I didn't say you couldn't compare. I simply corrected you with facts that only at this time were Ali and Gomez better than Jan at ITU. Anything else especially as it deals with Kona specifically as that was the comment in question is your own conjecture...which was my whole point. Like lets let them race and then talk about how above they are of Jan as it deals with IM. Anything else is just as the movie goes..."your opinion man".

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

I think oscaro is not claiming they are above everyone else AG Kona. He sais that they are above everyone else in terms of being triathletes (without any specific distance mentioned). So while it is possible that others beat them in kona because they can handle the beat better or are better suited for long stuff, that is all speculation. All we can say is that Brownlee and Gomez seem to have the best potential to do well in Hawaii.

What I don't get is why everyone sees it black or white. It's either "he will crush the fiele by 10 minutes" or "he will melt down in the heat and be injured and don't get his nutrition right".

I think he will do very well. But I also think that he might need some time and then be in the mix and win it sooner or later. But not on one leg.
Remember Frodeno. In his first longcourse year in 2014 he came third in Frankfurt and he "lost" in Kona again albeit with some bad luck. Then he weit on to be the best. So maybe Ali will have a different learning experience.

And imagine when Ali in his first Kona has an off day like Frodeno in 2017. Then everyone will think they were right all the time and he can't do it and is not that great anyway. But in Kona so much can go wrong. You don't need to nail it from the beginning. And a guy like Lange had it easier to learn as he could do his own race and fly under the radar. With Ali everyone will try to cover everyone move etc.

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10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

That was sorta my point. Before we crown them the greatest Kona athletes ever, let’s just let them race. Let them have great result and the inevitable “bad” result and then call it what it is. Do I think either shows up in Kona and day 1 and knocks it out of park? Not a chance. Even as yes they are the most complete triathletes likely ever coming into IM racing. But there’s a whole hell of a lot of factors beyond just the fastest S-B-R that factor in especially at Kona.

I still go back to the point PS and JF made a few years ago on their old coaching podcast. They chuckled at the idea that your defined to be “great” in IM distance racing at only 1 race location in IM racing. That if you somehow aren’t a good heat acclimatized athlete you somehow are “2nd rate” if you don’t win Kona. It’s almost a farce imo that it’s only Kona or nothing for IM World Title. But that’s what it is for an private company owning it etc. The lure of Kona is stroong.

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

Chrissie did.

Name any wage you want on Ali or Gomez showing up 1st year and winning...I'll even give you odds.

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

I think what you are missing in this discussion (and your previous post about 10K guys moving up to marathon) is everything from 5K to 10K to half marathon to olympic tri to marathon and even largely half IM racing is largely a fuel depletion event. You basically you go through all the glycogen you have stored on your body, which is roughly 2 hours worth.

When you move up to Ironman that leaves 6 hours that has to come from a combo fat burning or topping up the tank. With the physiology that Brownlee and Gomez have, they should be able to basically swim and ride at a similar percent of their personal FTP to Jan and burn just as much fat as he does. Now the question is how good are they at refueling and who can store more glycogen on their body. It's not a slam dunk what the outcome of this race that requires refueling is to the same extent that a 12.5minute 5000m scales to a 2:03 marathon. Both still are largely a depletion exercise that you can survive through on last night's pasta.

The other factor is Gomez, Browlee, and Frodo all have to devote the exact same percent of their top line wattage to moving 700c wheels through the air at 40 kph-45 kph (or whatever number, assume all these guys are riding the same watts). This leaves Frodo with more of his top line watts to move the bike forward, assuming his slipperiness scales with his size in the same proportion to his top line wattage as the other two guys. Gomez has the biggest disadvantage on this, but Frodo is a bigger guy than Brownlee and for a moment I will assume his brute FTP is larger than Alistair (which may not be a correct assumption, but I'll roll with that for this disussion).

In any case assume three athletes, one 5'10, one 6'1' one 6'4" with the same watts per kilo FTP and relative the same kilos scaling vs height and equally slippery aero for all of them, then the big guy will bike fastest on the flats.....everyone has the same size wheel "tax" at the same speed.

Remind me when Ali is on the start list. I'm sure we can find a bet then. I'd hate to have to track you down if he's not on the list for a few years and we both forgot this thread.

imo if he does 2020 as his 1st year of Kona after going for the MTR gold in Tokyo, i'll have to give you lots of odds to make it fair. I dont think you can train for both and nail both successfully. It's just too much different energy systems and the specificity is far to reaching, even if he is only "domestiquing" for his brother by then in the individual race.

