no perfect triathlon watch, no perfect triathlon running
shoes, bike, yadda yadda yadda. But you know what? Vlogging, life, triathlon,
you just kind of pick it up and do it. You bash it off the walls. You figure it out. Sure it might not be perfect. But it's better than doing nothing. That's not very motivating. You're better off than
you were when you started. There you go. That's much more motivating. Okay, that's a good place to end it. We drone-less. Sorry, train-iacs.
