Triathlon Tips: How to Run Faster Off the Bike

Whether you want to complete or compete successfully, executing a triathlon requires discipline across three disciplines.

Depending on your goals, you'll need to bike fast enough to place in your age group or overall, or make a time cut, but you don't want to overcook your legs for the run.

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What can you do to ensure your legs will get you to the finish chute?

Gwen Jorgensen and Nicola Spirig running. Credit: Creative Commons

Proper Triathlon Nutrition and Hydration

Nutrition might be triathlon's fourth discipline. If you nail your nutrition, you won't feel too tired to finish, and you'll be able to cross the finish line feeling like you left it all out there. But if you don't get your triathlon fueling right, you could suffer cramping, loss of power, delayed decision-making, and severe fatigue that prevents you from finishing.

Eating and drinking on the bike is easiest, compared to swimming or running, so this is where you'll want to focus on keeping your energy stores topped off. If you practice your nutrition strategy while you're on the bike and when out for your training runs, you'll be dialed in for race day.

You'll want to train for eating and drinking on the bike by consuming enough electrolytes and carbs for your size, weight, and body type. Before race day, you'll want to know how much to drink while riding (and in what kind of weather) and how many grams of carbohydrate to ingest, without overdoing it before getting to the bike-in transition zone.

And the same goes for staying hydrated with an electrolyte and/or carb solution.

Keep in mind the longer the event, the more important hydration and nutrition become for being a successful triathlete. A sports nutritionist can help you dial in your specific needs.

Pro triathlete Taylor Knibb is a beast on the bike, but she paces it well knowing she'll have to run after pedaling. Credit: Creative Commons

Pacing on the Bike for a Better Run

Another sure-fire way to finish strong on the run is not overcooking your legs on the bike.

A power meter and a heart rate monitor are invaluable training and racing tools for guiding how hard to go on the bike. A bike computer that displays your effort (power, heart rate, distance, time, speed, etc.) is a must-have.

If you have the tools to guide your training, you can practice pacing to ensure your variability index (the ratio of Normalized Power to Average Power) is as close to 1.00 as you can get it. Sustaining watts while seeing a gradual elevation in heart rate (minimal decoupling and low cardiac drift) is a good indicator of fitness and steady state cycling execution. You'll also want to keep an eye on your bike cadence. Ideally, spin between 80 and 90rpm. Too slow, and you'll induce fatigue; too fast, and your power may be sub-optimal.

If you use a simulation environment like Rouvy or Zwift, do so without using erg mode to learn what power output feels like. You'll want to pay attention to your watts and heart rate.

You'll want to avoid going out too hard, and also limit surges on the bike. When climbing, the longer you can stay seated, the more efficient your cycling will be, leaving you in a better position for the run.

If you can stay calm and relaxed in transition, you won't spike your heart rate and will likely have a better run. Credit: Creative Commons

Practice Transitions for Faster Runs

Another great way to improve your triathlon run is to practice transitions. Practicing your transition will give you the experience of moving from the bike to the run and all the skills necessary to get onto the run efficiently.

You'll want to practice efficiently getting into your running shoes, grabbing any nutrition and hydration you'll want for the run, and then moving towards the run-out exit without stumbling, cramping, or going out too fast.

If you're too nervous after the bike segment, you may be more likely to go too hard too early.

One way to practice triathlon transitions is by doing BRICK workouts in your training. You don't have to follow every bike ride with a run, but doing specific workouts targeting the bike-transition-run, as well as the increased fueling needs, will greatly benefit you. USA Triathlon suggests that if you're running three times per week, one of the sessions should be a bike-run workout.

A simple BRICK workout that's highly effective for Olympic- and half-distance triathletes is after doing a two-hour ride below threshold, do a 20-minute run, employing a negative split strategy, finishing the final 10 minutes or last mile at target pace. A BRICK workout that's effective for shorter events may be doing two 20-minute threshold efforts on the bike, at or just below race pace, followed by running one mile at race pace.

If your race distance focus is sprint triathlon and/or Olympic distance races, you'll want to train intensity when running off the bike. If you're doing longer events, like 70.3 and 140.6/full-distance events, you'll want to practice not going too hard, too soon. You'll want to avoid going too hard and/or for too long in training, as this requires appropriate rest and recovery, which could impact your training in the following days.

BRICKs are also excellent opportunities to practice your nutrition strategy!

You don't have to follow every bike ride with a run, but doing specific workouts targeting the bike-transition-run will greatly benefit you

 
Practice pacing the run segment so you don't go out too fast. Credit: Greg Kaplan

Run Pacing Practice

Wearable fitness devices are invaluable tools for training and pacing when racing. But they are only tools to guide you.

Triathlon coaches recommend track workouts for speed, hill workouts for power, and base distance and tempo runs for fitness and physical adaptation. You'll want to understand your pacing while doing structured run workouts geared for triathlon, which means running off the bike.

Once you've got the basics of running off the bike (after swimming!), which feels quite different than doing an open run, a wearable device can help guide your pacing. This is where using technology is a great advantage. Pay attention not only to your minutes per mile/kilometer, but also your heart rate. If your heart rate spikes too soon, you'll have a hard time getting it back under control and will fatigue too early.

Keeping your heart rate under control through proper pacing is especially important for long-course triathletes, who run for several hours.

Smiling on the Run

One sure way to run easier and faster off the bike is to smile. This simple, low-energy-cost muscle expression is proven to relax athletes and serves as a reminder that you're doing this hard work and sometimes painful racing as a fun exploit.

Top Triathlon Tips for Faster Running Off the Bike

• Eat and drink on the bike
• Don't ride too hard
• Stay relaxed in transition
• Pay attention to your pace out of T2
• Smile!