Kevin Moats. That's too bad.

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New Training/Racing Log - http://www.earthdaykid.com/blog --- Old Training/Racing Log - http://colinlaughery.blogspot.com

It's OK, PNF beat him!

What bike was she riding? I looked up some pics of her on the Easton bike with small wheels. Her position looks good for such a small person.

Not a great shot, but I believe she was on some parachute bike with an awesome position:



This was around 1991 though on the 24 inch bike



and on her felt back on 26

Why is it the top 15 men and only the top 10 women?

I'm not the organizer of IM Hawaii 1988. You need to ask Valerie Silk why she only posted results from top 10 pro women. Maybe that's all she had in the field. But while we're at it, we could push PNF in the top 15 pro men too. As I said she almost ran down Pauli Kiuru who has a bunch of 8:0x IM's in his palmares.

Paula always had one of the best positions out there regardless of what bike she was riding. I had a FELT B2 with Corima wheels to be like Paula.

The splits make it appear that she had the lead coming on the bike and he ran her down (similar swim, PNF had a faster bike but a slower run). Unless he passed her early on and imploded and she almost caught back up?

Paula, Chrissie, and Daniella all in their prime would have be an awesome spectacle

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Matt

Paula also ran down her partner Paul Huddle. Household bragging rights.

Agree. I feel none of those three on their best day had anyone really pushing them to their best. Chrissy her last year when racing after the crash was a test for her but again that was not her at her best. Daniella was just starting IM and has mastered it now. PNF on any day she showed up ready had no competition. yes she got beat but not due to her not being the most talents by loads even on those days where she may have messed things up like the infamous meltdown in kona

That was the year that really started the "could a woman go sub 9-hours?".

IM should create a retro (circa late 80's-early 90's) tech race. There weren't many carbon bikes used by pros back then - Molina might have been the only one or three in the top-10 to have been on a carbon tubed bike. Most of those bikes would have been Reynolds 501 or 531 chromo, and maybe some aluminum. 7 or 8 speed Shimano SIS was the norm too.

Hey in 1990, Erin Baker beat PNF. By this point both had 2 wins at Kona. It was not always a slam dunk for PNF in terms of competition. Erin, was much more diverse over PNF over all distances and all types of racing and also was on the NZ national team for the open marathon. I believe, she raced in the Commonwealth Games. I just checked Wikipedia and in her career she had 104 wins in 121 starts. Erin closed off her Kona career with 2 wins and 3 second place!

For a lot of those years Paula rode a custom built bike make for her by Jim Felt. Jim was working for Easton and was just starting to build bicycles ( he was building motorcycles.)
I doubt it was as slow as Dev implies.

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Team Zoot So Cal

Get a pic of her 1988 bike. I am certain that it was not the Easton custom bike...definitely 1986 was a parachute old school bike. But her position was always awesome. To this day, I think her and Natasha Badmann hold the high bar for ultra slippery positions for small women. I can't think of anyone in the 5'4" and lower category who match their positions!

OK I got a pic of her riding in 1986 off a youtube screen capture. Old school double diamond with drop bars and here she is riding down from Hawi like Sebi Kienle or Peter Sagan:

She was driven and meticulous about all of her training and racing.

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Team Zoot So Cal

I stand corrected. She was on an Easton by 1988 as you pointed out. Found this on youtube, but it's the best screen capture I could get.

More importantly Mike Pigg had hair back then. Tinley, Allen and Ken Glah were on Kestrel's. Pigg was on a Centurion. I can't tell what Molina was ridding but he had grip shifters on his Scott DH aerobars.

I believe Miyata was Molina's bike sponsor back then. It was black, looked ugly and heavy, but it was light!

I think this only underscores, what is well known, but often disregarded. The rider position is about 70% of the drag, wheels, frame, everything else is 30%. Granted we understand a lot more now about aero positioning, but there was no reason someone's position 30 years could not be as good as today, regardless of the relative clunker of a bike they might have been on.

I guess exhibit A would be Anquetil's TT position on his drop bars. This is from Tour De France 1964

Man, will they never understand? His cranks are *way* to long. If he'd use shorter cranks he'd open up his hip angle. His run off the bike would be much improved.

In seriousness: I think his saddle is too low by modern standards. Check the knee angle in his right leg. But besides that, you're right - looks pretty efficient.

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

Am I mistaken that I have read multiple comments over the years that PNF's bike splits were probably aided by the mass start that included AGers?

Dev,

I few things from someone who raced back in this time frame.

- This was the first year with aero-bars

- The IMH time that really needs to looked at was Dave's time from either the year before or '86. He went 8:26 on swimming in a speedo, riding on a steel road bike, with regular road bars, a Bell helmet the size of a giant mushroom on his head, a baggy running singlet flapping in the breeze, and doing the run on bananas, Gatorade and coke! Think about that for a second. That 8:26 time would have put Dave in the top-10 in most years up to a few years back!!

- I'm going to be straight-up with people. We had no idea what we were doing back then. There were no coaches. There were no books. There were no power-meters. HRM's were just starting to be used. We swam with the swimmers. We rode with the Road Cyclists. We ran with the runners. We pushed hard and long in training all the time, year round. Pouring on volume - as much as we could handle.

- I agree with what others have said here that BIKE POSITIONING is massive - for both aerodynamics and power transmission. The frame and ALL the other stuff is important, but it's all minor and fiddling at the fringe.

- In races, with no technology to monitor, we really went for it. Short or long, always at the limit. If you blew-up, you blew-up - try again next weekend, next month, whenever.

- There was a real spirit of adventurism and pioneerism with it all. We ALL wanted to explore the outer-limits of our fitness and endurance, any way we could. "Hey Steve, do you want to ride 200K today? My girl-friend has agreed to pick me up in such-and-such town. Want to join me". Me - "Sure, thing. Let's go for it"! That was about the extent of the, "training planning"!

From all of this came some performances, that were pretty good, and despite, ALL the technology both actual sports equipment and the training technology available now, stand the test of time. I've said it before and I'll say it again - endurance sports training and performance is as complicated or as simple as you want to make it! Back then it was simple, now, today it seems more complicated!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog