It's funny how you talked about racing in the midst with pro women and passing them, earlier in the thread (albeit at another race). You were in that race passing a pro woman and giving a play by play, but guess what, you were talking about yourself in talking about your experience. It is totally OK if you want to share your experience, and one could view it as bragging about your race, or if you want it could be viewed as a explaining a point with a context from your racing. You gave an example from your experience !!! It is actually OK to do that, because not everyone has been in the mix with what goes on with pro women's racing, so your context is actually useful, even though it is talking about your personal podium chase!!!

But you also called Paula a spoiled brat and when she came on here, you needed to backtrack. It is OK if you want to call pro athletes anything you want. They are pros, and the rest of us are fans. Fans say all kinds of things they would not say to the face of pros because this is what fans do if the sport is professional enough. But when they show up, just own what you said about the pro. You called her a spoiled brat, and its OK to own it rather than backtrack. Its not like you were trying to qualify what you implied calling her a spoiled brat until she ACTUALLY showed up here.

Everyone is human, You could have cut Paula more slack before she showed up. She did not have a perfect race, but she was on the tarmac fighting it out in the real world and she's on here with her own identity owning her body of work defending herself to an anonymous person calling her a spoiled brat.

Errr, didn't this prove Messicks point? They needed two days. Hence two locations since Hawaii said ʻaʻohe maikaʻi to two days there.

The women's race is necessarily impacted by the men's. Now, could they have spaced it further out? Maybe, but there are real stresses for every extra few minutes, there are always knockdown effects, delays etc. But Messicks point was, to be most fair to women, give them their own day. That was proven here, not disproven. Maybe someday if the sport was big enough, they could do it more often outside of worlds races.

@Engner66 is of course entitled to their 'spoiled brat' opinion: just as others are to disagree and explain why. Not sure if it helps to be so judgemental.
"How does a mid pack pro get a deal from Specialized?" This comment, @lyla does suggest an extraordinary lack of perspective/knowledge, typing diarrhoea, or is just (successful) trolling.
"mid-pack pro"? or is this an off-topic dig at Eric, in which case I suggest Specialized's partnership is a joint deal (see also LCB and Barclay with far less/no justification: Eric wins races).
Findlay was a world beater in 2011 and has retained that reputation through some hard times.
Her win in Daytona before Christmas 2020 lit up that short season (Iden won the men's) and announced her return to the sport's top echelon.
https://stats.protriathletes.org/athlete/paula-findlay
She had a tremendous season last year with superb races at Edmonton (with all the home-town pressure) the Collins Cup humbling of Matthews (and on time #3 behind Ryf and Gentle): exalted company.
https://stats.protriathletes.org/...ins-cup/2022/results
And for her 'A' race of 2022: the IM 70.3 world champs she gains silver, solidly ahead of Pallant, LCB, Duffy et al.
#3 in the PTO Rankings
https://stats.protriathletes.org/rankings/women
"mid-pack pro"? Please don't make me choke on my Cheerios.

if you really care about the female race you find those 10 min somehow. ie you let the age group70 plus start behind the pros with a 1 min gap, and for the rest you cut the cut if times a few min so you can finish the race at the same time for instance.

That's the same know-better reasoning that gets applied in every fb group etc. I assume they have to budget delays in and all other considerations so that ten minutes potentially becomes more? Maybe I'm just knee jerk defending what I presume is knowledge on their part and it's really group think ignorance.

But here's the thing. There are two presumptions I can make. You know what you are talking about and know better than them. Or they know better than you. It seems like I make an assumption either way, and the safe assumption is the latter. The feel good contrarian assumption is just too attack the people in "power". That seems too easy for me.

As it was, looking at the results the race was supposed to start at 6:40. The time start shows the men going at 6:39 and the women going at 6:42.

I thought it was "supposed " to be 5 minutes between. They felt pressured to move things faster or just jumped the gun. But when you've got people coming and going from a Marine base and you future ability to run a race in a venue depends on making a good impression, maybe it's as simple as them wanting to be absolutely certain they overperform the expectations they set in various stakeholders rather than causing some annoyance that Ironman always goes 20 minutes longer than expected.

