g_lev wrote:
Not that I have any intention of attempting to be competitive here (This race is mostly going to be used as a really cool way to have a training day for an upcoming IM), but what is the best power strategy for a profile like this?
Hammer the first half of the bike course hard, and relax totally on the second half? My usual strategy for courses of this profile is to keep it easy on the first half, and hammer the second half thus starting to pick off those who overdid the climb. However on a course like this with all the twisty descending, that strategy doesn't look like it will work right.
We rode the 70.3 WC Nice bike course last week after a week in the Dolomites and Alps of Italy. After descending Giau and Stelvio we didn't find the Nice course descent all that technical. We had disc brake road bikes in Italy and planned the same in France renting from FBR the IM partner, but most of us ended up with rim brake road bikes. I had to laugh because the rep explained away the disc discrepancy by telling us he preferred rim brakes. I was actually more bummed about getting a bike with a 30 while the others came with 32 cassettes! We rode the course the same day with thunderstorm clouds looming all day. Then in Saint Jeannet the sky opened up with something greater than 1"/hour of downpour. I kept thinking back to the rim brake conversation and laughing that I was two for two with my last two France rides and descending in thunderstorms (see my earlier post about Pay's d'Aix last year). At least I had aluminum wheels and not carbon clinchers.
The rest of the week was clear and hot leading into the current heat wave. We also rode most of the IM France bike route too as we were based in a Vence VRBO and traversing Nice to the east was tough with a music festival and FIFA WC underway.
The Col de Vence climb that has been focused on in this thread is definitely noteworthy. It was less difficult than expected and can be reasonably paced throughout. More noteworthy was just how nasty we found the climbing starting around 12k to be. They aren't long climbs, but are steeper than any section of the Col de Vence and they come early in the bike.
There is a lot of descending, but the higher elevation descending allowed for a lot of visibility. The lower elevation descending felt a bit more risky due to vegetation and terrain shadowing the road in places. On road bikes we just kind of rocked through it, but more care will be necessary on a tri bike. It reminded me a bit of some iterations of the Vineman courses where there can be nasty pavement conditions in the shadows. The IM bike course map info below the turn by turn description gives solid information on where to proceed with caution. They were marking the IM course while we were there and highlighting all pavement and road hazards with spray paint ahead of the hazard and at the hazard if was a pavement issue. There were a lot of recent pavement repairs on the higher course and the equipment was still out there parked. Nothing was repaired on the lower part of the course when we were there.
The other item to note is that we logged around 4,300-4,500 feet of climbing on our ride and this included a solid climb from our rental to where we hit the course. So, the advertised 5k is probably a little bit high.