The Triathlon/Ironman Training Thread 2025

Training
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I don’t.

If I’m really committed to training for something (specific mountain bike races) I will do a couple dedicated sessions a week. But for something like triathlon, which I don’t take seriously, I don’t do any training. I just run for fun and swim for necessity.

Lately I’ve been doing a couple of fast group rides after work (Tuesday Worlds and Thursday crit) and just doing extra riding to and from.

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244

Looks like my calf didn’t heal as I feared, so I DNF’ed. I ran a quarter mile slowly, but then I felt a flare up. I started to just walk the whole course, but after another quarter mile I knew I was just going to aggravated it more, so I walked back. Really disappointed, but didn’t want to further my injury.

Swim was totally average, which I’m fine with.

Fastest age group bike split on my roadie. Crazy part is I did the same course on a 2002 TT bike I bought for $300 in 2013 EIGHT minutes faster than my modern road bike! TT position just makes so much difference.

I was using the same Garmin pedals when I did this course in 2018, and the average power was only 5 watts difference.

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245

Does anyone know if the ‘normal’ Ironman in Nice is taking place? Looking at possibly 2026.

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Can anyone point me to a good, highly detailed set of instructions on how to set up a Garmin watch for a triathlon to take the greatest possible advantage of the available features, and then how to operate it during the race?

If you have a Garmin bike computer, does that simply sit idle during a tri? Or can you display some of the watch data on it like power, speed, etc? And I’m guessing I’ll need to pair my bike’s powermeter to the watch now?

I may not always use all of those features, but I like knowing what my tech can do (and how to do I it) so I can choose what I want on each day. And for my upcoming Montauk tri, I’d like to “test out” the tech as well.

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You can pair it to display the numbers from the watch but I’ve found this sub optimal.

In long course I record the bike on the bike comp and the run on the watch.

Recording the swim is optional, I see very little value in it - either the goggles or the watch for completeness or Strava really.

Short course I record it all on the watch but rarely look at the numbers in race just an occasional check that I’m not blowing the doors off.

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248

Same ish.

70.3 and shorter, watch records all.

Swim for me I just swim to best I can, sometimes I push, if breathing becomes problem I ease off.

Bike: I use a wahoo, for power distance and pace but ride by RPE (I pair my forerunner to the power meter as well), I check the bike computer to make sure I’m not being wuss. I have HR and distance on the watch but dont really look at it unless something seems off.

Run use RPE, but look at pace and always go out to hard even looking at it. The adrenaline from T2 makes the first few Kms feel really easy, so I check in during the first half of the run. Second half, well, then its just give it what you have got.

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249

Basically record the event, maybe dual record bits. Bike computer and watch, so you have the data to look back on.

Just race it to rpe and enjoy it.

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Raced St. George today, absolutely brutal race. I’ll write a longer race report later but TLDR:

  • Swim was great, water temp was 66.5ºF/19.1ºC, pretty pleasant by St. George standards. Sighting during the outbound leg was a pain in the ass as usual with the buoys aligned straight into the sun and it was pretty crowded so I got beat up like a piñata (the announcer said 2,400 age groupers total). Still, managed to shave almost 7 minutes off last year’s swim time, my fastest half-iron swim ever. I’m definitely keeping the endless pool in my training rotation after this.
  • The weather for the day was forecast with a high of 95ºF/35ºC and it was already pretty warm heading out on the bike, so I dialed my effort way back; I always struggle in the heat with this early season race and I was worried about my stomach just completely shutting down. Trying to follow any kind of pacing plan with such a crowded course would have been almost impossible anyway, so I took it very easy and paced on vibes. Snow Canyon was brutal in the heat; I had to stop at the aid station at the top and douse myself in water, I was so overheated. I was at least 15 minutes slower than last year, but I don’t know if I could have finished the race otherwise.
  • The run was the hardest I’ve ever done. I don’t know what the temperature was on the pavement but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was in the triple digits. I paced it on vibes as well, and walked through every aid station to drink two cups of water, dunk my hat in the ice buckets, and shove ice down my tri suit. Despite that, missed a sub-2 finish by only two minutes. Still, it was a sufferfest the entire way, I honestly can’t believe I finished it.

Overall, the hardest race I’ve done so far. Other than my swim, my times sucked; my overall finish time (6:13:07) was only a minute faster than my first 70.3 a few years ago. Not my best result by any means but maybe the most satisfying because it was so hard won. Man, I’m gonna miss St. George.

