Du-ing a Duathlon

Intro: This is the TriDot podcast. TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile, combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries. Our podcast is here to educate, inspire, and entertain. We’ll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests. Join the conversation and let’s improve together.

Andrew Harley: Hey folks! Welcome to the show. I’ve never dedicated a show to an athlete before, so this is an absolute first. TriDot Ambassador, Brian Mull, this one is for you. There does exist under the sun forms of multisport racing that are not triathlon and today we’ll be talking about dominating a duathlon and I can’t think of any TriDot ambassador as passionate about racing duathlon as Brian. I’ve got a strong duo with me here today to download their duathlon knowledge straight into our brains. Our first guest today is Andy Blow from Precision Fuel and Hydration. Andy is a sports scientist with a degree in Sports and Exercise Science from the University of Bath. An expert in sweat, dehydration and cramping, Andy has worked with multiple Formula 1 Racing, NBA, NBL, MLB and Premier League sports teams, as well as many professional triathletes. An elite level triathlete in his younger days, Andy has finished in the top ten of Ironman events, as well as winning an Xterra All World title. Now Andy, you’re usually with us to talk about fueling and hydration, are you excited to chat about duathlon today?

Andy Blow: I am. It’s an under represented part of the multisport world I think. So yeah, excited to be on.

Andrew: TriDot Ambassador, Brian Mull, agrees with you 100%. Also joining us for this conversation is Coach John Mayfield. John is a USAT Level II and Ironman U certified coach who leads TriDot’s athlete services, ambassador and coaching programs. He’s coached hundreds of athletes ranging from first-timers to Kona qualifiers and professional triathletes. John has been using TriDot since 2010 and coaching with TriDot since 2012. Now John, we’re only talking about two sports today, biking and running, so it should be easy right?

John Mayfield: It should be. Drowning is not usually a threat we have while podcasting, but today it’s definitely off the table. We are safe from drowning today.

Andrew: I'm Andrew the Average Triathlete, Voice of the People and Captain of the Middle of the Pack. As always we will roll through our warm up question, settle in for our main set topic, and then wind things down with our cool down. Lots of good stuff, let's get to it!

Warm up theme: Time to warm up! Let’s get moving.

Andrew: A common question endurance sports athletes get asked by non-endurance sports athletes is “What do you think about while you’re out there for hours at a time swimming, biking, or running?” I personally get asked this question most often by non-athlete friends and actually my wife’s co-workers. Somehow they just always find a way to bring this up. Andy, John with your just extensive experience in the sport, in the miles you’ve logged, in the hours you’ve spent training how do you answer this question? What do you think about when you’re out there exercising for so long? John Mayfield, what do you say here?

John: So man. The stuff is just so random that can come to mind especially if you’re out there for a run that’s an hour, two hours, longer. Just you see things and spurs thoughts. So one thing I kind of try not to think too much and I always doing especially those long sessions with other people and especially on the long runs I’ve been blessed over the years to have a lot of great partners that I do those long runs with. It’s kind of funny, I’ve always been the conversationalist in my group and I will actually like plan out things to talk about for that long session.

Andrew: Okay.

John: I was actually talking about this just the other day as we were doing one of these and I was telling one of the athletes I coach was running with us and I was like, “Yeah, so this is what I do. I have three things for today. I have three topics we’re going to cover.” And you know, it just helps pass the time. If you kind of get lost in the conversation and you’re focusing on that conversation and not so much focusing on the endless miles and the endless steps. So for me I kind of like to have an agenda to go over because otherwise it’s all bets are off. Who knows what’s coming to mind.

Andrew: Alright, great response there John. So you try not to think when you’re by yourself and you try to talk when you’re with people.

John: Exactly.

Andrew: Yep, totally checks out. Andy Blow, what is this answer for you? What is this answer for you? What do you tell people when they ask you, “What do you think about while you’re out there training and racing?”

Andy: Well, I reckon there’s probably three parts to the answer for me. I would say today, these days, now that I train what I would call largely recreationally. So I kind of train for fun now and it’s often not particularly goal oriented. So I do a lot of sessions by how I feel and I’ve got a pair of those bone conduction headphones that set on top of your ears…

Andrew: Those are great.

Andy: …which is phenomenal. So rewinding, I never used to listen to music or anything when I trained seriously because I was pretty focused and I would be thinking about what I was doing. But nowadays I use it as a phenomenal opportunity to listen to audio books and podcasts. So now, I get lost in the world of books and podcasts when I’m training probably 8/10 times. I think when I was training really seriously I would be pretty focused on the session, but within that it would fall into one of two counts—one was if the session was going well, you’re feeling good, you’re training for a goal, I was all about the visualization. I remember being told by a sports psychologist when I was younger that it was always good to like visualize the outcomes and the performance that you wanted and that just resonated and stuck with me and I guess kind of got into my head as a good thing to do. So I would spend a lot of time visualizing success in my next race or whatever I was preparing for and I think actually in a lot of races it really did help because you kind of rehearse in your mind things going well and how you’re going to perform.

Andrew: Yeah.

Andy: But I’d say that’s almost impossible to do when your session is falling apart and you’re just groveling and dying and just feeling terrible.

Andrew: You don’t want to picture yourself dying on the race course.

Andy: No. So I suppose at that point I was probably thinking about dinner instead.

Andrew: That’s a great response. A lot of people, Andy, will resonate very deeply with that answer right there. What I always tell my wife’s co-workers or friends that ask, on race day largely—when a non-endurance athlete hears you’re doing an Ironman, you’re doing a half Ironman, you’re running 13 miles, 26 miles, you’re biking 100 miles, 50-something miles—they just see I think just endless monotony. They don’t realize that all those miles are filled with stuff going on. There’s people passing you. There’s people that you’re passing. Especially on the bike, you’re trying to drop out of people’s draft and you’re trying to pass people in a certain amount of time and on the run you’re constantly trying to be thinking of what time am I taking in my fluids? What time am I taking in my nutrition? You know, how many aid stations ago did I take a gel and do I need one at the next one? You’re constantly just evaluating how you feel, how you’re feeling, what your needs are. If you’re working with Precision Fuel and Hydration as a case study, you’re trying to count how many cups of water you’re drinking and how much of that water you’re taking in so that Abby Coleman can get that answer from you on the back end which we talked about a few podcasts ago. So I tell them on race day, you’re just kind of constantly evaluating how you’re doing, where you’re at and what’s happening around you. Then in the training, for me, I actually really like to kind of plan podcasts on those runs and bike rides. A lot of time,s on the bike rides especially, I will sit there and just try to think of ridiculous warmup questions because we always have shows coming up that need a ridiculous warmup question just like this and that’s what it is for me. So guys, we’re going to—as we always do—throw this question out to you our listeners. I’m very curious to hear what you have to say when people ask you, “Hey, while you’re out there training and racing for hours and hours and hours on end, what do you think about?” And what do you tell those people when you’re asked that question?

