The Short Course Triathlon Thread

Ouch.

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Yep! :joy::joy::joy:

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Question on pacing. Iā€™m eyeing a short-course race next summer as an A race. The course is 3 loops for 12 miles total, and it looks more like a 4-corner crit than a tri course, with two small climbs before two of the corners. Should I do my best to hold a reasonable VI and keep power mostly constant, or should I bump up my power on the climbs and turns and just worry about average power for such a short course?

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12 miles so a sprint tri?

I basically go as hard as I can throughout so it kind of regulates itself without looking at the power meter, as I canā€™t go any harder on the hills without cracking :slight_smile:

A Sprint tri is all about pushing it the whole time. The asterisk for most is pushing yourself on the bike hard enough but still saving enough for a respectable run. Easier said than done.

Are you doing or planning on doing any all out bike sessions and hill repeats to prepare for it? Thatā€™s what I would be doing. If you are effective and efficient on the hills youā€™ll slide right up the overall leaderboard. But, you also gotta have quick transitions and hold on for the run.

What they said ā€¦ and even if you have a pacing plan youā€™ll end up just smashing it as hard as you can!

If you do manage to think clearly enough, then as there are two climbs per lap, there are two descents too. Most people will push it on the climbs and ease off on the descents. If you go steady (just below threshold) on the climbs then keep pushing over the top you could make up time on a lot of people.

What will also make a difference is if itā€™s draft-legal, and where you get out of the water. If thereā€™s drafting then what others do and what groups form will affect your race quite a lot, and if you get out of the water among the last then youā€™ll be amongst a really diverse mix of cyclists - from experience youā€™ll be passing people on hybrids, and youā€™ll have good riders who canā€™t swim blasting past you like you are standing still. It might be like that in the middle and at the front of the race tooā€¦ maybe one day Iā€™ll find out :grin:

Agree about transitions - with a bit of practise you could easily drop a couple of minutes off the total time, which is a significant percentage in a sprint. And even though itā€™s a sprint Iā€™d still ease off on at least the final 500m of the bike, unless youā€™re planning a lot of full effort brick sessions to prepare.

And this is why Sprint triathlon is both the best and worst of all triathlons. Pacing is kinda necessary because you do need to be able to run post riding the bike so its not an all out TT but you also need to completely kill it on the bike because its such a short and fast race. I absolutely love it!

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Hmmā€¦:rofl:

Smash the swim, smash the bike, hold on for dear life on the runā€¦no?

I think I stop hyperventilating about three minutes after crossing the finish line.

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If itā€™s not draft legal, I usually try for 0.95IF and keeping the VI reasonable. So Iā€™d push the hills just a tad and then on the downhills keep the power on but maybe be around 90% FTP. And because of the turns, really make sure youā€™re practicing your cornering. Go into a residential neighborhood and just bomb a circuit again and again and again and again and again and again until youā€™ve found the limit you and your bike can handle. People who canā€™t corner on a course like that could easily loose up to a minute or more just because they brake, slow down, and then need to re-accelerate. And in a sprint, a minute is HUGE.

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There was a quote by one of the Brownlees about pacing in a triathlon which went along the lines of ā€œStart out hard and fade to the endā€ :smiley:

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Anyone know if Swim/Run adaptations have been changed?

Iā€™m back on a TR triathlon plan, and as earlier in the year it seems that Swim/Run workouts get Adapted to be easier if I miss one.

I realise that only a couple of weeks get downgraded, so you get back on track pretty quickly, but on the LV Olympic plan Iā€™ve set up the base swim and run workouts are all easily achievable so I donā€™t see the value in small temporary downgrades.

My workaround to avoid swim/run adaptations is to delete the missed workout before the end of the day - this doesnā€™t seem to trigger any adaptations.

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Thats basically all it is, if you miss one the next one gets replaced. Itā€™s a really simple binary process that only looks at it if you donā€™t tick it off. Tick off and put a 5 minute duration for an hours run and thereā€™s no change. So itā€™s not really ā€œadaptiveā€ as much as it is regressive.