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251

Great work :clap: :hot_face:

252

I can write up a more detailed guide later, but what it do is:

  • On my Forefunner 955, I use the built-in triathlon activity, which uses the data screens and settings for the open water swim, cycling, and running activities, so as long as you set those up however you like, you’re set.
  • I turn off the automatic transition detection because it’s not super accurate, so I just hit the lap button to switch from swim → T1 → cycling → T2 → running as I hit the timing mats.
  • As for each invididual activity:
    • For the swim, I just have whatever is the default data screen, since I can’t look at it during the race (I think it has timer and distance). I do have it set to auto-lap every 100m, which helps me keep track of the distance (as long as I don’t lose count in my head of how many times it has buzzed).
    • For the bike, I keep it simple: 3s power, timer, distance, heart rate. I don’t look at my watch too much during the bike; I prefer to use my bike computer, so the watch is there mostly just to record. I’ve had mixed results with Garmin’s mirroring feature, so instead I dual-record on my bike computer and then discard it at the end, since I’ll save the activity my watch is recording.
    • What I do with my bike computer is turn it on while setting up my transition in the morning, load up my course and power guide if I’m using one, calibrate my power meters, and then put it to sleep before heading to the swim so it’s ready to go when I get back to T1. Then I start the activity before leaving T1 and use that to look at my metrics instead of my watch.
    • For the data screens in my bike computer, I tend to use Garmin’s power guide feature a lot since the data screen for that is quite good: It shows me the target power for the current segment, current 3s power, and avg power for the segment, which tells me how far off from my target I am. It also shows me upcoming climbs or remaining distance in the current climb. The two optional data fields in that screen I have set up with HR and IF, the latter so I can see how far off I am from my overall pacing. I also have drink alerts set up to go off every 15 minutes.
    • Finally, for the run, my data screen has lap pace, timer, total distance and heart rate, and I have it set to auto-lap every 1km, and alert me every 300 calories.
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253

First Tri done and dusted! :-).

Swim 700m: First 2-3min little struggle but then body adapted and found more or less a rythm and finished in 13:24 (279th / 631)

Bike 37km: Technical course with some short climbs and a few longer roads for speed. Also here need a few minutes to get into the flow (maybe swim transition body has to adapt also). Done in 1:01:20 so had a pretty fast bike leg ( (150th/ 631)

Run 9.1km: Well, after 2km body refused to run downhill. Upper leg cramps in quads and above knee. Had to stop when going downhill, and that walk that part. After that I could start run again but was just holding not to cramp again in downhill sections so had to walk a few times. Finish in 53min (486th/ 631).

So overall 311/631, pretty ok (also not important) but my run was horrible. Too fast bike? Not well trained enough as a runner (for sure…still building my run volume and pace). And also not an easy course bike and run. So. As a first event. I survived :wink:

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Congratulations!

Cramping on downhills not uncommon with less experienced runners as mentioned in our DM. But also more likely coming off the bike. Possibly you overpaced the bike, but tough to know without data, but not uncommon to have issues running downhill if it’s not something you’ve trained/are used to/know how to do well enough to limit the contractions a little bit.

But great work! Now you know you can do it, all you have to do is go faster! :slight_smile:

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Maybe a little. But 210w/230NP is with FTP 265-270 not too hard. In my roadbike I can ride that wattage 3hrs. But on my TT bike I have 20-30w less power in my legs :frowning:

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:tada:

Now you can introduce yourself as a triathlete in any given social situation :wink:

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257

Yes, and next Sunday my 2nd Race ;-). 1k-100k-10k. More bike so better for me ;-).

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That power is not too bad if that’s your FTP on the TT bike. What you can do on the road bike doesn’t matter if you’re racing in a different position, and it’s pretty common to see a 5-10% drop in power in TT position. You can close that gap with training in position but it takes some time. The more you can train in position, the better off you’ll be.

So generally what you’d want to do is train your offseason comfortable - do more work. Then as races approach, think your build phase, you want to be working almost exclusively in TT position for a couple of months leading up to your key races.

As it stands, you did ~.85IF which isn’t bad for an olympic distance race at all, but again that’s based on road bike power. 230 normalized on a 245W TT FTP would be more like a .94 IF which is a bit too hard, particularly for an athlete newer to the sport.

The other issue I see from those numbers is a 230W NP vs 210W average. Was this a hilly or rolling course? That’s a 1.10 variability index which is pretty high for a TT/triathlon, at least a flat one, and indicates quite a bit of surging. How much time did you spend in “zone 5/6” during the race? You can see that on TrainingPeaks or TrainerRoad.

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259

Here’s that longer race report:

This was horrible. Can’t wait to do it again.

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That run sounds BRUTAL!!! Great job sticking it out.

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Wow, well done and nice write up. Appreciate the itemized lists for the bags.

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