Main set theme: On to the main set. Going in 3…2…1…

PRECISION HYDRATION: Thrilled to have Andy from Precision Fuel and Hydration joining us today. Precision Fuel and Hydration has a range of tools and products to help you personalize your fueling and hydration strategy so that you can perform at your very best. Long-time listeners of the show will know them as Precision Hydration, but they’ve changed their name to reflect the fact that they’ve been helping athletes nail both aspects of their performance for a long time now. Everyone sweats differently and the amount of fuel we require varies just depending on factors like duration and intensity of our activity so a one-size-fits-all approach to fueling and to hydration just doesn’t cut it. So head to precisionfuelandhydration.com and use the free online sweat test and their quick carb calculator to understand your own fluid, electrolyte, and carbohydrate needs during training and racing. From there you can book a free one-on-one video consultation with the team to refine your own hydration and fueling strategy for your next race. As a listener of the show you can get 10% off your first order of fueling and hydration products by using the code TRIDOT10 when checking out. Once again at precisonfuelandhydration.com.

Andrew: Swim, bike and run tops the multisport world as the most commonly raced discipline pattern, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only race format worth our time, attention, and affection. You can swim and bike with an aquathon, you can swim and run with a swim run event, or you can bike and run with a duathlon and that—the duathlon—is what we are talking about today with Andy and John. Now Andy, at the top of the show we always share your sports science background. We talk about your professional triathlete background. We talk about you winning an Xterra World Title, but you’ve told me before that you were actually more competitive as a duathlete than a triathlete. Andy, how did you even get into duathlon in the first place and what were kind of some of the highlights from the duathlon portion of your career?

Andy: Yeah, I started doing duathlon probably in the early or mid-1990s because I came into multisport. I had a bit of a swimming background, but not a truly competitive swimming background. I’ve done a lot of cross country running and then got into biking to get into multisport, but it meant that my running was probably the stronger of my three disciplines and certainly the one I preferred the most. So duathlon was quite an appealing version…

Andrew: Yeah.

Andy: …of sport for me early on. When I went to university I must have been around 18-19 when I started and the first international vest that I got racing for Great Britain as a junior in the top end of the junior age groups was to race in the 1998, I think it was, European Duathlon Championships which was held in Poland at the time.

Andrew: Wow.

Andy: So for me it was a really big moment to finally get a Great Britain vest.

Andrew: Yeah, that’s so cool.

Andy: Unfortunately, that race panned out really badly because literally on the first run it was two 5K loops. I think I got around the first 5K loop and then there was a dusty, rocky, kind of slightly off road—not really off road actually, but like a worn path on a descent and I rolled my ankle really badly. That was race over. I tore the ligaments and ended up—didn’t even get on the bike. So I flew my bike, unboxed it, and took it home again. Yeah, it was a special sport for me because it was that one where I finally first sort of felt like I maybe could be competitive at an international level, not just at a national level.

Andrew: Okay. Then so from there, what was kind of your duathlon experience as you progressed? Did you have some successful attempts where you didn’t roll your ankle on a gravel pathway in Poland?

Andy: Yeah, yeah. I had a few. So I think also the first sort of descent race that I won outright as a senior man was a duathlon race, one of the British sort of qualifier events. Then eventually I went to and I raced some people would remember when duathlon was kind of they brought out a duathlon competitor to Ironman if you like—then called Powerman which was the big race, the Kona of duathlon was in Zofingen in Switzerland. So there’s this massive Powerman race which I can’t remember the exact distances, but it was not far off the kind of time of an Ironman race. It was very hilly as well. So it was a real tough guy event. I never got to do the Zofingen Powerman, the top one, but here was a Powerman UK. There was like a series around GB and I think I got in the top five or so in one of those and I also qualified in 2004 to race the full on like elite men’s World Championship Duathlon in Belgium, in Geel in Belgium. Although I didn’t place anywhere near the top, I think I came about 40^th or something like that in the race, it was an unbelievable experience that really like literally be lining up with the best guys in the world, representing GB. I put out—it wasn’t a horrific performance when you look at the times and the splits, it’s just that the standard in that sport is savage. I think I ran 31 and change for the first 10 kilometers and I was in the third pack getting on the bike. It was like insane. The front guys were running even back then, this is 2004, they were running like 29 split for the first 10K and that’s before getting on the bike and smashing out 350-400 watts for an hour.

Andrew: Yeah.

Andy: You know, it’s a savage sport and I think that’s where it doesn’t get a lot of credit with pure triathletes some of the time is because of the elimination of the swim they kind of see it as the easier option, but yes it’s easier technically if you’re not a good swimmer, but my God, it’s not easier physiologically. It’s tough.

Andrew: Now Andy, it’s interesting you say that because when I was doing some research for this episode, I’ve done two duathlons myself over the years and I read most publications when they’re talking about the different types of races and they’re comparing triathlon versus duathlon versus this versus that, everybody was saying duathlon is the hardest on your body and again, just not having done—I don’t have a large sample size of them to really compare, so you firmly believe duathlon is harder on your body, it’s a harder effort than going and racing a tri?

Andy: Yeah I would say so. If the standard distance duathlon is 10K or 6 mile run, 25 mile bike, and 3 mile run or 5K run at the end, that in time is not that far away from doing an Olympic distance triathlon. But when you ad in the fact that in that case you’ve run a flat out 10K, you’ve pounded your legs on the bike and then run a flat out 5K, like the muscle soreness and damage that I used to experience after one of those races was probably at least double what you’d experience from doing a standard Olympic distance triathlon.

