The more your brain cooks, the less you think, the faster you go.

Take that Sutto. I can fight Broscience with Broscience

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Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

Reminds me of what someone once said about Emil Zatopek. "He does everything wrong but win".

Hahaha.
Back then, you could do that with enough talent!

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Personal preference, but I prefer the look of longer legs on the shorts. On the bike, it just looks "right".

But at least we're moving in the right direction. Far less girls racing Kona in shorts and bra this year, which I think sets a good example for the general population.

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ZONE3 - We Last Longer

Many pros are also extremely arrogant when it comes to their abilities... not saying they're arrogant from a personality standpoint just arrogant when it comes to their sense of what they can and cannot do athletically.

The Sutton coached athletes just play follow the leader and carry on like mindless drones when it comes to equipment choices. Shame on them. Chrissie Wellington has already been brought up. She won every IM race she started on pure talent. She made poor equipment choices, or at least poor equipment choices were made for her. Her bike sucked, her helmet sucked, and she didn't use a power meter (we can debate that endlessly but I think it's a fabulous race tool). If she would've continued racing she would have eventually lost at Kona by a minute (probably to Miranda Carfrae) and realized her bike and helmet choices cost her the win. She would've changed things up and picked up a better bike, worn an aero helmet, and probably comeback to win the following year. See Craig Alexander. He was given a bike equipment lesson in 2010, dropped that piece of shit Orbea, donned an aero lid, and voila... wins in 2011. Then he suddenly got old overnight and hasn't been remotely competitive at Kona since. ;-)

I agree with Rob about pros mimicking what top AG'ers are doing when it comes to equipment choices. Many pros spend a lot of OCD time regarding equipment choices and setup (see Rapp) and are extracting every iota out of both body and machine. I know there's a give and take with equipment sponsors but a lot of pros have probably never been within 250 miles of a wind tunnel, let alone inside one. I think that's absurd when your livelihood depends on it. Equipment choices matter... a lot.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

Apparently you could still do it at least up to 2011 in triathlon.

But of course Zatopek didn't do everything wrong. He didn't train wrong and he didn't run wrong. The only thing that was "wrong" about him was the way he held his head and the tortured expression on his face. If you ever take the time to watch some hiqh quality video of him and ignore his look of agony, you can see his running form is every bit as good as smooth as that of his competitors. But people tend to focus on the minor details and blow up their importance beyond what they deserve. Kind of like what people are doing in this thread.

nah, I don't know of anyone who did everything wrong. People gave chrissie a lot of crap for using shallow wheels and a road helmet. But she was also on a cervelo, in a decent position compared to most women, and those shallow wheels were still aero HED wheels.

Not bad!


Well, he might have been training wrong. We have to clone him and train him differently and find out.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Ermmm, Cannondale Slice from about mid-2009 wasn't it?

That wasn't a terrible frame either.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

In fairness with her aerobic engine she could have ridden this and still won races.

Not quite, but a caad 10 would have worked most years.
Gatorskins and Mirinda would have run her down some years.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

As much as you've tested now, do you have general recommendations you give athletes that can't make it to aerocamp (besides save for next year)? I believe in the past, you've said the A2 improves most people, so go with the odds. Is that still true?

JM, for any given distance I will be wearing it for 25% - 30% longer than those pros and since I'm carrying at least 10kg/22lbs more than them, it is quite likely I'm generating at least as much, if not more heat.

That said, I overcame my reluctance and bought a Rudy Project Wingspan a few years ago, and can attest that it has great ventilation with the vent open, or even with the mesh. I noticed a huge increase in discomfort with the vent fully closed though.

To the OP, get an aero helmet with acknowledged ventilation characteristics, and if you need to, shave or cut your hair short.

A 300 watt pro male will be producing about 700 watts of waste heat. A 250 watt age grouper male only around 580 watts of waste heat. A 200 watt age grouper only ~450 watts of waste heat.

Of course the pros will have a bit more wind since they are moving faster.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

You know what? We really don't. Because he won. Not just a little. A lot. 4 Olympic Gold Medals. 3 European Championships. World records at distances from 5000 to 30000. Still the only man ever to win the 5000, 10000 and marathon in a single Olympics. That marathon was the first marathon he'd ever entered and he not only won it, he set the Olympic record.

