Wind

Thursday morning is Front Runner threshold bike session so today we had a wee bit of cycling.

Good session, 6 x 6 minutes done at 100% FTP, so on the shorter side, but since it was so short people really pushed it hard right to the end (usually poor pacing early and fatigue starts to slow them down) so it was fairly solid for everyone.

An interesting complication for many of the athletes this morning was that there was quite a strong wind blowing during the session. The course we ride more runs more or less East/West and so when a strong easterly blows (as it often does in the mornings in Perth) you are either fighting it or flying. Given prevailing wind patterns in Perth this is not an uncommon problem, but it is one that we regularly discuss anyway.

The reason we discuss it regularly is that besides being a regular feature during training, it is also a regular feature during racing in WA, so it is important athletes know how to handle it, particularly the headwind.

When it comes to racing into the wind the advice is pretty standard. Accept it, don't get frustrated and don't fight it. The old 'wind is your friend' motto. What does all this mean? Well for one, the wind is there whether you want to be or not. Whether you get angry at the wind or simply focus on riding into it smartly is up to you, the wind doesn't really care one way or another. Usually it is more productive to accept the wind for what it is and concentrate on riding smart.

What does riding smart look like? Well the aim of a bike leg in a triathlon is to reduce the intensity variability as much as possible. We know that those with the most stable power output are the ones who run the best, this means we don't want big power spikes as you ride into the wind and conversely we don't want people cruising in the tailwind. This will probably mean riding a bit slower in the headwind and faster in the tailwind in order to keep the intensity fairly stable. I think that one of the big mistakes people make when riding in the wind is getting wed to a particular speed. An attitude of 'I must ride at XXkm/h no matter what' means a person would be changing up their intensity every time the wind changed. This won't kill your race, but you definitely won't run as well as you could. Preventing this phenomenon is one of the major benefits of a power meter. A power meter gives you an objective metric output no matter what the conditions. You use FTP to calculate your planned power output and you sit on it no matter what the conditions are doing. Simple. Painfully simple in fact which is why so many people like them.

Riding smart isn't just about keeping the intensity stable, but it is also about being smart with your cadence. When you ride you can either tap along at a comfy tempo (whatever that is for you) or you can grind away pushing a big gear. From my observation when riding into a headwind people often fall in the trap of grinding away. Triathletes are usually very fit, but often we aren't cycling monsters. We have heaps of cardiac capacity, but perhaps not so much muscular endurance. Once we start pushing a big gear into a wind we move the load from being aerobic (which we are good at) to being muscular (which we may not be good at) fatiguing some of those leg and glute muscles that we are going to be wanting later when we are running. A piece of advice I give my athletes when dealing with the wind is to keep the cadence in your 'happy zone', basically 'use your gears, that is what they are for'. Gearing down will help you raise your cadence and keep you taping along at a comfy tempo, helping you keep your cycling efficient rather than bogging down and getting frustrated.

All up there are plenty of ways that athletes can ride 'smart' in the wind. They may not 'make the wind your friend', but it might at least reduce the frustration that comes with it. As with all these things practice makes perfect which is exactly what the squad got this morning.