Olympic triathlete Alex Yee takes on the London Marathon and Eliud Kipchoge in his debut

Paris Olympic champion Alex Yee has proven beyond any doubt that he is force to be reckoned with on the triathlon scene. With his blazing fast run splits he has clinched wins in exciting and extraordinary fashion, surging past his competition and snatching gold. He is set to test his running prowess in a much bigger arena in April, as he debut in the London Marathon.

Any marathon debut is an intimidating prospect, but doing so while chasing a world-class goal time is next-level.The British triathlete has set an aggressive finish time for his first attempt over the 42.2K course on April 27. In a blog post by his sponsor, Coros, he revealed his training secrets, including his target time.

“I’d love to run somewhere around 2:07 to 2:10,” Yee said. “We are going into the unknown, so we will see, but I want to give it a really good go.”

Why the marathon?

Despite returning from the Paris Olympics last year with a gold medal and establishing himself as the most decorated Olympic triathlete of all time, Yee didn’t feel satisfied. His team acknowledged that some changes would be made.

“We all agreed that [training] can’t look the same as it has for the last few years,” Yee said during a press conference in February. “If I do the same stuff, then I’ll stay the same. It was all about looking down different avenues to improve and be better as a person and an athlete. For me, that fit really well with doing one of my dream races, the London Marathon.

“To be able to race at home is pretty special,” he added.

Yee’s training secrets

While he’s clearly skilled across all three triathlon disciplines, Yee’s greatest strength lies in the run. For the first time in five years, he’s shifted his focus to refining his run thresholds, using the Coros Heart Rate Monitor and Coros Pace Pro to track and analyze his training data. In January, he made his 10K debut in Valencia, breaking into the top 30 with a time of 28:07.

Prioritizing run training has meant significantly easing up on his weekly volume in the pool and on the bike; as of February, Yee had “only” swum five times and ridden for nine hours. That’s a major drop from his usual 15 hours on the bike and extra pool sessions, but the adjustment allowed him to push his running mileage to 130 km per week. Yee also said he planned to scale back the bike even further and increase his weekly running volume to 145 km.

Yee’s heart rate threshold sits between 172*184bpm, while holding a 3:02/km pace.