Andrew: Wow.

Andy: I always felt like the recovery time from a duathlon was a lot, lot longer because the accumulation of all that extra fast running and the fact that your legs literally do not get a break the whole time makes it really, really tough.

Andrew: So John, you’ve coached many of your athletes to successful duathlon finish lines, but you actually just recently raced your very first duathlon. Tell us what you thought about the run, bike, run format. How did that first race go for you?

John: So my history with duathlon goes back to the early 2020’s, in fact it was 2021 when I did mine. I actually had an A race in the summer. It was a sprint triathlon that I was targeting and I wanted to have—because it had been a while. We came out of 2020 without having the opportunity to race, especially race the short distance, so it had been a couple years since I had done a sprint. It was like, well this is my opportunity to go test the legs and test really everything prior to this A race that I had. So yeah, there was a local opportunity. There was a triathlon in the same event, but I had done that triathlon several times and the swim is just nasty. It’s in Galveston Bay and I just didn’t want to do that again. So I was like, well let me try a duathlon. So I signed up for that and got kind of lucky because the swim that day was just a complete mess. The seas were—

Andrew: And you didn’t have to do it!

John: Yeah like, the buoys were moving. They were pulling people out in the middle of the event and it was just chaos and we just went and did our little run. So it was great but I thought I’m in pretty good shape. I can go and maybe be competitive, maybe get like a Masters win just because there were some young guys who were just smokin’ fast. So I ended up 5^th on the day.

Andrew: Okay.

John: Four of which were all older than me including—so I was 41, racing 41. There was a 63 year old who beat me.

Andrew: Yeah, love it.

John: I just pulled up the results. He beat me by 4 seconds. So I should have maybe closed out a little better, I don’t know. But it’s been almost a year since this race. Looking at these results, those 4 seconds now haunt me. I didn’t even know they were there, but now they’re out there haunting me. But yeah. It was super cool to do something a little different. I’ve had a few of the “duathlons” over the years where we showed up expecting a triathlon when the swim was canceled , but yeah, this was my first entry into true duathlon with the run, bike, run and yeah, it was definitely cool. I would definitely do it again.

Andrew: I think most triathletes would say they know what a duathlon is. We know it’s the sibling of triathlon. We know it’s run, bike, run in that order, but from there I don’t believe most triathletes know much more. So Andy, kind of catch up to speed here. What are the different distances and how does a duathlon race flow?

Andy: So in terms of distances I would say the standard distance for duathlon when you look at international competition and that kind of thing, the equivalent of an Olympic distance triathlon is the standard distance duathlon which is 10K run, 40K bike, 5K run...

Andrew: Okay.

Andy: …in metric, so in Imperial that’s like 6 miles, 25 miles, 3 miles, something like that and that would be like the internationally competitive distance. Then you can literally half that and go down to what is like a sprint duathlon, so 5K, 20K, 2.5K—fast and furious. Then I think beyond that there are kind of recognized long distance duathlons, but it starts to get a little bit more confusing because you’ve got lots more course-specific races. Like with Powerman, which I’m trying to think—I might be putting my foot in my mouth here, but it was something like 20K run which is like close to a half marathon run. Then it was 150K on the bike which is about 100 miles ride and then it was like a shorter distance, like a 10K run to finish; 6 mile run to finish. It was some figurative of that and it was very mountainous and hilly so there were lots of long duathlons around that played around with those sorts of distances. Then there’s lots and lots of other ones which are more organic and sort of specific to whatever the local courses are. But generally the format tends to be a longer first run, a decent bike ride, and then finish with a shorter run. There are exceptions to that, but that tends to be the general format. I always think that’s kind of in one way it’s good to get the longer first run kind of out of the way to begin with because doing a short run then a bike then a longer run is sort of mentally quite daunting, but it also leads to one of the big problems with duathlon which is that you can—sure if you work over hard you can ruin a triathlon with the swim, but it’s pretty hard to do that comprehensively.

Andrew: Yeah. True.

Andy: You can thrash your legs on the first run of the duathlon and have a horrific time for the rest of it.

Andrew: I bet. Yeah.

Andy: If you’re not disciplined with your pacing and pace judgement. We know that with most people, a huge issue with especially the more novice people is pacing is a massive issue so always learning to find what’s acceptable. I remember doing the British Championships Duathlon one year and I was really convinced—I had convinced myself in my head that I was like a podium contender or whatever, I was going to be up there. So I made sure that I was right at the front of the run and ran I think from memory like something dangerously close to a 30-something minute 10K split, you know 30 and seconds and stuff, but then predictably—that was my PB for 10K. So I had literally, I had emptied the tank. I had left it all out on the road at that point and so then spent the rest of the day cratering horribly and like just going backwards and being really disappointed when I’m pretty sure if I had knocked a minute off that, given a minute away on the first run, it would have been a whole different day out. Generally speaking, it’s a long run, decent chunky bike, and a short run and a huge part of that tactically then becomes pacing it out because of the destructive nature of it.

Andrew: If someone is joining us for an episode of the TriDot podcast and they’re listening in they’re either a triathlete or they’re being forced to listen while riding in the car or something with a triathlete. So John, Andy, for our triathletes listening, why should a triathlete give a duathlon a go?

John: So I would say it’s a great test. Andy’s already thrown out several reasons. Typically you can supplement your race schedule. With those duathlons a lot of times they’re shorter so they don’t require the same focus, long training phase to lead into like a long course race or that A priority race. They’re not going to—you’ll bury yourself and you’ll be really sore for a day or two, but you can still continue on throughout your normal training so it’s not going to be a massive disruption to your training. If you do a 70.3, that’s going to be a big disruption to your training, but you can go out and do one of these duathlons. Just the fact that you don’t have to swim provides opportunities as well even just for location. You don’t have to have that swim venue which is the most difficult thing to identify in a race course. Then you don’t have to worry about water temperature. So certain parts of the world, the swim venues are now ice so you can’t swim in them; physically too cold. So I think that’s why one reason those winter series are popular as well because you don’t have to worry about water temperature and that sort of thing. I think as Andy alluded to I think they’re great in developing those skills because they are physiologically harder. You know, that’s not really an argument. You can have a philosophical argument of is triathlon harder or duathlon harder? Physiologically speaking, running is more difficult than swimming.

