Emma's Weekly Tips

Dear Athletes,

This week we are going to take a look at the bike.

You will recall from previous emails, it is possible to develop your race IQ so you can make easy time gains, just by racing better and smarter. Just as a reminder, I have designed my emails not around a specific race, instead around as many scenarios as I can cover that you will find in races.

Last week it was also outlined that as no two athletes are the same, these emails when discussing a discipline will always consider three athlete scenarios –

1. Athlete A will be a strong athlete in that discipline.  
2. Athlete B will be an athlete who has a weakness in that discipline.
3. Athlete C will be an athlete who is young or inexperienced in that discipline.

It is important to note that when testing each discipline specifically, Athlete A on the bike may not be Athlete A in the swim from last week. We are not considering the same athlete in each discipline, rather we are considering the same advantages/disadvantages athletes may possess in each discipline.

Today we take a look in detail at the bike and the important skill of making the bike count in triathlon. This is not a ‘save your legs for the run’ section of the race rather the bike is the longest section on the race (both in distance and time spent) and is therefore vital to racing triathlon well.

Assuming the athlete has been tested (see 17 March email), and we have established Athlete A, B & C as the profiled athletes.

KEY MESSAGE - In every discipline there are key skills EVERY athlete must develop.

As with every discipline in triathlon, there are some key requirements regarding bike equipment.

Firstly, you must understand the bike and take time to do this – don’t just do what others are doing, or what your training partners are doing. Your bike is an extension of you and it is vital it feels that way. There are some key equipment decisions that triathletes must consider. These may not be accepted by pure cycling coaches, but a pure cycling coach does not need to consider their athlete running well off the bike.

The following are some considerations you must make

Frame Size

A smaller frame will always be more responsive If you have a choice of bike frame – always select a smaller frame over a larger one. This doesn’t mean find the smallest bike you can find and expect to go fast. A ‘small’ frame will allow you to hold your drops, shift forward on your seat slightly as if you were chasing or attacking on the bike and you can clearly see your front wheel hub. With this type of fit you are able to manoeuvrer the bike beneath you and control it with your body weight.

Gearing - know what gears you have setup

You should know which gears you are most effective in, you should know what gear combinations you need in hills courses for different gradients and you should also know what gears you can push for a sustained period of time. You should also adapt your gearing to suit courses, and avoid always riding the same combination of gears. Compact gearing was developed for cyclists, not triathletes and a typical WT triathlon course does require you to summit mountainous stages – so are compact gears really necessary? It is also worth considering the negative impact a high cadence has on running off the bike. These are all the reasons you must learn when to use which gears.

Componentry

Disk brakes are more responsive and better in the wet, can become more complicated if you get a flat, but if you take care of your equipment that should be rare. Cranks, keep them at 172.5 (unless you are very tall/short and require a specific crank length), any shorter and your cadence will be too high for a fast run (we will cover my ideas on this in a later email).

Cockpit

Handlebars should not be wider than your shoulders, to ensure you minimise the chance of neck tightness and soreness.

Race legal aero bars should be fitted to your bike. Every stage of any race you may need to chase or stay away from a chase group, so a close to aero position should be adopted for speed advantages. Your aero bar pads must be low, at the height of your handlebars to ensure you are remaining in a low aerodynamic position.

Tyres & Wheels

Train on heavier wheels than your race wheels, to save the fast feeling of your race wheels for race day. When selecting which wheels and tyres to ride, you must always consider weather conditions and road surfaces and learn what you ride well on in which conditions. On race day, look at the course and make decisions on wheels and tyres, including tyre pressure.

Your bike Position

Not really equipment, but it is the correct use of your equipment! Have your bike setup so you sit more forward and slightly higher than a road cycling position. This will enable you to reduce the load on your quadriceps, which when loaded excessively on the bike will negatively impact your ability to run fast. The focus is on aerodynamics and speed rather than comfort, after all it is a race.

When first looking at a discipline and how to race well and with equipment choices made, what is important is to look at what each athlete MUST do, regardless of their physiological profile. Every discipline has some race skills that are vital for all.

