Shownotes

Opening and Updates

00:30 -

• I have been dealing with a strange lower leg niggle, not shin splints but something more muscular on the outside of the shin bone, possibly an anterior compartment issue around the tibialis anterior.
• I have physio booked, and in the meantime I have been spending good time on ROUVY for the shorter training windows, getting some short and sharp sessions in and exploring the new Azores courses.
• That is the great thing about doing three disciplines, there is usually always something else you can do.
• I have a big mountain race in Andorra next weekend, and after putting a rough FTP estimate into TrainingPeaks and ROUVY and seeing how low the number was, I am motivated to combine a bit more biking with the running once I am back. I miss the bike a lot, and even the swim, so some open water swimming is on the cards this summer.

 Jack's volume base

03:20 -

• I got in 28 hours last week and will not build much beyond that for now, instead adding intensity back in over the coming weeks.
• I had not lost much fitness, since the break was really a couple of weeks of doing bits and pieces around the arrival of his baby, with a very supportive partner making the return possible.

Race-Day Priorities

04:55 -

• The main topic of the episode is the ten most important things for maximizing your performance on race day.
• To clarify the scope, these are things you can actually impact out on the race course, from very close to the starting gun until you cross the finish line. It has nothing to do with the training leading in, it is all about what you do on the day itself.
• The first and arguably most important one is pacing. You cannot win the race in the first half, but you can definitely lose it by overcooking things too early.
• The harder you go, the more lactate you produce, the more carbohydrate you burn, and the more likely you are to blow up later, and no amount of carbs taken in can out-eat poor pacing.
• A useful way to approach it is to treat the entire day as being about getting to the last quarter of the run in good enough shape to still run strong.
• That will not be the fastest part of the day, but holding that idea in the back of your mind lets you take in every minute of the race with more control.
• Unless you are quite advanced, you should feel well in control for almost all of the day, and when you are not, technique and efficiency tend to drop too.
• There is some nuance in that you have swim arms, bike legs and run legs, meaning you can often push slightly harder in each discipline than if you were doing that discipline alone for the full race duration, since you start the bike with fresh legs and the run uses slightly different muscles again. 
• Broadly, the day should feel controlled for the majority, start to feel pretty hard around the third quarter, and really start to bite in the last quarter.
• There is also a physics perspective worth understanding. At the speeds most amateurs run, you get a roughly linear return in speed for any increase in effort.
• On the bike that is not the case, because aerodynamic drag means a given increase in power returns much less extra speed, and on the swim it is even more pronounced because water is around 800 times denser than air.
• That is why it pays to be able to run well, and why the old saying goes bike for show, run for dough.
• Even in pro racing, when somebody appears to win a race on the bike, they still pace well enough to run well off it. Nobody over-bikes, blows up and still wins.
• And with amateur speeds rising, the point becomes ever more relevant.

Pace by feel 

11:29 -

• My first item is pacing to RPE. That does not mean ignoring other metrics. I recommend having power on the head unit on the bike and pace on the watch on the run, with heart rate also collected and used to varying degrees depending on the athlete and circumstances.
• But the primary metric guiding your intensity should be RPE. There is no situation where a single number like 250 watts or four minutes per kilometre makes sense as a fixed target, because you cannot know in advance exactly how you will feel on race day.
• There is a lot of false precision in racing, including in articles prescribing certain percentages of FTP for different distances.
• Set things up as ranges in your pre-race plan, use race-specific sessions in training to find where within the range you tend to fall, and treat that as a starting point.
• On race day you might feel much better having shed fatigue, or worse because a hard swim and bike make the run feel different from training.
• The best way to maximize performance on a good day, or salvage a decent race on a bad one, is to have your numbers available but really understand how close you are to the limit of what you can sustain.
• There are two further reasons to race primarily to RPE.
• Equipment malfunctions happen, whether the power meter fails to connect or tall buildings make the satellite signal and pace data unreliable, and if you race often enough it will happen to you.
• And environmental conditions can change more than you prepared for, such as unexpectedly hot races, where you need to let go of the numbers you trained to and pace by feel.
• The way to get good at it is to start in your very next race and improve with every race after that. There is a reason the best pros in the world, with the best teams, coaches and physiologists behind them, still build their race plans around RPE.
• Power ranges for different sections and caps for the first half of the run have their place, but RPE is the guiding light.
• If an athlete comes back to me having abandoned the prescribed power range because it genuinely felt like the right call, I will tell them they did the right thing even if it ended poorly, because on another day it could have paid off and they learned something either way.
• The caveat is that someone who has gone purely by feel and walked ten runs in a row could probably stand to be a bit more strict.

