5 Beginner 70.3 Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

Avoid these Half Ironman Mistakes!

Embarking on your 70.3 journey? Avoid these five common beginner mistakes and set yourself up for race day success! In this video, I’ll share crucial tips on pacing, nutrition, transitions, and more to help you cross the finish line feeling strong and confident. Whether you’re tackling your first half-Ironman or looking to improve, these insights will help you avoid the pitfalls that can derail your race. Like, subscribe, and comment below with your triathlon questions or goals. Let’s conquer 70.3 together!

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what are the five most common mistakes I see athletes making at their first 70.3 so you’ve done it you’ve entered your first race you completed it and you had a bun fight in the water you got kicked and punched you didn’t realize that You’ get through transition quite beaten up feet wet Sandy and people were passing you on the bike like you were standing still like rocket ships and you were half dead on the marathon or the should I say you were half dead on the half marathon and you had to walk a lot now you’re addicted and you’re determined to fix it so in this video I’m going to cover some real simple things that I see time and time again with some of my athletes and certainly newbies that are easily rectified for your second or third one this is you listen up and I’m sure you’ll learn something and hopefully you can apply it in your your next race first of all starting of course early on in the race with the Swim getting into the wrong start pen so now and for a long time Iron Man have self-seeded you into sub 30 minutes 32 35 35 to 40 Etc minutes for your half Iron Man swimm now if it’s your first time you have no idea how long it’s going to take you and you are normally quite feared you normally fear should I say the swim portion of the of the of the race of course it’s open water there’s a few hundred of you and you’re going five of you every couple of seconds into the water and they’ve created this environment so you have less anxiety so what happens is people overestimate their time uh they say oh I’m going to swim 35 minutes but actually they’re a 40- minute swimmer so they’ll go in the sub 35 minute pen this generally happens to 60 70% of the races but the humble athletes tend to go right I’m realistically around 3435 so I’ll I’ll hold back I’ll go in the 35 to 40 and swim my way through and feel relaxed what actually happens is you end up just getting held up all the time because people overestimate their swim time they’ll say they’re a sub 30 minute swimmer and they’re 32 34 Minute swimmer cuz they want to get to the front of the race out of the way but actually it messes up everyone else’s race because you end up swimming over bodies you ruin their race because they freak out because you’re going over them plus you get super frustrated heart rate goes up with tension and you get pissed off so get in the right star pin if anything move up I think into a slightly faster time category because you get sucked along as soon as this loads of swimmers in front of you unless you’re going off of the 20 sub 25 minute lot you you’re going to have people ahead of you and you know who you are and if you are come from a swim background and you know you can get away get ahead don’t think you’re going to hold back cuz you’re a weaker triathlete and you slow on the bike get away from the crowds and get up to the front back yourself have confidence and of course ideally you practice this a little bit in training unless you’re coming straight from cold weather and you can’t get into Open Water that’s the first first critical error have a real think about where you are in your race and what actually happened at your first 70.3 now you felt like your prepar preparation was superb and you thought you could conquer everything on the race day you’ve covered 70 80 km of training perhaps or even the full 90 56 mies so you’re confident and it it isn’t a long super long day and majority of triathletes first timers will absolutely have a great day what I tend to find and see is they over bike so they do not understand the strategy to use around pacing for 56 M 90 km now it’s easy to say hold back or see how you feel which is which is really important feel is everything so some of us use power meters some of us use at least power and heart rate now if you there’s a lot of different theories around what percentage of your threshold you should ride at and if you’re a season 70.3 so experience intermediate and above you can probably operate at a higher percentage so just understand that that versus if you’re a beginner your first second time you’re better off holding back and under biking because yes you know it you’ll have more legs and carbohydrate storage for the Run you’re better off coming off the bike saying CH I should have ridden harder you probably got your pacing right so in terms of power what I like to get people to ride it’s a quite a big range 85 to about 91% of their true threshold so if you go and ride as hard as you can for 45 minutes up to an hour that should be technically your threshold on a bike ideally outside in your environment that you quite used to if you can’t do that you can do it on a turbo working at as percentage of that sh bear in mind if you’ve done all the training to get there that should save your legs and resore um spare some glycogen some carbohydrates for the Run similarly if you’re working with heart TR it’s a slightly higher percentage of your threshold heart rate 86 to 91% more on the lower side for beginners first timers of your threshold heart rate okay so if 100% is of course around about your Olympic distance heart rate or your average heart rate you can hold 45 minutes to an hour on the bike at that 86 91% of that as a percentage value that’s a nice safe environment to be in obviously if you unsure just work on the low end don’t over keep your ego at Bay okay females are really good at this males aren’t so good coupled with that biking I’m going to include under Point 2 2.2 is transition training a lot of people