That is not someone "training wrong". He wasn't some genetic freak. He just trained right. He stomped everyone.

I know it's fun to suppose that what if he'd done this or what if he'd done that, how many seconds faster MIGHT he have run. I guess that's sort of the purpose of these threads. But at some level of dominance, it's time to just shut up and respect the result or you just sound silly. I think we're past that point with Wellington (and Zatopek).

Wondering if he trained optimally is not a sign of disrespect. It is just curiosity. There is no amount of dominance where it is somehow not ok to wonder that. Especially not in the 1950s, or women's triathlon today.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Fair point, and though I can't argue, as I don't have data, are those absolute figures? I've often wondered about the relative output of a MOP AGer over 11- 12 hours of effort vs the pros & FOP AGer in 8 - 9 hours

Human body is about 30% efficient


So if you make X watts, total energy production is X/.3 subtract the energy that went to the pedals and the rest of waste heat.

This same phenomenon makes it really hard for talented men to train indoors. Need a big fan and plenty of airflow into and out of the room. or a huge room.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

On the topic of head temperature, I just read an interesting article (can't find it now) saying the old "you lose 90% of your heat through your head" theory is crap. You lose body head from, well, your entire body. A helmet with poor ventilation may mean your noggin gets hotter but don't forget about the 20mph +/- wind that will be helping cool your body during the ride. Plus, your head getting warmer isn't necessarily a bad thing.

If you even get close to heat exhaustion/heat stroke it is not the fault of the helmet. I spent 10 years in the military and can tell you that not overheating has 100% to do with your hydration, not what you're wearing. I've walked mile after mile in 120 degree heat, carrying 50+ pounds, dressed from head to toe, blah, blah, blah and never came close to heat exhaustion. Any triathlete should have their hydration plan in check prior to race day and know what they need and when they need it.

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The best pace is a suicide pace, and today is a good day to die. -Steve Prefontaine

Pretty sure the answer is: they think they are fast enough without one to place where they want to place. Sometimes that's true. For some pros it might be true most of the time. But when races are lost by seconds or a minute or two? Always wear an aero helmet!

No disrespect in "non-optimally". But then again that's not even in the same league as "wrong". Nobody has ever trained optimally in the history of athletics.

Speculation is great. It's why I read these threads. I get the math of cycling. But the math people here occasionally get so caught up in the analyticcyling aspect of it that they seem think Kona is nothing but a time trial in a lab wind-tunnel. They seem forget the "race" part (not to mention the other two disciplines). So you get these silly posts where somebody thinks they can rewrite a Kona result because of a few grams of drag from this helmet or that frame.

Well Ryf really might have been able to aeroweenie her way in there. We will never know until we rewind time and see how much faster Mirinda could have run!

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Since everybody here is focusing on aero & heat, I'd like to bring up something different:

1) Practicality
If you like to do cool-down or pre-race rides, you need to bring an extra helmet, because aero-helmet outside race is inexceptable.

2) Comfort in all-day crosswinds. When its very windy from one side for prolonged times (i.e. an island ironman riding mostly on the same side of the island in the same direction for a while), the constant wind-pressure on that aero-tail can make your neck pretty stiff.

For both those reasons I'm in the process of getting an aero road helmet as a replacement for my old road helmet and an alternative for my pure aero helmet

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if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

Well, talent and extremely effective maniacal training.


Neither the P2C nor Slice "suck." They may not have been optimal. But they don't "suck." Put Tony Martin or Cancellara on either of those, they're still going to be top-5 TTers.


Sacrilege!


It's relatively easy to reason about who's getting "every iota" out of machine. But very difficult to to gauge who's getting the most out of their body. Rapp's performances have seemed...inconsistent...over the past few years. Relative to the trajectory it looked like his career was taking. (crash notwithstanding). Of course it's much easier to be consistent when your fitness (whether from talent or training) is so much better than everyone else's that you have the reserves to compensate for bad days or some bad choices.

Let me rephrase that same sentence "Put Tony Martin or Cancellara on either of those, there a good chance they won't be on the podium."

Equipment isn't everything, but it's not inconsequential. Lots of victories can be attributed to better equipment choices.

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