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

Sure, fuel depletion and nutrition are key for their success. But that still leaves the probability leaning towards at least one of them succeeding. Plus either way I just down find it outlandish to say they will be the best to have ever toed the line in Kona.
Regarding ftp, Jan probably has a higher absolute number compared to Gomez, but pretty sure Alistair smokes him in bit raw ftp and w/kg.
Rumor is Alistairs ftp is north of 400w, which is more than Jan and puts his w/kg close to 6.

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Terrible Tuesday’s Triathlon

You think he can't throw enough long rides/runs in during a 8-10 week period between the Olympics and Kona to allow him to acclimate to long course? He probably already does as much if not more volume than a lot of long course pros already. He'll have the speed, no doubt about that, all he needs is to build some resilience. That won't take long for someone already doing significant volume for the better part of a decade. Plus, he can scale right back on the swim training if needed to focus more on the bike/run and still be right at the front of the race.

The only way he or Gomes gets beat is through an accident, injury, nutrition issues or some other unexpected reason. Physiologically they are on another level.

Jan is great but lets not forget he went to LC because he know he was nowhere near AB./JG or about 10 other people for that. I think he only one ITU race (Hamburg?) outside the Olympics?

There are too many variables to categorically say AB will win or beat Gomez. Heat, pacing, nutrition, inexperience at that distance. Chris McCormack would attest to that..

key point.

i always say, imagine if people said usain bolt was no good because he never won boston. or even that gebreselassie wasn't a great distance runner because he never won boston either.

closer to home, scott molina probably belongs high on the list of best athletes to race tri, but his physiology just was not suited to kona. whereas PNF and dave scott were basically kona machines but didn't have nearly his palmares otherwise.

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

There's quite a few pro's racing LC now who were pretty much dare I say chased out of Oly distance by the Brownlee's and Gomez (one of them came 3rd in Kona last year)

Rather my and many other point! It they are getting beat at SC why is it going to change then the fastest chaps have a go at LC too. Normally the only reason is what the SC chaps leave it too long. It's appears that Gomez has realised this and isn't leaving it too late.

Take Simon Lessing (maybe not a great example because she struggled with the Kona heat) if he had turned up at Kona at the peak of his powers in the 90s instead of as an after thought I have to think the result would of been quite different.

If you have a guy with heat/nutrition issues your chances of solving it are much improved if he can:
- swim front pack without red lining it, buying time to sit on his watts early in the bike while others chase (Frodo's ace card).
- has a bike engine that means staying out there and leading into T2 (or at least leading over the key run threats) allowing a 'managed' run or sitting in on the Hawi Express Train when it comes by and conserving energy are genuine options
- has 10k run speed that actually means physiologically a 2:40 marathon is not 'fast'.

Problem is still there, and has to be solved but much easier to do so if you have these in your favour.

I'd take that bet. I basically agree with you, but I'll still put 20 bucks on Ali winning first time around. What odds can I have please? :-)

In fairness, I think Ali has everything he needs to dominate this race on an athletic level. He is among the very best swimmers we have seen in ITU, lagging only behind the extremely rare fish like Varga and I guess Schoeman and Raphael. He is arguably the strongest biker we have seen in ITU recently... as evidenced by Kitzbuhel 2013 and the times when he has basically TT'd off the front of the group, which you don't really see anybody else doing. We also have a barometer for his prowess against specialist TTers in the UK. And then we know how he can run.

So IM is longer. We know that the best 5km/10km runners are often the best marathon runners. It is basically doing the same thing, a tiny bit slower, for 8x or 4x as long. We also know from the UK TT scene and, you know, the long history of cycling, that the guys who are fast over the 10 are also fast over the 100. Hell, Bradley Wiggins went from 4km pursuit to winning the Tour de France. Another example; our own Steve Irwin from this parish has a 17:49 to his name, a 1:35 for the 50 and a 3:28 for the 100. Pedalling aerobically is pretty much the same as pedalling aerobically, just with a little bit more W' contribution over the shorter distances. Swimming is swimming.

The thing we are arguing about is execution. The longer you are out there, and the more you need to fuel, the greater the opportunity to cock up is. We don't know how well Ali will fuel in an IM, and there is the question of heat (which is frankly based on n=1 and a slightly bollocks argument IMO).

The only thing you can say for sure is that he is potentially one of the most athletically gifted athletes we've seen across the 3 disciplines and it will be fun to watch! :-)

The only way he or Gomes gets beat is through an accident, injury, nutrition issues or some other unexpected reason. Physiologically they are on another level.

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yes that’s pretty much why I’m saying they won’t win on 1st try.