Fuel and hydrate

17:01 -

• The next big one is carbohydrates and hydration, and it helps to split them up.
• Borrowing the Precision framing of levers, you have carbohydrates on one lever, hydration on another and electrolytes on a third, each with its own plan and each adjustable independently, rather than lumping everything together and losing control. 
• In a race scenario you can fix dehydration. I have been in plenty of races cramping towards the back end of the bike or the start of the run, knowing hydration had not gone well, and been able to rally by getting fluid and electrolytes down based on what I knew I was lacking.
• Overdoing the electrolytes slightly on the bike means the run can be just water, and a lifetime best performance is still possible.
• Carbohydrates do not work the same way. Once you are properly lacking and bonking, you can recover to an extent but not to the same degree, so there is far less room to be reactive.
• The most important thing is a clear plan going in for all the levers, built with your coach or with a resource like the race planning tools on the Precision website, practiced in training, and then stuck to on the day. The specifics of what to take vary so much between individuals, and with heat, humidity, intensity and tolerance, that the universal advice is simply to have a plan and follow it, with small adjustments on the fly.
• Beyond the cramping example, another adjustable scenario is the onset of GI issues, which can often be solved by getting more plain water on board, since the cause is frequently too high a concentration of carbohydrate relative to fluid intake.
• Even something like losing focus, such as suddenly realizing a turn was coming up on the bike and you were not paying attention, can be an early sign that you need another gel to get glucose to the brain. Learning to recognize these signals lets you make real-time tweaks that protect your race. 

Bike speed secrets

21:42 -

• My second item is maximizing your speed on the bike, and there are a few factors.
• Number one by far is staying in aero. In an Ironman especially, watch the second or third lap or the final 60 to 80 kilometres and you see more and more people sitting up for longer and longer on flat sections where they really should not be. 
• Some of that comes down to bike fit or training that cannot be fixed on race day, but often it is a creeping desire to change position without actually needing to, and it can even be a sign of declining cognitive function and a cue to take another gel.
• As a rule, at around 25 kilometres per hour and above, roughly 16 to 17 miles per hour, you want to be staying in aero, while below that, particularly on climbs, you lose little by taking a break from the position.
• The second factor is knowing how to distribute your power over a course. The takeaway is to push more power when your speed is slowest and less when it is fastest.
• This follows from the same physics discussed earlier, since aerodynamic drag means you do not get a linear speed return on power.
• Going uphill, into a strong headwind, out of a U-turn or over the crest of a hill, your speed is low and the power you push goes mostly into acceleration, which gives a strong return on investment.
• Going downhill, push less than your average.
• Taken to the extreme, a computer simulation of a rolling, technical course would spit out a wildly variable optimal power profile that has you sprinting out of every corner, which is not the way to go because you will blow up by the end of the bike or on the run, and you probably have not trained that way. 
• The skill is finding the balance where you maximize speed with a somewhat variable power profile without blowing your legs up, and over time raising the ceiling of how far you can take it.
• Really good cyclists and triathletes are not necessarily pushing much higher average power, they just spend it very wisely.
• Cam Wurf is a great example of someone whose power is not necessarily higher than other pros but who knows exactly where to use it, and Sam Laidlow has very high power in an Ironman and is also excellent at knowing where to push.
• The third factor is being self-sufficient to minimize slowdowns at aid stations. The fewer times you have to slow down and grab a bottle, the better.
• My preference is to carry all of your nutrition in your bottles and a bento box from the start. For a half distance you may not need to grab anything at all, unless you are out there longer or it is very hot, in which case a bottle of water or electrolytes might be needed.
• In an Ironman you will always need extra fluid bottles, but the carbs can all be on board from the start. And whatever you do, do not stop at an aid station.
• Know what you need, slow down, grab it and keep moving. On top of all that, technical riding matters, especially on the lap-based courses that are increasingly common.
• Staying smooth and relaxed through corners and technical descents, limiting time on the brakes, taking the right lines and using the whole lane to minimize the drop in speed is easier said than done without experience, but there is a lot to be gained from it.

