ITU athletes are better than long-distance athletes, even at long distances - discuss


This, at least for me has been known for some time. The main reason has to do with basic exercise physiology. Many AG triathletes and others don't seem to understand, that ALL of this is about endurance fitness. Language is important. They call it a "sprint", but A race that lasts an hour is NOT a sprint - it's almost 100% aerobic - thus, the bigger the aerobic engine and the better your endurance fitness, the faster you will go at that race that lasts an hour or a race that lasts multiple hours!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

There are people here that will argue all day that Chrissie was better than all the ITU athletes.

Agreed broadly re the physiology but the interesting thing is why? Does ITU racing attract the best natural athletes? Is the talent pool the same but they train better? I remember a Frodo comment where he said he trained harder as an ITU athlete than he does for Ironman.... (or maybe I've remembered that wrongly?). Whatever the reason I'd be interested in further discussion, maybe with some exercise physiologists who have studied them (not me, I don't play that game anymore)

Except an argument based on no facts is pointless. I'm focusing on the reality that the best ITU athletes do so well against the best long distance ones. Frodo, Ryf, etc switch and dominate, Gomez turns up off ITU training and wins 70.3 worlds etc etc. That holds true at the shorter, different stuff like Island House, Super League as well. One thing that's seems clear is that prior to some good swimmers arriving in long course, the swim was irrelevant as it's so short. Note Lionel Sanders tweet after St. George, Mirinda Carfrae winning Kona etc etc. I wonder whether we'll really get some of the long distance people focusing more on the swim in order to at least try to give Lawrence, Brownlee etc a bike race...

Well, considering she never lost (at the IM distance), I'd have a hard time arguing with them. There was nothing stopping anyone from proving they could beat her.

But. She was better. What ITU athletes best her st her chosen distance?




I realize the point you are trying to make, but that's a bad way to start.

I'm just stirring the pot :)

Shockingly, the best triathletes are the best at triathlon.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

yup!! but even at the long duathlon that's started wet the ITUs are better 😜

And Jean Girard is better at NASCAR than Ricky Bobby.

I'm wondering what happens, not so much "ITU" but the attributes that change when moving over distance/time.

I figure you can be less efficient @ forward movement but delivering more power at shorter distance & be fast. e.g 70.3 fast. However, also be unable to extend that for longer duration.
Consider the following equation:

Power Delivery = Energy Conversion (cardio/muscles) - Effects of Waste Products (in blood stream)

In other words I could be limited by my ability to flush and tolerate the waste that I generate over a certain distance. I have not built up the conditioning to withstand them. Think meltdown at the finish.

The above is what I felt this weekend in going over 3 hours of work. I never really train more than an hour straight due to schedule and boredom. My muscles were fine, I had a real problem with what was happening to my blood chemistry. That lasted for many hours after the event too.

Having said that ITU athletes likely train long hours anyway, and most seem to be built like birds - thin and efficient. Weight/blood volume or whatever compensation systems that keep muscles moving properly is probably already in place.

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Agreed for 70.3, but not at the Ironman distance. 70.3 is not very different than OD, but an Ironman is and requires specific skills. I'm not saying that Ironman athletes are better, just that you can't be competitive at both at the same time.

Agreed that 70.3 seems possible off OD training, but even so the top Ironman athletes now come from ITU, albeit with presumably specifically modified training for things like fueling etc. Granted the sample size is small (Frodo, Ryf...) but quite telling.

I wonder whether it's something to do with the more 'cutthroat' nature of ITU focused structures...?

Here's the argument: Anyone can start in triathlon aiming at IM and 70.3 and happily drift along on homegrown or coached training and may find that they can become Pro as they have the right genes. The change from AG to Pro in IM and 70.3 seems a bit of a shock based on interviews you hear but I wonder how 'professional' it really is.
Compare that with ITU focus; there are very structured training groups focused on world & olympic medals from day 1 and the in/out nature of team selection I'm sure focuses the mind and ensures that only the best, from the perspective of genes and I maybe more importantly, work ethic, actually make it. You can then imagine that kind of mentally and physically honed athlete comes into IM/70.3 and the years of intense focus is now applied to the different distance with what seems now to be the evident result. This would also jibe with Frodo's "I trained harder as an ITU athlete" comment.

If my conjecture is true then I wonder what new focus the Brownlee long-distance era will bring in the established long-distance athletes... Sanders' post St. George tweet about the new era might the beginnings of the change. If so then maybe we should expect even more records to fall over the next few years as it becomes necessary to have this more 'professional' approach to compete? It was very noticeable how there didn't seem to be a big change in the women in the Ryf era; Carfae, Joyce etc have basically been consigned to podium chasing at best as Ryf totally dominates IM. I'd be surprised to see this happen on the men's side as, particularly Sanders, appears to be really up for the challenge and have the mental approach to take it to the next level.

Wasn't Mark Allen and Dave Scott competitive at both at the same time?