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Iā€™ve done this for most of the swimming workouts for the last while just doing shorter swim band workouts (like 15-30mins) and it works fine for keeping AT happy. Iā€™ve wondered if just putting 1 second as the duration and checking the Swim/Runs off would also just be enough to keep things from changing after missed workouts, since itā€™s not really doing any useful adaptations anyway.

Just signed up for Leeds 2022, after not racing since 2019 :laughing:

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Does anyoen by any chance have the file from Best Bike Split to upload into Workout Creator so I can practice the bike route for Leeds Olympic Distance 2022? Iā€™ve done one years ago but cant remember the process, I could do it myself but this is way less effort :slight_smile:

Looking like Iā€™ll be doing a couple Oly races in June/July and then My B+ race for the year is going to be USAT Nationals in Milwaukee again, August 6th. The A race is IMFL in November so coach is going to be dropping volume a little bit in July to focus on that raw speed. Hopefully I have a much better showing than last year. Aside from that short course is going to really be just that thing I do to see how fast I am and get those competitive juices flowing. As long as the fast people donā€™t show up, maybe add some hardware to my pain cave trophy case :slight_smile:

Anyways, thatā€™s my 2022 short course plan. Anybody else got some fun races planned?

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Iā€™d like to do the local sprint at the beginning of June I did last year, want to see if my run split drops. But I need to see some run progress before Iā€™ll reward myself with that.

Basically Id like to lose at least three minutes and see last Januaryā€™s 5k PB in a sprint tri. No worries there then :sweat_smile:

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Iā€™ve had a bit of a ā€œhard resetā€ on the goals for this year. I have spent most of the last 7 months battling with the reality that 2 children is more than 100% more work than 1 child. As a result I am limiting my training to only during work lunch times and then parkrun on a Saturday, which is a family event with us but sits outside the training plan so if children kick off and I cant run I am not kicking myself for missing a session. I do want to have one ā€œinconvenientā€ session a week (on a weekend evening) but that is a bonus strength and conditioning workout. As a result I know that my performance is going to drop but the best plan is the one that you can follow!

As far as events go, I am still going to enter them but itll just be for fun and social activities rather than out and out speed. Sprint Duathlon in April, Sprint Triathlon in May and then running up a literal mountain in France in June is what is in the diary so far.

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Iā€™m wary of setting goals at the moment - I canā€™t quite believe that races arenā€™t going to be cancelled (again). I was looking at doing a really local trail race thatā€™s just been pushed from Feb to April.

But with that in mind, event wishlist (rather than plan) is something like:
21km/500m trail race this weekend (will only be second ever half marathon distance, and first in a race) as warmup for
27km/1000m trail race near Grenoble mid-March
Olympic Tri at Salagou end of May (if it runsā€¦ no sign of life from the organisers at the moment)
Cross Triathlon at Bouzigues mid-June (really want to do this - it was cancelled twice last year!)
Something in the summerā€¦ Altriman Olympic, Gorges dā€™Ardeche S/M or maybe Xterra Super Besseā€¦ depending on family organisation, holidays, work and cancellationsā€¦

@simon-trimon good luck with the kids - it gets easier every year, but it also goes real fast, so relaxing a bit now will also let you enjoy the time. Youā€™re not doing the Mt Ventoux Xrace are you?

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@timb34 Iā€™m doing the KMV at the Marathon du Mont-Blanc. My partner did the 10km with some friends before we met and it was the first thing we booked to go away to as a couple. Now with the kids we cant both run the same race and so she does the 10km and I do the KMV. I love it because its SO FAR outside anything else that I ever do that I have absolutely no expectations.

Should also have said that the eldest is 4 so I totally get how it gets easier, he is a completely different thing even to about 6 months ago. I guess I just didnt really think about the fact that while both my partner and I could do whatever we wanted to with the other one of us minding the child, two is completely different especially while the youngest is a baby. I am almost chained to the older one at times because mums time is completely taken up with the little one. I am comfortable with the choice that I have made with training, I chose to have the kids and so scaling back what I can do isnt really a sacrifice. Plus I am so bloody tired at the moment so less is appealing :smiley:

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