Swim Smart

28:28 -

• In a similar vein, the next one is maximizing speed on the swim. There is probably not quite as much to be gained as on the bike, but people do not realize how much a technically savvy swimmer can gain.
• The biggest element is the line you take. The drone footage of amateur athletes swimming all over the place is familiar to everyone, and you can add hundreds of metres over an Ironman swim that way, so sight every six to ten strokes and take the most direct line around the course.
• Drafting in the swim is also very valuable.
• If people around you are at a similar pace or slightly faster, sitting on feet or in the group can save a lot of time, and even if it feels slightly easier than swimming alone, it is usually a worthwhile investment, because just as on the bike, an increase in effort does not translate to speed the way it does on the run.
• That reminds me of something I forgot to mention on the bike, which is that legal drafting, at 12 metres front wheel to front wheel, is another genuine source of free speed there.
• Tied to the shortest line is how you handle buoys. Most people leave quite a big gap and do not swim close to the buoy, so you can often slip up the inside, and if you are side by side with someone going into a buoy, the swimmer on the inside automatically comes out with a body length advantage.
• So avoid overtaking on the outside going into a buoy, and take the inside line when it is there.
• The start also cannot be overstated, especially in mass starts, which include a lot of local races and even amateur championship races starting within age groups. 
• Getting out in the front group, not necessarily the very front, means being dragged around to a much quicker swim.
• Check the entry if it is a beach start, know where to line up, how long to keep running, what the bottom is like, when to porpoise and when to start swimming, and be efficient through any exits or Aussie exits.
• Even for a deep water start, positioning matters. Despite everything said about pacing, it is worth burning a match at the beginning of the swim to get into a good position.
• The take-home message is that you do not have to be the fittest swimmer to be among the fastest, and plenty of swimmers are far better in open water because of these technical aspects than their pure pool speed would suggest.
• That race craft is one of the most exciting things about the swim.
• One more addition is that if you have a dominant breathing side, factor it into where you position yourself on the start line.
• In most cases it is best to be breathing towards where most of the field is rather than away from it, because otherwise you can drift away from the field without realizing and lose the chance to draft on someone's hip. 
• My own preference has always been to start on the far left side almost regardless of the race setup, because I feel much more comfortable overlooking the entire field to my right, which is my dominant side.
• You do have to trust that the course is fair, since some start lines clearly favour one side, but on a straight beach line with the first turn buoy a few hundred metres out, the extra distance from starting well off to one side versus directly in front of it is barely a handful of metres.

Racing in the Heat

36:02 -

• My number three is learning to adjust your racing for the heat, which is especially relevant heading into peak summer racing season, and a given in places like Kona.
• This is strictly about race day, not heat preparation. By far the biggest adjustment is pacing.
• On a really hot day you should probably be slightly more conservative even than you think you should be, particularly without much experience racing in heat, and the longer the race the more true that is.
• This is a scenario where I would lean heavily on RPE, with heart rate elevated to a more important supporting role than in temperate conditions, including setting heart rate caps based on your zones that you do not want to exceed. The effort needs to feel more comfortable than you think it should.
• Beyond pacing, increase both fluid and electrolyte intake, because you will lose more and need to replace more.
• If you have done sweat rate testing across different temperatures and conditions, you can draw on that database, and otherwise you can extrapolate from whatever conditions you did test in and assume a considerably higher sweat rate in real heat.
• Ice is valuable where available.
• Ingesting ice is probably the only method that actually affects core temperature, making it the most powerful option, while holding ice or placing it in strategic places is more debated and the evidence for a genuine performance effect is less clear, but it feels good and it is free at the aid stations, so it is worth doing. 
• The best locations are where you have plenty of superficial blood vessels, with the groin and the femoral arteries top of the list if your trisuit allows, along with holding it in your hands, while the armpits are effective in principle but hard to keep ice in.
• Finally, water dousing over the head and skin maximizes evaporative cooling, and a recent meta-analysis of around 26 studies showed a positive impact on performance, interestingly without a demonstrated reduction in core temperature, which would be the hypothesized mechanism.
• Most people douse naturally in the heat, but if you do not, take it up as a deliberate tactic.

