It’s been 5 years since I last raced in Hawaii so things may have changed. At the very least you’ll have a few more competitors to deal with and a race start staggered by gender.

As a race two things make Hawaii stand out from others: the conditions on the island and the level of competition. It’s the heat, humidity and strong winds that make this course so challenging. Alongside this there are a lot of closely packed athletes meaning there will be periods when the course is crowded. Controlling effort in these circumstances can be challenging.

The main thing I’d advise is to enjoy everything that’s different about this event, but treat the race itself like any other Ironman. Turn up, execute a solid race day plan and you’ll be fine. Heroics might leave you walking through the energy lab with six miles still to go. I can tell you the views out there are stunning, but the prospect of walking back to town isn’t.

Pre-race:

Coming from October in the UK training in Kona will feel terrible to start with. This is normal. You’re not well adapted to the heat and humidity and you’ll be jetlagged too. Don’t fight it, go by feel and adjust sessions accordingly. Don’t stress when you miss your usual heart rate or power numbers, or that the effort feels much higher. It will get better with time, you just have to keep doing your taper training and sweating it out.

Given this, don’t neglect hydration – it’s pretty easy to dehydrate out there. There’s a lot of coffee on offer in Kona, that alone won’t cut it. I should also mention sunscreen. You’re British, you’ll burn easily. Protect yourself throughout race week and especially on race day. You could still see my race number for weeks after the finish (you may consider this a pro when returning to club swims back home).

Along side the physical stresses are mental ones – this is the Ironman World Champs everyone is lean and ripped and looks like they’re in peak form. A lot of them are. You may not fully appreciate it, but you’re one of them.

By the time you land on the island there’s nothing more you can do. It’s the taper, stay relaxed. Ignore the other athletes and enjoy the experience.

I’ll emphasise that: enjoy your time out there. From a race perspective it’s easy to do too much in race week, taking in too many sights and taking part in too many activities. From a race perspective you need to rest and relax when not taper training. But how often do you go to Hawaii? It’s not a cheap trip, make the most of it. If I’m honest, I wish I’d been more of a tourist.

Swim:

This is the toughest Ironman swim you’ll likely encounter. It favours strong swimmers. Most athletes qualified by being fast in their age group which means there’s a lot of people swimming a similar time to you. Expect this course to be crowded. To avoid the worst of it you might choose to go wide of the buoys, but swimming alone in that sea will be hard work too. Unless you’re leading the swim, just go with the groups.

If you’re wearing a swim skin, be aware they are tight and the water is salty – expect chafing. Use vaseline, lots of it, anywhere you have even the slightest suspicion the suit might rub. If you’re not wearing a swim skin – and you might not be, they’re expensive for something you’ll so rarely use – try to ensure your tri kit is close fitting and without pockets. I can’t give you a figure for how much drag you’ll save, but it’s worth a shot. Ideal solution is probably shorts only in the swim and full zipper top in T1 to put on for the bike.

Expect T1 to be busy when you exit. Everyone is getting out between 1:00 and 1:15.

Bike:

Obviously do not draft, and good luck with that in the first hour or two of the race. The initial out-and-back on Kuakini Highway is so busy it can feel more like a procession than a race. It will thin out as the ride goes on. Move past groups where appropriate, hang back if not; to be honest it’s the same deal in any Ironman race these days. It’s also important to assume that most athletes are overbiking for the first couple of hours; stick to your race plan.

The hills in Kona aren’t really that bad. Palani is the steepest thing you’ll encounter and it’s short. It’s the wind that’s the problem and you won’t know exactly what you’ll get until race day.

From a gearing perspective you don’t really need anything bigger than a 25 cog on the back, although it’s not going to hurt if you’ve got an easier gear to spin. An 11 cog might be useful if you’re lucky with some tail winds. You may be able to spin that out with the right circumstances. Don’t expect too much of this though and if you do get a lucky tail wind you’ll have to deal with the equally tough head wind at some point.

