aahydraa wrote:
ericmulk wrote:
aahydraa wrote:
Interesting to observe that in the full, the run time is notably longer than swim and bike, while in the half and quarter they're much closer to equal. Presuming they're using the same route, does this simply mean that the full distance athletes weren't able to pace their energy expenditure correctly?
A possible confounding factor would be the "Most Equal Athlete" award, but it doesn't seem to have affected the full distance racers times.
Would you suggest an "athlete's choice" of sequencing of the three events to confirm effort per distance equality? :)
Indeed, that is an interesting observation and TBH, I had not looked as closely at the "Most Equal" chart as you have, until now. After pondering it a bit, my thought is that this demonstrates the "sliding scale" between swimming/cycling and running, e.g. the swimmer/cyclist can maintain a higher %age of their max pace longer than the runner can, b/c they are not having to support their full weight. This is demonstrably true if you look at the fall-off of WRs in the respective sports. It's a bit harder to demonstrate in cycling b/c it is not a very WR oriented sport, but the effect is still there. So, i think as a result of this sliding scale, the swim and bike might need to increase more in proportion to the run, e.g., perhaps an 8-mi swim and 75-mi bike to go with the 26.2 run. Of course, we should see this effect in going from the quarter to the half but perhaps we did not have enough entrants to fully demonstrate in these races.
Regarding the "athlete's choice" option, i think you'll always need to have the swim first just for safety, and to have any finishers at all:) You could potentially allow people to choose run/bike or bike/run
I agree with the sliding scale theory. My suggestion though is that most of the athletes who participated in the full event *may* have overestimated their abilities and undertrained for the swim phase (hey, for the Fishes, EVERYBODY else does this =))). I think they may have a planned time in mind for each event, find that they actually had to push more than expected for the swim, forced a higher pace in the bike to equilibrate (not that difficult) and then crashed trying to reach the target time in the run when relatively burnt out from the bike. I'll be watching next year's event, especially since several athletes who are well balanced in the swim leg (including you!) will hopefully be doing the race. In an athlete's choice event, I would suggest pool swims, flat bike and flat run routes in order to make sure terrain doesn't affect either leg times or safety. The athlete's sequencing hopefully would let us find out if overexertion in earlier events are affecting the times of the subsequent ones. This should also make some triathletes stop complaining about the swim leg being unfair =). Finally, is there anything that would prevent you or anyone else from setting up a similar race in the US? It would really be great to have an equivalent event that would be more accessible and hopefully less expensive! If you're taking requests, West coast please haha.
Hmmm, well, based solely on my experiences with swimming long distances, i kinda think you fall into a pace that feels fairly comfortable at the start, and then increase the pace over the last 1/3 of the race if you can, and this would be assuming you're just doing a swim race. If it is an OW race and you can draft, i might do that although TBH I have never had much luck with that. I just don't trust other people not to go off course, so i would rather lead than follow. But anyway, i think you swim at a comfortable pace in the Isoman, then bike at a comfortable pace, and then see how well you can do on the run after all the other. You might feel comfy for the first half of the mary, or even first 20 mi, but then it just all comes apart. And, i tend to think that could happen on the bike too, if you did the run 2nd, and bike 3rd, e.g. the last 30 mi it is all you can do to crank the pedals at 15 mph.
The idea of doing the swim in a pool such that you could in theory do it 3rd if you wanted, definitely has merit, but i myself would stick to the traditional SBR order of events, just b/c it seems kind of natural to me after all these years. Also, some of the worst, hardest swims i've ever done were after a bike/run workout:)
Regarding putting on an "Isoman-like" race, i have certainly thought about that but to date have not tried to organize one. I live in the southeastern U.S. so sorry but the first one wouldn't be on the west coast. I think i would call it "Equilateral Man" b/c that is more geometrically accurate, as only an equilateral triangle has all three sides of equal length. The isosceles triangle only has 2 sides of equal length, so they kind of missed the boat geometrically, although Isoman is a bit catchier than "EquiMan" or "EqualMan". Or, we could call it the "Triathlon for Equality"; that should get a lot of media buzz:)
"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."