(applause)
- Morning Trainiacs, it is the last day
of my rest week before the final three week section
before half Ironman Puerto Rico.
So I'm just chilling out here for a couple hours
on the bike, and I thought what better opportunity
to have another edition of everyone's favorite
Thoughts From The Bike, and today,
we are going to go over the 10 most common mistakes
that new beginner triathletes make
when it comes to their bike training.
(electronic dance music)
So the first three issues are fairly related,
and they're all about getting the
right training intensity mix.
The first most common mistake that new triathletes make
when it comes to their bike training
is not going hard enough.
Now there should be at least one session
every single week that is like,
eyes popping out of your head intensity.
Like, I don't think that I can hold this for 30 seconds,
two minutes, five minutes, eight minutes,
and these workouts can be really really short,
these are like your hit workouts,
your high intensity workouts that you do
during the weekday, because they tend to be shorter,
we don't have much time during the week,
so we have a short really intense workout,
and what this does is it actually builds
your muscles, your arms and legs endurance ability,
as opposed to your heart and lungs endurance ability,
it makes your peripherals, legs, arms, strong.
It allows our legs and arms to process the oxygen
that we give it with another type of training.
That's the next issue.
The next most common mistake is that
new triathletes don't go easy enough enough of the time.
Somewhere around about 80% of your total training
over the course of an entire training year
should be at fairly low intensities.
This is what builds up your heart and lungs,
your central fitness, it's what allows
your cardiovascular system to be nice and fit.
Also, big benefit to this, is that it sheds
a fair bit of fat while you're doing it,
it keeps you injury free, and it builds
your base of fitness that allows you
to accept that really intense stuff,
and that race stuff later in the year.
All good, go easier, get faster.
The third thing that beginner triathletes
make a mistake on is also related to intensity,
and it's typically, left to our own devices,
triathletes will go and spend too much time
in what I call low ROI training.
This is zone three training, this is the gray zone training.
This is like, race pace training,
but triathletes spend way too much
time in this training zone.
Should be used sparingly around race season,
unfortunately, because it's a nice comfortably hard pace,
when left to our own devices, lot of endurance athletes
will spend as much as 50% of our time in this zone,
when it should be more like five to 10.
The reason that this is a mistake
is that because the intensity is hard enough
to do damage, but not hard enough to make us faster,
training in this zone over and over and over
digs us into a hole without actually
making us progress at all.
So use zone three race pace training sparingly,
close to races to sharpen up.
The next most common mistake that beginner triathletes make
with bike training is not going long enough.
Quite often, what beginner triathletes will do
is let's say they're training for an Olympic.
They'll go for a 25K bike, a 35K bike,
maybe build up to a 40K bike thinking,
hey, I can bike 40 kilometers,
I can do an Olympic distance race.
Well when you combine the 40 kilometers in the race
with race effort, and having to run after it
and swim before it, the endurance required
is significantly higher than that 40K.
Also, when you're riding a bike,
it's a great opportunity to build huge amounts of endurance
because it's low impact and we can
do it for a long period of time.
So that long long bike of, instead of 40K,
we're talking 60, 70, will help you
with your overall endurance to do the entire race,
not just be extremely strong on the bike
and get off fresh on the run.
Next most common mistake, and this is all the way
from beginner triathletes to even some pros,
is not spending a big enough focus on comfort on the bike.
About 80 to 85% of the total drag
that we have to push through the air
actually comes from our body, so if we can be
really comfortable on the bike,
and not necessarily be the most aerodynamic,
but be the most comfortable and stay
in an aerodynamic position for the entire bike ride,
not shift around, not look up, not move around on the seat,
but instead stay nice and steady
and have an even application of power,
that is going to be the most aerodynamic that you can be.
Get free speed, I've heard of people
having as much as a 16 minute game in time savings
over the course of an Ironman with no change in fitness
and just changing their bike position.
Related to that aerodynamics bike fit issue,
is that beginner triathletes will often get
a super long tail aerodynamic helmet,
thinking oh, that's gonna be the most free speed
that I can get with that helmet.
