newguy wrote:
Personally? I have kept it simple- I have one tribike, very basic Felt B 16 ( old frame- on clearance ) 60/90 cheap carbon Chinese mold wheels ( not that I know of any real gains from them personally). My " beef" I guess is that none of what I have nor what I don't have means much, really. In my opinion, MOP and BOP racers need discussions about training - not aero hydration systems. I just don't buy the five watts savings for this plus ten for that really can be proven. I mean maybe you could gain that " lost time" by not sitting up as much or having better swim fitness, etc. None of the testing has ( nor I believe could- but I'd love to be proven wrong) shown results in nature with like- people on the set ups. I have no beef with math- my colleagues at the college I teach at that are math proffs are great, smart, and open minded people- but looking through only a math lens at an issue is one sided imo- especially since, really, math at it's basic levels is just as subjective as say, my field of study, rhetoric. Just ways to view the world each with corresponding limitations...
Coming back to your thread.
In my mind first order of business:
- Train at least 500 hrs per year (its not much, just 1.5 hrs per day consistently)
- Harden running legs through consistency (part of the above)
- Work swim form that you can hold and execute on in a race (part of point 1)
- Put in enough bike miles that you can get to T2 fresh (again part of point 1)
- Get into a decent aero position that you can stay bolted in for 1 hour at FTP, 2.5 hrs at 0.85FTP, 5+ hrs at 0.7FTP. Just stay in the stupid position dammit....stop sitting up like a sail out of your perfect windtunnel position
- Pace, Pace, Pace in racing. You can never know your body and your paces if you don't do enough of 1. Good swimmers, good runners, they just "know" what their body can handle for 1 min pace, 4 min pace, 20 minute pace, 1 hour pace, 2 hour pace...and so on. Show me a person who does enough training and they know their pace and they almost never blow up in a race at any distance.
- Enjoy getting to the start line and executing 1...every day, 365 days per year. If you hate it, you will suck in racing
- Get your body composition down to something that you can sustain 300 days per year......have a second body composition goal for 60 days per year around peak racing. Don't try to hold peak racing composition all year, you'll screw it up. Don't swing wildly from your 300 day body composition.....+/- 2.5 lbs
- Get your transitions down....practice practice practice
- Learn how to open water swim in pack. This is like the difference between bike TTing and pack racing in a crit. You can't have a good triathlon if you suck at pack swimming. If you get good at pack swimming you can bat waaaaay above your batting average for the same swim training.
- During your 500+ hours per year dial in your nutrition at target pace....do some hard swim+bike bricks that combine race nutriton....stomach totally misbehaves when you tack on the hard swim first....people are always surprised when on race day they "suddenly" have nutrition issues.
- Practice hard longer rides with no drafting, no coasting no stopping....just load up and head out at 0.8FTP for 4-5 hours with everything you need....one stop max. Don't make race day your first day all year where you DON'T have 12 stops in your 180K ride.
OK....having done 1-12 above, Second Order of Biz
- Get a good fitting wetsuit that you can breath in. This is the most important piece of "hardware" for your overall triathlon
- Get proper runner shoes that won't give you blisters for your race duration. Second most imporant piece of gear
- Get some fast wheels (plenty on Ebay that did not slow Stadley down on the old 4:18 Kona bike course record)
- Get a fast helmet
- Get a bike that you can get into your all day aero position (see point 5 in first list)....plenty of stuff on ebay....Chrissie went 8:37 on a 2008 Cannondale Slice at Roth....but look at her positiion relative to others....and she could hold that all day.
- Get tight fitting skin suit (may depend on race duration)
Now having done both 1-12 in the first order of biz and 1-6 in the second order, you have graduated to worrying about ceramic pulley's and the shape of the nose cone area on your TT bike and the shape of your base bars.
I don't think Chrissie every got to the third set of things that we're slicing and dicing....but she was doing 1000 hrs+ per year of training...and I do get that a large engine allows you to have a lot of small gain sins and get away with it, but her swim form, bike form, run form, pacing, training, body composition were all near perfection