Mentioning winds, the descent back from the turn point at Hawi can be hairy. Stay relaxed in the cross winds, the downhill will do most of the work for you. Keep in control and don’t stress too much, once you’re at the bottom it’ll be fine.

Other than the climb to Hawi the course is generally rolling, it’s the wind you’re working against. Just stick with a sensible pacing strategy, control your effort and look to be strong on the return leg . Both times I raced there I felt like I was losing ground all the way to Hawi, but gained it back on the return stretch.

A small tip for T2: run on the carpets, the tarmac will be very hot. Also, make sure you top up the sunscreen while you’re there.

Run:

The first 10 miles of the race are mainly flat and sheltered. Start easy as with any Ironman marathon and keep it steady for the rest of that segment. Remember it will get tougher later so save some energy. Once you turn up Palani and onto the Queen K you’ll be more exposed to sun and heat. There’s 16 more miles to go.

Pacing is the same as any other Ironman marathon with the note that the heat will curb intensity. Cooling is a key factor in this run; fortunately aid stations are well stocked. As well as taking in cold drinks, grab ice, carry it with you, put it under your cap or shove some down your shorts. Basically anything that helps keep the body cool as you run is good.

Try to be consistent – there’s a bit of descending and climbing at the Energy Lab, otherwise it’s rolling. Make sure you use each aid station and work steadily between them. If things are going well and you’ve something left to give then the time to push is as you close in on town again. Once you turn down Palani you’ve about a mile to go so at this point give whatever you’ve got left. Enjoy the finish line.

The pacing strategy I advise is simple, but also relatively flexible. It needs to be; a race is no time for complex calculations or rigid targets. To that point I set power caps to avoid rather than power targets to chase. The athlete’s goal is to ride to the best of their ability while remaining below the specified cap. If they’re having a bad day they shouldn’t overwork chasing an impossible target and if they’re – hopefully – having a good day they’re cautioned against pushing too hard.

Typically these caps are specified as a relative percentage of an athletes Functional Threshold Power (and of course could be adjusted to work with other systems). My general guidelines would look something like the table below. So for an Ironman I’ll usually advise an athlete not to ride over 75% of their FTP (their Race Cap).

Then it gets a little more complex: I add another power cap. There are times when it makes sense to work harder – short inclines, headwinds or overtaking for example – but an athlete still needs to keep their effort under control. That’s when the additional Push Cap comes in, an extra allowance for periods when it’s of benefit to work more. Such efforts should be rationed during the race and limited in their duration. For the Ironman my advice is typically to keep it under 85% of their FTP.

Of course these caps will be crossed during a race, it’s unavoidable, the objective is to minimise this while still riding as strongly as possible. As they race all an athlete needs to do is regularly check the 3 questions in the flowchart below.

I keep my setup simple on race day and limit my Garmin display to 3s Average Power, Time and Distance. The first rapidly informs me if I cross my power caps, the rest let me know how long or far I’ve gone. Some find 3s Average Power too variable, 10s Average is a reasonable substitute, but further averaging delays or hides warnings. Riding to caps needs relatively swift feedback that average or normalised power won’t necessarily show. You can, of course, put whatever variables you like on the other screens on your bike computer.

Now the caveats and warnings.

Just like setting an arbitrary power target for a race, setting arbitrary power caps needs testing in training. Ideally, as part of the peak period before a race, an athlete should practice riding their race bike according to these caps. A simple session I might give an Ironman athlete is a 5 hour bike with two 60 minute efforts riding under their Race Cap during the second half; it’s not a particularly stressful workout, Ironman pace is relatively easy, it’s about the discipline of maintaining it. If the numbers appear to work in training you can be more confident applying them when racing.

