Shownotes

Chain maintenance and waxing

01:00 -

• I have been waxing my chains for around five years. The appeal goes beyond performance — the main draw is how clean and well-maintained the drivetrain stays.
• There is no grit or grease spreading onto other parts of the bike or kit, which also makes travelling far less messy. Getting a chain in and out of a bike box without covering everything in grease is reason enough on its own.
• The process itself is not complicated, though it is time-intensive. The critical step is making sure the chain is completely clean before waxing.
• The method involves soaking in a white spirit degreaser overnight, followed by an alcohol spray to remove any remaining residue.
• The chain then goes into a rice cooker — available for around ten euros — along with wax sourced cheaply from eBay or Amazon. On bikes that cost what they cost, this kind of low-cost maintenance that extends drivetrain life is well worth the effort.
• We covered this topic in some depth a couple of years ago in an episode with Adam Keiran from Australia, which got into the full picture: different lubricant types, the cost comparison between waxing and other options, and calculated chain lifespan figures under each approach.
• Adam is extremely thorough on this subject, and I will drop a link to that episode in the show notes for anyone who wants to go deeper on the numbers.

Race report

05:00 -

• I raced recently at Ironman 70.3 Valencia, three weeks ago. Sam Laidlow made everyone look ordinary on the bike, but the race was a solid start to the season — a strong swim and run, and pleasing given that the first race of the year tends to be a rough one.
• This winter involved more training volume than ever before, so it was reassuring to see that translate on race day, even while carrying some accumulated fatigue.
• But with about 24 hours of distance, the picture shifted. Looking back against previous races of similar elevation and distance, it was actually meaningful progress, and the time landed just inside the slower end of my goal range.
• Some of the disappointment likely came from not exceeding expectations rather than failing to meet them, which is not always a logical place to end up.
• I have had many athletes in exactly that situation — where the first conversation after the race is about pulling apart what the actual expectations were before it started, and whether hitting those expectations genuinely warrants disappointment. 
• Probably not, but we are not always rational in those first hours. On reflection, I am pleased with it. There are areas to work on, but it was a good race on a beautiful course, with the kind of views and trails that make mountain races worth the effort.

Performance determinants

08:45 -

• The main topic is sprint and Olympic distance training and racing.
• Because the majority of amateur athletes around the world race these distances in non-draft format, that will be our primary frame of reference, though we will also touch on draft-legal racing and its specific considerations later in the episode.
• A common mistake in the endurance world is to assume that sprint means sprinting. It does not. Both sprint and Olympic distance are still aerobic events — even the fastest athletes are looking at close to an hour for a sprint and two hours for an Olympic.
• The endurance foundation remains essential. That said, compared to longer course racing, there is a more pronounced intensive component: lactate spikes are more frequent, athletes operate closer to lactate threshold, VO2 max becomes a more significant limiter, and the ability to surge above threshold and sustain time there matters more.
• These are considerations that need to be built into the preparation.

Training requirements

10:20 -

• On the beginner end, a generally active person with access to a bike and basic swimming ability could realistically complete a sprint distance race with very little specific preparation, particularly if it involves a pool swim.
• A 750m swim, 20k bike, and 5k run should not be seen as an insurmountable challenge. That said, if there is a race at the end of summer, starting to train now and arriving confident and well-prepared is never a bad idea. 
• The Olympic distance is a different matter — for someone new to triathlon without a strong endurance background, that is likely a three-hour day or more, and it warrants more deliberate preparation.
• Equipment need not be a barrier at the sprint level. I did my first Olympic distance event on a borrowed city bike in a windsurfing wetsuit, and it worked out fine.
• The general recommendation for anyone doing their first triathlon is to use whatever bike you already have or can borrow, complete the race, see if you enjoy it, and invest from there.

Intermediate and advanced athletes

14:20 - 

• For someone targeting a performance rather than just a finish, three to four months is a solid preparation window — enough time to meaningfully change your physiology and arrive at the start line with genuine confidence.
• For intermediate and advanced athletes, the framing shifts. In an ideal world, these athletes are training consistently year-round with only a seasonal break, so the question is not how long to prepare but rather when to transition from general to specific work.
• For an A-race at sprint or Olympic distance, around six weeks of highly specific training is the target, with a more gradual transition beginning roughly twelve weeks out.
• At that point, the training starts to shift in character — not yet full race-pace work, but a meaningful move away from purely general aerobic training. 
• The concentrated race-pace work then comes in from around six weeks before the event. The general aerobic base, of course, is largely the same regardless of which distance you are targeting.