Know the Course 

41:01 -

• The next one is knowing the course and the transition flow.
• Every year there are high-profile examples of professionals taking wrong turns and ruining their day, and while being in the middle of the bell curve with people around you offers some protection, you should never blindly trust the marshals or the athletes in front of you, because people take wrong turns all the time.
• On the swim it matters even more, since it is so hard to see what is going on from low in the water, so know which colour buoys you keep on your left, which on your right, and how many there are.
• Knowing where the aid stations are should be factored into your nutrition plan, and even when it is not, if a bottle flies out on the bike you need to know when the next aid station comes so you can decide whether you can get by without stopping.
• Beyond the swim, bike and run maps, study the transition flow.
• Almost all races publish maps of T1 and T2, and knowing where you come in from the swim, where you go, where you exit with the bike and the same for T2 is extremely valuable, because coming out of the water your brain is not working properly and not having to think is a real advantage.
• Some races are honestly confusing, so do not trust that it will be obvious.
• The best-known example of a triathlete taking a wrong turn is our friend and colleague James Teagle, whose wrong turn at the death of a race went viral, along with the very sportsmanlike athlete who stopped before the finish line to let him pass.
• I have done it myself, most memorably on the bike the first year I did Challenge Lisbon, a tricky one because it was on a freeway you could not ride before the race.
• Even when you cannot access the course, you can preview it with Google Maps and Google Earth, and nowadays you can ride most Ironman and Challenge courses on ROUVY. 
• One more thing worth knowing is where the penalty tents are, in case you pick up a penalty.

Mental Race Control 

45:17 -

• My next item is your mental performance, everything that goes into your psychology on race day. There is a lot to it, depending on the type of race, your goal, and your individual psychological profile, including whether you tend to go too hard or too easy, and it could fill a couple of episodes on its own.
• The most common mistake I see is letting previous setbacks in the race get to you and affect everything that follows. If you take only one thing from this, stay present.
• Practical problems need resolving, like replacing a dropped bottle, but if you took a wrong turn on the swim and lost a few minutes, it is easy to sulk and then fail to get the best out of yourself from T1 to the finish.
• That is the moment to decide you are going to have the best rest of your race you possibly can.
• How you do that comes down to motivation. If you only have external motivations, a target time, a position, a Kona slot, then as soon as the setback takes those away, you may lose the drive to have a great race from that point onwards.
• If you puncture on the bike, reach T2 out of the hunt for the Kona slot that was your only goal, how likely are you to have a good marathon?
• Quite unlikely, and the longer the race the more unlikely. So build in process goals and internal motivations. One that works for me is simply remembering how good it feels to cross the finish line knowing you gave it everything, good race or bad, and reminding yourself of that mid-race.
• The distance plays a role too. In an Ironman or a 70.3 the mental strategy is more about holding yourself back early, while in a sprint it may be about managing the redline.
• Beyond that, segment the race into bite-sized chunks, one lap at a time on looped courses, or one mile or one aid station to the next on an Ironman marathon, with the chunks getting smaller and smaller towards the end.
• Use self-talk, where the research is good, leaning more instructional early on, particularly in the technical environment of the swim, and more motivational towards the end of the bike and especially the run, keeping it specific and ideally in the second or third person, which research suggests is more effective than first person.
• Focus on yourself more than on what is happening around you, on you swimming, biking and running, which in psychological terms is keeping an internal rather than external locus of control.
• And finally, be prepared to push to your maximum when performance matters, which in a long race means the very end, perhaps the final eight kilometres of an Ironman or the last 10 to 12 of a 70.3, or the entire duration of a sprint.
• It will hurt, but you can maintain it for longer than you think you can, provided you are motivated and have not burned all your matches earlier.