The other point of note is any power cap or target has the capability of limiting an athlete. Testing should minimise this risk, but the numbers given here are typical guidelines and individuals can (and will) vary. An athlete might be able to race a Half Ironman capped at 90% of their FTP and still run well, capping them at 85% would potentially limit their performance. No system is perfect, these are guidelines and should be adapted as appropriate.

Final warning: power meters go wrong, heart rate straps fail to work. Every season I have athletes whose kit lets them down on race day. Develop a feel for race intensity in training. The strategy should be a backup and sanity check to this.

Two of the most popular posts on this site review my training diaries and data to examine what I did in preparation to break 10 hours at Ironman. There are a lot of triathlete’s interested in breaking that barrier – despite being 3 years old those posts remain some of my most read. I’m going to visit the topic from a slightly different angle today – utilising the mass of Ironman results data to examine where and how age group athletes go sub-10 at Ironman. This will not tell you anything about the training involved, but it might help advise race choice and give some indication of the splits required.

The table above shows the top level details for this analysis: the races examined, the number of years I’ve looked at in each case, how many athlete results and the proportion that are sub-10 finishers within that. Probably the most interesting statistic is that proportion – certain races stand out for having distinctly more sub-10 finishers. There are many factors that come in to play in determining that percentage, both the course and the quality of the field. A third highest 15.9% at the Ironman World Championships reflects the qualification criteria more than the nature of the course. Races like Sweden, Melbourne, Frankfurt and Austria produce high percentages through some combination of the two – fast courses with a good field.

A small aside on the data used – Ironman results are far from standardised and in such a large data set there are many errors. I have done my best to remove erroneous data from consideration and clean up obvious mistakes. Some may have slipped through. I have made choices to exclude one or two instances of races where the best way to clean the results was unclear. Ironman Melbourne 2013 is a good example – I’ve excluded that race due to the significantly shortened swim. Races do vary in exact distances and as we’ll see this is reflected in the average splits; I’ve not adjusted this as these small variations reflect what may be encountered at that race.

I’ve seen many discussions of the optimal splits required to break 10 hours. Put simply it will depend on the course. The table above offers the average sub-10 splits seen at each race. As I said it won’t tell you how to achieve them, but it gives a sense of the common requirements for those looking to break the 10 hour mark. You can also observe indications where a race may have a tough bike and so require faster swim and run splits (Lanzarote) or a faster bike that takes the pressure off the run (Austria). We might note that Wales appears to have an unusually fast run split largely the result of a short course in the 2012 edition, although with a challenging bike a fast run is required.

At a very simplistic level you could take the average splits and use them as rough performance benchmarks. I want to break 10 hours at Austria (a good choice for it) then I need to be capable of close to an hour in the swim, low 5 hours on the bike and around 3:30 for the run. There are also transitions to consider, but if you’re chasing sub-10 you shouldn’t be spending much time in there. However – time goals on an unknown course tell you little about the actual performance required. Be aware that a 5:30 bike in Lanzarote is a very different beast to a 5:30 bike in Austria.

To round out this fairly brief, but data heavy post here are the fastest and slowest splits seen from sub-10 athletes at each race. Here we see how a strong swimmer, cyclist or runner can skew the splits to suit their strengths and still make the goal. I’ll admit we are also likely to see signs of a few errors within the data; I put in a lot of work to clear mistakes, but some may have slipped through. These are the outliers – the 1:35 swimmer who can bike a 4:30. Typically performances lie far closer to the averages, but it is interesting to note that there are many ways to achieve the same goal.

My database of Ironman results is largely complete – all but a few results sets available on Athlete Tracker are imported. It opens up examinations of performances like this and the potential to dig further. At the very least I will examine how splits distribute for sub-10 athletes to build a more precise picture of performances at these races. It may help an athlete gauge which race to choose for their sub-10 goal. And potentially there’s more I can do – some work with the TrainingPeaks API could allow me to mine the diaries of sub-10 athletes I coach to build a better picture of typical performances and training for example. I can now expand beyond the sample of one that formed the basis of my original articles.

