Wow Thanks Lloyd for taking the time to share this info. I went to the site and see the bike review is not up yet. A quick question(I'll wait for the review to be up till I ask anything else).A guy who did nationals said it was pretty hilly and to use a 12-25 cassette. Here's the question,I am using a road bike with STI(Klein Q-Pro Carbon)should I put my areo bars on or do you think there is enough shifting that I will lose any advantage of having them on.(due to the constant changing of position to shift) Thanks Very Much, Ken

Ken,

I had a number of friends do the Nationals in CDA, and several reported the same thing. I think, however, that the IM course is different enough that the same does not hold. I rode this past weekend on my P2K Cervelo, and spent the majority of the time in the aerobars quite comfortably. In fact, I would have hated not having them, since we fought some pretty stiff headwinds at times, and there are several fairly long, straight sections. In the current iteration of the course there are only a couple of places I'd consider technical enough to be of concern, and those are mainly descents. I don't think bar-end shifters will be any disadvantage, nor would a setup like yours, with clipons and STI.

As for the hills, I am set up with 700c wheels, and my chainrings are 53-42. I was using a set of Xaero lites, which I use for the bulk of my training, and on which I have a 12-27 (ala Slowman - it's pretty hilly where I live, a couple of my training rides have climbs of 16%+--my race wheels, on which I've done Hawaii, Vineman, and Utah, are set up with 11-23). Still, I had no trouble with the hills, though a couple will be a bit of a trudge on the second lap. The longest hill, which I'd guess at 8% max, and which extends for about 1.6 miles, I was able to spin up in 43-21 (43-19, near the top). I'm ~185 right now, 50 years-young, and not the greatest climber.

I hope that helps. BTW, I'm still revising the bike course review, but hope to have it live later today, work, etc., permitting.

--Lloyd

Thank you very much Lloyd. This is my first IM. 43 and 180lbs. Hope to see you there.About to go out for eighty miler. Have a great day. Thanks again. I"ll tellyou what,I would hate to be doing this as a first timer if was not for forums like this and the helpful people that are allowing me not to go there altoghter green..

Ken,

Hope you had a great (and safe) ride. I got a short brick in before the rain hit us. Our review of the IM CDA bike course is finally posted. You can see it here:

http://www.transitiontimes.com/viewstorylocal.cfm?ID=2208&ett2locale=Utah&ett2local=Utah

--Lloyd

Thanks Lloyd. Did my first 80 miler.Going out had a tough headwind, avg hr 133 and avg speed 17.5mph.Ran 16.5 and 300 yrd swim mon. I sure am having doubts. I have already done a hlf im for training. To run that marathon after 112 is going to be tough. Thanks again. Ken

Lloyd- Hey thanks for the info! One question: Can you tell me what the recent change was in the course? Did the 2 big hills, which were at the end of the laps, show up somewhere else? The IMCdA site doesn't have the profiles updated yet.

Mike

The "big hills" are still there, but the course profile that's still on the race website, and which should be updated soon, is backward. In the changes posted as of 4/15/03, the course direction was reversed, but the profile not updated to reflect that switch. (BTW, it's just a quess on my part, but I think that rider safety was at least part of the decision to reverse the direction. Coming down the last "big" hill the old way, would have been pretty fast, and would have required a left turn onto Route 95. I think that beyond the traffic hassels, there would have been crashes with the speeds riders would have approached the turn at the bottom of the hill.)

The most recent changes, posted as of 5/05/03, are just minor tweeks. The turn-by-turn instructions have been updated and clarified (for example, it now explains that there will be a paved connection from the Centennial Trail to Riverbend Rd. by race day, whereas now one has to go across the grass to get there); there is a change at the turnaround at the west end of Appleway; and the turn off of Seltice toward the North to get on Compton is now onto Chase, rather than onto Cherry (which was very confusing before). That's all I picked up on my perusal, at least.

Hope that helps, let me know if you have any other questions. BTW, the "hills" are as we've described in our review, they're really not too bad...well, unless you're from Kansas ;^)

--ll

thanks again for doing this!

I'm sure you have a certain time in mind you will try to do on the bike.
I know, I know, wind, weather, ...but just give us a guess comparing with what you are able to do on another IM course. I think that would be a good
estimate on how fast, hard the bike is.

thanks again

Oh, now you're looking for trade secrets! Actually, I'm not the fastest rider around, a little long in the tooth, just coming off knee surgery (that part's true) etc., etc. However, excuses out of the way, I'm shooting to ride around 5:40. I think that's doable for me, but I'm just racing for fun this year, so I won't be disappointed if I don't hit that time - I mean I've done worse...with severe leg cramps (which started in the swim, and never stopped all day), and some bad luck in the wind coming down from Hawi, I rode a blazing 7 hours in IMH in 2001 (I have done much better, really). I have a friend I train with who rode Canada in 5:15 last year, I genuinely expect him to top that at CDA. The climbs are there, but are short, and followed by downhills to keep the average speed up. The only thing to slow you done here and there are the turns through town, and a few other 90 degree turns when moving from one road on the course to another. But, it's still 112 miles, so anything could happen. I hope that helps.

yes it does help but as I always want more ...here is a question:

let me list some of my times at IM around the world and then you give me your guess for IMCDA (not showing off or anything just trying to get an idea of the pace I can expect). Unfortunatelly I don't have the time to go up there for training.

Lake Placid 5:30
Florida 5:05
Switzerland 4:55, 5:00, 5:05
Roth 4:50

So, do you think I can aim for a 5:00 bike or are those hills too steep and corners too sharp to keep the speed up?

I think you can aim for the 5:00, with your history, that looks well within the realm of possibility. Outside, I'd say 5:10-5:15, the climbs are short enough, and the turns occasional enough, that they shouldn't represent a problem for the stronger riders at all. I think that one, maybe two of the descents on Riverview will require some caution, even for the best riders--just riding under control, otherwise, all things being equal, nothing tells my you shouldn't put up a fast time.