Bike-run time is fastest when you go all-out on the bike

Interesting reference.
I think the fact that they studied sprints says it all.
Most sprints, you should be going all out all the time anyway.
Also, although he faults them for using "recreational" triathletes with an 19:51 5K, I would be THRILLED with a 19:51 5K. I think MOST of the readers here are recreational, and maybe slower than that! 

I agree that during a sprint and possibly even an olympic, the best pace is suicide pace for the bike.

The same study, but done on IM athletes would be very interesting. I am sure we all know the results but they would be nice to see.

not really a surprise for sprint distance. It will be nice to see this study replicated for longer distances.

Doesn't work for me, that way.  I tried it (training).  If I go ALL out on the bike.  I'm done.  I'm also 45.

From that understanding, I have varying degrees of "hammer it".  Just looking for a happy medium.

The only way I can do well in a Triathlon is to blast through the bike as fast as possible.  The only problem is that you anger a lot of runners when you pass them on the bike.  This gives them an opportunity to pass you on the run.  Revenge can be so sweet for them.

x2.
If I truly went all out on the bike, my run would be a walk.
My fastest races have all been when I felt like I could have gone harder on the bike, but then followed it up with a run that was close to my open run pace.

When I really hammer it hard on the bike, which is my best leg, I have a chance to get far enough ahead of the faster runners to maybe get AG hardware. I'm not a natural distance runner, and it sucks to see guys flying by on the run.

I've replicated it a couple of times in HIM races.  It doesn't work out the same.

Happened to me yesterday at an Oly.  I beat the 3rd place guy in my AG everywhere except the bike (and T1).  But he really beat me on the bike.  I killed him on the run (by 5 mins.), but he'd built too much of a lead on the bike for me to catch him...even if I'd beaten my standalone 10K PR by like 3 min. (which wasn't going to happen).

Not that I didn't pretty much hammer the bike, but some people's "hammer" is bigger than other's.  What we can't know--I guess--is if he'd still have beaten me (i.e., maybe had a significantly faster run) if he'd had a slower ride.  This thread suggests not.

Apparently, we all have different interpretations of "100%".

Agree that conclusions may differ if longer tris were studied.  But the main fault I see with these studies claiming max effort endpoints is defining (and verifying) "maximum effort" in each athlete subject.  From the abstract it appears that the athletes may have known they were going to have to run after cycling so could have been pacing (at least subconsciously).  Perhaps all these authors did was help these athletes find their optimal pacing strategy.  If they had pushed them to cycle even faster I suspect they may well have seen a cycling pace beyond which total time dropped off- even at sprint distance.

On  these BB's people talk all the time about going "all out" for a sprint when they are NOT really "all out".  Think about it.  Is your best isolated 100M dash time at your 5k pace??????? 


Edited by Oldteen 2010-07-19 2:24 PM

For me:

In a sprint: 100% = high z4 with no hesitation about going into z5 for hills, to clear a group, or just because.
In an Oly:  100% = high z3 with frequent and sometimes lengthy incursions into z4 for the above reasons.

My Oly bike takes just over an hour, so in principle that's about how long I should be able to hold z4 (LT).  I try to bike mostly just under that effort.

Ditto...what I just learned the other week on my first event

From the article linked:

"with the intensity of the bike ride varying from 80% to 100% of max intensity (compared to an isolated bike trial they’d done previously)."

so apparently 100% is equal to their stand alone time trial (I would assume for hte race distance)

i just did a sprint on sunday.  10 mile bike / 5k run

my bike was at 100% of my ftp.  still run relatively well.  i think next month when i do the same distance i will shoot for a 105% on the bike. 

Raced a duathlon this past Saturday and that happened to me.  I passed a girl on the first lap (of three) during the bike portion and she blew by me about 3k into the final run like I was walking.  I tried to speed up to keep up but ended up finishing well behind her.

I don't quite get this - you need to leave "something" for the run.  I raced Sunday at 91% of my FTP, and that left me enough to jump a few places up on the run.  But at the end of the run (7K) I had nothing left.  If I'd pushed harder on the bike - which was doable - then I wouldn't have had as much speed for the run. 

This is what I was thinking.  If you truly go "all out" on the bike, you can't run a 5k afterward.  Otherwise, you didn't go all out on the bike, by definition.  As someone else said, there are degrees of hammering on the bike. 

But this study doesn't apply to me since I may never even become a "recreational" athlete by their terminology (19:51 5k).

You're not missing anything.  This "study" is a joke and says just about nothing regarding pacing, as far as I can see.  If you go properly "all out" on the bike over any distance (100% effort for said distance), your run will suffer.  The question is always how close to "all out" you should go to optimize your combined bike & run times.  The shorter the bike & run, the closer to 100%.  Seriously, what kind of "study" do you need to tell you that?

hard to give an educated opinion without reading the entire article, still in addition to some of the flaws mentioned by the blog author I would also ask:
1. what are the stand alone 5k times for the subjects?
2. how do they determine their power threshold or off of what they based different intensities?
3. why they didn't have the subjects swim if this is for a triathlon? I would assume how much you push on the swim will also have an exponential fatigue factor on biking and then on running.

As the race go longer other things come into play in regards to muscle fatigue such as metabolic changes, dehydrating, heating, etc. IMO, this study hardly proves going harder on a bike is better for the overall time in a triathlon, in particular on races where energy stores play a greater role. The data I have from athletes at the 70.3 and Ironman distance suggests otherwise; the harder you go over you fitness capabilities for the bike leg, the greater your chances you run pace will decrease dramatically as the distance gets longer.

Their conclusion might make sense but I will tweak it a bit: it is not the time you lose in the bike that you can make up on the run that really matters, but is the time you make up in the bike by going above your fitness capabilities worth the potential time losses you can and most likely will experience during the run, in particular as the distance increases?