The Triathlete Blueprint Newsletter #114-How to Pace Your Triathlon: Strategies That Actually Work

Yan Busset
7 days ago
10 min read

Read time: 8min.

By Coach Yan Busset

Don't Blow Up: Pacing Tips for Triathlon Success

You’ve spent weeks, maybe even months, preparing for your race. You’ve trained, built your fitness, tested your gear. The start line is in sight. But on race day, one thing can make or break all that work: your pacing strategy.

It would be a shame to waste all that preparation by pushing too hard too early, or by holding back too much at the wrong moment. Finding the right balance between speed and control is one of the most important and underrated skills in triathlon.

In this article, we’ll look at practical pacing strategies for each part of the race: swim, bike and run. Whether you’re a beginner looking to finish or a more experienced athlete aiming for performance, your pacing approach will need to match your experience and your goals. The idea is simple: help you get the best out of your day.

Swim Pacing Strategy

The swim is the shortest part of the race in terms of time, but it often sets the tone for what comes next. That’s why it deserves real attention when thinking about your pacing. But saying “take it easy to save energy” is too simplistic. It all depends on the distance you’re racing and your level of experience.

Let’s break it down.

If you’re racing a sprint and it’s your first triathlon, the smart strategy is to treat the swim more like in long-distance racing. Your goal is to survive the chaos, avoid spending unnecessary energy, and come out of the water ready to ride. It’s not the place to play hero, it’s the place to stay calm and efficient.

Now, if you’re more experienced on the sprint distance, you can afford to push. But make sure you place yourself correctly at the start. If you’re too far back, you’ll be trapped in the washing machine. Too far front, and you’ll be overtaken and swum over. Be smart, be aggressive when it’s worth it, but keep control.

On longer distances, the swim becomes a pure efficiency game. The best strategy is to be in eco mode and aim for the best speed-to-energy ratio. You want to arrive at T1 as fresh as possible. Your pacing should reflect your training volume. If you’ve trained properly and logged consistent swim volume, you’ll be able to swim faster without burning too many matches. But if you’ve been inconsistent or under-trained, pushing hard in the swim will just take away from your run later on.

And don’t forget the extra variables: wearing a wetsuit, water temperature, choppy conditions, or even just swimming straight, they all impact pacing. In open water, it’s harder to guess your pace compare to pool swim, so learning to swim by feel is crucial. Focus on your frequency will help. Try to figure out your ideal race day stroke rate in training and practice holding it in different conditions.

If you’ve got the tools, use them. Devices like the old Finis Tempo Trainer its helpful to lock in your ideal stroke rate and build familiarity with your sustainable pace. But the main idea is to get comfortable with your rhythm in open water, not just rely on numbers.

Swim Pacing Table

Distance	Experienced Athlete	Finisher Mindset
Sprint	Zone 4	Zone 2–3
Olympic	Zone 3–4	Zone 2–3
Half	Zone 3	Zone 2
Full	Zone 2–3	Zone 1–2

Main Takeaways – Swim

• Start smart: where you place yourself at the start can shape your entire swim.

• The shorter the race, the higher the intensity, but only if you’re ready for it.

• Drafting is legal and can help, but only draft swimmers who are actually going your pace.

• Don’t judge your swim by the official distance, courses are rarely exact and you may not swim straight.

• Focus on being efficient, staying relaxed, and coming out of the water under control.

Bike Pacing – Where Most Races Are Lost

Let’s be clear: this is the segment that makes or breaks your day, especially in longer distances. The bike takes up to 50% of your race time, and the decisions you make here will define your run and your finish line story.

The most common mistake? You get out of the water — relieved — finally on the bike, finally in control. And boom, you go too hard. Especially if the swim was rough or you're not confident in the water. You want to “catch up”. You feel strong. You feel fast. But 20 km in, you’ve already spent more than you think. The price? It will come later in the run.

