Long Course Tips
By: Coach Mark Kwiatkowski
Whether it’s your first 70.3 or 10th full Ironman, the long course triathlon is nothing short of a beast of a race. Part of the reason these races can be addicting is there is so much to learn about the race as well as yourself during the training and racing process. Here are some tips related to the long course I have personally encountered as well as mistakes I have made to help you avoid making the same ones.
1. Plan your training schedule
Can you get ready for a 70.3 in two months with little to no prior experience? Sure. Should you? Absolutely not. Before you take on any long course race, make sure you know what date the race you’re aiming for is and then see how much time you have in between now and then to train. Ideally, 4 months is a great amount of time to train for a long course race. This gives you plenty of time to build up volume on your body while avoiding injury, as well as toughening your mental to be ok performing physical activity for 5+ hours straight. If this part of the process seems daunting, please do not hesitate to reach out to our coaches and they can take away the guesswork in setting up a training program for you.
2. Train like you race and race like you train
Long course races take a large amount of time, which makes it even more important for this style of race to train like how you plan to race. For example, if you plan to do the entire race at an aerobic heart rate level, then you should be emulating that kind of intensity throughout most of your training sessions. If you are going to be riding in aero bars on race day, then you should be training in those same aero bars to get used to the position and how it feels on your body.
The same goes for on race day itself, if you have spent the last four months training at 16 miles/hour on the bike, DO NOT go into the race trying to hold over 20 miles/hour. It is not a good time, your body is not prepared for it, and the run you have after that bike is going to basically be a zombie walk after pushing your body way past what it was trained to do.
Train like you plan to race and race like you have trained for four months.
3. Eat and drink, drink and eat, etc.
It is imperative that you learn how to take on calories and fluids throughout your different disciplines. From personal experience, you may discover that you end up hitting a wall at a certain time every time. If this is the case, it might be time to start experimenting with how much you are consuming and look to increase those numbers. During your training, you should be experimenting with different fueling protocols (timings, products, amounts, etc.) to see what works best for you. Training is the best time to make mistakes like this, so when race day rolls around, you have a fool-proof plan on what works best for your body. Nutrition is the unspoken fourth discipline of triathlon and you will be doing yourself a service if you have the details of that discipline ironed out throughout your training.
A couple phrases I personally hold on to when it comes to fueling and hydrating for long course races:
Eat early and eat often.
Most problems can be fixed by slowing down and eating and drinking more.
If someone walked up to me and asked me for advice in training for their first 70.3, the above 3 points are exactly what I would tell them. Taking these 3 tips to heart and really practicing them will make worlds of difference when it comes to excelling in your races.
Coach Mark Kwiatkowski is a Level 2 Playtri Coach. He is a distance runner of 12 years, 70.3 finisher, and is enthusiastic about all things triathlon and getting people involved and excited about the sport and achieving their goals.