Hi Nic,
Short answer is yes. Long answer, I am still waiting for things to get worked with my license ie i do not want to be in the PRO/1/2/3 races since I am a total beginner, while my road license says otherwise. Whatever happens I have to see, season ends in January, I am not stressing out about it. What I long ago had decided to do regardless, is what I refer to as pocket rides.
Why the name? I bought a pair of CX tyres that fit my road bike and will venture off road on my weekend rides, I see plenty of mountain bikers off the paved roads in the forest parks I cross as well as fields are harvested so it should be fun to explore new routes. Where does the pocket come into play? My Garmin while still on and recording, goes ‘in my pocket’ so for those particular rides I ride at MAF ‘by feel,’ (and also to look where I am going rather than ending up in a ditch…). I feel that I have reached a certain fitness baseline (ie i don’t have to coast every time the road goes slightly up) so I can vary things a bit and add new challenges. Also it is awareness of your body that is the ultimate goal so I think that would be a way to do it. If i can ride at a comfortable pace off-road, it should help my lacking bike handling skills.=)

As far as taking time off from racing, as an athlete I can tell you, doing that last season was probably among the best decisions I had made in my longish amateur ‘career’; I am not going to lie that it took quite some internal dialogues to realise that I simply had to start from scratch and a LOT of things needed addressing (mobility, diet, training, bike fit, etc.). I did try to race probably 2-3 times early on (got dropped like a bad habit) and did TT Nationals in end of June, though the last, I started as something to do in between riding my famous roads – no goals and no expectations. I am starting to get the racing bug again, though road season just finished around here so I have the winter ahead to build further. It’s a (life) journey. We’ll see where I take mine.

As a coach, I am truly convinced that MAF works and if it doesn’t there are important aspects that need addressing. MAF is a principle/lifestyle, one way of calling it is that it represents aspiring and building towards total fitness, choice of sport/activity is just details. Therefore pulling all the stops aka racing is not advised if you have other problems, especially if we are talking health and injuries; you don’t race a car with worn out tyres that needs the transmission looked at, while there is a misfiring engine. Without knowing your training background (including your recent MAF training), food habits, life/family situation I can’t advise you. Also I remember you mentioning that you want to advertise your business at events. Though your personal health should always come first, that way you can dedicate 100% to helping others. Your mileage may vary.=)

-Nikola

Hi David,
First things first, you don’t mention your background as a cyclist, so you should start on the right foot aka get a good position. I post some links to Steve Hogg’s bike fitting page in my article here. If you have not trained a lot on the bike I suggest slowly building up since it is a different activity, your brain also needs to get the right motor patterns etc. (and let’s not forget your ass/perineum=) ) You can start with 1-1.5h rides and build up from there slowly, of course keep an eye on your MAF HR.

As far as the duathlon, 105miles on the bike is 4+h and indeed you don’t really need to do rides that are 4h long in order to get ready metabolically. You might do the occasional weekend long ride (3-4h) just so you are used to being that long in the saddle. The goal is to be able to have enough energy to do it at a sustainable fast pace. I like to think of it as having a 1000 miles worth of fuel in your car and it doesn’t matter if you do it all at once or in 4×250 or 10×100, the efficiency of the engine doesn’t change from one run to the other; you don’t need to always run it for 1000 miles to be able to go that distance. The human machine can be developed/trained, so you can get a big powerful engine and you would be able to go the 1000 miles faster using the same amount of fuel. This is what is called being metabolically efficient or a better fat burner.

Where I am going with this is that you want to be producing the maximum amount of power at MAF (ie burning mostly fat), so that at higher heart rates/intensity during the race, even though you are starting to tap a little into the limited carbohydrate stores as well, you are not exhausting them so you can keep the high pace until the finish. Some external sources of carbohdyrates are of course ok, such as diluted fruit juice etc. The longer the event the closer to MAF your pace will be, the shorter, the higher above MAF you will be able to sustain. You will have to experiment with it during training and learn to ‘ride by feel’ this is a big part of MAF as well – being in tune with your body.

How much is enough to get a response?
In general with MAF, as long as your MAF tests are improving over time (without injuries, colds, allergies, etc), what and how much you are doing is working for you. That depends on your family/job situation, amount of stress in your life etc., it is individual and may vary from week to week, again listen to your body and be careful for red flags/injuries. I have included some ways to test MAF on the bike in the article above that you can use to track your progress. You can see my Strava on how I train, in general once I got comfortable, most of my rides are in the 2h range, and on the weekends I usually to go 3-4h because I like being outside. Your mileage may vary.=)

Good luck with your duathlon training!

-Nikola

P.S You don’t mention what type of bike is allowed at the event, ie can you use aerobars. If so, I definitely advise you to check Steve Hogg’s article on aerodynamic position on the bike.