If you go to Strava and look at Segments that are part of the course, you see a lot of folks left their full data up even though it seems to indicate they were drafting like a mofo. If you average 25 mph over 20 miles on a flat segment with no discernable wind on less than 180 watts (PM measured, not calculated), you're either a hella-biker munchkin with a tiny frontal area, or are drafting. When the heart rate data shows an average in the low 130's, you can be pretty certain it's the latter.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

can we go back to posting pics of Moats?

Agree. Implementation wouldn't be an overnight fix. If left up for the athletes to turn in a file it would just be a matter of time before cheaters would hack a file together somehow and cheat the system that way. Batteries would magically die once they found a pack to run with or some other non-sense. WTC has the $ to invest in a technology solution that's independent of athlete input. Every athlete already wears an ankle timing chip. Tweak the chip technology or provide a tracker that attaches to each bike. That would help 'live tracking' for family and friends too.

The video evidence and injuries from Texas should be enough to force an improvement. It's not right for anyone involved. It's not just a KQ issue. It's an issue for every athlete and their family and friends that sacrifice so much to have a clean as possible race.

those who've been racing since the early 80s have masters degrees in how those packs form. bad swimmers who're good cyclists sweep through the field picking up riders.

i don't know how it was in texas, but typically what happens, historically, is that the pro women get caught up in those packs. and i mean, basically, almost every single one. virtually every competitive pro woman. so, if you're going to get high and mighty on me, be prepared to call 4 out of every 5 pro women out as amoral cheaters.

at a certain point you realize how this dynamic works, you recognize the sorts of races, and courses, and race organizations, where this is likely to happen, and you make your choices at the point of race decision rather than during the bike leg. if you wait until after the race and you decide to start calling out the folks in these packs, you've waited too long, and you're spending your virtue dollars unwisely.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I honestly feel the easiest solution to add in is using drones + officials on the ground. Now I dont know the details of doing that, but that to me is the far easiest way to get ahead of this problem that can use pretty simple costs. The old cop trick that X cop gets your speed and radios to Y cop 2 miles ahead who to pull over for speeding and Y cop is the one who gives the ticket.

I think that's likely one of the more *easier* solutions I've seen. Hell they can give an entire "group" a stop and go penalty, I dont. Just something that starts to break up the packs, etc.

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

Because IM has done nothing to address this issue in the past, and because there has been no response from IM re IMTX, I’m all for extreme measures like Name and Shame. Or boycotts of IM partners to get leverage on the issue.

I’m not sure I understand what answer I will get if I ask myself why or how drafting occurs. When I try to parboil it like that, I keep coming up with “people are shitty.” But I don’t think that is what the exercise was intending.

it doesn't prove drafting, but if you look at cadence and power (when available) you can get a preetttty damn good idea of when someone was not riding solo.

A million years ago, when I got my first Polar power meter (the chain tension type) I was talking with a student of mine (I'm a corporate trainer), who was an engineer and roadie. He had a powertap and, was mentioning to me about how often he'd be riding in a pack and his power would effectively be zero at 25mph. He basically said pack riding with a power meter was "interesting" but not really meaningful. Since I have always trained alone the conversation was enlightening, and, completely foreign. Unless I'm descending, 25mph is serious power, cadence AND HR. Having the benefit of a draft before a marathon makes the ride a really long warmup (pink, kinda). Looking at bike splits, usually, you know that the slower swimmers and really fast bikers were not drafting. The times at IMTX make that separation more difficult because there are so so so many fast times.

BTW at Kona last year I had a decent swim and a terrible bike, and for the most part saw good behavior of riders as they passed (and passed and passed) me. Especially given the nature of who (mostly) KQ'd to get there.

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I saw this on a white board in a window box at my daughters middle school...
List of what life owes you:
1. __________
2. __________
3. __________

How is that info going to become available. I guess that's my point to the "data analysis" angle. Unless your saying that garmin/power data is now going to be required by athletes + give up that information to said race officials.

I'm not disagreeing, I'm more wondering how it's going to be legislated in to actually get the data from athletes to then make it pretty easy to determine drafting.