Well, fact of the matter is that even a lot of pros
will still look to the side, look down, look around,
and as you're doing that, that tail
is flipping around actually creating drag,
and that aero helmet with the long tail
is actually doing you more harm than it is good in total.
So there are a lot of pros that are realizing
that they haven't put in the work
to keep a steady head for hours and hours and hours on end,
and they are actually going to an aero short tail helmet.
Now next most common mistake might be odd to hear
as I'm sitting on the super bike of all super bikes,
the Ventum, but it's that new triathletes
focus on spending too much money on a bike,
and worry about having to spend
10 thousand dollars plus on a bike.
You can get a entry level, say like a Ventum Z
tri bike, slap on a one thousand dollar
set of aero wheels, clean up a little bit of the cables,
make sure the cables are zip tied nice and close,
get some race tires on those wheels,
and mount the bottles and your nutrition
in aerodynamic positions, and boom,
you have about 95% of the bike
that you need to go as fast as possible.
Beyond that, spending thousands and thousands
and tens of thousands of dollars,
is kinda just more of a luxury
without giving you as much benefit
as those first, say, four or five thousand dollars
to set up a really really good bike.
Now the next most common issue is
not having a properly fitted race suit.
Cam Wurf talked about this in the
How to Bike with Cam Wurf Masterclass
that I've spent the last couple days editing,
- Ooh, you're falling!
- And he said that if he had a thousand dollars to spend,
and only a thousand dollars to spend
on improving his performance by buying speed,
he would probably spend about six or seven hundred
out of it on a really well fitted aerodynamic suit.
Oh, again!
And he actually talked about some of the studies
that have shown that even just having
something over top of your skin
is more aerodynamic than skin itself,
which is why you see athletes like Lucy Charles
wearing socks that come all the way up to her knees,
it's to get that skin area gone,
and getting rid of all the folds
and extra material that flaps around
is going to make a huge benefit
to your overall aerodynamics.
Remember, 80 to 85% of our drag is our body.
So the more aerodynamic we can make that body,
the more aerodynamic we're going to be overall.
The next most common issue that
beginner triathletes don't address
when it comes to bike training is poor nutrition.
Long race specific rides are the time
to start dialing in your nutrition for the race.
Whereas beginner triathletes often think
of race nutrition as a complete afterthought,
and three weeks before the race hear,
oh, yeah, okay, what should I do?
Mmm, now I've gotta start thinking about nutrition.
I'll go to the bike shop and get a whole bunch of stuff,
or fill their bottles with Gatorade,
'cause that's gonna give them a superpower.
But, what happens is, their stomach
isn't yet trained to accept any of that,
so while it might even be the right race nutrition,
it's the wrong race nutrition for
that gut at that point in time.
And I actually did an entire video series about this,
and there's a free supplement that you can get
by going to triathlontaren.com/triathlonnutritionguide,
that walks you through how to figure out
your entire race nutrition plan,
which you just then try doing in training.
Particularly on a bike.
And then the final mistake that beginner triathletes make
with bike training, is really common,
and that's not following up enough bikes
with a brick run afterwards.
A lot of beginner triathletes think,
well, if I can swim the distance,
if I can bike the distance, if I can
run the distance, I'm totally fine.
Or they might even be doing longer than the distance,
and they think, oh I'm totally fine.
Well that reroute of bloodflow
going from the bike to the run,
is a huge toll on your body, and you gotta train
your body to reroute that bloodflow really quickly,
or it's gonna feel like somebody put cement
into your legs in transition too.
So at very least, you've gotta do somewhere around
six workouts before your first race
going from the bike to the run as quickly as possible.
So you go Trainiacs, those are ten of the biggest mistakes
that you can make as a beginner triathlete,
but one of the big things to know about all this,
is everyone makes mistakes in their first race.
Everyone makes mistakes in their 10th year of racing.
We are all constantly learning,
and that's one of the coolest things about triathlon,
is that it keeps you always progressing,
learning, trying new things, so don't feel
like you've gotta get this right in your first season,
your second season, your 10th race,
it's all a learning process and that's part of the fun
of triathlon, no matter what, make sure that you enjoy it,
and make sure that you're subscribed
so that you learn along with us.
Alright, later Trainiacs.