Transition Efficiency 

51:30 -

• The next point is transitions, and the mindset to carry in is that they are not a break between the legs.
• Keep moving and optimize everything you can to maintain forward momentum, with the caveat that you should be confident and comfortable with each technique, so do not attempt shoes clipped to the bike if it is going to make you anxious going into the race.
• Everyone has to get the wetsuit off, so practice doing it quickly.
• Put lubricant beneath the legs and around the ankles so it slides off, make sure you can reach your Velcro and know how to pull it, and pull the top half down as you come out of the water while keeping hat and goggles on your head so your hands are free, then remove them once the suit is at your waist and keep running.
• At your transition bag, take the helmet and number belt out and put your swim kit in, but rather than standing there putting them on, do it while running to your bike, since some Ironman races give you another 300 to 400 metres to cover anyway.
• Just make sure the helmet is on and done up before you touch the bike, because that is a penalty.
• With shoes clipped to the bike, the important thing is to mount, get up to speed and only then worry about getting your feet fully in and the Velcro done.
• Slipping the feet straight in and pedalling works, as does pedalling on top of the shoes and then putting each foot in by turns.
• What you see a lot of people do instead is mount, take a couple of pedal strokes and then start fiddling with Velcro while rolling at a crawl, which wastes speed and is sketchy, since going that slowly while looking down with one hand on the bars means weaving across the road and probably cutting someone up. 
• The caveat is the course, because if an eight kilometre climb starts 500 metres out of transition, you want your feet sorted earlier.
• In reverse, choose your moments to get your feet out coming into T2, ideally at corners where you are easing off and braking anyway, slipping one foot out and then the other, and earlier rather than later. 
• Getting feet out while riding is easier than getting them in, so athletes who do not like the shoes-on mount can still ride out of the shoes into T2, since it is not all or nothing.
• For the run, have your socks opened up and ready inside the shoes rather than bunched at the bottom of the bag, and use elastic laces so everything slips on quickly.
• On watches, the biggest crime of T1 is wearing your watch on top of your wetsuit sleeve.
• One school of thought says no watch until the run at all, since you have the head unit on the bike and should not be looking at a watch while swimming anyway, and a watch adds weight on the arm and interferes with the neoprene.
• My own preference is to wear it under the wetsuit set up for the run only, so there is nothing to put on in T2, although I have not tested whether it costs a watt or two aerodynamically, and with modern front-end designs it probably does not.
• A good related tip is to start the activity with auto pause enabled and leave the watch in your T2 bag, so it starts automatically when you run and you can crop out the T2 portion later, bearing in mind that a long run out of transition means finishing the race at 21.5 rather than 21.1 kilometres on the watch.
• A couple of final tips are that depending on your wetsuit, cutting the legs a bit shorter can help it come off, and while you have the scissors out, cutting open the tongues of stubborn super shoes makes them far easier to slip into, something both of us did with the Alphaflys.
• Lastly, think about gearing when you rack your bike, so that it is already in the right gear for whatever climb or descent comes out of transition.

Race Dynamics 

1:00:20 -

• My final item is understanding your race dynamics, meaning the dynamics specific to the race you are doing, the athlete you are, and the goals you have.
• Are you looking to complete the race, or to compete, whether in your age group or at the front of the overall field?
• Many bigger races now have rolling starts, and if you are not starting right towards the front, among the first bunches of six athletes going off together, your race will almost always effectively be an individual time trial, because that is the fastest way for you to get from start to finish.
• But if you want to compete at the front, or you are a strong swimmer or biker, you probably want to seed yourself right towards the front of the rolling start, where you can benefit from drafting fast swimmers and from the legal bike dynamics, getting more speed out of your effort.
• To be very clear, you should never seed yourself in a corral that does not reflect your actual swimming ability. If your race plan would benefit from a more forward seeding, the answer is to train more and swim faster, which is one scenario where swimming becomes a real focus.
• If you have a strong bike without a strong swim, getting to the front of where you can realistically be in the water at least minimizes the number of cyclists blocking you from going fast from the start of the bike.
• With mass starts or bigger wave starts, group dynamics play a much larger role, and honestly those are the most fun races compared to rolling starts.
• There, burning a match early on can pay off by putting you in a faster swimming group and a faster biking group, but you need to know how many matches you have, which comes back to pacing, and the better trained you are, the more matches you have to burn.
• If you are simply trying to complete your first Ironman, do not get involved in any of this and treat it as an individual time trial, and in many other cases the race is still mainly a time trial.
• But where there is a mass start, or where you want to be competitive towards the front end, understanding the dynamics and where your strengths and weaknesses fit, and using the swim and bike dynamics to your advantage, is something to think about deliberately.
• For anyone who has not done a mass start race, seeking one out is well worth it for the fun alone, and the shorter distances at least tend to still have bigger wave starts, something that is becoming rarer at longer distances.

Final Reflections 

1:04:50-

• To finish, a point about perspective. All ten of these things are genuinely important, but a lot of people put too much blame or emphasis on race-day execution, or even the taper, when a race does not go their way.
• The three or four months, or years, leading into race day still have the biggest impact on your performance. This episode is about maximizing your performance on race day, but the performance itself is made in the months and years before it.
• Even performing in the heat largely comes down to fitness, since the fitter you are, the better you cope even without specific heat training, and the same goes for pacing, where fitness gives you more matches to burn and more room for the dynamic pacing described earlier.
• Fitness is the solution to almost everything.
• Take Kristian Blummenfelt, give him the hottest day ever, no water, no carbs, awful pacing and bad execution, and he is still going to beat almost everyone.

LINKS & RESOURCES

• The effect of additional skin wetting on physiological strain and exercise performance: systematic review and meta-analysis - Anderson et al. 2026