Specific training sessions

17:02 -

• How much VO2 max work belongs in the specific phase depends heavily on the athlete's level.
• For most age group athletes racing non-draft sprint or Olympic distance, race pace sits right at threshold — critical power and critical speed for sprint, and roughly 90% of FTP on the bike and open half-marathon pace on the run for Olympic distance. 
• That puts Olympic distance race effort in the sweet spot to just-below-threshold range, somewhere around two to three millimoles — what you might call Norwegian threshold territory.
• Given that, there is not a strong case for dedicated VO2 max sessions in the specific block for age groupers.
• The exception would be course-specific demands: a profile with sharp climbs or technical corners that require repeated accelerations might warrant incorporating surges to VO2 intensity within threshold intervals, rather than standalone VO2 sessions. VO2 work still has its place, but before the specific phase rather than within it.
• For athletes racing at a higher level, where a meaningful portion of the race is spent above threshold, and VO2 max is genuinely being tapped, more of that intensity belongs in the specific block.
• The race dynamics are simply different. This is also why the framing for most of this discussion assumes non-draft age group racing — the conclusions do shift depending on where on that spectrum the athlete sits.
• On the sprint and Olympic distance bike and run, even at intermediate to advanced levels, there will be more surges above threshold than the age group picture suggests.
• Olympic distance courses tend to be more technical, with more corners to accelerate out of, and the condensed nature of the race creates more packed dynamics and shorter drafting distances. 
• The swim, too, can demand repeated efforts above threshold. So while the overall intensity distribution holds, there is a case for a wider range of intensities within the specific period as the athlete's level rises.

Swim sample session

21:20 -

• On the swim, whether to include dedicated VO2 or speed work depends on the athlete. For anyone competitive enough to care about exiting the water with a group, developing that upper range becomes important.
• For the most part, though, those elements are best integrated into sessions that are primarily threshold or race-pace focused, with fast-start or surging components built in rather than treated as separate sessions.
• Shorter distance races also tend to be mass start or age-group wave start rather than the rolling starts common in long course, which means athletes are dealing with contact, congestion, and elevated heart rates right from the gun.
• A useful swim session to prepare for that is a main set of two rounds of: a 200 at get-out speed — roughly RPE 8, slightly above threshold — with ten seconds rest, followed by four 100s at just below threshold, around RPE 6 to 7, with ten seconds rest between each, then a full 200 easy recovery.
• The fast opening 200 spikes the heart rate and forces the athlete to settle into race effort under fatigue, which is exactly what race day demands.
• For sprint distance specifically, a useful variation is to open with 3x50 at takeout speed — around RPE 8.5 — with roughly ten seconds rest after each, then move into a 250, a 200, and a 150 at race pace and threshold effort with short recoveries, followed by a 200 easy, then repeat the whole thing.
• That gives 1,500 metres of swimming for a race with a 750 metre swim. The volume matters: doing sets that are too short and too intense in the sprint-specific period is one of the more common mistakes, and this structure avoids it while keeping the session manageable.

Bike sessions for sprint triathlon

25:50 -

• On the bike, a reliable indoor session is four rounds of a ten-minute block structured as four minutes at 95% of FTP followed by one minute at 100 to 105%, repeated twice within each block, with three to five minutes of easy spinning between rounds.
• It is an under-over format that trains the ability to push above threshold and recover while still moving, which mirrors the demands of a technical or undulating race course.
• Where possible during the specific period, getting outside is preferable. Riding real terrain and optimising speed for a given power output is more specific than hitting precise watt targets on a trainer.
• On a slightly rolling course, the natural variation in gradient creates the same under-over stimulus without needing to structure it artificially. Both approaches lead to a similar outcome.
• For Olympic distance, the outdoor equivalent is four by twelve minutes on a course that approximates the race course as closely as possible.
• The target average for the session sits in the low to mid 90s percent of FTP.
• In practice, articles suggesting age group athletes should hold 95% of FTP for an Olympic distance bike leg are common, but that very rarely plays out on race day — turns, downhills, and course variation all make sustained power harder to hold, and doing so while still running well off the bike requires a high level of conditioning. 
• In a training context, aiming slightly more aggressively than race day is fine, so hitting 94 to 95% average across those intervals is acceptable.
• A four-to-one work-rest ratio works well, giving around three minutes of recovery between efforts. The interval length can be adjusted — ten or fifteen minutes works just as well as twelve — but the goal is to accumulate 45 to 60 minutes of race-intensity work on as race-specific a course as you can find.