Andrew: Yeah.

John: You are supporting all of your body weight on the run. You have massive amounts of impact with every step that you take that’s just simply not there while you’re swimming. The water is supporting your body weight. There is little to no impact to your body. So yeah. Even if you spent equal amount of time, if you have a 20 minute swim spilt or a 20 minute run split, even just looking at things like heart rate you’re going to see that that heart rate is significantly higher during the run portion even if you’re pushing an equal intensity. Your body’s working much harder to run than it is to swim just again for those reasons. It’s supporting its weight. It’s absorbing that impact. So they’re hard and that’s a great skill to have is to be able to race hard and do those hard things, overcome. As Andy mentioned, they tend to—I say maybe the average distance is shorter than the average distance triathlon whereas 70.3 and Ironman are very popular in the triathlon community, your average duathlon distance is like Andy said, somewhere in that sprint to Olympic distance race. So they are a high intensity race. It’s all about how hard can you push without blowing up, which Andy’s mentioned sometimes you cross over and you learn those lessons. But there’s a lot to that of who can push the hardest without pushing too hard. That’s an incredibly valuable skill to have regardless of what distance you’re racing or what you are racing; triathlon, duathlon, short course, long course. That’s a fantastic skill to have. I’m reminded of Matt Russell’s career. So Matt Russell is now a fairly well known Ironman triathlete.

Andrew: Yep. Uh-huh.

John: He’s done very well and what most people don’t know is Matthew came from a duathlon background.

Andrew: Ok. I didn’t know that.

John: He was actually—he helped with even the formation of TriDot in the early days. Matt was a member of the Tri For Him pro team and did most of his racing in duathlon simply because he was not a strong swimmer. To say that now that he’s an elite level Ironman athlete, his swim was downright abysmal compared to his bike and run abilities, but he was able to continue to refine his skills racing duathlon being he was national champion in duathlon, all the while he was working on the swim. So he kind of bought him some time to…

Andrew: That’s interesting.

John: …remain competitive. He, again, was national champion in the duathlon. All the while he was working on that swim and then once the swim came along now he was more competitive within the triathlon ranks.

Andrew: Yeah, no, that’s very, very interesting. Andy, for you when you talk to triathletes what would you say to them to encourage them, some of the tangible reasons why it’s good to throw some duathlons on the schedule and give it a go?

Andy: I think the biggest one which John’s touched on is like skill development and you can do—we used to have this series of duathlons. When I was at university in Bath in the UK, there was a race circuit called the Castle Coomb Race Circuit. It’s like a car race circuit just up the road and on a Wednesday night through the summer for like, I don’t know, the equivalent of like probably $10 you could go up there and race 2 miles around the perimeter of the race circuit, five laps I think on the bike of the circuit itself which was 10 miles, and then a 2 mile circuit around. So it was like a 40-some minute race if you were fast and that was just—doing that week in, week out as John said, although it’s hard on your legs, it’s not that long that you really, really do incredible damage. You get to practice transitions. Although it’s a bit different, you do do two transitions in there and so in the heat of battle—if people are only racing 70.3 and Ironman, maybe they’ll race like three big races a year well that’s not very much to really get good at transitioning…

Andrew: That’s very true.

Andy: …and jumping on the bike. With the best one in the world, even you guys as coaches I’m sure you try to encourage people to practice transitions and stuff.

Andrew: Yeah.

Andy: But there’s nothing like practicing transition when you’re breathing out your backside, when you’ve got someone chasing you down, when it’s all on the line. Because doing it in a parking lot on a training camp is not the same thing. You know, it’s a reenactment of it. I reckon it’s all of the little sharpening stuff that it does, plus I would say if you’re a descent triathlete, if you’re a bit of a swimmer and the rest of that, it’s good to go and get humbled by a 63-year-old or whatever sometimes. So it actually is. It’s good because there are some really shit-hot duathletes out there that basically will hand your ass to you and like put you back in your place and everyone benefits from that once in a while.

Andrew: There are workouts in our tri training that specifically have us run off the bike to prepare ourselves for that feeling of making the bike-to-run switch during a race. Andy, is there anything we need to do the other way around I mean to prepare ourselves for the muscle switch going from that opening run leg to then hopping on a bike?

Andy: I would tell you if you’re going to do duathlon seriously then absolutely, yes, because the specificity of it is unique and what I used to do was I used to set my turbo trainer up and I would classically do an escalating workout starting with a light jog then jumping on the bike and doing a spin and then increase the—and it was probably about a mile loop I used to run around. So I would probably do two or three miles to warm up and then get on the bike for ten minutes. But I would do an escalating session of increasing to a very, very hard one mile run until later in the session I was literally pounding out a mile as hard as I could, immediately on the bike for ten minutes of like high threshold power output and then getting off and doing it again and kind of accelerating through. I think that that type of workout is critical if you’re going to race to your potential in duathlon. If you’re a triathlete who’s going to play around doing a few duathlons in the off season, the utility of adding then on top of that additional run-to-bike training sessions is kind of down to digression I would say. If it’s easy to do, especially if you’ve got a treadmill and an indoor trainer set up and you can hop from one to the other it makes total sense. But yeah, I would say it’s a critical component of a serious duathlete’s training week for sure.

Andrew: It sounds very hard right? To just run a hard mile and then immediately hop on the bike and be going threshold. That sounds like a dewsy.

Andy: Yeah, it’s totally different. It’s like in it’s own way going from swim to bike is obviously really challenging, but run to bike yeah you feel it all over the place. As John mentioned, your heartrate will be really spiking, your legs feel quite weird and jelly like and kind of rediverting the blood flow and getting the legs to get going. I often found that it was useful to run a pretty high cadence. My running cadence is reasonably high anyway and so it would help the transition. What would always be really hard is coming out of a T1 in a duathlon straight up a massive hill or something because then you’re putting down a lot of power with low cadence which is like completely opposite to running. So I would always gear down a bit if I could and try and ease into it.

