Going faster over the standard distance
What does it take well to perform over the standard distance? In this article Coach Alan dives into the metrics that really matter to race fast and hard over 1.5k of swimming, 40k of biking and 10k of running. Commonly long-course athletes focus on an increased CTL value as a predictor of performance, but what should a short-course athlete focus on?
Both aerobic capacity and anaerobic threshold are important for strong swimming over the standard distance with 1500m to cover as well as fast starts and re-accelerations after buoy turns.
Event Duration
Athletes can take anywhere between just under two hours and over four hours to complete a standard or Olympic distance triathlon depending on the course difficulty and conditions. In this article, I am going to focus around two to three hours, for those athletes taking on significantly challenging courses or competing with the cut off I would suggest that articles focused on very fast middle distance races may also have some significant value as the duration will be very similar and therefore the physiological demands of the event are similar.
Research
Physiology tells us that a two-hour-plus event will be predominantly aerobic in nature, usefully research Puccinelli et al. (2020) goes further and identifies four specific areas of performance.
The study looked at thirty-nine male and six female amateur triathletes, assessing anthropometric, physiological, genetic, training, clinical and circadian factors in order to assess the strength of any relationship with predicting race time.
The study suggested the following prioritisation in terms of predicting race performance;
Triathlon Experience
Max Aerobic Velocity
Percentage of Lean Mass
Anaerobic Threshold (Swimming)
Experience
Experience is simple, keep a race log, how many multisport events have you done? The act of writing down race reflections will help learning points and successes carry over to the next event you race, in order to make small steps and improve performance.
My suggestion here would be to prioritise racing instead of training with athletes in their first couple of years of competition. Don’t worry about the specificity of a race to your main event just gather breadth and depth of experience, aquathlons, duathlons and sprint triathlons as well as single discipline events add to your pot of experience and provide great context and perspective for your development and performance. Too often athletes can get bogged down in unnecessary and overly complex factors, plans, graphs and charts and overlook the simple factor of experience. (Also fun!)
When racing complete a race results diary combined with a diary of race reflections, including some ‘what went wells’ and ‘even better ifs’
Importantly at this point that ‘fun’ can also mean ‘play’ and play generally leads to skill development. Lots of races give lots of opportunities to make up a plan as you go along and trial those crazy ideas you have. It could also mean going out as hard as you can racing a friend knowing full well you can’t keep up but what the heck it’s fun, you’ll pay for it later but also you will know what this extreme end of the racing spectrum feels like and as such have a useful benchmark and perspective with which to judge future race paces.
Although this isn’t something mentioned in the research I will happily wager that there is a very strong relationship between experience and skill. Race admin, kit preparation, start position, sighting, transitions, pacing, bike handling, psychological performance and general technique are all likely to be better with more experienced athletes. The technique element can’t be measured or can it?
Max Aerobic Velocity
Technical improvements can be partially reflected by the measurement and tracking of your output metrics (pace, power) for a cost (heart rate), the faster you can go at an aerobic heart rate or at an aerobic exchange of gas the more likely you are to perform well at the standard distance. Within Training Peaks ‘Efficiency Factor’ (EF) is the metric that measures this aspect of training. Training over a consistent course at an aerobic heart rate whilst monitoring and tracking changes in EF can be a useful way to track aerobic performance. It may improve due to physiological (capillary density), structural (increased pelvic stability) or technical factors (more effective stride rate). It is worth noting good structure and good stability facilitate good technique, this is why the measurement of technique is only a partial reflection, there is much more than simply one contributing factor to these data points.
Decoupling of heart rate compared to pace or power (HR:PA, HR:PWR) can also reflect the depth of aerobic fitness. On a graph of training data, this will be indicated by a heart rate that stays the same as you hold the same pace or power over a longer and longer duration. This can be monitored with the repeats of intervals during the working time and also subsequently recovery heart rate can also be tracked at rest how quickly do you recover post-interval and how quickly does your heart rate return to resting?
If you work out your aerobic heart rate based upon a very hard training session or race you can start to look at the pace or power you are able to achieve whilst maintaining this heart rate. This is a really important switch to make in your approach to or reflection upon training if you currently focus on the pace or power simply being higher it is well worth looking at the relative cost of the work as by doing the former you might be moving away from working aerobically and thus missing possible improvements in this aspect of your performance.
This means that aerobic training is still a huge part of performing well at standard distance therefore simply dropping all aerobic effort, or as some might disparagingly describe, ‘easy’ training is not the correct move. It also means that at some point the amount of aerobic work, and volume, that an athlete is able to safely complete, absorb and adapt to the better they will be. This explains why elite athletes at shorter distances still complete high volumes of aerobic training when compared to Ironman training. The specific sessions do however change.
A large maximal aerobic capacity, VO2Max, will also be required. It is worth noting that VO2Max is mentioned in the study as a stronger predictor of performance for faster elite athletes over the standard distance. This shows us some of the changes in focus as an athlete develops, aerobic velocity first, then VO2Max.
Anaerobic Capacity
Specific training is where the requirement to have a strong anaerobic capacity sees a diversion away from the demands of long-distance performance. It seems from this study that anaerobic performance is particularly useful in the swim, specifically mentioning staying with a lead pack however the study doesn’t mention if this is with regards to the bike leg being draft legal.
Lean Mass
Lean mass is very tricky to measure, however, crucially it should not be read as ‘weight’. You can read a little more on the ‘w’ word here, but for now, I will say that muscle and power are highly important and lean mass is muscle mass, therefore, increasing this may be linked with performance improvement.
Other factors
Scientific studies are useful because of how they isolate factors to study, this however means that one study can’t necessarily consider everything by its very design. We would also suggest you consider;
Swim Threshold Pace
Start out speed to the first buoy
Bike FTP in race position and aerodynamics
Run 5k/10k performance
Run Threshold / VO2max running
Peak 1k pace off intense cycling
Aerobic and VO2max ability
Anaerobic contribution to performance
Power and rate of force development
Sub race distance efforts 750m / 40k / 5k
A volume that meets middle distance efforts in duration in training 30min straight swim / 3-4hr ride / 90min run
The ability to push yourself at very high intensities for a sustained period of time. This is a psychological strength and can be developed with experience
Summary
If you are racing over the standard distance you still need to focus on the pace you can maintain whilst working predominantly aerobically, this will shift as you get faster towards 2 hours to Threshold/VO2Max. Being an experienced, strong and lean athlete will always help you to race well. if you can focus on the metrics above your training will become specific and effective in order to help you perform at your best over this distance. It is important to shy away from a volume-orientated mindset, and instead focus on meaningful training efficiencies you can make to be faster.
Alan has worked with Tri Training Harder since 2014. During this time working with a wide spectrum of athletes from beginner, to youth and junior elite athletes through to 70.3 and Ironman AG winners and Ironman Kona Qualifiers.
An active Triathlon coach since 2007 Alan has been fortunate enough to work with athletes, peers and support staff who have continutally challenged him to evolve and develop. Building on a solid foundation in swimming teaching, Alan has specifically developed swimming coaching experience having worked in High Performance Swimming environments. Alan's other passion is all things fast on a bicycle!
Since 2015 Alan has worked in conjunction with the other Tri Training Harder Coaches to significantly develop collective coaching practice both on camp and online.
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