Run sessions and brick workouts

28:50 - 

• For the run in a sprint-specific block, a solid session is six to eight times 800 metres at critical speed, targeting race pace as the average across the set.
• The structure should be progressive — starting slightly below race pace on reps one and two, hitting it squarely on reps three and four, and finishing strong on the final reps.
• Six times 800 suits intermediate athletes; eight times 800 is more appropriate for advanced athletes, pushing the total volume above race distance while staying at threshold intensity.
• A three-to-one work-to-rest ratio works well for this. Done off the bike, it is a demanding session and should be used sparingly.
• Brick workouts in general are probably overused. Two brick sessions in a specific preparation block for an A race is enough. They are useful, but they are the finishing touch rather than the foundation of sprint and Olympic distance preparation.

Progressive running workouts

31:30 - 

• The design logic behind run sessions reflects how the run off the bike actually feels.
• On the swim and bike, workouts are built around surges and recovery, because that is what those legs of the race demand.
• The run, by contrast, tends to get progressively harder from start to finish once the legs come around, so run workouts should mirror that. Progressive structure from rep one to the last rep is the principle to follow.
• A standalone run session that works well is six times one kilometre, building through the set from just below threshold on the early reps through to open 5k pace on the final ones.
• That structure generates a VO2 max stimulus at the back end. A one-to-one to one-and-a-half-minute recovery works for this.
• An alternative is to build reps one to three, ease back slightly, then build again through reps four to six — a double-build format that stresses lactate clearance more deliberately and hits the key intensities twice through.
• Sprint and Olympic distance is still aerobic events, and longer sessions remain part of the training week even in the specific period

Long workouts

34:10 -

• The longest efforts belong in the base phase, but rides of three to four hours and runs of around 90 minutes still have a place in a specific block.
• The key adjustment is intensity — keeping those longer sessions in the lower end of zone one to zone two protects recovery and allows the key quality sessions to land properly.
• As a rough benchmark, if the longest ride in the base phase was three hours, dropping to around 75% of that — roughly two hours fifteen to two and a half hours — is a sensible reduction. The drop is meaningful but not drastic.
• For athletes working within a fixed weekly time budget of around 12 hours, a three-hour-long ride and a 90-minute-long run is a solid standard template regardless of whether they are targeting sprint or Olympic distance.
• The long run in particular reaches a point of diminishing returns fairly quickly — 90 minutes delivers most of what you need, and going much beyond that adds limited additional benefit for these distances.
• The long ride has more room to scale upward for higher-volume athletes, potentially reaching four hours, but the long run would likely stay at or around 90 minutes even then.
• It is worth reiterating that the three-hour ride and 90-minute run benchmarks apply to the specific period. In the base phase, the long ride can reasonably take up a larger share of the weekly hours.
• That said, even through a base phase for an athlete preparing for a June sprint race, staying at or under three hours for the long ride from January onwards is not a significant sacrifice.
• A 12-hour-per-week athlete doing three-hour long rides will get more out of their training than a 10-hour-per-week athlete doing four-hour rides, because the extra time can go into quality and recovery.
• Three hours is enough to generate a strong aerobic stimulus while allowing the more intensive sessions to land well. In winter, when getting outside is harder, erring towards shorter long rides is sensible.
• When conditions allow, extending slightly is a reasonable way to vary the stimulus and avoid stagnation.

Nutrition strategies

39:50 - 

• For sprint and Olympic distance racing, the nutrition approach is relatively straightforward given the shorter duration. A caffeine gel fifteen minutes before the race is a good starting point.
• On the bike, a carbohydrate or carbohydrate-electrolyte drink mix in one 500ml bottle covers a sprint, with a second bottle added for an Olympic.
• An additional gel on the bike may be appropriate for an Olympic distance, and one to two gels on the run depending on conditions and duration.
• For a sprint, a gel on the run may not be necessary at all. Total carbohydrate intake ends up moderate, which is appropriate for a race lasting around two hours.
• On a hot day, carrying a bottle with electrolytes — such as a high-strength electrolyte tablet dissolved in water — out of T2 is worth doing for an Olympic distance.
• Aid station cups rarely provide meaningful electrolytes, and getting something in early on the run before discarding the bottle at the first litter zone is a simple way to manage hydration in the heat. For a sprint, even in hot conditions, this is less critical.