The swim sessions were, for me at least, the surprise highlight of the training camp. Where bike rides split us into groups by ability and the uptake for runs was variable we all came together at the pool. Once the session started – in some cases this took time – the athletes did what they were told, there was the occasional quibble of course, but when they were told ‘no pull buoy’ for a set, there was no pull buoy. At the end of a full day of training they pushed through long sets and, more importantly, enjoyed it. The added bonus was testing them the following week and seeing improvements on their critical swim speeds – the work paid off.

While the athletes focussed on swimming I captured the sessions in high definition video, using the GoPro camera on deck and sometimes below the surface. After several evenings and a weekend of editing – film is harder work than blogging – four hours of footage became the 4 minutes of highlights below.

The key moments are in there: the time it took to get certain individuals – I’m thinking of those wearing wetsuits in the fast lane – into the pool; the entertainment of watching triathletes swim medley; near misses after tumble turns; Steve fighting the water every inch of the way; and central to the video Sam collapsing on deck. I should make it very clear that no athletes were harmed in the making of this film; during a hard set late in the week, Sam did need a lie down and chose to take it right by the poolside, but he was fine. Mainly I hope the clip shows the athletes working hard in the pool, because that’s what they were doing.

Every athlete on camp had their swim filmed individually with feedback from Mark. You can also view a selection of these videos below:

Before camp I was becoming jaded by the ‘typical’ age group triathlete attitude to swimming – there is little love for the pool, poor return on investment is often cited and even, on occasion, resistance to technique improvements (because that’s just how they swim). I understand the arguments, they often make sense, return on investment is poor, but I don’t understand training without a desire to become better. Complacency in the pool is a different matter to the conscious choice to swim less and better utilise that time. Within this framework it can be hard for a coach to sustain their own enthusiasm for swimming.

After camp, seeing athletes swimming hard, doing what they are instructed and pushing themselves to improve, my enthusiasm is back in full. With time and the right environment, easily achieved on a training camp, but harder at home, triathletes will swim effectively. When I am coaching poolside I can help ensure it is the right environment, remotely I can ensure it is the right session. There are those I can and should push harder.

Garmin Connect is not a coaching tool. Sharing of accounts is awkward, usually I end up being given temporary access, otherwise it’s simply too difficult to find all the information I need. The Analysis section is of limited benefit – a calendar view of workouts and a summary page of activities, in limited chunks of course. To review a season I need overviews and I need more than summaries of volume, there is only so much that durations and distances tell you, average heart rate in itself says very little. Ideally I want a graph. Before I consider specifics what I really need is something akin to the Performance Management Chart found on other platforms. Garmin offers nothing, it’s prototypical Training Effect doesn’t come close, to review an athlete’s season I needed to make my own.

Having spent the last few weeks automating the process of retrieving Ironman results, extracting summary data from Garmin Connect was resolutely manual. There is an Export to CSV option, unhelpfully it only downloads the current page of 20 items with no option to change what is returned. A triathlete fills a lot of pages over the course of a year. Others have developed tools to extract training data from Garmin Connect I’m pleased to discover, but unfortunately none for the Analysis pages. Were this my own data I’d extract it all and import it into a more analytical system, a time-consuming step when quickly reviewing somebody else’s season. I opted for 20 minutes of clicking Export to CSV and Save As to fetch the data I needed for the next step in reviewing the plans.

Training Stress Scores (TSS) are the basis of the Performance Management Chart (PMC), they’re calculated by factoring intensity and duration of a workout. I’ve previously estimated TSS either as part of the planning process or using heart rate data from mountain bike rides. I will note, as I did at the time, that estimating TSS from heart rate data is imprecise. However when all that’s available is duration and average heart rate and all I want is to quickly visualise the impact of workload over a season it will do. So a single heart rate value estimates an Intensity Factor (IF) and in turn that estimates a Training Stress Score. I can be quite certain that sessions are being scored too high or too low, but hope that on average it balances out. I’ll admit I cheated with swimming, avoiding the complex estimation process I’d previously tried, and simply assuming that most swims would have an IF of .70 including rest; the swim PMC is effectively based on swim volume. You can access a copy of the spreadsheet for estimating TSS from Garmin Connect data on Google Drive.