Andrew: So the biggest question I’ve seen triathletes ask in regard to duathlon is this: “How do you pace it?” You know, we’re so used to only having to pace one run leg basically with whatever energy you have left at the end of the race. So I think the idea of those two run legs with the bike in the middle just kind of twists our head up like a pretzel. Andy, John, how do we pace each leg of a duathlon? So Andy, for you as you were racing and obviously it could differ a little bit based on which run leg is longer. It could depend on are they the same distance? But just in general, what are kind of some pacing tips you can offer us from your career in duathlon?

Andy: So I would say a few key things on this which make it—When I was racing duathlon competitively, a lot of the races were draft legal on the bike which is a massive factor because essentially then you don’t really get a choice. You almost have to throw down and stay with the pace.

Andrew: You just have to stay with the group, yeah.

Andy: You have to decide how hard you’re willing to go to put yourself in the front pack, the second pack or whatever and kind of be real about that. I’ve already told you about one story where I went off way too hard, there is always a bit of an element of if you’re racing competitively in drafting races you have to be able to tread the fine line and roll the dice. Yeah, you run the gauntlet a bit and you accept that you’re hoping for like a little bit of a respite on the bike to maybe catch your breath if you overexert yourself.

Andrew: Yeah.

Andy: I think if you’re racing at a level either where it’s non-drafting or where you’re definitely one of the fitter athletes in the race, that gives you options and at that point I’d fall back on sort of general endurance common sense which is that start relatively easy and comfortably because the vast majority of people will overextend themselves and if you’re in a non-drafting race and you’re a strong biker and you can catch people or if you can basically pace yourself and hold within your limits, not go over that horrid redline too much, future you will thank you for that when you get later into there. So that’s when the general principle of just being sensible applies. What I would say though is it’s significantly more challenging without doing lots of duathlon races, it’s kind of tricky to figure out where that redline is I suppose.

Andrew: That makes sense.

Andy: I would say more often than not though because most people that are probably think about doing this are not racing elite and drafting races I would say caution is the better way. Better to leave a little bit on the table on the first run which you can spend those pennies later on.

Andrew: During that first run, remember that there’s a future you that has to do the second run and do future you a solid.

Andy: Trust me. We have this saying at Precision Fuel and Hydration we like: “Will future you thank you for doing this right now?” and that applies to all sorts of aspects of your life, but pacing is a massive one. So if the future you can benefit from a conservative start, then be kind to him or her.

Andrew: John, when you’re coaching your athletes heading into a duathlon, what do you tell them just in terms of approaching their pacing plan?

John: Yeah, it’s that. But even thinking back to mine. Clearly, I lost by four seconds to someone old enough to be my dad, so I maybe didn’t do it quite right, but that was kind of a fun part of it and was that—I guess maybe that’s what was giving me butterflies before the race was especially it was a 2 mile run and it’s like, that’s short. I mean, I can go hard, but it’s in knowing again that I’ve got to do, it was a longer bike. I think it was like 18 miles or something like that so kind of relatively long for that sprint distance, but that was my strength. So it was kind of that let the runners go, but not too much. Almost that same kind of strategy as like a draft legal where I wasn’t necessarily trying to stay with them so I could be in their draft pack. I just didn’t want them to get away. So I was trying to run hard enough and it was even with 2 miles it was kind of keep them in sight.

Andrew: Yeah.

John: Don’t let them get so far ahead that you can’t see them. Then I did work my way through the field, a lot of them, on the bike. Then, yeah, it was probably the longest 5K I’ve ever ran. I know all 5K’s are 3.1 miles. It’s all the same, but good Lord! I think kind of running 2 miles at first kind of spoiled me and I was like, “Okay, that was pretty easy. That was over pretty quick.” Then it was like, it’s 50% more. Which at that point 50% is a lot and I guess 50% is always 50%, but that was a long 5K and a big 50%

Andrew: It’s like 51% more, 52%.

John: Yeah. At least.

Andrew: Something like that. So let’s talk about the gear involved with duathlon and what it takes to be ready to race. Is it literally just the same gear you’d roll with for a tri minus the swim stuff, or are there any other considerations, Andy, that we need to make in organizing our kit for a duathlon?

Andy: The biggest one for me would be, especially around the shorter races, is footwear choice because where we certainly used to race occasionally with these things, they were called something like power platforms. What they were like is like a carbon plate that you either clipped into a standard pedal or some of the more expensive ones came with their own axel and they were a whole pedal setup. So full length carbon plate which had a little bit of adjustment in it and you could slip your foot in with your running shoe on.

Andrew: Wow.

Andy: So it gave you the benefit of a cycling shoe rigid sole. Not quite as good because you still have the EVA foam in your running shoe in between the two, but back in those days this was obviously way before the big carbon plate shoes now. So we would have wafer thin, and I’d even go for super wafer thin running shoes so there was a lot of power transfer and then you could just buckle up and go. Then that was obviously a huge consideration and it was always like a massive talking point before every single race was basically which way do we go? Looking at other people. They’re riding the course in their normal shoes. Are they planning on changing? Because if you were like 20 seconds off the pace on the run, but had the power pedals and someone else was changing their shoes you could actually probably still beat them out of transition.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely.

Andy: I mean that’s a bit of a—I don’t even know if you can still buy them everywhere. I did chat with one of the athletes that we work with in New Zealand. There’s a funny race over there called Coast to Coast which is like a multisport race and it starts off with a really short run, then a bike ride. So it effectively starts with a duathlon before you go into the kayaking and stuff and some of the athletes there use these power plates because of this like 2 mile run then you go into a 40 mile ride and then back into a run. So they keep their same shoes on for that full section and they use these plates. There’s someone over in the southern hemisphere who has been making them, but I don’t know how widely available they are. So that was always a major talking point with races what you would do.

Andrew: Are you going to use those or not? Yeah.

Andy: I would say certainly when it was like flatter courses, non-drafting races where you were a bit more in control of the power output where it wasn’t quite as sprinty out of tight corners and things, they were often always the better option because you knew you were sacrificing a little bit of efficiency, but the gain in transition was huge. On the flip side, like racing a really tight criterium style bike ride on a load of hills is where you really need it. When you’re up on the pedals putting out hundreds and hundreds of watts and chasing gaps and things, you wanted the security of a proper fitting bike shoe and the power transfer so you can go for that. I mean, outside of that obviously otherwise certainly for me it was always very, very similar. You would ride the same kind of bike you would ride in either a drafting or non-drafting triathlon with the setup appropriate to whatever course you were doing. The clothing side was always a bit of an interesting and funny one because there were a few very famous American duathlete, Kenny Souza, who insisted always—if you Google him there might be some pictures on the internet—but he was a guy who would always race duathlon in swim trunks and he looked a cruk because back in the day obviously the triathlon way was race in a little tiny running vest that just basically covered your nipples and a pair of swim trunks and Kenny Souza was I think he was maybe the World Duathlon Champion, but he always insisted on racing in swim trunks and a thing which people obviously had very strong opinions either way on that.