Tapering for shorter races

42:00 -

• For sprint and Olympic distance, arriving fresh on race day matters more than it does for long course.
• The neuromuscular sharpness that comes from a proper taper — that pop and muscle tension — has a more direct impact on performance when the race is short and intense.
• In longer course racing, carrying a little more volume into race week can be beneficial for maintaining blood volume and aerobic adaptations, and the neuromuscular component is less decisive. For sprint and Olympic, the priority flips.
• The approach is to reduce volume more aggressively than in a long course taper while maintaining intensity.
• The volume of intensity drops, but the intensity itself does not.
• Given that the specific period for sprint and Olympic already involves less overall volume than a long course block, the percentage reduction in the taper may be somewhat smaller in absolute terms — but the end result should still be less total volume than a long course taper would produce.
• To put the tapering logic in concrete terms: two athletes training at 20 hours per week, one targeting a sprint and one targeting an Ironman, would taper differently.
• The sprint athlete drops volume more aggressively in absolute terms because freshness matters more.
• But if the sprint athlete is already training at 13 to 14 hours per week against the Ironman athlete's 20, the percentage reduction may actually be smaller — they simply end up at lower absolute numbers in race week because their starting point was already lower.
• One common mistake in the taper is being too conservative with intensity. Sessions in race week, particularly something like a 20-minute threshold effort on the bike two or three days before the race, should still feel like genuine work in the moment.
• The distinction is that recovery from them is quick — no meaningful fatigue carries into race day.
• Athletes, and beginners especially, sometimes drop intensity too far or do so little that they lose conditioning and feel across all three disciplines. 
• The taper should always be proportional to the training load going in.
• For a first-time sprint distance athlete on four weeks of unstructured training, there may be no taper at all — just consistent work up to race week, since nothing is being done is fatiguing enough to warrant one.

Equipment and technical considerations

46:51 - 

• On the bike, a more aggressive aero position is viable for sprint and Olympic distance in a way it is not for Ironman. The shorter duration makes it possible to hold a position that would break down over a full Ironman bike leg.
• These races also tend to feature more loops and technical courses rather than open roads, so bike handling competency matters more than it might for long course racing and is worth paying attention to in preparation.
• On transitions, racing without socks is worth considering for anyone chasing a strong performance. For most people, 10 kilometres of running without socks is manageable without blistering.
• Where there is a known problem area, gluing a blister plaster to the inside of the shoe before the race — particularly on the heel — is an effective precaution.
• Baby powder or any other friction-reducing measure can also help.
• Elastic laces are the natural companion to sockless racing, removing one more step from the transition entirely. Both are worth practising before race day rather than trying for the first time in competition.

Draft-legal racing insights

50:23 - 

• Draft legal racing demands a different approach across all three disciplines. The priority is straightforward: get out of the water with a pack, stay with a bike pack, and run as hard as possible.
• Transitions become far more consequential — losing a group by a few seconds can change everything, so speed through T1 and T2, including skills like flying mounts, needs to be practised deliberately.
• Even in non-draft racing, 20 seconds in a sprint distance transition can shift your position significantly in the results.
• The bike leg in draft legal racing is highly surgy. Attacks come on climbs and out of corners, with periods of relatively easy rolling in between.
• This demands a higher VLA max than non-draft racing and requires genuinely different training — not a complete replacement of the sessions discussed, but additional specific work targeting lactate tolerance and the ability to repeatedly surge and recover.
• Much of that needs to happen outdoors, practising accelerations out of corners on a technical course. The skills involved cannot be fully replicated on a trainer.

Pacing considerations

52:48 - 

• Olympic distance pacing spans an enormous range.
• The fastest athletes complete it in well under two hours, operating close to threshold the entire way, while others are out on course for four hours or more, which is effectively an ultra-distance effort in terms of physiological demand.
• Understanding where you sit in that range shapes how aggressive your pacing strategy should be. Athletes finishing under around two and a half hours can afford to approach it as a short, intense event.
• Those well above three hours need to treat it with considerably more respect and race conservatively.
• For athletes racing close to threshold, the cost of exceeding that line is steep.
• The glycolytic contribution and lactate accumulation increase rapidly once you go above it, and the ability to absorb even modest surges diminishes significantly. 
• In an Ironman, where effort is well below threshold, a five percent power surge carries a manageable metabolic cost. At Olympic distance intensity, the same surge is far harder to recover from.