Once I have Training Stress Scores then I need only put the values in the Performance Management Chart Excel spreadsheet I’ve used for planning to produce the above graph. My quick, relatively easy – somewhat imprecise – visualisation of an athletes training stored in Garmin Connect. Sufficient enough to tell me that at the very least he was training sufficiently to keep a steady, progressive growth in fitness (blue CTL) without ever reaching severe levels of fatigue. Had I seen significant declines in fitness, moments of major fatigue or patterns of inconsistency I could have been more targeted in my review, but at this heavily filtered level it would appear that training has been largely text-book. Which left me to the deeper examination, building up a picture of individual workouts and patterns over the year to understand what were the athlete’s next steps.

From Garmin Connect summaries to a quick and easy visualisation of a season’s training. It fulfilled its purpose – a starting point for a more thorough review. In this instance, the real answers were hidden within the weekly combination of sessions and how the athlete performed. Potentially the usage of the summary data could be expanded, it will never offer a detailed insight, but there is a role for graphing weekly volume and perhaps showing changes in average heart rate over a season. Currently Garmin’s Analyze section leaves a lot to be desired

Let’s start in Roth. Despite a 90 minute improvement on Kevin’s previous best time, this was not a perfect race. A swim of 1:14 was within expectations, the bike performance was more conservative than his FTP would suggest and the run that followed was slower than planned, the second half dominated by walk breaks. Based on an estimated 260W FTP the graph below shows Kevin never gets into his stride, showing a highly variable power output (VI often above 1.10) with an overall declining profile. Given the apparently moderate pacing of his race this fluctuation in power may help to explain the decline on both bike and run. Although for the latter it a running schedule hampered by an existing achilles issue could equally be to blame.

The overall result was positive – a personal best. However, the execution clearly allowed room for improvement. Nutritional strategy could be refined, consistency of pacing could be addressed; in theory these two factors could help deliver a better bike and run performance. We thoroughly debriefed in an attempt to identify all potential contributors to the decline in performance. I can’t rule out an incorrectly set FTP, when an athlete fails to reach targets this has to be a consideration, on my side I clearly needed to prescribe more consistent checks. we had 2 months to prepare for Challenge Henley and every confidence we could iron out a better race strategy.

But what happened in September was more of the same. Worse. The graph above shows that although Kevin started on target, he experienced a more severe decline in power. His report matched the power profile: feeling uncomfortable from the start, unable to stay aero and then really suffering from about halfway. The data offered no specific reason for the failure to race, the response had been so immediate. If anything the riding was more controlled, less variable than before. Had something happened in the swim? It had been harder than in Roth, but sufficient to explain the rapid decline? I didn’t need to examine his run data in detail to understand why that had also failed to follow the plan.

Drawing a blank from the race data I looked back and reexamined the two months preceding race day. Following the debrief plans had been put in place to transition from recovery back to a short block of training designed to restore fitness to Roth levels and to practice race execution, but Henley proved to be a race too far. Kevin’s training was inconsistent, some initial success quickly fell apart as his motivation dropped. First the Olympics distracted him, then a period of illness derailed him and a break consolidated this. By the time we came to taper, there was little to taper from – a smattering of successfully executed rides and runs – very little swimming – over a two month period. Kevin was not race fit. At best he had maintained some form from his post-Roth recovery.

