bespoke wrote:
The holy grail to KQ is to pick an event with a lot of slots, a limited pool of athletes and also somewhere miles from Kona so chances of a roll-down are higher. By that reckoning IM Wales (60 slots this yr) is attractive - very few non UK guys will go there.
I agree the mainland Euro ones are packed with talent - you are getting the best guys from 5 countries driving down...
Its luck of the AG - 4 people in 40-44 were sub 9, yet the winning time in 45-49 was 9.15......
Regarding my comment on a 'fair course' I am not that bothered by the distance (and I got it at 177km). Its not like a pool being 48m vs 50m
They do the best they can on public roads
Everyone talks about 'short' courses, but there is no mention of elevation or road quality (or drafting)
If Vichy course was 179km in 2015 and 900m elevation, but 177km in 2017 with 1100m which is harder?
The fact that IM Nice is 7km short proves the point - its a total beast of a course; you dont need to add on 7km along Rue Anglais just to make it a 'proper course'
Barcelona may be the correct distance but its a notorious draft fest
I have done Roth in 9.24 and Copenhagen in 9.35. Both were much cooler, had a wetsuit legal swim and with much better road surfaces.
I think they are at least 10-15 mins quicker than Vichy
Which makes the fact that 4 guys in my AG did sub 9 even the more remarkable
I wish there was some kind of "conversion tolerance" along the line of for every 400m of elevation gain, WTC would allow a concession of 1K of horizontal distance. They had this entire debate about Muskoka (in its only year) not being an IM because of the road issue it would be 176K and due to all the crying and bitching they had to go and find another road to close to do an out and back. As it turns out, the race was so hard that no one signed up in the second year and WTC killed it. If the race was not 10-15 min "longer" on the ride than an already tough courses like Whistler or Tahoe or Nice (I split 5:27, 5:37 and 5:37 in those races respectively off 182, 165 and 185W) and had I don't Muskoka, I'd have been lucky to do 5;45 on the same watts. Also I split 5:21 (ride time) in Kona off the same watts with Kona wind and it is supposed to be a tough course but is 600-800m less vertical than the above courses. Vertical gain makes a huge diff especially if you have sections at 6-12% for an extended period. Lots of 2-5% in the aerobars with 2-5% downhill you don't lose as much on the uphill nor lose as much on the downhills wasting your potential energy pushing a ton of 70 kph wind like on steep downhills.