Transition strategies

56:30 - 

• One underappreciated pacing variable is how an individual responds to surges on the bike and how that affects the run.
• There is substantial individual variation — some athletes run almost identically off a surgy bike as off a steady one, while others are severely affected.
• Knowing which category you fall into is valuable, which is one of the genuine reasons to include a couple of brick sessions in the specific block. In a non-draft race, that knowledge gives you direct control over your pacing strategy — you can choose how surged to ride.
• In draft legal racing, you have less control if you want to stay with a group, but at least you know what to expect and can work on it in training.
• The surges that matter most here are not the sustained efforts slightly above threshold on a climb, but the short, explosive accelerations out of corners — efforts at 150 to 250 percent of threshold power.
• These are primarily neuromuscular in nature, and for some athletes they have a disproportionate impact on running legs compared to more moderate intensity variation.

Sample training week

57:30 - 

• Three weeks out from an Olympic distance race, a sample week for a beginner to intermediate athlete built around three key sessions, with total volume of around 11 to 12 hours.
• The swim session was the race-simulation set described earlier — a 200 at get-out speed, four 100s at settling effort, and a 200 easy recovery, repeated twice.
• The athlete was doing their first open water mass start race, so preparing for the adrenaline and early chaos was the specific goal.
• The bike session was five by eight minutes outdoors, focused on holding an aerodynamic position with clip-on TT bars.
• The key cues were to surge slightly over climbs, out of corners, and into headwind sections to maximise speed — watts per CDA being the relevant output measure — while averaging around 90% of threshold across the intervals.
• The run session was done entirely to feel rather than pace, structured to reinforce a progressive finish.
• Three by six minutes at RPE 6 to 7 off two-minute jog recoveries, followed by three by three minutes at RPE 7 to 8 off one-and-a-half minute jogs. 
• The six-minute efforts were controlled; the three-minute efforts were meant to be meaningfully harder, matching the experience of finishing strong in a race.
• Outside the key sessions, the week included a two-and-a-half-hour easy ride, two additional swim sessions — one with speed builds across shorter 50s and 25s, one more technical in focus with paddle and band work — and two easy 45-minute runs, one of which became a run-walk to manage an ongoing Achilles issue.
• The longest bike of the week was the easy two-and-a-half-hour ride; the longest run was the session itself, coming in at 65 minutes.

Listener Questions

1:01:40 -

For average age groupers, do you suggest training differently for sprint versus Olympic?

The two distances are more similar than different. Sprint training carries a slightly higher intensity emphasis, shorter intervals, and marginally less total volume.

Why are short course athletes typically much lighter than long-course athletes?

The answer lies primarily on the bike. In draft legal racing, the decisive moments are the surges out of corners and over short climbs, where lighter athletes have a clear advantage. 

In between, athletes sit in the pack and any power advantage a heavier rider might have cannot be expressed. Long course is the opposite — a time trial where higher absolute power over distance matters more. 

The run also favours lighter athletes at elite speeds, but the bike is the larger factor.

Setting goal race pace: for example, what percentage of FTP to target on the bike?

Sprint maps onto threshold across all three disciplines. Olympic sits just below — sweet spot on the bike, open half marathon pace on the run. For less experienced athletes, those percentages come down.

After a period of Ironman racing, top-end speed feels blunted in sprint races. How possible is it to do both distances well?

Residual fatigue after an Ironman can linger longer than expected. The discomfort of short-course racing is also genuinely different and requires specific training exposure to tolerate on race day. 

The broader issue is Ironman-specific blocks that run too long — the cumulative fatigue extends the recovery needed before short-course performance returns. 

Block periodisation helps, as does maintaining some intensity year-round and keeping easy sessions genuinely easy when transitioning back to short-course work.

Key takeaways for athletes

1:12:42 - 

• Sprint and Olympic distance are still aerobic events — keep the volume in, but protect the key quality sessions by backing off the intensity of longer and easier work.
• Race intensity for most age groupers is threshold, not maximal efforts, and the specific preparation should reflect that.
• On the taper, freshness matters more than in long course, but maintaining quality intensity through race week is equally important and trickier to get right than many athletes expect.

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Chain lubrication (save watts and money) with Adam Kerin | EP#323