Roth had been the product of weeks of consistent training. While it hadn’t been perfect a period of 6 months preparation had done a enough to get him to the finish line in a new personal best. On reflection the decision to race again had been a mistake as the motivation wasn’t there to repeat the training cycle. Rather than building on success we stretched goals out without fully committing to the process. The signs were present in Kevin’s feedback and I tried to shift momentum back towards the race, but ultimately training has to be done for it to work. I’d already experienced this when I raced in Roth after weeks – months – of inconsistency; it doesn’t work.

There are lessons to be learnt on both sides. Kevin is taking a break, but will be revisiting Roth next season with fresh goals and a better appreciation of the importance of preparation, especially if he wishes to approach or even break 10 hours. And I need to be more emphatic in ensuring we follow the plan with clearer implications when we don’t. We cannot afford doubts around FTP or targets in training and racing; we need to ensure that run volume is maintained throughout the season, although achilles tendonitis makes this a challenge; we need to practice race strategy throughly. These are not new ideas, they have a place in a plan for a reason; it’s surprising how easily that can be forgot. Reviewing this season has been a reminder how important they are for both of us.

A training camp, regardless of timing, is about improving fitness – or skills – relevant to triathlon. It does so by offering a supportive training environment, a challenging structure and the removal of all distractions. Each day you train longer and harder in the presence of your peers, subtly, or not so subtly, pushing each other on, and then you recover, properly recover, free of the demands of work or family. Increased load balanced by increased recovery. While we normally look for consistency and a steady, manageable progression, the camp is about a jump in fitness.

The real issue is what place a spike in fitness has back in February. During a build or peak period a camp can put the finishing touches to your preparation; you should already be in excellent shape and able to take full advantage of the camp to push yourself further. It is easy to connect the performance in a race with the activity of a peak period training camp. Harder though is to see how a big week of training in February is of benefit when three to four months of progressive training still follows. But I would argue additional gains in fitness are always beneficial, the fitter you are the more work you can do to improve performance.

The Impact of my own Camps

The samples of my Performance Management Chart (PMC) above show the first four months of the last four years each containing at least one training camp. The blue line, labelled CTL, represents fitness, its profile a reflection of my training. For the purposes of this blog we can view the PMC simply as a visualisation of the training process, understanding that effective training raises the blue line. The more I do the steeper it climbs, the higher it rises the fitter I am.

It would be inaccurate to label this period of 2009 or 2010 early season, my schedule was ongoing and the two Epic Camps are more akin to a mid-season camp. I am already in good general fitness (the blue CTL line is high), I can perform well on the camp and use it to achieve higher than normal levels of fitness prior to a race. They are perfect examples of the peak period training camp, the fitness boost of Epic Camp 2010 led to one of my most successful Ironman races in New Zealand.

By 2011 I had settled back in the Northern Hemisphere and into a seasonal cycle. I start the year from lower fitness and use the training camps to accelerate my fitness growth (a short, sharp climb in CTL). In 2011 a week focussed on volume towards the end of March set me up for a summer of hard riding. The content of that week had little direct input on my race performances, but it gave me the fitness to focus more effort into developing power. 2012 is the counter example, showing two failed attempts to use an early season camp, each fitness boost rapidly lost without the support of consistent training. Unsurprisingly I was ill prepared to race.

An athlete needs sufficient fitness to deliver a race performance and the early season camp offers a means of accelerating towards that goal. Not towards peak fitness, but towards the platform on which peak fitness and performance can be built. But it is a blunt tool and incorrectly managed it can be disruptive, interrupting the benefits of consistent progression rather than enhancing them. The balance of work and recovery needs to be managed to avoid burnout and enable the athlete to continue development after the camp. As my 2012 graph shows one week of improvements followed by three weeks of recovery is a disaster.

Assuming an athlete is in reasonable fitness with a period of training under their belt and they are cautious in how much additional training they take on during the week an early season camp can be very beneficial. And when we’ve been locked away indoors on turbos and treadmills what could be better than riding in the sun?

