On the Alcatraz thread the twitchers were commenting/critical of most of the bike setups, for basically leaving time on the race table. And I almost fell into the same trap! But that thread was in my mind when.....
I wanted to ride my Di2 Guru bike w/HED's and thought well there won't be much of a difference between that and my purpose-built Sprint machine - the '12 Argon E112 808/Disc. But to be sure I did a test. I rode both back to back on the same watts :) Twitch-be-damned the Argon setup was faster by ~20 seconds over just 4 km!
The stupid part is in my mind I thought it was a dead heat, I even willed the Guru to be quicker. But on the Guru my bars are higher, the bike setup is heavier and without a disc. Tires are bit more gruff too - Conti Classics, clinchers.
So my race has a 20km leg 5x20 = about 100 seconds. That time reduction would prove critical. Unloading the bike I got some ribbing about the disc, which says a bit more about the human behavior of being aero.
My swim was less than ideal due to some tactical errors and a team/ringer swimmer knocking down a 5 min 400M in our lane. Great to watch this Adonis hammer it, but not so good being run over!
So I came out of the swim in OK shape but lost seconds. With my velcro race pedal setup, I was able to recapture about 10-15 seconds and get spinning on the bike. So here's where aero comes in. I rode to a 4th place bike split (overall), basically on being aero because I safety checked the corners and didn't hammer the climbs.
And when I hit the ground running it was the first time I could actually turn my legs over with feeling like I was going to die. I didn't achieve my run goal but the time I banked in the swim/bike gave me my best race result ever. PS: photos of the test and race are on my twitter feed
Training Tweets: https://twitter.com/Jagersport_com
FM Sports: http://fluidmotionsports.com
I wanted to ride my Di2 Guru bike w/HED's and thought well there won't be much of a difference between that and my purpose-built Sprint machine - the '12 Argon E112 808/Disc. But to be sure I did a test. I rode both back to back on the same watts :) Twitch-be-damned the Argon setup was faster by ~20 seconds over just 4 km!
The stupid part is in my mind I thought it was a dead heat, I even willed the Guru to be quicker. But on the Guru my bars are higher, the bike setup is heavier and without a disc. Tires are bit more gruff too - Conti Classics, clinchers.
So my race has a 20km leg 5x20 = about 100 seconds. That time reduction would prove critical. Unloading the bike I got some ribbing about the disc, which says a bit more about the human behavior of being aero.
My swim was less than ideal due to some tactical errors and a team/ringer swimmer knocking down a 5 min 400M in our lane. Great to watch this Adonis hammer it, but not so good being run over!
So I came out of the swim in OK shape but lost seconds. With my velcro race pedal setup, I was able to recapture about 10-15 seconds and get spinning on the bike. So here's where aero comes in. I rode to a 4th place bike split (overall), basically on being aero because I safety checked the corners and didn't hammer the climbs.
And when I hit the ground running it was the first time I could actually turn my legs over with feeling like I was going to die. I didn't achieve my run goal but the time I banked in the swim/bike gave me my best race result ever. PS: photos of the test and race are on my twitter feed
Training Tweets: https://twitter.com/Jagersport_com
FM Sports: http://fluidmotionsports.com