Competitive people will take every advantage they can especially in a big race such as an ironman. It is the responsibility of the race to catch people breaking the rules. This happens all the time in sports. Do you think that because it is against the rules to hold an offensive lineman wouldn't every play if he wasn't getting called for? I played somewhat high level baseball as a pitcher back in the day. If I could scuff up the baseball with no worry of being caught to make the ball move more I would have all day long.

Kevin Moats - Ironman Hawaii 1993. He passed me on the way out to Hawi somewhere glued to someone's wheel! :-)

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Slowman wrote:
[

i'm not telling you how it oughta be. i'm telling you how it is. slow swimmer passes cyclist who doesn't want to be passed. and speeds up. these two catch a third. by the time you're at cyclist 5, 6, 7 the fact that the fast cyclist is stronger doesn't matter, because those in back are getting the draft. and on it goes.

so, your math is great if no cyclist ever changes his velocity. but that's not human nature. you may argue that the person who gets passed is not forced to change his velocity; nor is he forced to ride in close proximity on a course with a lot of width. i'm telling you what actually happens, not what should happen.

so, you say, i'll let the pack pass me and go to the back, and dangle off the back. but other honorable people think and say the same. so, pretty soon a bunch of you are dangling off the back. more or less together.

i'm not going to get all righteous on you. i'm just saying certain things are predictable. you can blame the racer; you can blame the race organizer; or you can just not do those kinds of races and then you don't have to make the decision of whom to hate.

^^^^This^^^^
I was "caught up" in a draft pack in Ironman Florida 70.3. I don't know where they came from, I'm a slow swimmer, I started in the back half of the swim. The fast, competitive cyclists should have all been in front of me, as it's a one loop bike course. I was passed by 1, 2, 3 wide. They cut in front AND in back of me. Just like that, I was in a pack. I didn't want to slow down, there was someone on my wheel and I thought there was a chance they could take me out if they hit me. Fortunately, there was an aid station ahead. I got out and dropped back. About 500 yards outside of the aid station, there was a bad crash from the middle of the pack. I don't know if the riders who went down were in the pack or were just being passed. They were a swervy, unpredictable bunch and I hated it. After that, there were no more packs. The crash must have spread them out.

It’s like telling people not to draft on the highway during rush hour. I would love to have 6 car lengths to myself.... it just does not happen. If you are a statistically average biker there are hundreds of bikers on the course who will be riding within one mile per hour of you for the whole 112 miles.


As Dan Empfield hinted at, this is not a new problem (Drafting). It's been an issue in bigger races since the early 1990's. And as race fields have become bigger in the bigger races, and the middle of the pack type of triathletes more equivalent in fitness, and more competitive, it's only become worse.

It's a problem of numbers and physics and also one of philosophy and behavior.

It's been clear for a long time that, at certain times or a lot of times, the volume of athletes on the road at a given time is overwhelming the no drafting rules. There are too many people, in too short a period of time, on too little space of road. Look at the Pro races these days - here, the problem has been more or less solved. They have a separate start. Field size has been constrained (40 - 50 athletes). They all get and respect the rules. It's actually a beautiful site in the mens race at Kona - 30+ guys all lined up in a line with exactly 10m between them. A 300m long legal peleton! Not so with the AG races - again too many athletes, in too short a time, with too little of road to work with!

You can go on and on about the rules all you want - the drafting still goes on. They tried playing super hard-ball with the rules about 15 - 20 years ago and having mass DQ's (100's of athletes) at IM races, and found it was not good for business. More recently, it seems to be a turn-a-blind-eye approach. Until they severally limit the field size (impractical), or make every bike course insanely hard (also impractical) we we going to have what we have today. As blasphemous and crazy as this sounds, I'm all for them scraping the No Draft rules, mandating road-bikes only, and allowing drafting. People will figure it out.

On the philosophic & behavior front Dan touched on a few things. Here's a few more. The bike leg of a triathlon is a strange beast. It's raced head-to-head on the road, using time-trail like equipment, with some of the rules for road time-trials employed. Are you still with me? Some embark on a triathlon bike leg and seem to think they are in a true solo ITT - but they are sharing the course with hundreds, thousands of others, that they are racing head-to-head with on the road. Others, look upon it all a bit more strategically, pushing the envelope here and there when they can - things like sling-shotting, are fully legal in the AG ranks - employed smartly this can be a big fully legal advantage. While others blatantly abuse the rules, and treat long portions of a triathlon bike leg, like a group ride!

It's a mess!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Here is a histogram from the 58mi check of how many athletes where passing through each second.



12m takes 1 second at 43km/h, meaning, at most, 2 athletes should occupy the same second (1 passee, 1 passer within the 12m zone)

I also pulled the first 500 athletes from athlete tracker into a spreadsheet so you can cross reference athlete names with where the big groups occurred (sort by Column E in the spreadsheet) -- downloadable at

https://alancouzens.com/...MTexas2018splits.csv

Of course, within the high density period, it's entirely possible that one or 2 guys/gals is riding legal as the big group passes but, when you see the same names cropping up in repeated high density periods across the checkpoints, esp when some of those names have already appeared in this thread as very fast time off low power, the evidence starts pointing in one direction.

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Alan Couzens, M.Sc. (Sports Science)
Exercise Physiologist/Coach
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alan_Couzens
Web: https://alancouzens.com

Thank you for this. I cross referenced every guy that finished ahead of me, and all but one was solidly on the wheel of someone (often the same person and always with the same group) on nearly every timing point.