Every athlete must be capable of cornering 

….and cornering means left corners AND right corners that are, sweeping, sharp, blind, reverse camber, 180 degree turns..all types!. Some you pedal through, others you never pedal through. You must understand what gear you enter with to exit fast. All corners, you need to know where to position yourself in the bunch and once all these skills are learnt you need to understand how it all changes with a wet or slightly wet road. If a course is technical, such as the World Series event in Yokohama you could be negotiating some sort of corner or turn up to 20 times each lap – so do this well and you can put the pressure on a lot of athletes around you (and do this badly, and your bike becomes tougher and requires a lot more maximum efforts to get back on following each corner).

A technical course requires the skills of an athlete. Often they tend to attract the tough Time Trial cyclist who relies on long efforts of work to beat their competitors. This type of course is good for younger athletes to remain in contact – as long as their skills are up to the task.

Cornering well gives Athlete B and C the chance to remain with an athlete A type. BUT this cannot be achieved by simply sitting on the back of the pack. A B & C athlete must be towards the front of the group throughout the bike on a technical course to avoid being dropped.

Every athlete needs to learn to climb…and descend

The skill of climbing is a combination of standing up and powering over a hill, and also sitting and grinding up a hill. It is about knowing when to do which to enable you to maintain pressure on those you are racing, without also destroying yourself.

Climbing also includes descending, because those athletes who are capable of powering over the crest or a hill and fly into a descent are truly mastering an undulating or hilly course in Triathlon.

The hills in WT events are not mountains so you need to be efficient if you are going to make up time, create gaps and hurt your fellow competitors – so use the entire climb well – the ascent and descent.

Climbing efficiently is not achieved by selecting a hill in training you think looks hard and simply doing repetition after repetition over it. Learning to climb requires consistent training over undulating terrain that constantly tests you. You need to know how to select gears, when to sit or stand, how to use your bike as leverage, where your body position should be and how to summit and ride strongly over the top of a climb. All this is learnt in training, on the road, not on a trainer. When you ride on the road, select a course that has around 600-1000m of climbing over 2 hours. That way you know you are getting a good mix of climbs and descents each ride.

What also cannot be learned indoors on a trainer is descending. Similar to cornering, you need to have a bike on the road to develop this skill so you understand body position, speed, cornering and the fine technique details required.

An athlete of type A quality should really seek to take advantage of their bike skill and use climbs and descents to really make their competitors work hard to stay with them. A younger or less confident cyclist must work on understanding their gearing, working on positioning and looking at ways of climbing more efficiently. If you know you are not a strong climber, always start the climb at the front of the group. That way if you are passed you are more likely to be in contact or get back onto the group at the top because you would have lost less ground on the group than you would have if you started the climb at the back of the pack. There are also areas on the road that have sections that are not as steep. If a climb is winding, the middle of the road will generally be the line of most consistent gradient and therefore less tiring on your legs. You may also need to practice your gearing. Perhaps because you are younger you need to stand rather than sit. Perhaps standing you can push a slightly higher gear so you can get more ground covered each pedal rotation. You only know if you can do this if you practice in training. Don’t ever guess on race day, and always ride the course prior so you know what exactly you can do…

Every athlete needs to develop an ability to go it alone

If you truly want to be a world class WT triathlete, you need to have the capability to go it alone on the bike. This ability is developed predominantly through sheer bike fitness. This does not mean you need to spend hours each week on the bike – it is actually far from it. You need to just ensure you are doing the minimum amount of riding required to remain fast, fit and efficient on the bike. The best way to achieve this is to use training environments that challenge you. Flat time trial work is not where your foundation work should be done. As mentioned in the climbing section above, train on an undulating terrain consistently and become fitter. The fitter you are the more likely you will be able to maintain contact, establish breakaways and run fast off a tough bike leg.

Above all be fit on the bike to enable you to run fast off it.

Forget the ‘Save your legs for the run’ mentality. This is pointless for two reasons.  Firstly, if every athlete chasing is to adopt this view, they will all lose more time and make winning almost impossible. Secondly, the fastest runners in a triathlon usually come out of the fastest bike pack – or all those who worked hard on the bike.

Aim to achieve greater bike fitness, it is really a no-brainer!

An important reason you need to be an independent cyclist, is because often it is difficult to entice others to contribute to a chase.

