Totally agree with this. For iM pacing I reckon knowing where LT1 is, would be more appropriate.
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correctā¦
Edit: and it is usually a lot lower than athletes thinkā¦
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Does LT1 exist or is it a range?
it exists as a fixed valueā¦
but it is an estimateā¦
in wonderfully contradictory academic assumptionsā¦
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Your all gā¦wrong.
The question is: how many watts for your race day efforts?
The answer is: all of them.
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Iām aiming for whether I do it or not right now. Apart from that, sub 16 would be great given Iāll be riding a butcherās bike. 
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FTFY 
LT1 as above. Again so different , cant be judged as a %, but one reasonable assumption is can you nose breathe, can you talk in full sentences then you will be close or below. As eJC says, probably lower than you think.
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I like to think Iāll have some break through but after seven Ironman races donāt think thereās much more I can get on the bike in terms of total power output.
I do think that race day execution is a big thing, and I have found wattage targets definitely help.
Sprint itās just empty the tank and pray through T2.
Olympic you have to hold back a bit but itās still pretty much all hard. I think my race day watts show I could add another 10 or 20W and see if my run suffers much.
70.3 and Iron is too long and hard to say ādo what you feel likeā though. Unless you donāt care when you finish, like my last IM.
With a functioning bike, good preparation, and a few hours every few years fucking about on bestbikesplit Iāve come up with a simple formula.
Pick target watts based on training/racing eg 70.3 200W
If itās flat, thatās my number.
Slight incline? +10W
Hill? +20W
Never above +40W unless some Canute accelerates when youāre passing.
Downhill? Stop pedalling when youāre going fast 
Nosebreathing? Usually too hot on IM race days, but I will have a bit of a sing song. For some reason āIām going doooown, in a blayze orfglooory!!ā usually seems to fit the bill. 
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Disagree - most people overestimate FTP, and even then itās likely a measure of ~50 minute power for most people depending on TTE. Given you then need to run another ~45 minutes after Iād be wanting to save enough. More likely to bike 1 min faster and run 2 min slower than other way round. When youāre close to 10k pb in Olympics (Eg one minute ish) would I start thinking about being more ambitious.
Can never quite get the read on @Poet posts, with bits of sense and bits of 
. As hammerer says %FTP is very vague anyway given the FTP itself is likely inaccurate, and then the % of is different for everyone. Whilst LT2/CP is a great marker for Olympic and below itās near meaningless for Ironman, which is reflective of performance at LT1.
Other than that, as first paragraph itās complet opposite to the fisherman: stop chasing a bike split and avoid walking.
Use a %threshold value if you want to guide first few training sessions, then dial in RPE.
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JJ asked the question how well can you run?
Way back when, I did Outlaw the year after the day it was hotter than the sun.
Started off at 180W, this was down to 160W at the end, so on paper totally over biked. On my run I still set off at 7 min/miles, on paper again way to fast, this slowed, but ran the whole way and still went sub 3:20. Not sure why I am contributing here other than a bit of look at me 
PS I can run and used to be able to run off the bike no issueā¦
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Replied as I read through thread before getting to the end. Like your last post.
IM Pace needs to feel easy. Remember itās your warm up ride to the start line of a marathon.
Maybe those more experienced and faster can start thinking about actually putting some pressure on the pedals, but not until then, and again based on previous successful run splits.
I tried it in Cairns in the last hour of the bike to maintain 75% FTP NP, and only just got away with it. Was probably at the end of the overlap range between time gained on bike costing run time. Much more and Iād have lost more on the run
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If theyāve overestimate youād be right.
But the way people talk on the internet itās like everyone overestimates FTP. Which isnāt.
It so simple to ratify threshold power these days, people are just lazy if they havenāt done it.
So when it comes to Olympic, ride/race an indoor 40k TT - Zwift for example . forget the race result, but look at the power. Youāll soon know whether you were in the right ball park or not.
FTP doesnāt have to be super accurate, thresholds vary day by day anyway, so 5 watts here or there is no biggie. Itās still a good estimate of an approximation of a quasi-threshold steady state - and who doesnāt love those?
So much easier than a 5k TT run too, which people seem to do every other week in some placesā¦
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And then do a 10k run off it. And youāll know whether you were in the right ball park or not 
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change gear insteadā¦
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train to work at your LTP1 on all but the most technical of descentsā¦
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in most cases they doā¦
itās easy to fix the 20 min testā¦and if you think most people arenāt exceeding FTP when racing on Zwift, wellā¦
Tested a female LD triathlete last week to make this very point:
Zwift calculated a new FTP as 195 W ā 3.65 W/kg Cat 1
Training Peaks calculated a new FTP as 187 W ā 3.5 W/kg Cat 2
Lactate test analysed FTP 178 W ā 3.33 W/kg Cat 2 - an 8.7% difference.
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Iād say for the majority of the field, theyād have a better overall time if they followed my plan 
Mainly, as theyāre all doing >11 hours and havenāt done the training (mass generalisations!)
When I did Cotswold 113 in 2019, I just rode 100km at race power every week, eventually it felt pretty damn easy. And I knew the āeffortā required for it, so rode well even with no PM on race day 
As for Ironman? Never got one right. Ever.
5:10-5:30 bikes all with >3:40 marathons (when Iām running decent times for 5km - HM)
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Imagine this but smaller:
No, frustration level is not related to performance levels. If you arenāt expressing what you think you are capable of it doesnāt matter if itās sub 10, 12 or 16.
Try pacing with power to nearer a 6h bike. No powering up hills. Use Gatorskins
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Done that on many 200km rides (although theyāre just under 7 hours)
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