Is there a way to know the perfect race weight???

Jeff Braaten

 I was just jotting down my weight on the EN weight chart and was looking at everyones goal weights including my own. How do we calculate ideal race weight? Lighter is better but only to a point. For myself, I am just guessing at 180-185 but I have never raced that light before. IMFL last year was 195ish and I pr'ed. Currently I am back down to 195 and 10% body fat according to my Tanita this morning and dropping the weight as per my plan heading to 185. I have read that for each lb lost in weight you gain 2 seconds per mile in running speed so the 10 lbs I am now carrying extra costs me 20 seconds per mile. That's huge.  Any insight on this topic would be appreciated and I thought would be something for everyone to chime in on.

Gordon Cherwoniak

Jeff,

I'm no expert on being skinny at least in the last 10 year anyway but here's my 0.02. 

There is a coulpe factor involved here to the weight.  How much upper body muscle mass you have.  If you lifted weights in the past this extra upper body weight is not useful for triathlon.  This muscle can be difficult to shed.

When you get down to a low body fat % below 6-7% some people get sick more often.  Finding the balance for you is the challenge.  is it 5% or 7%?  I not sure exactly what the seconds/lbs works out to be but along with the speed increase you joints are also taking less pounding.

My n=1 For me when I was in shape at 6', I weighed from 160-170 and around 8% at the upper end if memory serves me correctly.  I was involved in figure skating so mostly low leg muscle mass.

Gordon

HayesSanborn

Fitzgerald has a forumula or methiod on calculating the "ideal" weight, but he lost me during his explanation and I have trouble buying a lot of what he says anyway....Its listed in his Racing Weight book.

Really its just like any goal. It needs to be measurable, attainable, and time oriented but its just a number you come up with. If you're 10% body fat, you're probably at about where you need to be and shedding any weight will be tough.

My only tip, be at your 'racing weight' two or three weeks prior to your A race so you're not run down from losing the weight.

 

 

Nemo Brauch

I think formulas and charts are misleading and can cause you to either over reach or under achieve if you buy into them too much. Additionally, trying to accurately measure body fat becomes really hard to do in a normal household setting.

I've gotten to a place where I know that XXX is a good rough number to be at where I'm as light as I can be without risking injury, illness, and fatigue that impacts my ability to train. Oh, and under XXX I get pretty grouchy too- so saving my relationships at work and home are a critical factor too!

Like Hayes said- the goal for me is to be there a few weeks before race day, and then the challenge is not gaining anything during the taper (which means adjusting my normal eating levels down a bit to account for the lower activity levels).

dan_forbes

 This is the old adage I keep reading, not necessarily right, but it makes me laugh nonetheless...

"the trick is to keep losing weight until your friends and family ask you if you've been sick. then you know you're within 10 pounds. if they start whispering to each other, wondering if you've got cancer or aids, you're within 5. when they actually do an intervention, you're at race weight." 

Steven Ford

I prefer the tapeworm method, that way I can still eat

mancona

Totally depends on your goals as I think there is a heathly training and racing weight that most people could maintain for most of the year. However if you really want to be as lean as possible you can go below this.

Like Hayes and Nemo said I can only get to my race weight for a few weeks for the season. I know this because my ability to recover is drastically reduced and my mood goes to crap. It simply takes a some trial and error to figure this out.

FWIW, If I wanted to I could hold about 138 year round and not have any problems, but I like to eat and enjoy a break from "dieting" so I typcially let myself slip and gain some more in the winter. All spring/early summer I try to stay around 137ish. I have raced A-races at 135 and 132. At 135 I'm totally fine, but at 132 I'm too lean. I'm continuing to refine exactly were I can race at but have got down to that range after 3 years of trial and error.

Varrious charts tell me I that as a RUNNER I would be the fastest at 128 but I think I would have to lose all of my upper body muscle to get there and I'm sure would lose some of my power on the bike as well.

Make this a long term goal and very slowly lower your weight and see how your training and racing goes.

ironmtngrl

I have no experience with being at a perfect race weight so my approach has been to follow the Fitzgerald approach of improving BF% by a certain number of points, and once you are at that point, re-assess. I've improved by 10-15 lbs each of the last two tri seasons. I also recently read the Ironman book, "Weight Management for Triathletes." That book recommends setting a motivating, aggressive goal, and then once you're at that "new best ever" weight, you try to maintain it for 6 weeks within a small range to see how easy/difficult that is before moving on to lose more lbs. Like training, achieving a lean racing physique seems to be a lifestyle choice of how much you are willing to sacrifice for your race goals. Fitzgerald also recommends keeping track of your race weight for each race, so you can see zero in on your best race weight.

William Jenks

I also read Matt Fitzgerald's book to see what he had to say about finding your "ideal racing weight", and I interpreted his advice to be (not to be too flip about it...)

 

race at different weights

see what works best for you

that's the closest you've been to your ideal racing weight.

if you have a great race, specifically note your weight at that race

 

Here's a brief web version that gave me the same impression.  Here's another version from training peaks; it alludes to his percentile tables, but again, what he's giving there are "good targets", not anything that really addresses the question we all have that directly.

 

Ultimately, this not very satisfying, but probably not very far from reality.  I think Matt's advice (extrapolated to each of us) makes a lot of sense, too.

Chris M.