Some points on organising an effective bike group – for A type athletes…

1. You need a like-minded desire to work - If you are the strongest cyclist you must be prepared to do the majority of the work and entice others to help in the easier sections of the course. Athletes chasing out of the water should also be resigned to the fact they have no choice and need to improve their bike leg and T1 transition – in simple terms they must be fit enough to cope with their weaker swim. For whatever reason, every athlete should have a need to work on the bike at some stage of the race. Those that don’t aren’t there to win or improve their performance.
2. Bullying has a limited impact - In situations where athletes are bullied or forced to contribute to a chase on the bike, they will generally not ride well and actually slow the progress of the group. The strong cyclists of each group (usually 2-3) are better off focussing on the task at hand and just ignoring those who aren’t contributing. In actual fact, by getting the slower riders to the back will drop them sooner, so the entire pack will become more efficient.

So how do type A athletes on the bike entice help during the bike if they are the strongest cyclist?

1. Lead by example - As with all things in life, if we want to initiate change, you often have to take the first step. Be an honest contributor to getting things done out on the bike, and your reputation as an athlete who wants to have an impact will spur on others to contribute. Give others a good reason to want to work with you, and a constructive and positive environment to do so.
2. Organise, don’t yell - No one, unless you have some sort of power over them, will respond to being yelled at. You may initially be able to bully them into contributing for a short period of time, but those being yelled at or ordered around will always be looking for ways to stop contributing.
3. Use the course to set up an attack - take advantage of certain areas of the course and use them to support those who are working with you. Sometimes it takes a lap of the bike to see who is prepared to help and who isn’t. Sometimes there are opportunities to ‘help out’ and ‘set up’ those working with you, and you can organise this with a quick constructive conversation.  
4. Cut the non-workers - Don’t force others to take turns, they will only contribute as little as possible and mess up any type of progress you could make. Keep them on the back and out of your way (see the bullying point above). If you are a B and C athlete – don’t let this be you.
5. Provide a ‘safe’ ride - If you are working with a group, and you are clearly the strongest cyclist, don’t rip their legs off each time you roll through for a turn on the front. Roll through constructively, then maintain a consistent pace. Make sure your turns are longer and on tougher sections. Ask others to just give you a 10-20sec respite so they aren’t afraid to come to the front and work. Shorter, intense more frequent turns will lead to a faster overall bike time than long, leg destroying turns that leave your fellow athletes scared of returning to the front.  If you are a B and C type rider, take the opportunities to work with a strong cyclist, because it will only help move you up the field.

Given all of the above how do you race the bike smarter?

• Inclines/Descents

Inclines provide opportunities for strong, fit cyclists to break up packs, create a breakaway and simply alter the pace of the bike section. Attacking inclines consistently will have an impact on a field. This must be trained for.

Declines or downhill sections are very useful sections of the course, not only for recoveries from attacking uphill sections, but also for providing momentum to take into an uphill attack. Even very slight downhill sections are useful for smart cyclists who are attacking a bike section.

Weaker cyclists need to know where to sit in the bunch (front half) so any places lost on a climb does not see you fall off the back of a group.

• Corners

A simple way of making up time is to ride through corners quickly. A pre course review of all corners is useful for deciding which corners can be pedalled through and which corners cannot. Pedalling through a corner is a much faster option, but the dangers of this are obvious when looking at tight corners.

A corner ridden through quickly can provide a similar benefit to the momentum gain an athlete will achieve by using a downhill section for maintaining speed.

Weaker cyclists need to be able to corner well and position themselves in the bunch towards the front, so they are not dropped through corners.

• Wind direction

Head winds are very useful for destroying competitors. When leading, your athlete must understand where to sit on the road to ensure competitors cannot enjoy the drafting effect fully, unless they are part of a group working with you effectively. Attacking into a head wind is also an efficient way to make time up, because this is the area where most athletes struggle the most. Weaker cyclists must understand wind direction and where to sit to get the benefit of the draft. Understanding this will change as you make your way through a bike course is critical.

Tailwind sections are useful for big gear chasing and setting up an attack using speed and momentum, similar to the use of riding corners fast and using inclines.

The Key points

Training sets the foundation for a strong bike. Use technical areas to gain time over competitors. Master the technical skills and always know what equipment you are going to use, and how you are going to race a course by taking yourself over the course pre race.

Next week we look at the run.

Emma

Global Development Partner of World Triathlon