24/09/2026
Steve had never done a triathlon in January.
On Sunday he finished IRONMAN 70.3 Weymouth in 5:56:28.
Sub 6 on debut. 32nd of 91 in M45-49.
Every number along the way came from a test.
His 400m swim dropped from 7:25 to 6:49 in four months. Threshold pace from 1:54 to 1:47/100m.
On race day he swam 1.9km of open water at 1:53/100m, just under threshold, exactly where we planned to hold it and all from data pre-summer.
Bike zones were set from FTP testing and anchored to heart rate, because different bikes and apps give different watts.
His indoor bike FTP moved from 152W to 159W on the same device. Whilst another FTP towards the end showed an improvement to 210W! Race day included 1,019m of climbing!!!
Fuelling was trained like any other system. Twelve weeks of gut training took him up to around 80g of carbohydrate per hour.
On race day we held him at 75g. Deliberately. The gut adapts to what you repeatedly ask of it But race day isn’t the day to find the cliff edge.
Most of it went in on the bike. It’s logistically easier to eat and drink there, and the gut tolerates fuel far better on the bike than on the run .
Every chew was taken with water. Chews on their own leave a concentrated load in the stomach that empties more slowly.
Water fixes that.
We picked a primary aid station on the bike and a back-up, for taking on water. His carbohydrate blend was personalised to him.
Nearly six hours. Zero stomach issues.
Then the run. 1:44:35 off the bike. He ran every step and passed 259 athletes, 23 of them in his age group.
A few months earlier he’d finished his first ever triathlon, a sprint, in 1:52:47.
If you’re a strong runner assuming triathlon isn’t for you, the data says otherwise.
DM “TRI” and we’ll talk through what your first 70.3 block would look like.