In case you missed, it, the top Ironman guy of all time, Mark Allen, was first ITU World Champion before he won Kona. Mark was unbeaten in 20 short course races in a row before he banged out his 2:39+T2 marathon in Kona.

This is like the letsrun arguement about whether milers to 5000m guys are better than marathoners. Answer = They are different events. Some are able to span over the spectrum and do better when they go long after not doing as well at the shorter distance, some never bridge up well to the longer distance.

Mo Farah is only 2 second behind Sebastien Coe's 1500m former world record in 335th place all time. Meanwhile in the marathon he is ONLY a 2:08 marathoner ranked way back at 964 all time. In the 5000m he is only 64th all time with a 12.53 and in the 1000m he is only 16th all time with a 26.46. Meanwhile the guy is sitting on 4 Olympic golds in the 5000m and 10000m, because he has a crazy fast closing kick. At the London Olympics he ran a sub 4 closing mile including a 53 second final lap. The guy aparently can close at 49 second speed when he hits full stride

So who is a better runner...El Gherrouj who has the 1500m record, Kimetto who holds the marathon record, or Bekele who holds the 5000m and 10000m, or Farah, who holds the last 4 5000m/10000m Olympic golds? Different runners for different distances run under different tactics.

The reason I picked Farah is because he has some decent amount of fast twitch muscle composition to go with his aerobic engine. ITU racing can reward some guys with slighly different body composition than Ironman. To use an extreme example, let's compare Chrissie Wellington and Vanessa Fernandes/Emma Snowsill. I don't think either of these ladies would come within an hour of Chrissie in Kona.

This has been more or less true for a long time, the best LD athletes are all ex-ITU athletes already Frodo, Ryf, etc. going back to the days of Simon Lessing, Michellie Jones, and even Mark Allen...

But in terms of the modern ITU athletes, a lot of this has to do with the competitiveness of the series, you need to be a complete athlete in order to have any degree of success on that circuit, whereas there's more room to make up for errors in longer races like 70.3 or 140.6. And first and foremost in this is the importance of the swim, in a DL race, you need to swim to put you into the action, a poor swim, and you're lapped out very quickly. This means that most of the athletes coming off the circuit into 70.3 and up, are all going to be at or near the FOP on the swim. Most of the guys and gals on the ITU circuit these days started as kids of steel, and then through the Youth, Junior and U23 ranks, so unlike many that have been around a while who often started as single sport athletes, and then added the other sports later on, you're getting people who have been triathletes for almost all of their lives...

Agree with everything you've said, very similar to my points above. Wrt the swim it was so noticeable in the last Island House that Mola had I think the second fastest swim times, when in 2016 in ITU racing he rarely made even the 2nd pack on the bike! Most IM racers are so poor on the swim as it frankly didn't matter, Carfae being the perfect example, IM was in essence a duathlon started wet. If only they'd change the distances... oh well one can dream....

I don't think the level in ITU was anywhere near where it is now. Maybe the run course was long for this particular race, but assuming it wasn't... A 33' 10k wouldn't quite cut it nowadays.

It was no drafting too. Definitely a super long course (both swim and run). When the ITU guys move up to Kona and beat Mark's time, then let's talk about running ability. Aside from Alistair Brownlee and Gomez, Mark would have done just fine on the run against everyone else. All you guys act as if athletes now suddenly got a ton faster over 1989, when in reality, thing have only budged marginally in the marathon and 10,000m where technology does not come into play (if you compare biking and swimming, times are faster due to technology and for swimming technique and rules). Carlos Lopes' 2:08 from Rotterdam 1983 is the same time that Mo Farah ran in the London marathon in 2014. The main reason for the movement of the 10,000m and marathon world records is because the East Africans got serious. Times from runners from western countries (from which we draw triathletes) are kind of static.

Mo Farah has a better PB on 1500m than Sebastian Coe.
Mo 3.28.81
Coe 3.29.77

One thing that has changed.
Ironman now has doping tests. Back in the day it was no testing a all.

In my opinion, only the Brownlee brothers and Javier Gómez are better than the very top long-distance athletes at long distances.

I stand corrected.....I missed Mo at 31st in the all time 1500m list ahead of Coe:

http://www.alltime-athletics.com/m_1500ok.htm

So there you have it. Mo kind of sucks at the marathon and is awesome at 1500m. Is he a better or worse runner than Kimetto (2:02.57 marathon at Berlin)? They are just "differently awesome runners". Is he better or worse than 1500m world record holder El Gherrouj? Well Mo is sitting on 4 olympic golds....El Gherrouj "only" 2 gold, and a silver. But the guy also holds the mile and 1500m world records. I vote for EG. But I think that Kimetto is awesome as is Bekele spanning 5000m to marathon quite nicely holding the world record in 5K, 10K and third all time in the marathon. Bekele also has a 3:32 1500m in his palmares. Bekele almost did the same double double as Mo over Athens and Beijing but ended silver in the 5000m in Athens