The hardest aspect of organising the camp – so far – has been trying to find that balance between quality and value. Quality means ensuring a good venue, good coaching and proper support for the athletes who attend. Value is a more debatable term. This is a commercial venture for me, but – as the numbers I’m working with show – I wouldn’t describe it as profit driven. I want to organise this training camp because I know how much I’ve enjoyed and learnt from the many camps I’ve attended, and also because I know how much I enjoy and learn from directly – actually – coaching athletes. A huge part of this is about the experience, the pleasure in coaching and the chance to put together a week based on my approach to training. As long as I don’t make a loss I’m happy.

This is going to be an early season camp, with dates tentatively set for the middle of February. The focus will naturally be towards those racing Ironman and Half Ironman distances and the camp itself will put the overall emphasis on bike volume. We will be going to Lanzarote because it’s a great place to train, it’s warm and I am familiar with the island. What is new is the proposed venue, pending confirmation of the dates the camp will be based at the Sands Beach Resort in Costa Teguise. This is a holiday resort, but with a real interest in sports, they sponsor a number of events and athletes and have recently taken the step of building a 25m training pool. The location gives us resort quality accommodation and food, plus all we need for a triathlon camp: pool or sea to swim in, easy access to good riding and paths or trails to run on.

I will provide a full itinerary along with coaching throughout the week, but athlete support is an important aspect of any camp, so to allow for increased numbers I’ll be joined by Mark Racher. Mark is a former British International swimmer and national champion at 400m and 200m Medley, and at one point – until an incident in Vegas derailed our plans – I coached him for Ironman. He’ll be providing support throughout the camp, setting some of the swim sessions and offering coaching points and advice. We’ll both be riding and running too, splitting into separate groups where necessary to allow for a mix of abilities. The schedule will allow for swim, bike and run everyday and will take in a number of race courses over the week.

Until I’ve final confirmation on apartments at Sands Resort I can’t commit to exact dates or prices. There are still details to be set. But I am too excited to hold back on this update. Once everything is confirmed full details – price, dates, a complete itinerary – will be published on this Lanzarote Training Camp page. The camp is open to anyone, but numbers will be limited to ensure we can offer adequate support. If you are interested or want more details, then please email me to find out more.

The tools, to an extent, have. There are more power meter options, although Powertap and Quarq still make up the majority of devices I encounter, there is also Power2max and in limited quantities the Look power pedals. None that I’d term affordable, but a small step in the right direction over the last eighteen months. The software continues to improve, at least on the online front. My preference, TrainingPeaks, absorbs more of its desktop counterpart WKO’s functionality with each update and we are now promised a new version of WKO including Mac compatibility. Eighteen months on and it is easier to work with power than ever before.

The hurdle isn’t the equipment it’s the seemingly steep learning curve. I realise not everyone – most people – are not as taken by data or statistics as I am, and discussions of power, with the exception of this one, are always accompanied by graphs. In contrast heart rate is simple: test, set zones, train in zones. Nobody analyses heart rate data to the extent that we pick apart power files. You can’t. The fluctuations in heart rate are less telling and predictive than those of power, the question can be reduced to in zone or out of zone? But there is no reason power need be any more complex: test, set zones, train in zones. As a beginning this works well, the more complicated details can follow.

My own tentative first steps with power, when information was scarce, followed those very lines. I read Training and Racing with a Power Meter as all users should and then I got on with riding and attempting – I’d emphasise attempting, it didn’t always work – to hold the zones I’d set. I collected data, I didn’t hugely worry about concepts like Normalised Power, Variability Index or Training Stress Scores, the Performance Management Chart barely registered, although they would come to be important training tools. Initially I simply trained and just as I’d done with heart rate I aimed to be within my zones, the experience was no different.