Andrew: Andy, we found the pictures of Kenny Souza and he’s got some long hair and yep, not wearing a lot of clothes.

Andy: No, he was big on keeping the ventilation good.

Andrew: Yeah.

Andy: So, but otherwise, I used to race in like a cyclist style time trialing skin suit when I could because that was pretty decent for running and then it had a zip on the front where you could vent, but then it was pretty aero on the bike. That would probably have usually been the go-to rather than—but a lot of the time again going back to the whole thing about duathlon being a bit of a poor second to triathlon, there weren’t and probably still aren’t a lot of companies that have designed specific kits. So you end up either using some kind of horrible compromise of running kit, triathlon kit, or cycling kit with all their inherent disadvantages that each of them offer because clearly cycling in running shorts is unflattering and uncomfortable, but running in a proper, big cycling chamois is also equally uncomfortable so you end up with a kind of triathlon type suit or something.

Andrew: It sounds like if you’re serious in duathlon and you want to be competitive then maybe it’s worth investigating those power plates and see who in the southern hemisphere is making them. For most triathletes wanting to make a splash in duathlon, probably just use a very, very, very quick transitioning speed laces on the running shoes and just a one strap tri shoe setup and probably just your most aero, kind of compressive tri suit. Any thoughts there John?

John: So the one thing I was excited about was I didn’t have to worry about either compromising not wearing socks or having to put on socks in transition.

Andrew: You could start in socks.

John: Yeah, it was kind of fun to do the whole race in socks. That was a first. So that was kind of remove that from the decision making process and even from the transition time. Something—and again, this was probably more so a bunch of just triathlete wannabe duathletes that didn’t know what we were doing. There was even some conversation of having two pairs of shoes and I think part of that was more so kind of the T1 because you know you set up your T2 to be very quick and efficient to where you have your shoes right there, the laces are open or use the speed laces. Something to where you can get into that running shoe very quickly in T2, but for those of us that were far less experienced it was like, how do we ensure we have a quick T2 while also having a quick T1 because I want to just pull those shoes off and just chunk them and not give any consideration. Kind of like, I don’t care what I do with my wetsuit in T1 because I don’t need it, but I was going to need those running shoes again. So I was just a little bit more cognizant instead of just throwing them down and not really caring whether they were up or down, forwards or backwards, I did take—

Andrew: Which John, probably took those four seconds.

John: 2 seconds a piece apparently. But yeah, for me that was a consideration, but other people were doing that. They would have a second pair of running shoes there setup like they would in T2.

Andrew: I never would have thought of that.

John: As I came into T1 just kind of pulled off the running shoes, chucked them under the rack and we’re off on the bike.

Andrew: I even have two sets of Nike Vapor Flys that I can do that with and I never would have thought of it without this podcast conversation. So thanks John.

John: You’re welcome.

Andy: I’d say that’s a super smart idea. I’m sure it was being done. I don’t know that I ever had two pairs of racing flats on the go at any one time when I was doing it, but I probably should have thought of that.

John: Next time.

Andy: Yeah.

Andrew: I would imagine transitions are super similar. Maybe some small differences and John you just identified one small difference there just with the placement of the shoes after T1. I mean T2 feels like it could be exactly the same. I mean, T1 obviously changes since we’re not coming off the swim. What do triathletes need to know about the duathlon transition, Andy?

Andy: I would say you’re more likely if the first run has been long and hard, you’re probably in a way more flustered state than you are coming out of the swim. Now that is a generalization because I know a lot of people if they struggle with the swim they can come out quite stressed.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s true.

Andy: But I would say based on my own experience if you’ve run hard, especially if you’ve, for example, closed the gap to a little group as you’re approaching T2 to try and get onto a pack or something like that, it’s amazing how disoriented and—I have in a duathlon run straight past my own bike in transition.

Andrew: Wow.

Andy: Because of being basically so buzzed up and so adrenalined and fired up. So I would say be aware of that beforehand and make doubly, tripley sure like you would with a triathlon, but like really double down in the idea of understanding the route to your bike and the racking because it’s so frustrating to throw down a fast last mile on the run to give all that time away by doubling back in transition and getting in your own way. Just be aware that if you can, you want to get your breathing and heart rate a little bit under control just so you don’t screw up transition because going in at 180 beats a minute and then trying to get your helmet on and get your bike and that sort of thing is huge. The other one which we didn’t mention actually, but when the first run is really short and I certainly remember doing this in the winter on some of the Mudman Duathlons, there was a move towards a lot of us running in our helmet for the first run. If it’s real cold, because a bike helmet doesn’t weigh much…

Andrew: Yeah. True.

Andy: …and with cold fingers and hands we definitely experimented with running the first 2 mile run in the bike helmet which clearly makes you look ridiculous, but in the spirit of speed, certainly I would say in some of these duathlons which are where the swim is canceled in a triathlon they basically put a token run at the start just to spread the field out. Like be prepared to sort of like put your vanity on the line and just wear it for the first run, because why not? Because it’s going to save you a little bit of time.

John: It’s obviously more aerodynamic so that’s going to make you faster and…

Andy: Yeah, exactly.

John: …maybe you’ll be 4 seconds faster if you wore a helmet on the run.

Andrew: I would say this. That would be a race photo you would have to buy

Andy: Yeah.

Andrew: Whenever a race photographer gets a picture of you running in your cycling helmet, that’s a must buy photo right there. That’s not going to happen too, too often.

John: I’ve seen the accidental coming out of T2 with a helmet on.

Andy: Yeah.

John: Maybe it was intentional. Maybe they were on to something.