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"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Elliot | Cycle2Tri.com
Sponsors: SciCon | | Every Man Jack

I'm with you, Fleck. I don't see a logical alternative.

Thank you!

Pretty disheartening to see friends and people I know who are top athletes resorting to blatant drafting...

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What's your CdA?

Fascinating to see 25 people get off the bike within 20 seconds (around 12:25).

Also - where is the prince?

Wow, thanks. Very bummed to see what this is telling me.

3000 people who ride outdoors maybe a couple dozen times a year and have near zero bike handling skills riding in tight packs 50 to a few hundred strong?

What could possibly go wrong?

Thank you Alan

I’d quit doing tri if drafting on the bike became legal

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Matt

If this is done, there will happen the same thing as in professional biking courses, but also with agegroupers. You have one person for whom to work. You take a team of 10 (or 50) people who all swim at least as fast as this one person. Lets just say this one person drafts in the swim. Then for the bikeride, the team does a team time trial keeping the one person out of the wind. This person does thus not have to do a lot of training on the bike. He must then do the work on the run.
So first of all, the winner is going to be a good runner. Secondly, if you do not have a team around you, you will never have a chance on a hawaii slot.

Thanks to everyone for the support. Sad that there is a need to play 'armchair detective' but there clearly is...

Also, per the interview/other thread, I want to give much respect to Sam. All of the later checks looked a lot like the following, with Sam and a couple of others out in front of a huge pack of multiple athletes on the same second (& the same thing in the surrounding seconds).

While obvious, it needs to be said that it takes a whole lot of strength (of both legs and character) to pull that off & not get overtaken/'swallowed up' by the pack. #Respect

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Alan Couzens, M.Sc. (Sports Science)
Exercise Physiologist/Coach
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alan_Couzens
Web: https://alancouzens.com

So first of all, the winner is going to be a good runner. Secondly, if you do not have a team around you, you will never have a chance on a hawaii slot.

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How often times is an IM athlete not a good runner now? How often is it a strong swim/biker who then "holds on"?

As to your 2nd point, you can easily sit in on large group pack. It's not as if they'll put a stick through your spoke. They may try and "drop" you but it's not like you will not benefit from the pulls from other teams/riders, etc.

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

Haven't we all experienced the same phenomenon in your car on the highway? You stay in the right lane because people in the left are going faster than you want to and you end up stuck going slower than you want to. The combination of the number of cars and limited space removes your ability to drive your car completely independently. You end up being part of something bigger. I think a similar thing happens in overcrowded races.

I don't get stuck there, not because I don't use the right lane, but because I look forward enough to anticipate slower traffic, and move left well in advance to pass. Once past, I move back to the right lane. There are plenty of reasons why this isn't a reasonable analogy (no speed limit on the bike, no drafting rules in a car, etc.), however.

Packs form in triathlons because people who are overtaken choose to take the opportunity to go faster on the same watts, rather than maintain their speed on fewer watts. That's why you see plenty of people with much faster splits than their norm, and not so many with slower splits than they might have done.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Who actually wants to spend their free time (witch) hunting for cheaters? I know I’d much prefer to watch the paint dry on the wall, wash my hair, pick my nose ... c’mon, really.

It’s up to the race officials to enforce the rules. If they can’t be bothered to do it and it bugs you - don’t give them money and participate in those races.

And I'm sure at some point in moving left and back to the right you made some adjustments to your speed to fit in. All analogies break down (you forgot to mention cars use gas and bikes don't and they have 4 wheels instead of two and sometimes they're trucks with even more wheels), but your brilliance and superiority is duly noted so there's that.

I don't draft. I hate drafting. The point is that too many people in too small of an area is going to create a problem. That problem forces you to choose to go faster than you've earned through training (drafting/cheating) or slower than you've earned through training. (dropping off the back of one or more packs). And if everybody drops off the back where do they go?

"Brilliance and superiority is duly noted." Why the snark? I gave a reasonable response to you, and you come back with snark? I try very hard to maintain the same speed when highway driving by being an active driver, watching what's going on ahead of me and behind me.

Nobody "drops off the back", unless the people who just passed them suddenly slow down. The people who passed them were going faster, so there is no need to slow down. At all.

Packs don't form by themselves. People form packs. The reason you get too many people in too small an area (other than coming out of transition, for instance) is because people draft, instead of dropping their wattage to maintain the same speed they were going, and letting those who are going faster just go ahead at their faster speed.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Packs don't form by themselves.

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I think the most anyone can hope and expect in all of this is that the racers race fair and the races themselves do everything they can to also officate the race as fair as possible. When only 1 is doing it's job, it's going to make it a tough day for everyone.

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

It's a shame that racers need officials to keep them from cheating. Such is "human nature," as Dan said (without explaining how those pro women got sucked into these packs).

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Then go back to racing with 200 people

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

Would be interesting to see how many KQ'ers fell into the high frequency sections of the histogram. Guessing from CPT Chaos' post, I'd wager there are at least a couple where the answer is "quite a few." The other interesting data point is that (at least from what I could tell, although didn't plot it), the bunching is a lot less in Column H for some of these suspect groupings - which I assume is near the finish. This seems to negate the "packs couldn't help but form" argument and suggests that the packs - when not way out on the course - realized they should disaggregate for appearance's sake.