Most cycling podcasts are made for cyclists. That sounds obvious until you are a triathlete trying to learn something useful from a two-hour episode about classics tactics or peaking for a stage race. The frame is wrong. The bike is not the event.
For a triathlete, the bike is the middle third of a longer race, and every decision on it is measured by what happens in the first 5km of the run. Pacing, fuelling, position, cadence, gearing — all of it gets judged at T2, not at the finish of the ride.
This guide is for triathletes who want cycling content that respects that. Four shows, specific episodes, and why each one matters for your bike leg.
Why most cycling podcasts miss triathletes
Open the average cycling podcast and you get race tactics, equipment deep-dives, and World Tour gossip. Useful if you race road. Close to useless if your A-race is a 70.3 in Mallorca or a full in Lanzarote.
The gap is structural. Road cycling optimises for the finish line of the bike. Triathlon optimises the bike as an input to the run. Those two objectives produce different training. A road cyclist trains repeatability of short, hard efforts. A long-course triathlete trains sustained sub-threshold power with a fuelled gut and a body that will still run.
The fuelling gap is even wider. Prof. Tim Spector and the sports science community now sit around 90–120g of carbohydrate per hour for endurance performance. Most road cycling content still talks about 60–80g. For a 5-hour Ironman bike leg, that difference is roughly 300g of carbohydrate — the gap between running a marathon and walking it.
Then there is strength. Road cyclists can get away with minimal lower-body lifting. Triathletes cannot, because the run demands eccentric loading the bike never produces. Shows that cover strength for cyclists rarely frame it around protecting a marathon off five hours of aero position.
This is why triathlon bike coaching sits as a distinct specialism at Roadman, and why we built a coaching programme that handles the bike leg without breaking the run.
The four podcasts that speak to the bike leg
Four shows earn the recommendation.
The Roadman Cycling Podcast runs 1,400+ interviews deep with World Tour coaches and sports scientists including Prof. Stephen Seiler, Dan Lorang, John Wakefield, and Dan Bigham. Lorang in particular is directly relevant — he coached Jan Frodeno, Gustav Iden, and Anne Haug before moving to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe. His episodes translate directly to long-course triathlon because that is where he built his career. Episodes on polarised training, aerodynamics, and race-day fuelling apply cleanly to triathletes who filter for bike-leg relevance.
That Triathlon Show by Mikael Eriksson is the single most rigorous triathlon-specific feed. Long-form interviews with Alan Couzens, Sebastian Weber, David Tilbury-Davis, and Dan Plews. Bike content sits in the context of the full race, which is exactly what triathletes need.
Fast Talk with Trevor Connor and Rob Pickels leans cycling-first but repeatedly invites guests whose work spans both sports. Their episodes on sub-threshold training, VLaMax, and durability are directly applicable to a long-course bike leg.
Empirical Cycling with Kolie Moore is the technical deep end. Physiology, testing protocols, and training logic. Triathletes who want to understand why a threshold workout is built the way it is will get more from Moore than from most coaches talking directly to triathletes.
Four shows, different angles. Rotate them, filter for episodes that cover sustained power, fuelling, and strength, and ignore the race-tactics content unless you draft-legal race.
Specific episodes on pacing the 70.3 or Ironman bike
Pacing is where most age-group bike legs fall apart. The data is consistent across coaches: variability index under 1.05, normalised power at 72–78% of FTP for a 70.3, 65–72% for a full. Go 5% over those numbers and the run implodes.
On The Roadman Cycling Podcast, the Dan Lorang episodes are the first stop. His framing of race-day power caps for Frodeno and Iden — disciplined sub-threshold riding with aerodynamic discipline — is exactly how age-groupers should model their own pacing. The Dan Bigham episodes add the aerodynamic half of the equation: holding position at those wattages is worth 20–40 watts of free speed.
That Triathlon Show has multiple episodes with Alan Couzens on Ironman pacing that dig into the aerobic decoupling data. His rule of thumb — if your pace-to-heart-rate drifts more than 5% across the bike, you paced it wrong — is the cleanest pacing test in the sport.
Fast Talk's episodes on durability with Prof. Ed Coyle and Iñigo San Millán explain why the last 30km of a 180km bike feels nothing like the first 30km, and what training produces a rider whose sub-threshold power holds for five hours. That is the single most important physiological quality in long-course triathlon.
Empirical Cycling's threshold and VLaMax episodes explain what you are actually training when you do a 2x20 at 90% of FTP, and why that session builds the engine that holds 75% for five hours.
Four shows, same underlying message: pace below the number you think you can hold, hold it cleanly, and arrive at T2 with a body that can still run.
Specific episodes on fuelling for the bike-run
Fuelling is the other failure point. Most age-groupers arrive at T2 under-fuelled by 200–400g of carbohydrate, and the marathon becomes a walk.
Tim Spector's appearances — both on The Roadman Cycling Podcast and elsewhere — set the science floor. The gut is trainable. 90–120g per hour is achievable with 8–12 weeks of progressive intake. That is the target for long-course triathletes, not 60g.
That Triathlon Show's episodes with Asker Jeukendrup and Dan Plews are the gold standard on practical application. Glucose-to-fructose ratios close to 1:0.8, hourly targets scaled to body weight, and the specific protocol for gut training across a race build. Plews in particular has applied this to Kona-winning athletes.
Dan Lorang's episodes on The Roadman Cycling Podcast cover race-day fuelling from the World Tour side — how his athletes rehearse intake in training, what fails in the heat, and why under-fuelling the bike costs the run twice over. The same protocols apply to age-group triathletes at lower absolute wattages.
Fast Talk's episodes with sports dietitians cover the carbohydrate-availability question in periodised training: when to ride fuelled, when to ride fasted, and why triathletes should almost always fuel their bike sessions if a run follows.
The pattern across all four shows is the same. Intake is a trainable skill. Aim high, start early, rehearse under race pace, and treat the bike as the fuelling window for the marathon — because it is.
Where to start this week
Pick one episode from each of the four shows. Lorang on Roadman for pacing. Couzens on That Triathlon Show for decoupling. Jeukendrup on That Triathlon Show for fuelling. Moore on Empirical Cycling for the physiology underneath. Four listens, roughly six hours, and your next long ride will be paced and fuelled on better evidence than the one before it.