Like you said, those few minutes seem both meaningless and inconsequential in the overall race day but can have a big perceived impact on the race. Well, likewise, it might have a big perceived impact to be that many fewer minutes faster on the course closures. Disagree? Then tell me you've never exceeded the speed limit, risked death to yourself and those around you....to save a couple minutes or less on a commute. When you're holding your hat out essentially begging on a road closure "donation" it makes a lot of sense to over deliver on your times.

as i understand it, the main problem with scheduling (specifically at oceanside) is access to the base. fair enough - i guess the military really limits the window that IM gets to pass riders through.

maybe the bigger question is the value of the pro field to IM. oceanside has almost become a 'spring classic' in our sport, and is attracting great pro fields. despite that, the prize purse is a joke. if pros were important to IM, they would presumably be trying to negotiate a bigger window of access to the base (maybe they already are?), or would be willing to squish more AG waves together to allow more space for the pros.

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

So are you saying you don't really see this as a problem because it doesn't affect too many people? Oceanside showed even if it's a handful of people that it can cause problems for WPROs. & I don't say that to blame the MPROs. I think they have every right to race. They should be in pro fields instead of dominating the AG ranks. I would still be in favor of a slightly bigger gap. What's the harm in 10:00 versus 5:00. Then if any women catch pro men on the bike it'll be a little later into the race where it should be more decisive (moving at different speeds versus riding at the same speed). Maybe we'll get more split day races but I can't see local races going for that. It's good for the World Champs. But the World Champs have more narrowed pro fields to begin with so it probably doesn't matter. A lot of pro races are gendered now where you'll have a men's pro race in one location & the women's pro race in another on the same weekend. Maybe that's the move but idk I like having men & women competing on the same course on the same day. If you're a pro you can try to line up the gendered races if that's what you want to do. Might be helpful for the newer pros. Can see developing WPROs having a similar issue with AGers catching them. It's a little different but it could help them latch onto a pack on the bike and catch back up to other WPROs. It's probably not fun to get passed in those situations though.

Also that resource you shared is great to see the projections.

No bragging it was a funny story only.

As for the spoiled brat, I just indicated the context of the term.

Have you actually seen the video where she is snapping at her partner all the time because she was dealing with an injury? She really did come across like that in my view.

My question would be if this issue occurred for 40 miles, what time gap would take out basically any complaints? Would the BOP pro be the “moto draft” that ppl bitch about now for the last hour of the very key FOP once the gaps have occurred?

So 40 miles of interference? Bad since it’s so early and true gaps can’t form for FOP WP?

Last 10 miles of interference? Shoulder shrug cus you likely can’t *completely fix it?

Like what time gap does it need to be that we just deal with the *slight* annoyance, not a 2+ hr bike annoyance position?

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I don't like the idea of a 10 minute delay as everyone is waiting and it pushes everyone out another 10 minutes into the heat of the day.

Personally I don't want to be racing a minute longer into the day on a blistering day. I've raced where the heat index was over 100F and thank God when I finished it was around 82F. I drove away to see slower athletes literally melting in the oppressive heat and humidity. Some of these people are less fit than the top end of the race.

While it's only 5 more minutes, the number of ambulance sirens increases proportionately to the duration of the race. It increases the risk factor for age groupers, and age group entry fees pay for these races to be held.

In race details the starts were advertised as 0640 and 0642. By the Pro briefing the organiser decided (significant lobbying) they could increase to a 3 minute gap (0640/0643) so on the morning the starts were exactly as planned. Dawn twilight levels are a key determinant of how early you can start (and in clod water conditions) - NSS (Conan Doyle)
The organiser had also shared/explained (Fb) that, as you have implied, they had a specific window of thoroughfare agreed with USMC Camp Pendleton and any greater start delay would increase the risk of not meeting that. Or they'd have had to impose harsher cut off times at the 22 mile point of the bike (turn to entrance of the camp) to the detriment of amateur back markers.

This problem and others would be solved by having fewer age groupers. The bike course was ridiculously overcrowded. I raced Barcelona last year which is a notorious draft-fest and it was nowhere near as bad as Oceanside.

But the race sold out in October so I’m sure Ironman are trying to figure out how they could sell more places, not less.

Pre-Pandemic they had started doing MPRO and WPRO only Ironman races, especially some big ones like Placid and Wisconsin. Probably will start seeing more of those over time. But that also means less pro race fields on broadcast I guess.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

IM's Fighting Chance video

and WPRO:

Yeppers

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E-DUB
Chief Janitor @Slowtwitch
Life is short. Dont be mad all the time.

Did you help in the production ?

Resurrecting this to add this excellent vidoe (they did a good one for Indian Wells too):