There’s a saying I like: “Bike for show, run for dough.” Another one: “Bike to run.” Don’t ride with ego. You’re not racing anyone at that moment. You’re preparing your run. If you feel like you’re racing in the first hour of a full Ironman bike leg, you’re probably going too hard.

Your strategy should reflect the distance. On sprint or Olympic races, if you’re experienced and the goal is to push, then yes — you can go close to your threshold. But if you’re a beginner or just want to finish strong, then your approach should be closer to that of a long-distance pacing strategy: conservative early on to avoid paying the price later. We’ll break this down in the pacing table below.

And remember, pacing on the bike is not about holding the same speed. Speed is affected by terrain and wind. What matters is physiological intensity. Try to keep your effort smooth — meaning: push a bit more on uphills, stay steady on flats, and coast smart on downhills. Once you’re already riding at 60+ km/h, pushing 30 extra watts barely gives you seconds, but it does burn matches. And burning matches here can cost you big time later.

Let’s talk about peak efforts for a second. Each high-intensity surge creates a metabolic shift. Your body starts producing lactate, which in turn forces a switch: you move from burning fat to relying more heavily on carbohydrates. Your body can use some of that lactate as fuel, yes — but the main consequence is that you stop being in fat-burning mode. And once you burn more carbs than you can replace, you’re walking a tightrope toward bonking. It’s not just about going fast — it’s about staying efficient.

If you have a power meter, use it. Honestly, it's probably the best investment you can make for your bike training and racing. You can’t pace by speed. Speed is deceptive. But watts are watts. Think of training without a power meter like going to the gym without knowing how much weight you lift. It works — but it’s hard to measure or improve.

If you're pacing with power, you can also use TSS — Training Stress Score — as a smart tool. TSS is a metric that combines both intensity and duration to reflect total stress. You can think of it as an energy budget. If you’ve already spent too much halfway into the bike leg, you know you’ll have to ease off if you want to survive the run. It’s not an exact science, but it’s a great way to reflect honestly on your effort and budget your energy across the race.

Now, a big one that is often overlooked: cadence. If you’re riding around 180 to 190 watts — typical of long-distance athletes — your ideal cadence might be much lower than you think. Many triathletes assume they need to spin at 90 rpm like the pros. But for most people, a cadence closer to 70 rpm is often more efficient. It reduces heart rate and saddle friction, and it helps with energy conservation. Lower cadence doesn’t mean grinding. It means using your gears smartly and finding your own economical rhythm. I’ve written a full blog on this topic, which you can read here: [Blog link].

And please — simulate race day in your training. Ride in the same position, on the same bike, with the same nutrition. Don’t do all your intervals on a Wattbike in an upright position and then expect the same numbers on your TT bike. It doesn’t work like that. Testing needs to reflect reality. So does training.

And remember — your bike effort isn’t just about the bike. It affects your ability to run. It’s all connected. You don’t win the race on the bike. You only lose it there.

Bike Pacing Table (Zones and FTP %)

Distance	Athlete Type	Effort Zone	% FTP
Sprint	Beginner	Z2-Z3	70-80%
Sprint	Experienced	Z4-Z5	90-100%
Olympic	Beginner	Z2-Z3	70-80%
Olympic	Experienced	Z3-Z4	85-95%
Half Distance	Finish-focused	High Z2	75-80%
Half Distance	Experienced	Z3	80-85%
Full Distance	Conservative Start	Z2	68-72%
Full Distance	Experienced	High Z2-Z3	72-78%

Bike: Main Takeaways

Don’t “win” the bike — manage your effort smartly
Terrain matters: push uphill, hold steady, coast downhill
Avoid peak efforts: they hurt fat-burning and increase carb use
Cadence matters: lower is often more efficient than you think
Simulate race day: bike, position, power, nutrition
Use TSS as your energy budget to avoid spending it all too early
Train with power if possible — but learn to pace by feel in case tech fails

Run Pacing – Where It All Shows

The run is where pacing decisions show their consequences. You’ve already swum and biked, and now it’s about what’s left in the tank. If you’ve overcooked the bike, you’ll know it fast. If you’ve raced smart, you’ll feel the difference.