Does anyone remember Ali at Beijing? He was likely the 2nd most dynamic athlete in that race that day. But he just wasn’t ready to take the big step of winning.

And here’s the thing. Like it’s not a bad thing if Ali or Gomez doesn’t win day 1. I’m not discrediting them at all by suggesting they won’t win it on first try. Do you know how easy it is to f up nutrition and cause a huge blow up by mile 16/18, etc. I’m actually saying the “process” of racing Kona is more important than just how fast/good they are.

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

The thing we are arguing about is execution. The longer you are out there, and the more you need to fuel, the greater the opportunity to cock up is. We don't know how well Ali will fuel in an IM, and there is the question of heat (which is frankly based on n=1 and a slightly bollocks argument IMO).

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Yes which is why I was discussing earlier mostly with oscaro and Jackets comment. You cant be the best IM athletes in the world when you in fact havent raced even 1 IM event let alone, Kona, *yet*. They are likely the most complete athletes ever to come into IM and this likely gives them the best chance at it, but they have to execute on race day. And what they do at ITU while helpful, IM has many more "oops" moments that can cause spectatcularly huge breakdowns later in the race. So we've not seen anything from either of them to suggest they are immune from bad decisions on race day.


ETA: So moral of my post on this: let them freaking race and get experience both good and bad races and watch how they likely change Kona race tactics. I think they'll have great careers, I was just balking at the idea that they already are a step above the current class of Kona athletes...that is more disrespectful than anything imo when they havent even shown up and raced, *yet*.

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

I never said they were the best IM athletes, I said they were the best Triathletes.

This is what you said:
Gomez and the Brownlee's are in a different league to anyone who's ever compete in Kona as complete Triathletes there's potential for them to take things to another level, just as they did at Oly distance.


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Again they havent even raced that distance, yet. Which was my original point to oscaro. All we know currently is that Ali and Gomez are the best ITU athletes to come into LC. We've not seen how they handle the distance of 140.6. While they are the best complete athletes, maybe they do well, and maybe they dont like it and hang it up. But we know they are super strong, and no 1st timer male has ever won Kona. We also don't know how they stack up in IM pro field yet with putting it all together, which I would say they'll have some adjustment period (i think all would acknowledge that), especially at Kona. So while they are super world class at ITU, let's let the chips fall before we claim they are a different league *already*. They may turn out to be or they may not, but your emphasis that they already are in a different league is fanboy talk plain and simple, especially when IM has much more emphasis on the "other" categories, for which we don't know how they'll handle/adjust to.

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

"no 1st timer male has ever won Kona"

Oh dear! If you don't know the history of the sport then maybe at least use google before making statements!!

http://www.triathlete.com/...a-cool-hand-luc_4754

Ok thanks. So what 1 out of 38 years (i guess 2 since the 1st winner was 1st year). So is it only 2 out of 38 years a 1st time winner has won? Hasn't happened in 22 years.

So want to take odds on Ali or Gomez winning it 1st time or not?


Come on this is an easy bet apparently since they are such a class above.....

ETA: So I errored and it's not 100% accurate that the Kona conditions/experience + pro field makes it 100% no 1st year pro wins, but more like what ~95-98% depending on if you count the 1st year race as a statistical point. Fair enough. Which I think still my reasoning is still fairly true that jumping to IM and especially Kona takes adjustment and feeling out period. If you think because 1 person has done it, that it will mean Gomez or Ali does it, that's fair enough as well.

I'm also not going to judge the success or failure of either of them if they in fact don't come in and take IM by storm early on, especially Kona. I think there are enough 140's to water down fields so that they can actually win an IM or 2 before Kona (obviously different story if Gomez is doing Kona this year, I would think he's probaly only doing 1 this year + Kona?). I also think Ali if it's true he's waiting longer than likely Gomez to do Kona (they are saying 2020 for Ali post Tokyo?), that's going to be a big hurdle to jump. Gomez in year 2 or 3 at Kona vs 1st year Ali, give me Gomez every day and twice on sunday just based on the experience factor alone.

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

Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but St George was hot as hell last year and Ali was cruising. He had no problem with the heat that day and it was absolutely miserable out there.

I stand by this point that they are in a different league as complete Triathletes, my next sentence mentioned potential for them to raise the bar!

Of course I acknowledge the fact and completely agree with whoever made the point that they may cream in every time they race Kona for whatever reason, I'm willing to bet that doesn't happen though!

2020 onwards could/should see Gomez/Brownlee type Ironwars which will only be good for IM as it would raise the profile and interest in IM distance and epic to watch at the same time.