One of the most common questions we hear is, how do you improve your running times in a triathlon. Some of the athletes at Team Airofin have said that they are capable of hitting under 40 minutes at 10k distance but when it came down to the 10k at the end of the triathlon they would struggle to hit under the 40 minute mark. We spoke with our team coach Jarrod Harvey @Jarrodharveytri who is the head coach at Tri Edge coaching https://www.triedgecoaching.net/ - Jarrod has previously finished 9th (25-29) at the Kona World Championship in 2017 with a time of 9:23:23 so we asked him for some tips and advice on trying to improve our run times at the end of the triathlon....
Here are some of his useful tips for racing and training in improving your run times.
Work on your cadence
Now for those of you not familiar with the term cadence, it is simply put the number of steps you take per minute. If you can work on improving your cadence then you will be able to improve on your run time. But how do we increase cadence?
First off, you will need to set your own cadence zones up. If your cadence at race pace is at 160 steps per minute, then you will want to try and increase that by 5-10% initially and work on that by implementing shortened intervals at a higher cadence. Instead of counting your steps you should try a metronome to help keep track of this.
Practise running straight off the bike
(Image: @tri_kajtek)
This seems like a really obvious one, but it is something that a lot of people miss out of their training. Jarrod recommends working on a long sustained strength effort (roughly 8 minutes) on the turbo trainer and quickly transitioning into a 2-3km run. This will help your body develop an understanding of what to expect coming from the bike to the run and programme the muscles to learn to adapt.
Match your cadence on the bike to your run
Now this is something we haven’t really heard of before but it is a great point to make. If your run cadence is 180 steps per minute you should try and pair that with your bike cadence. 180 steps per minute is roughly equivalent to 90RPM on the bike. Having the bottom half of your body in unison and pushing at a similar ratio means your legs will be able to make that transition over from the bike to the run much more easily.
Try giving these a go and let us know your thoughts on these points.