devashish_paul wrote:
monty wrote:
think Wurf plans to hammer the swim and Bike. He knows he needs a big lead into T2 to have a chance. He's gotta know that getting with Starky is his best bet for that// You can only swim to the limit of your abilities, thus he is going to be chasing for sometime. But I have said it before several times, I expect that the uber bikers are going to catch Starky at some point, and unless he is blown, he will hang to T2 with them. Wurf's problem is that 2 of those uberbikers are also very good runners, both who could win the race outright. And then you have the 2nd wave of uberrunners, many of which are going to run 2;40 +/-. So if he wants to win, he needs 10 to 15 minutes on the uberbikers, and 20 to the uber runners.
I dont think I have to explain the law of diminishing returns on a minute gained on the bike, equals more minutes on the run at some point past your ability. And all those gaps are well past his ability, so one could expect him not running close to what he has before. But all this talks about winning is really pointless, he is not going to win, or be top 3 even. I just dont know what his race plan is, to get the bike record by crushing it, or ride within himself and try for his best possible place on the day. Those two do not go together, and will be very observable around mile 80 or so I would say. Same goes for Starky, only I will lean heavily that he will ride too hard and not run very well. He is just no good in the heat, so his hail Mary's in other ironman where he could hold on to a good place, or even win, is not an option here with the field assembled.. My 2 cents is that Wurf needs Sebi and Lionel to ride with him TTT so he personally does not overbike and so the three collectively can have a faster split than solo and have padding on uber runners.
Then each of these three guys who are allies on the bike have to defeat each other on the run and defeat the uber runners.
It's like a slowmotion Tour de France 5 hour breakaway, where you are wondering if the breakaway can succeed, but rather than waiting for the final 1 km where the breakaway become rivals with each other, we get 42 km to see that play out. Cam kind of needs both Kienle and Sanders to crumble on the run to defeat both. Maybe one, but both seems to be a tall order....and on top of that hold off Gomez, Currie, Lange, McNamee etc etc.
I think he knows he has to be in front of both of them into T2. Maybe he does that in the last few miles and tries to break away, but really I think he doesn't want to be "with them" as pulling away would be hard as well as if it's enough as they are better runners. I'd think he'd prefer to not even see them on the bike and hope Starky and him can do the necessary work for that to happen.
He has Starky's race strategy: go hard and win or blow up trying. But he has to put pressure on the guys that can out run him, and the only way to do that is to have them overbike to catch him. My opinion anyways.