Andy: I would say just on T1 tips as well, these are a bit more general, but the ones which I always found that worked really well where I’ve made mistakes as well is if you can, get yourself like the most obnoxiously bright colored towel or something like that that you can lay under your bike so that you’re pretty sure you’ve got a visual cue to where it is. That always helps. Not all races these days allow you to leave things like that lying in transition, but if you can get away with it, then kind of mark out your little area with a really bright towel. Then the other one was—well two things. Making sure you’ve got the bike in the right gear setting. So the amount of times you see someone come screaming out of transition leap on their bike and it’s in the 53-11 and they can barely turn the cranks.

Andrew: Yep.

Andy: You’ve got to—and that’s especially important if you’re going straight up a hill or something. So gear down a little bit and make sure you’ve got it in the right gear. Then until I tried it, I didn’t believe how useful this was, but getting a little elastic band and just if you are changing into your bike shoes from your—putting it on the left crank around to the back, like attaching it and then propping your shoes up flat. Usually tri cycling shoes have got that little heel loop on them. If you put a really, really thin elastic band through that and attach it to the crank and the rear stay, it just holds them up out of the way. Then you run, you jump on the bike, the pedals are in the perfect position, they’re nice and flat. You put your feet on them and you just pedal and of course they just snap straight off, job done and you’ve got none of this like shoes bouncing off the floor unclipping themselves, the back wheel kicking itself up in the air and all of that. If you practice that, that makes a huge difference just with the smoothness of getting away.

Andrew: Yep, absolutely and I will even give a plug for both Precision Fuel and Hydration and TriDot online on their stores have transition towels that are brightly colored and you can represent Precision Fuel and Hydration, you can represent TriDot right there in transition by picking up one of those and they’re nice and bright. You can find your stuff nice and easily. So guys, we’ve talked about why to do it, we’ve talked about how to train for it, we’ve talked about transitioning during it. So Andy, with a duathlon, how do we fuel it? Does anything change with our fueling and hydration strategy with that extra run in place of the swim?

Andy: Well, yeah. If the run’s long at the front end, that makes a significant impact because unlike say doing a 20-30 minute swim, you are going to burn more energy and you are going to sweat more when you do that first run. So your fueling, your prefueling has to be nailed, it has to be nailed for any race if you want to do your best anyway, but you certainly might consider taking in a drink if there’s an aid station on the run or even the advantage of say doing a run at the start as opposed to the swim is you can take a gel with you. If you can get a gel down you on the run, if the pace is sufficient to allow you to do that then I would advocate for doing that because basically then you can start fueling 20-30 minutes into the race quite easily and that’s going to help set you up on the bike. The kind of usual—I mean, as you know on our website we’ve got the quick carb calculator for workout out grams of carbs per hour and I don’t think the recommendations change significantly just based on the facts of duathlon, but the fact that you can start fueling earlier means you’re more likely to hit the higher end of your fueling goals…

Andrew: Yeah, true.

Andy: …if you start fueling intelligently. It seems like quite early on to be taking a gel on the run in a duathlon, but I would advocate for it because there’s such a lot of evidence for basically this kind of dose response relationship with carbohydrate consumption and the ability to keep the pace high that it’s a no brainer to. So a gel on the run is a big difference. The amount that you take in on the bike and certainly hydration and fueling is going to be condition and intensity dependent, same as it would be in a triathlon. So all of this stuff that we’ve talked about before around setting a target grams per hour and then fluid and electrolytes based on your sweat output makes a huge amount of sense. Then what I would also advocate for is like making sure that you take another gel late in the bike if it’s a very, very fast and short final run because you’re unlikely to want to take anything on while on the run.

Andrew: While on the run, yeah.

Andy: Like John said, a lot of these races are a lot shorter than what a lot of your listeners will be used to doing. If they’re used to doing 70.3’s, if you take a gel early on in the run in a 2 or 3 mile run, it won’t even be hitting your blood stream until you’re practically at the finish line. So you’ve got to fuel late in the bike to fuel the run because you’ve got to allow that 15 minute window for it to come through.

Andrew: So John, occasionally we find ourselves in what I call an accidental duathlon when the swim leg of a triathlon is turned into an extra run leg or it’s canceled all together. All three of us talked about how we’ve ended up in races like this where the swim was canceled and an extra run was added or it was scrapped. John, what do you tell your athletes just in approaching those races on just how to be flexible in the moment and kind of shift your strategy to account for that last minute change?

John: A lot of it can roll around what Andy was just referring to in your nutrition. Your timeline has changed and kind of depending on the distance of the race it’s going to have a bigger impact kind of depending on that. So if it’s an Ironman distance race and you were largely planning on going an hour or more without any nutrition, now you have the opportunity to do that. As Andy was saying, you can even kind of preload that bike session by getting in nutrition within even just a few minutes or even that optimal window to fuel that ride. I actually had this happen in an Ironman race where the swim was canceled. We were fortunate to know that the day before so was able to kind of adjust my normal routine to account for that. It was great to get to sleep in a little bit.

Andrew: Yeah.

John: I went down and had a sit down breakfast in the hotel which was nice, but then I stood around for a long time in transition because there were something like 3,000 athletes that were now doing a time trial start. There was not a run before it. We just started on the bike and that’s obviously a consideration as well is if that swim is canceled are they adding a run, which they will do sometimes, or is it just straight on to the time trial start. So that’s going to be contingent upon how you approach it with both nutrition and pacing and that sort of thing. Again, depending on the distance, there’s maybe a little bit more opportunity. If it’s just now a bike and run event you have that opportunity to increase your output a little bit more so you’re not having to allocate energy or pacing to that first leg so now you can push a little bit harder on conceivably both the bike and the run, but kind of as we mentioned before, if now they are replacing the swim with a run segment, you’ve got to be careful there because as we mentioned that run is going to be physiologically more difficult, more demanding than the swim would have been. So it’s just taking all those things into consideration. They are generally going to be relatively comparable. These are not massive swings. We’re not changing our whole approach to the day, but obviously we do need to make some intelligent modifications to the plan just to account for those changes.

Cool down theme: Great set everyone! Let’s cool down.

