Wow! Correlation Bike Time : Run Time

Agreed that the balance of everyone's results will be different depending on where their strengths are.

However the overall pattern does support the theory that the harder you push on the bike the more it will impact your run. Good execution of the whole day is far more important to me than shooting for a particular time in one discipline.

I'm not trying to be snarky, but can you really draw that conclusion from your data? You fixed the total time, so it would logically follow that if one of the numbers increases, the other one has to decrease (assuming comparable swim and transition times) to keep the sum constant. For your equation (Bike + Run = Total), you've fixed two of the the variables (Bike and Total). I'm not sure that the Run numbers can really mean anything in this context.

To draw the conclusion that you did, I think you have to look at the bike times for the entire pool of finishers, and then compare ranges of run times (ignoring total finishing time) in order to determine whether or not people blew up.

Yeah I thought about doing the whole lot but it would have been a lot of work and I would have had to do a bunch of graphs and stuff to make any sense of it. I was interested in seeing if time conformed to normal distribution but never quite got there

I chose this time range because it is MOP. My guess is that you could take a snapshot at any point and get a similar result. Sure the numbers will be different, but I bet it would still show those go go hard on the bike have a slower run (relatively) and the opposite.

From the data here everyone finished within a similar time range (30 mins). Do you reckon the guy with the fastest bike split and walked a good bit of the run was happy with his race? I bet not!

Likewise the guy with the fast run would have been wondering how much more he could have pushed the bike.

There's a happy medium in there somewhere and each person has to find their own.

Of course the wider range you look at the wider the min and max time will get. That's why I took a 1/2 hour snapshot to show the range of differences between people who finished around the same time.

Yep everyone has different strengths and this is reflected in the bike to run ranges.

HOWEVER: For any give finishing time why go all out and smack the bike to then turn in a run performance that is below par for you. Surely a consistent performance across all 3 disciplines is a better result?

I've heard lots of people say to take it (relatively) easy on the bike, but these numbers actually demonstrated me.

Here comes motorsport-like TV coverage (real time on screen):

"And look at that, Macca just changed up to his 12 and look at him fly. 6 1/2 minutes now pushing 350 (or whatever it is) watts. Surely he's going to blow!"

It seems an equal number of threads also state that IMers all have different strengths. I come from a strong cycling background with years of training. I can ride a 20+ mph century (w/ no aero equip, FWIW) and not be "killing myself on the bike". That puts me at 5:30ish over 112 miles. I'll be training for closer to 5 hours and am exploring aero options.

But I have only been running for three months. The furthest I've run so far is 10k and I have absolutely no idea if I can even finish a marathon, let alone do it in any kind of noteworthy timeframe.

The only thing I can take away from these kinds of threads is that I need to ride a manageable pace, no matter what the corresponding MPH is. Although I haven't done it in a triathlon, I have done 100 mile time trials and other ultra events. My method is to maintain a target HR and not go over it, except for short durations to get over climbs. I train at and for that same HR.

In the case of IM, I am assuming that my target HR will need to be lower than what it would be for a cycling-only event. In a TT, I can sustain a 155-160 average for 5 hours. My plan for Florida is to stay in the 140s, but I will evaluate that as the training progresses throughout the year.

Any flaws in my approach or other advice?