ETA: And then if your very first statement is true "it doesnt prove drafting".....then is it viable option to then make everyone give up the data if that step actually doesn't "prove" it?

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

it's available to anybody when a strava athlete's profile is public. i'm not saying you use the data for anything other than personal enjoyment. it will never be used for anything serious. but if you're curious about a friend of a buddy's bike split and it seems too fast to be true... check strava.

Instead of all these complicated methods of identifying cheaters, which will no doubt have a lot of 'false positives', etc., I have a much better, more simple idea.

Lets put, say, 10 officials on motorbikes at each 70.3 and full IM race. They make their way around the course and hand out penalties in the form of time. Make each athlete have an identifying number somewhere on them, maybe on their arm, or even their helmet, for the official to write down.

Has that ever been tried?

That sounds way too complicated? How will these "officials" make appropriate notes of which athletes were penalized? How could they ever determine if someone is actually violating a rule?

No, no, that would never work.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Ah, gotcha!!! I still think taking some drones and looking for bike packs is probaly the easiest solution in addition to proper officiating w/ motos.

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

You don't have to up your watts to stick to a draft pack. Your wattage once they gobble you up will more than suffice to get pulled along. I had this happen twice. Ironman Canada 2013 (the year with 100+ Kona slots) and IMFL 2013.

IMC 2013: The Pemberton flats was a draft heavy for the "swim<1:10 and bike<5:30" crowd. I rode my watts and kept getting sucked into 15-30 people pelotons and couldn't shake them. I pulled off twice, as in literally stopped at aid stations, to let them all go ahead. It's not fair that I had to dick up my race just to let them get far enough ahead so that I wouldn't get sucked into their draft. Had I stuck to my guns and rode my watts I would have been in a draft pack the entire Pemberton part of that bike course, which was 34 miles, until we hit the mountains again to break everyone up.

IMFL 2013 I was in the "swim<1:05 and bike<5:00" crowd and I could not shake the draft packs that formed on the return trip south on 79. This time I chose not to stop but to just ride my ride. What happened is that I'd get sucked into a group, and either get dropped because they were hammering or I'd get to the front of the group because I'm riding harder than all of them, get sucked in again, get dropped or pull ahead, rinse and repeat. Some packs eventually pulled away. Some I dropped. I was never in the "middle" of one for very long but there were certainly times I was drafting per the definition. I didn't want to, didn't intend to but it was unavoidable at times. There were a couple of motos/officials that kept patrolling that area that did a good job of carding those that were wheel sucking at every opportunity versus others who weren't getting in the mix on purpose. I had at least four brief conversations with one particular female official about two groups that kept yo-yoing around me. She would yell at them and warn them to break it up, and then circle back around a few minutes later to ding the few that didn't listen.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

If everyone on this forum and LetsRun all took the amount of time they have spent in their life on wild time consuming projects such as this and put that time toward a more productive project - we would officially have a cure for every disease/condition known to man (except for stupidity of course)

I know you are joking, but I'm not sure they could have policed the Hardy Toll Road well. For the first 20 miles prior to the toll road there were tons of marshals. I had a marshal in my view for most of the first 20 miles and they would drive up to a pack ahead of me and the pack would slowly break up. I did not see any penalties given but many athletes put on the brakes.

But once on the toll road there was not enough space. They could have gone down towards Houston on the far right, but there were too many people and no clear lane for them to come back up. With no crosswind or hills of note there was nothing to break up the packs. They got large enough that 10-12 meters back was still a draft you could feel.

It was dangerous as well, I saw more crashes than any other race I have participated in. I do hope everyone was ok.

Never seen anything like it, not going back.

The math of speed, time, and distance belies saying it's some kind of passable random occurrence.

If you were even just 3min slower on the swim, but caught that person on the bike......that's a mile at 20mph. Further at more speed.

Meaning, you made up at least a mile on them in distance in about an hour if you're doing 21mph. That's 1.5 ft/sec gain on the person.

So, when said slow swimmer catches slow cyclist......in one minute they'll be 100 feet away.

I'd buy the explanation if you only had a 15 foot wide path to pass on, like a greenway trail. That freaking highway they were on was so freaking wide you could land a jumbo jet on it.

