GreenPlease wrote:
Job well done sir! And your setup looks quite slippery. May the aero be with you!
Thank you.
One thing I'd actually like to mention is that I have - to put it like you would in the corporate world - taken every aspect of this in-house since I set my eyes on this goal around November 1st last year. I already did all my equipment research, bike fitting and aero testing myself, but seeing lack of real progress on the physiological side I decided to also take training, diet and supplements into my own hands doing a bunch of research during the winter before training started to really kick off and requiring a lot of time and energy. This resarch and execution is an ongoing process, but it seems like the base research and planning I did in December and January and have fine-tuned since is working very well.
In the same breath I would like to thank the people on this board providing valuable feedback in all of these areas, but I'd like to highlight a few that I don't think always get the credit they deserve. One of them is, as you may have guessed, is rruff, who have given me some good feedback, especially on tire-related issues. The other is Jeffp, who has also given me very valuable feedback on primarily aero stuff. The last, but definitely not least, is Steve Irwin, who doesn't post a lot on this board, but this is anyway where I first 'found' him. I'm very confident I would not have won this race without his hugely knowledgable and critical feedback over the last years. You guys seriously need to listen whenever he does take the time to post.
So this sums up to say that you can pretty much make this happen without a huge number of people involved. A computer with internet access and a powermeter on your bike is really the foundation. The rest is the willingness and determination to do both the research, testing and the training necessary using those tools. Of course, having enough money to buy the really nice stuff does add something, but without the parts I just mentioned money is not necessarily going to gain you that much.