Andrew: On our website, tridot.com/podcast, there is a link that says “Leave Us a Voicemail.” The system can record your voice right there on the spot and send the audio straight to my email. It’s the best way to tell us a story from your own triathlon journey or to ask us a question on the show and we received a great question from TriDot Ambassador, Vanessa, from Canada. And Andy, while you’re with us I have full confidence—like 110% certain that you can knock this one down. Here’s what Vanessa wants to know.

Vanessa Ronksley: Hello TriDot Family! This is Vanessa Ronksley here calling all the way out from Canada and I have had this question that I have been pondering in my mind for, oh gosh, at least seven months and when I’m on those zone 2 rides and I have nothing else to think about, this is what is running through my mind. So I figured because I’ve been thinking about it for so long I need some professional help. So I’m putting this out there for y’all. Okay, here it goes. So my question has a title, it’s called “To Wipe or Not To Wipe Your Sweat.” So you know, we sweat a ton when we’re on the bike trainer down in the basement or wherever you’re training and I know that I tend to wipe all of my sweat off because it’s drippy and annoying and messy and gross. But then I got to thinking about the real purpose of sweat and it’s to help our bodies cool off and it’s taking the heat from our body and it’s evaporating the sweat. So I know that it – well maybe I don’t know. But I’m thinking that if you wipe the sweat away, you’re just going to become more sweaty and I’m wondering if that actually decreases or more so increases our dehydration level if we wipe our sweat away. So I think that’s—umm, I would love to know the answer to that question. Anyways, I hope you have a wonderful day everybody. Have fun training!

Andrew: So a couple things there we want to note, John. #1, I want to note that Vanessa from Canada did us a solid and used the word y’all in there somewhere. So shout out to Vanessa for that for being aware of who we are and what our love language is here on the TriDot podcast.

John: I’m going to challenge Andy to use the word y’all in his response.

Andrew: Oooo. I love this. This is great. We’re just really upping the ante here for Andy Blow. But, Andy, for Vanessa’s question when it comes to our sweat, to wipe or not to wipe? What are your thoughts here?

Andy: It is an interesting question. So Vanessa is obviously completely right that the idea with sweat is that sweating is like a human super power. Not many animals sweat as much as humans do. In fact, basically no animals sweat as much as we do. The most typical mechanism for other mammals to lose heat when their core body temperature rises is things like panting. So you know if you go running with your dog, your dog doesn’t really sweat. Your dog will breath out the heat by essentially forcing—a lot of it is forcing the hot air out and forcing air over the tongue which is moist and that evaporates heat away, but clearly the surface area of that is way less than the surface area of the skin and that’s why it’s one of the theories as to why humans evolved—Well no. We evolved in Africa in a hot, dry climate where to deal with it, you’ve either got to deal with the challenge of not enough water being around or getting too hot and so a lot of creatures that live in hot, desert environments don’t sweat because it’s wasteful in terms of water, but it is phenomenally effective in terms of keeping your core body temperature down. So where evolution kind of zigged in one way, humans zagged to the other way. We chose to need a lot of water, but to sweat a lot because sweating as it evaporates when your sweat evaporates it takes a huge amount of heat away from the body. It’s very effective as anyone will know from when you step out of the swimming pool even on a hot day if there’s a breeze, you feel immediately cold…

Andrew: Yeah.

Andy: …because that’s the transfer of heat to the environment going on right there. Now the interesting question is that when you’re training especially in doors or in humidity, when sweat drips off your body does it take much heat with it? And the answer to that is not really. Not a lot which is why humidity is so much tougher. Because when I ran in like Phoenix or somewhere like that in Arizona and go for a run, it’s surprising how hot it can be before you actually start to suffer in the heat because, and you never feel wet because that sweat is evaporating so fast you just get like salt left on your skin. Whereas if I go to Miami and go running there, you immediately know straight away the sweat is getting in your eyes, you’re dripping, your clothes are soaked and you still feel overly hot and it’s like 15 degrees Fahrenheit less on the thermometer.

Andrew: Yeah.

Andy: It’s why we have the feels like temperature or whatever you want to call it. So when you’re training indoors, should you or should you not wipe the sweat off? I would say in general what you certainly don’t want to be doing is wiping the sweat off large surface areas of your body constantly. So you don’t want to be putting a towel over your back and running it down your arms and like artificially taking the water away before it has a chance to evaporate because you are penalizing your body then by stopping that heat transfer. I think where we all know there’s an exception is that when you’re working hard on the trainer and the sweat is dripping in your eyes and dripping off your nose and it just feels unpleasant, you just want to towel down and wipe your face and that kind of thing, you’re only wiping away a small amount of sweat there and that is sweat that would otherwise be dripping off of you which is not doing a lot of good anyway. So I would say the behavior that most people exhibit is probably fairly sensible, it’s that most people wipe off excess sweat that’s annoying them, but don’t try and towel the whole body down.

Andrew: Every so often, not constantly. Yeah.

Andy: Yeah and so that’s probably a terribly sensible approach to take. The most effective thing you can do and one of the things I don’t see people do often enough I reckon with the indoor training stuff is actually get a big, massive fan stuck behind you as well as in front of you. Because you think about if you’re wearing for ladies just like a sports bra or guys if you’re fairly topless on the indoor bike then that surface area that you can hit with air which helps the evaporation of your sweat with a fan behind you is huge. So that’s probably—although that’s digressing from the exact topic and the question that would be my best tip for y’all if you want to…

John: There it is!

Andy: ...pull out your indoor trainer.

Andrew: Well that’s it for today folks. I want to thank Andy Blow from Precision Fuel and Hydration and Coach John Mayfield for helping us dominate a duathlon. Remember if you want to learn more about Precision Fuel and Hydration from Andy and his team, head to precisionfuelandhydration.com to book a call with one of their sweat experts to form your own race day hydration strategy. If you want to give Precision Fuel and Hydration products a try you can use promo code TRIDOT10 for 10% off your first order. Enjoying the podcast? Have any triathlon questions or topics you want to hear us talk about? Head to tridot.com/podcast to let us know what you’re thinking. We’ll have a new show coming your way soon. Until then, Happy Training!

Outro: Thanks for joining us. Make sure to subscribe and share the TriDot podcast with your triathlon crew. For more great tri content and community, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Ready to optimize your training? Head to tridot.com and start your free trial today! TriDot – the obvious and automatic choice for triathlon training.