Give me a freaking break (not you, just in general). You can't ignore math and logic.

i'm not telling you how it oughta be. i'm telling you how it is. slow swimmer passes cyclist who doesn't want to be passed. and speeds up. these two catch a third. by the time you're at cyclist 5, 6, 7 the fact that the fast cyclist is stronger doesn't matter, because those in back are getting the draft. and on it goes.

so, your math is great if no cyclist ever changes his velocity. but that's not human nature. you may argue that the person who gets passed is not forced to change his velocity; nor is he forced to ride in close proximity on a course with a lot of width. i'm telling you what actually happens, not what should happen.

so, you say, i'll let the pack pass me and go to the back, and dangle off the back. but other honorable people think and say the same. so, pretty soon a bunch of you are dangling off the back. more or less together.

i'm not going to get all righteous on you. i'm just saying certain things are predictable. you can blame the racer; you can blame the race organizer; or you can just not do those kinds of races and then you don't have to make the decision of whom to hate.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Heh, exactly. These threads are pretty far off base. The drafting occurred because the typical deterrent was not present on the course, not because it is ineffective. Even if the motos don't give out penalties, their presence alone is enough to break up the packs. Hell, if I were the race director I would pay local random moto folks to just drive around the course in orange vests to impersonate officials.

Bottom line is they need to change the course. Or just do away with the event all together and move it (I vote resurgence of the St George full), if the community won't support a championship-level course.

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Strava

I agree, even the deterrent is effective.
And has been mentioned before, you can even have the 'undercover' bikers on the course, especially if there is not room for motos..
At Mont Tremblant, where I've never seen big packs, they still had the penalty tents full of riders, had motorbikes on course, as well as undercover bikers. In 2016 when they had heavy rain and a bad crash on the downhill, the race director himself went out there and stood in the middle of the road getting people to slow down on that section. Maybe the Texas organizer should take notes?

Basically, you are saying that they are all cheating, and willfully so. Anyone who gets passed by a faster cyclist and speeds up because he/she "doesn't want to get passed" is a cheater. Period. Pretty sure I'm human, and I've never done that in a race. Human nature?

Dangling off the back is the smart way to race. If a pack gets together there, then they have made the decision to draft and cheat.

Tell me how those pro women got "swept up" by the faster male AGers. Were they just following "human nature" and found themselves drafting?

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----------------------------------
"Go yell at an M&M"

I think his point has some validity whether he's high and mighty about it or not. Nobody "gets caught up" in a pack. They either choose to stay with it or they don't. Pro or amateur.

The draft packs at the Pemberton flats were horrible when there were no motos around. I couldn't imagine an entire race like that. As a rider, you just have to try your best to stick to your race plan. That might mean yo-yo-ing with a pack a dozen times as their speed changes.

No excuses should be made for those in a draft pack. Pro, KQ or MOP AGers are all accountable to follow the rules.

Drafting seems to be seen the same as speeding in your car by some. Yes it is breaking the rules, but everyone else is doing it and we get there a lot faster, so what's so bad.

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Oui, mais pas de femme toute de suite (yes, but I am not ready for a woman straight away) -Stephen Roche's reply when asked whether he was okay after collapsing at the finish in the La Plagne stage of the 1987 Tour

no, i'm not saying they're willfully cheating. that's what you're saying. i'm just relaying what happens. and, while i haven't read it, i think there's an account by a pro woman who DNFd because of this.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Don't be silly.

The reason the course is what it is because a certain county commissioner would not allow the bike course to go through his precinct any longer. So the course from 2011-2015 is not coming back and there aren't many feasible options around The Woodlands that don't extend into areas that no longer wanted the race to go through it. If it wasn't for Harris County stepping up there probably wouldn't be an IMTX anymore.

Do away with the event? It has sold out every year and is one of the most popular of the North American IM races. What freakin' sense does it make to shitcan a race that sells out every year with somewhere near 3000 registrants for one that was canceled (St. George) due to lack of people willing to do the race?

The community couldn't care less about whether or not the course is "championship-level." The community only cares about the financial benefit and traffic impact. The difficulty of the course is of little concern.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One