- Right many of probably love the idea
of sub-eight hour Iron Man.
Now for our male professional triathletes,
that's kind of become the Holy Grail.
And for our females, it's the impressive sub-nine hours.
Now if you're like me,
that seems pretty mind boggling.
Now the bike actually takes up the largest percentage
of the overall race.
So they're clearly doing something
pretty special on the bike.
But I'm interested to find out how they're doing that,
what they're doing in their training
to ride such fast bike times.
Today, I am actually joined
by professional triathlete Will Clarke.
- Hey buddy.
How you doing? - Good to see you man.
Now Will is actually one of those members
of the sub-eight hour club.
Not once, but twice. - Twice.
- Yeah, and actually one of the only athletes
to have competed in all the major games and championships.
So, the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games,
you've done the Iron Man 70.3 World Champs,
Iron Man World Champs.
- Yeah man, long career, done the IT stuff.
- Pretty impressive.
Now Will, how on earth do you do it?
- Yeah, I'm not gonna give away all my secrets today,
but I thought we could run through
one of the sessions that I found
really useful the past few years,
to give me some extra grunt on the bike.
Shall we crack on and get warmed up?
- Let's do it.
- Cool.
(music)
- Right, well we're warming up at the moment,
and what is the plan of the session today,
what's the idea behind it?
- So today we warm up for about 15 to 20 minutes.
And we're gonna ride six times six minutes
at sweet spot which is 88 to 92% of the FTP,
so your hour power.
- [Mark] Okay.
- [Will] We're gonna do around 55 to 65 RPM.
I mean, if you're someone who struggles
with these for example, then you want to ride
at a slightly higher cadence to protect your knees,
so it's too cold. - Yeah.
Okay, so what are the benefits of this then?
- So there's perfect strength and endurance training.
Ideally after a lot of weeks of building up on this
you'll start to feel really good.
Start to feel some real torque in your legs,
- Okay. - And really strong.
It's also your 70.3 pace, pretty much.
So this is perfect training for that,
perfect strength for the legs. - Yeah.
- [Will] Really good session.
- [Mark] And then how much recovery will we take
between each of the reps?
- So for this I like to break into ten minute blocks,
so six minutes on
and four minutes recovery spinning at
a high cadence of around 90, ideally 100 will be great.
- Okay, in total how long would this whole session take?
- So this is about 60 minutes worth of work there.
So 15 minutes either side, that's a 90 minute session.
- Half hour's great for fitting in
around people's work and... - Also great for the October
Without getting too bored.
- Super, alright well let's get to this hill
and let's get going.
Alright Will, first rep done six minutes over gear
nice meaty gear,
so we're looking for quite a low cadence here?
- That's right, around 55 to 60 RPM.
- And are we gonna stay in the aero bars
as much as possible for this?
- Yeah, we're gonna ride as aggressive as possible
during these to really lock in that position.
- Awesome, all right.
Let's go.
(energetic music)
- So, good start, phew.
- And nice easy gear now. - Alright, knock it down.
Alright, so that's six minutes down,
about four minute recovery.
And we're off again? - Yeah.
- So far so good then, that's not too hard.
- It's not meant to be a session
that's gonna completely kill you.
I mean, you should feel a little bit
like you've been doing weights.
- Yeah.
- After this, so it's really good strength in the legs.
Won't knock you out. - I imagine by the...
I imagine by the sixth rep
I'm gonna be feeling it a little bit.
- By the sixth rep you should be holding on
because at the end of the day,
it's still a pretty high power.
320 watts roughly is what you want to do for this.
- Okay, that's our recovery over, now for the second rep.
Three, two, one.
This is great session for building strength,
but as with anything, this should be built up with time.
You can start out with something like
six lots of three minutes over gear,
with a longer recovery between each rep,
of around 7 minutes.
Now we're doing this with a cadence of 55 to 65 RPM.
But if you're starting out,
then you can do it with a cadence of 75 RPM
to condition yourself better.
Then as you progress this session,
you can start to increase the rep length
to something like six lots of six minutes,
as we're doing here.
And then even to something like four lots of eight minutes
with a shorter recovery of around two minutes.
(music)
Three, two, one, done.
Alright, second rep down,
nice easy gears spinning,
Okay, ready for the third rep?
Three, two, one, off you go,
(energetic music)
Okay, I'm starting to feel it a little bit now.
- It creeps up on you, eh?
- It does, yeah.
Now you say about trying to stay in the aero bars
for as much as possible.
Why are we trying to do that?
- It's just obviously that's the position that we race in,
so it's really specific muscle development
in that aero position,
really learning to push up the gear and push a hard gear
and work on that position.
It's only short reps so, I mean
it's a nice amount of time for you to really
concentrate on holding good position
so you can really focus on pushing it down and out
in that nice tail position.
At the end of the day, there's as many aero gains to make
as physical gains, so it's really important
to practise both in your training.
- Okay, full frack, ready and go.
(music)
A really key area to focus on with over gearing
is that you stay planted and solid in the saddle.
There is a tendency to move around
in the saddle with these sessions,
almost shifting and tilting the hips
from side to side to help generate power.
But this is actually a really inefficient way of riding,
and won't allow you to get as much benefit from the session.
You still want to think of your legs as pistons
whilst your bum stays seated still in the saddle.
- [Will] This is a session that you really want
to be able to do it on a terrain that's allowing you
to ride to allocated a downhill tail wind.
It's hard to ride at 60 RPM but still getting the power out.
So ideally you want to kind of take a moment
to do this so you're doing it into headwind
with no uphill slightly,
or indeed this is kind of best to do on the turbo but
I'm not really a turbo man,
so I prefer to go outside and muster out
amongst all the fertiliser on the road
and the mud on the potholes.
- Right, well on that note,
fifth rep coming up.
Three, two, one, up you go.
(upbeat music)
I have to say this session didn't sound like much,
but by the fifth and sixth rep,
my legs were really starting to feel it.
It's one of those sessions that creeps up on you big time.
As we start to tyre, we have to focus more on our form,
making sure we don't sway from side to side,
instead staying solid so that we generate
all the power from our legs.
That has a number of benefits as Will explains.
(music)
- [Will] Just think of that back half of the race
where no one's fresh anymore,
everyone's getting tired, everyone's getting heavy legs.
And we've been growing these pistons over the winter,
so we're more than ready for that last...
- That's actually a really
important topic in triathlons,
is that back end fatigue.
It's not like we're doing one discipline,
and we sprint for the line.
You know after the bike, we've still got to run,
so this almost is kind of training us for the run as well,
in our strength so..
- You have to remember that everyone's fresh in the silos
in the first 20 40 kilos on the bike.
It's that back end where you really made a big dent
on everyone else.
It's amazing how quickly you can move through the field
in an Iron Man in the 70.3,
if you're still fresh at the end.
So it's really important to try and make the split,
or even split the bike,
so you're not getting off completely netted.
- Right, thanks very much Will.
That was a great session.
I've got to say that really crept up on my towards the end.
- It's good to have you back out.
It's definitely a session that gets you
a lot of bang for your buck.
It's worked for me in the past.
Once you've been doing a bunch of these,
you can really feel the extra torque in the legs,
which is fantastic for this time of yeah
going into your race season.
- Yeah, and the beauty is, it took us
relatively level time through the whole session.
That was great.
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