ignore that certainly beginners and they storm out of the water run really fast because they want to make up time because they might be a good runner you’ve lost time in the water and all the blood is in the upper body nothing really in your legs you might have kicked the last few hundred meters upright blood pressure change heart rate goes through the roof so you get on the bike with the heart rate in the 160s a because you haven’t practiced the transition and the faft it takes to get your bag put your h on Race belt wheel your bike out and often it’s a couple hundred meters of a jog with your Tri bike or your road bike through transition the whole time the heart rate’s up your feet are quite dirty Sandy potentially you’ve slipped practice this I promise you it’s gold it’s just free time and like anything a bit like driving lessons you do six of those you you can drive a car so I’m putting that under the biking because you’ve started your your biking right you still with me okay the third thing yes I’m I can’t not touch on fuel and hydration I’m not going to go into an indepth but what I find is they train on the carb drink the hyper hypertonic carb solution drink 6% potentially some gels and they either overdo it on the bike because it’s race some simulation day and or they actually undercook the fueling because they don’t really potentially like the sweetness or they haven’t dialed in and practiced at least four or five times assimilation of what they’re going to use on the race day so they overdo the carb drink or the jails or both get quite slushy and Bloated and then they pay for it unfortunately when they start getting upright and running so you you know it you’ve got to have a proper fueling strategy now that you’ve learned from your first one understand what’s on race course that’s quite easy to work with now currently as we stand beginning 2025 it’s Mor and precision Fuel and hydration you can easily separate things and work with your hydration fueling to understand actually what you’re doing so you get used to your grams per hour that you’re going to Target start low and build up higher is not better especially if you’re a beginner you’re working at a slightly lower percentage you don’t have to burn through as much so actually less is more most of us overdo it something that’s completely underrated is understanding the course now that might seem a bit strange to you in terms of not a hierarchy you look on the map or you might go art in Valencia Art in muca and you just kind of go I’m great on Heels or you’ve got to understand where the eight stations are what the wind is probably doing there’s great apps art available to understand where you might have a headwind where you know when to push so you have to push into a headwind it’s like going uphill but then when you have a Tailwind that’s actually when you just really get quite aerodynamic and rest and that’s good time to eat some solids potentially bring the heart rate down you balance out your race so you got to understand where what and how and what the sun’s doing the wind and obviously understand the weather for that day which you probably know a couple of days out so understanding the course if you get a chance to wrecky the course even better but most of us travel somewhere you might only get there a day to so you might be able to ride part of the course I understand that or it’s in a city but understand watch some videos read some of the notes from people all online it’s it’s all accessible now and most people go in blind and they potentially think ah I’ve written 60k 90 will be okay things change after 2 hours of pushing at that intensity you might not be able to absorb certain amount of calories that you did in training so understand where the aid stations are the is normally two on a 70.3 you know carry enough fuel for at least 2 hours and understand where you’re going to get that on the course the fifth thing of course the run is left so no guesses for what I’m going to talk about what athletes do and Runners do this all the time they go out at a pace that they think so 5 minut km 8 minutes a mile they’ve done it in training so they try and stick to this pace but what we’re realizing is you’ve worken up at 4: 5 a.m. you’ve swam been in your out of your comfort zone you’ve biked fairly solid for 2 and 1/2 to 3 and 1/2 hours in different variable weather conditions normally quite hot there’s a fatigue and a durability issue here so you are quite new to it you don’t have that engine potentially so instead of going out to a set prescribed Pace yes feel is amazing and you should know your feel understanding your what your heart rate is doing in terms of your Zone and people don’t build into the Run they go out at a pace which they can sustain for 5Ks and at about 7 or eight the wheels come off generally due to the sun poor nutrition on the bike so they’re stummy slushy and they’re not absorbing the gel now they’ve taken and the emergency Coke so ra building I always try like to say guys and girls get to 10K so roughly halfway 6 miles 6 and a half and then ignore I don’t mind what you do heart rates Pace you can go for it most people will then try to pick it up but actually if anything they held it or slightly slowed your second half will generally be a bit slower if you can negative split and build in slower and have that confidence to hold back I promise you you’ll real in people because you Pace properly on the bike and you hold back on the first portion of the run it’s about 2 hours of running on average for beginners it’s a really long time to be out there um especially after a hard bike so in summary there you have it there’s some five common mistakes that I hope set you up and you can Implement straight away into your next race I’d love to know how you get on so please like subscribe to to the Channel watch some of my other videos and also just feel free to comment and get get in touch with me via the channel I’d love to try and help you if I can if there’s anything you need questions answering and um yeah best of luck for the next races and it’s a great distance you can do a few of them in a season and and see you at the races