Yep, the sweet spot LV plan was what I was going to try. It’s going to be a big learning process for me trying to manage 3-4 rides per week + running + swimming. I’ve never put my body through that sort of volume and i’m guessing I’m going to have to employ a bit of discipline early on in terms of effort and try and keep everything pretty easy for a while.
Yeah it seems like i’m going to have to get my HM time down below 1:20 in a 70.3 race setting to be competitive as an age grouper, which sounds plausible, but yeah there’s definitely a lot of work to do to get there lol.
Thanks for all the info and tips guys, you’ve given me good inspiration and motivation. Not many communities are as responsive and helpful as this. Much appreciated. Look forward to sharing my progress after a couple of months of base training!
An 80 min half on a HIM or a stand alone half marathon?
If you drop a 80 half on a HIM, you could potentially get a top 10 finish (swim and bike depending)
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Well yeah it looks like the top guys in the 30-34 age group run their half marathon leg of the 70.3 in roughly 1:17, 1:18, which according to the table above means they would be capable of 1:10-1:11 standalone half marathons. Thats pretty bloody quick. I’m not sure I could ever get down to that sort of pace now, but i’m pretty confident I could run a 1:15-1:20 half marathon with 12 months of training. To say I could become any faster than that would be a leap of faith. Whether or not that would be enough to get me in the picture for qualifying for worlds i’m not sure (and this is without considering my bike or swim). These top amateurs are still extremely fast, and for me, just qualifying in a world 70.3 championship would be a massive achievement I think. You obviously have to be super talented to be finishing at the pointy end of these amateur world champ races. Do any of these guys that podium in the amateurs come to triathlon as an adult, or are they generally life long triathletes that couldn’t quite cut it as pro’s?
A 1.20 half is super fast. Either as stand alone or after a him.
Baby steps…
A 120 half is about 610 per mile or equivalent to a 38 minutes 10k. You can aim at a Olympic at that pace as a practice.
Also, for world’s there is luck as well… Have a friend who had a 445 half and didn’t make it, and have another with the same time who made it.
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Yeah you’re right it is super fast. There is a lot of water to go under the bridge before running that sort of pace on the back of a HIM. Yeah what was the reason for that? 4:45 secured a spot in one qualifying race but not another?
You can get lucky with roll downs depending on the location of worlds/people’s willingness to spend money on the trip. I actually got my Nice 2019 spot from a roll down as I finished 4th in the AG (10th OA for the race with my AG winner also winning the race) and we only had 2 slots available–the first one ended up rolling down to me and the 2nd one rolled down to 7th. That’s for 70.3 races, ITU spots are likely handled differently, but I’m not sure how they’re handled in Australia you’d have to look into that (check the Triathlon Australia website as the first stop).
It really depends on what races you go to and who shows up that will determine how “competitive” you’ll be along the way. The beauty of triathlon is that it’s not just one sport so there’s opportunities to change the outcome of the race at alot of different points in the day (swim, bike, run plus transition and nutrition play a roll), especially as the races get longer. Obviously being able to hammer out a 1:20 run on a half would be awesome and set you up well at most races, but I’d suggest not really worrying about that stuff at this point–use it as a rough idea of where you’d like to be, but just focus on the process right now.
As for the feeling of a ramp test, it’s not like a 5k as it’s really easy for a good chunk of it then only starts to get hard for the last few minutes. The 20 minute test is more like a 5k where the suck is pretty much there the whole time. 
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Thanks for this info mate. So why did it take all the way until the 7th placed guy to fill the second slot? What is a roll down and why do they occur? Yeah the whole idea of the transitions and nutrition etc is all a mystery to me at the moment, it must be difficult to execute the transitions well under the mental stress of high exertion, I can see myself buggering them up consistently lol. Yeah i’m really looking forward to the ramp test this week and getting a real idea of where I stand at the moment. I suppose another thing to consider is how trainable each person is. I might have good natural ability but not be very trainable, whereas you hear about other people doubling relatively modest initial FTP’s through training.
At IM races they award slots after the award ceremony and you have to take your slot and pay the worlds fee on the spot if you take it. Each race only gets so many slots and splits them up per age group based on number of finishers with at least 1 per AG if there was a finisher. Not everyone who races is after a worlds slot all the time depending on their situation - - it’s not usually an inexpensive trip to make. People can also already have a spot from another race and people who finished off the podium may not even bother showing up to roll downs so it can vary where they end up rolling down to.
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This is accurate AF
The final 5 minutes of the ramp test is like a 1 miler… It hurts but you know its almost done.
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If you are a gifted athlete, then the sky is the limit. But you have to be careful. Just because you are gifted doesn’t mean you are not prone to over train or injuries.
I know a guy. He is a a gifted athlete. He got a Duke scholarship as a junior after smoking everyone on the state. I think he did a almost sub 4 mile… Then he got hurt as a senior. He didn’t race much but he still got the scholarship. He was on and off during college. Lots of injuries. After college the same thing. But the fucker is so damn gifted. He went to a 5k with 3 weeks of training of 20 to 30 miles per week after months of recovering… Dropped a low 16 minutes.
Now he is doing triathlons and killing it. But he had to switch so he could train hard and be injury free. It has work.
Long story to say… Train hard but take your time. Don’t get hurt.
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Me personally, I didn’t start tri’s until I was mid-40’s. (But raced bikes since the late 80’s). Took me a few years to get my footing because I kept running too fast and getting injured. Did my first IM @ 48 and qualified for 70.3 WC @ 50.
Worth noting that 70.3 slots are not as highly coveted as Kona slots…the gap is closing, but still not quite the same. So it is easier to get a roll down slot for 70.3 WC (not what I did, but 2 of my buddies got roll down slots, including one guy in your age group and he was only 9th in his AG).
So you don’t have to podium to get a slot…and depending on the time of year, and location of the WC race, it can be pretty easy to snag a slot. I heard stories of them offering a slot to anyone in certain age groups that wanted the slot after going through the top 20 and no one taking it.
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Many variables. If the wc race was in the states, it would probably be hard to get a roll down from a race in the states. My friend got his spot as a roll down to nice. Another day no to his spot because he didn’t want to spend the money to travel for a race.
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70.3 spots have also become a little easier to get because IM started splitting the race into 2 days for separate men’s and women’s events which of course opens up a lot of spots. There were almost 3300 finishers in the men’s race at Nice (so probably a decent amount more that qualified that didn’t start and some that didn’t finish - - there were some nasty crashes in that race!) which I think it quite a bit more than the total amount of spots in Kona for the combined men’s and women’s race. I think South Africa was one location recently where they were basically giving slots away.
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Depends on timing, too…I did Muncie 70.3, which was 6-7 weeks out from Chattanooga 70.3 Worlds and there were plenty of roll downs. I was shocked, TBH. Racers from basically that region, clearly on their game and lots of people just didn’t take slots.
IIRC, it was the last qualifier for Chatty…so you would have thought there would have been plenty of people looking for a slot. Dunno, maybe they already had gotten them.
That is a great point…Chatty was the first Worlds with a split field and it was awesome!!
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Wow thats interesting to know. So qualifying for Kona is well and truly the pinacle still. Good to know.