On sprint and Olympic, the run is more about tolerance to discomfort. You go hard, you hang on, and you empty the tank. It’s not really about pace — it’s about managing collapse. But still, don’t rush the first kilometre. Give your legs a bit of time to settle.

On half, it’s strategy. You need to hold back in the first half, control your emotions, and keep rhythm. Then, little by little, you build. The goal is to finish hard, not to suffer early. You want to start solid without collapsing before the end and at the end feeling that you gave all you had.

On full distance, it’s all about patience. The first 25 to 30 km should be in eco mode. Everything before that is just warming up. Your job is to get to the final 12–17 km with something left. Because if you can still run — truly run — then your day is made. But if you’ve gone too hard before that, you’ll walk. That’s the line.

Run Pacing Zones

Distance	Experienced athlete	Finisher mindset
Sprint	Zone 4–5	Zone 3–4
Olympic	Zone 4	Zone 3
Half	Zone 3 → 4	Zone 2–3
Full	Zone 2 → 3 (if fresh)	Zone 2

Run: Main Takeaways

• First kilometre: always controlled

• On half and full, hold back early — build in the second half

• On full, the race begins only after km 25–30

• Don’t pace the run like a stand-alone, consider pre-fatigue

• Pacing only works if your training volume supports it

Final Thoughts: The Best Plan Is the One You Can Adapt

You’ve probably got the big picture: in sprint and Olympic distances, and to some extent even in half distance, you can get away with pacing mistakes. The races are shorter, and the margin for error is wider. But full distance? That’s a different beast. Ironman doesn’t forgive poor pacing. Every decision echoes hours later. That’s why discipline, patience, and smart execution become more important the longer the race gets. You can’t fake it.

Let’s be very clear: it is rare that everything goes exactly as planned. That’s not a problem, that’s part of triathlon. Actually, that’s the rule. In long-distance especially, you will almost always go through at least one dark moment. It might come during the swim, on a long climb in the wind, or halfway through the marathon when your legs stop answering. That’s not the moment to panic. That’s the moment to stay calm, regroup, slow down a bit if needed, reset. It will pass. It always does.

This is why your pacing strategy must be flexible. Having a pacing plan is important. But knowing how to adapt that plan is what will actually save your race.

You can’t rely on the perfect scenario. Maybe your power meter stops working. Maybe your stomach doesn’t handle nutrition like in training. Maybe it’s 7 degrees hotter than forecasted. That’s fine. Expect change. Build your race mindset around adaptation.

And don’t forget: what you do in one segment will affect the next. There’s no medal for “winning” the swim or the bike. If you overpace by 5 minutes on the bike, it might cost you 45 minutes or more walking the marathon. That’s not an even trade. Your pacing must be connected, not isolated. Everything is part of the same effort.

Also, your strategy must reflect your reality. Don’t plan your race pace based on being fresh or based on a test make on a Wattbike if your race is on a TT bike. Don’t assume your pool pace translates exactly to open water with a wetsuit.

That’s the key: test in conditions that match race day. If you train on a road bike, but race on a TT bike, the position changes everything. Your watts on one setup won’t match the other. If you haven’t swum consistently and built volume, then forget your goal pace and focus on staying efficient. If your swim and bike volume is too low, you won’t start the run fresh, so don’t expect to hit the same paces you did in an isolated track session.

Everything is connected. Preparation, pacing, and performance. The strategy has to reflect what your training has actually prepared you for. If you get that right, and if you stay adaptable when things go sideways, because they will, then you’ll give yourself the best chance to finish strong and proud.

That’s what pacing is really about. Not perfection. Not prediction. But management. Intelligence. And knowing when to hold back so that, when the final 10k comes, you still have something to give.

In the end, you’re not racing the others. You’re racing yourself, your training, your mindset, your choices. Make them count.

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