When you’ve spent that much on a training tool you want to do more and while just training by zones will do the job it also misses many of the benefits of power. So to start with I’ve collected together some of my previous posts covering the usage of power – and data – in training on a new Ironman Training By Numbers page. There is plenty for beginners there, although not necessarily delivered in the most user-friendly fashion. Over the next few weeks I’ll discuss how I like to setup my power meter and software and some of the simple things to monitor in training before moving on to more complex ideas such as the Performance Management Chart. I’ll attempt to address some of the most frequent questions as I go. By the end of it we should have a complete beginner’s guide to power training.

Each comparison has a trend line in red giving an indication of the kind of relationship; in each case faster finish times come from faster splits. Faster athletes go faster. The degree of scatter around the best fit line gives some indication as to the strength of the correlation; for example, in Roth, any correlation between swim performance and finish time is weaker than any correlation between run performance and finish time. Not that correlation is necessarily cause. Unsurprisingly repeating the process for Kona shows similar results.

Faster athletes are faster at the World Championship too. The relationship seems a little tighter too – less dispersal when comparing swim times and finish times, or run times against bike times. Perhaps the result of the selective entry criteria for the majority of athletes: qualification removes the weakest swimmers, cyclists and runners. Having to qualify means that you cannot afford to have a genuinely weak discipline, there is variance, but in relative terms these athletes are quite balanced.

If we only consider the fastest athletes, which I’ll take to mean those going under 10 hours, then the relationships between the disciplines are remarkably similar for both races. Roth is faster, it is easier to break 10 hours there, but both have a high standard of fast athletes. As the chart below shows, in Kona the sub-10 athletes are again balanced. Notably the swim distribution is more tightly packed than for the equivalent athletes at Roth, selection at play once more or perhaps a side effect of the mass start. Perhaps it’s worth reflecting that the mass start may improve drafting opportunities during the swim and unfortunately increase the impact of drafting on the bike, we might expect both to lead to a tighter distribution of splits.

In my previous examination of the bike-run relationship I didn’t stop here, I attempted to find better evidence that a hard bike often leads to a slow run. Bear with me. I divided finishers into groups by percentage – 10% brackets from fastest to slowest, and then calculated the average bike splits for the fastest runners (top 25% of run splits in the group), slowest runners (bottom 25%) and the whole group. The idea being that if a hard bike leads to slower run we would expect to fine that the slowest runners tended to ride faster than the group average and the fastest runner tended to ride slower. Which is exactly what the data showed for Roth. Would I call it proof? No, but it offered a little support for a long held belief.

For Kona I’ve slightly altered my approach, dividing the field into fixed 30 minute blocks (with the exception of those going sub-9 who are grouped together). While the percentage approach ensured each group of finishers was of equal size, fixed finish times perhaps ensures groups contain a more comparable set of athletes. The results are in the graph below (you can also see a table of the data here)

As was the case in Roth the fastest runners have slower bike splits and the slower runners have faster bike splits; and as with Roth the question remains as to whether this is indicative of a relationship. It is worth noting that in the Sub-9 group, mostly male pros, there is little difference between the group average bike and the fastest runners’ average bike split, but as we spread back in the field the gap opens up. Also the faster an athletes finish time the smaller the difference between bike performance for different runners, a reflection of overall fitness and possibly better pace awareness. Of course swim and transitions being equal an athlete who runs 3:15 to finish in 9:45 must have biked more slowly than an athlete who runs 3:20 to finish in 9:45. As I said – this is not proof, more a potential indication. But if it is the case that those slower runners are biking too hard, the data shows that what they typically gain on the bike they more than lose during the run; their bike may be 5 minutes faster than the group average, but their run is 10 minutes slower.

Conclusions? The patterns I previously saw in the Roth results seem to be present in the Kona data, if there are differences then Kona is – questionably – more tightly bunched. Perhaps a subtle consequence of a mass start versus waves and the greater drafting and bunching opportunities that followed it, but equally potentially a reflection of the selective qualification process. Needless to say it remains the case that the fastest athletes are all round faster and that working too hard on the bike may really make you pay on the run.