Improve Your Ironman Performance

Posted by Mohit J.
6
Oct 20, 2022
93 Views

You might have just done a triathlon and are not happy with your results or you might have just signed up for one and are looking at how to do your best. As well as having an Ironman or cycle coach as part of your training, here are three tips on each section to help you see those better results.

Improving your swim performance

Getting ironman coaching is a great way to prepare for the event and to improve your performance. You also need to get yourself in a good swimming position in this part of the race. Too often races will allow the swim part to affect them negatively and put them in a bad head space leading them to make bad choices in the bike and run sections of the race. You can do things like swimming on the inside of the buoys as this helps avoid a lot of problems such as elbows in the face since more people will swim outside them. You can also choose to sight off landmarks on shore that are stationary rather than off the buoys as it is easier. Also rather than drafting on the feet of the swimmer in front of you, you could draft on the hips so you do not get kicked in the face.

Improving your bike performance

In a standard Ironman event, the majority of competitors spin at 60 to 70 rpm or less if they are going uphill. Usually, this is because they do not know how to use the gears on their bikes properly or they do not realise they are not using them properly because of fatigue, or they might not even have the right bike gears at all. In your training as well as having a cycle coach you need to work on and focus on those gears and make sure you keep your cadence at more than 80 rpm. Even better if you can keep it at 85 to 95 rpm even when going up hills.

Improving your run performance

When you reach the run event things can start to get foggy, especially about 6 miles in. As you run past the aid stations offering gels, soups, and so on it can be hard to know whether you have fueled up enough, what you have taken and what the plan is at this stage. It is important as part of your ironman coaching that you prepare for this so you are not left without the fuel you need to complete the race. You need to be able to calculate what you have consumed and how that converts to the fuel you need to keep going. Often athletes are doubled over in pain at this stage but they can't tell whether it is from eating too little or from mixing the wrong foods. Train your mind to do the calculation even when you are this tired.

Summary

By following the above tips you can help achieve better run times and you can feel better as you race.

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