The long and short of it for me is that I simply don't have the discipline to keep my BF below 5% for any period of time.  I can be comfortable at 6-7% all year long without being extremely hungry but to get below 5 and stay there is very difficult for me.  

I am 6'3" and raced Louisville this year at 177 ("normal" people were telling me I looked ill, I didn't), have been as light as 168 in my adult life, and typically only see that weight now if I get sick and have to stop eating for several days.  I would like to race Louisville in 2011 at around 172-173.  

There was a great article last year by Torbjorn Sindballe about cooling.  One of the main points was how much more difficult it is to stay cool in hot conditions when you are above a certain weight which was about 70kg so I would like to get as light as possible next summer. 

kjanracing

For me, when I'm stricter about my diet, I'll level off at around 150 and I've been down to about 145. Racing feels good there. My arms get really vascular and it's fun to see my veins pop out. That's kinda how I know I'm getting there. When I look in the mirror, I still see some that's "not engine", and wonder if I could go lower. But I think it would show up in my bike power. So, I don't know, Jeff. Depending on hydration I'll be under 10% on the Tanita, so I'd say go for it and pick a number you want to try to hit and race at.

William Jenks

Mentioning the Tanita brings a certain truth-telling thing that it seems to be working for me.

I started actually recording my weight and Tanita-based BF% a few weeks after my last big race last season. Just as a crude estimate, then you can get "lean mass" by subtracting (BF% x weight) from weight. From mid-August until now, I'm getting very similar numbers, almost all 135-136 lbs lean mass, despite weight fluctuation from 146 to 153 and now back down a bit. I don't have any idea whether the actual BF% measured (8-11% in that range) is especially accurate, but at least it's consistent. No lying to myself about where the weight is. :-)

I took that lean mass and multiplied by 1.05 to think that I should be able to get to the low 140s to race. Last year, my minimum was 143.

My very lowest in the last 5-10 years was ~138, but that was at the bottom of losing a ton of weight, down from almost 190 and before I was actually trying to race or anything. I wasn't monitoring BF then, and I'm quite sure I've put a bit of muscle back on. Probably can't lose 50 lbs without losing a bit of muscle too unless you're a lot more careful about it than I was.

[Deleted User]

Good question Jeff.  And thanks for everyone else for the insights.  All too often people focus solely on losing weight.  There is a point where you can be too light and lean.  Personally, I'm still trying to find that point.  I'm usually around the mid 150's with relatively low body fat %.  For my first ironman, I got down to the low 140's, somewhat steadily with the last 5 lbs coming off the weeks leading up to the race.  Felt incredible, body tight all over and ready to fly.  Unfortunately, come race day, it seemed that some of my power was shed along with the few pounds I took off the few weeks before.  So, it's still trial and error for me.

zildgen

I will start this off by stating that I have never been at or near my ideal racing weight. But thinking about it it seems to me that the leanest weight possible would be the best. So one needs to focus on decreasing % body fat. This is a measurable goal looking at 10% BF at 195# (lean wt 175.5#, 19.5# fat). So assuming that you will not lose any lean mass the lowest weight that you could achieve would be 175.5# at 0% body fat. Not doable. However, hitting 5% BF is doable giving you a weight of ~185#.

For me I would look to drop down to 7-8% BF. Assuming that you do not drop lean mass your weight would be 188.8 @ 7% and 190.7 @ 8%. Once you reach that weight try to stay there for 6-8 weeks. This would let you see how you feel in general and with training, what your times are like, as well as how you are recovering. Based on that info you can re-assess and try to drop another 1-2% body fat or go back up a little. Getting below and staying below 5% BF I hear is very difficult and can be dangerous. The only other way to safely drop below 185 would be to try and lose muscle mass. No sure how to do this.

Just my 2 cents on a topic I find interesting having lost ~ 100 # with 50 more to go to get to 220# at ~25% BF. Hoping to hit that before first HIM then hold near 220# for the rest of the season. Next OS will see about dropping down to 195 -200# at ~ 15-20% BF.

Al Truscott

My thoughts are based on my career as a physician and 5 decades as an athlete observing his own body fluctuations.
1. Every body has it's own set points which start with genetics and depend on activity and calorie levels. There is no one size fits all formula.
2. The best way to manage your weight is to observe and record data frequently ... Daily is best. Weight, BF percent, calories, activity level, fatigue, etc. You've got to learn how your body functions in various scenarios.
3. People seem to get hung up on various goals... Body image, specific weight, BF percent ... And ignore what I think are the only goals which really matter, specifically, what will make me the healthiest, OR what will make me the fastest. The two are not the same, of course. Like Matt says, you can't stay at an ideal race weight for long, cause your body knows it's not healthy.

I'm about to enter a new experiment for myself. Within days of my crash on 9-18, I lost 10 percent of my body weight, probably all muscle as my BF was 5 percent at the time... I was at peak fitness 3 weeks out from Kona. I'm going to try thru weight lifting and a 20 week Jan OS to get back to my strength and speed levels I had this summer. I wonder what my weight will equilibrate at when i get my strength back? That will tell me what my "ideal" (or lowest possible) weight is for peak training. My secret hope is that it will balance out at 1-2 percent below where I was at the time of the crash,and thus get some "free" speed. But my endpoint will NOT be a specific weight, but rather the weight I need to be at for my desired strength and power/pace levels.

William Jenks

@Al: You and Lance!