With wind resistance riding exponentially there's diminishing returns the faster you get, I guess that's part of it.

Tactics is another. I would guess Wurf could well have been holding back a bit compared to last year in order to save himself for a better run, especially if he realised that Kienle and Sanders were out of it. Conversely Ryf likely had to pull out all the stops after the position she found herself in after the swim and early bike.

Yes, I was thinking that both of these items factored in. I wonder how much of a wall of wind Cam was pushing to go 3ish minutes faster....at some point, for the same watts, he's basically creating the same wall of wind regardless of how hard things are blowing around him....he's creating his own headwind out of "no wind".

Daniela looked more aero. I think her mid foot cleat position actually allows here to pedal with a more open hip angle with an ultra accute ankle bend at the top of the pedal stroke to keep the hip open.

I really would love to see Cam's power files if they exist, and Daniela's for both year. Drietz's file would be interesting as would be Lionel's since both of these guys basically rode the same speed and seeing Lionel's versus last year. I still don't understand how he rode 1-2 min slower this year off one less watt being lighter unless his position was more of a parachute or he kept sitting up.

Do you guys know what happened to Kienle? Aside from the mechanical the rest of his 4:20 ride was tourist mode. He only biked 6 min faster than Daniela.

Check out Ryf's second half bike split & compare it to the train.

Did she match the Drietz blue train on the second half?

I'd say she clearly had more in her - judging by the dominant run from the get go, especially had she not been stung by the jellyfish.

Drafting is part of IM. It is allowed to happen and has been for quite some time. You see a hell of a lot more wind being alone off the front. I'd love to see some power files. I bet there was a lot of soft pedaling in the pelotons (I won't even bother mentioning the age groupers).

Starting to believe this more and more. Coming from a biking background, I was never really able to believe that you could get a draft effect of any kind once you were more than a few meters behind someone......we always tried to get within a few inches of the wheel in front of us while road racing.
But watching these IM races.....just seeing how many times Lange sat up and soft pedalled while riding with/through the group....

Watching the coverage yesterday and seeing the men and women putting speeds on the bike in the range of 27-30mph, what kind of watts are they putting out to manage this? I tried putting it into Best Bike Split for myself as a large rider (220lbs) and guessed a Cda of 0.27.. which I imagine they are much less.... but for me to put out 27mph it was giving 420w+... surely they arent putting out those numbers? as a newbie to the sport that power seems unbelievably high and unattainable.

Also, I didnt expect to see people missing swim cut off times etc at Kona, given that its the best of the best there... how come there were so many people who seemed way off the pace of what you would expect of a qualifying racer?

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@the.lazy.triathlete

https://www.strava.com/athletes/18691068

 
.[/quote] I still don't understand how he rode 1-2 min slower this year off one less watt being lighter unless his position was more of a parachute or he kept sitting up.
.[/quote]
I imagine a lot of the stronger bikers had to sit up a lot more in the pack. No wind would have leveled the playing field and to pass your competition would require more surging which in turn burns matches.

You can find this info via google. I think Kienle average about 320W in 2017.
That said, I don't think you can really compare a 220 pound rider to a pro rider weighing 150! :)

CdA of .27 is WAY higher than these guys and higher than you should be, even at 220 lbs. They are more like .22-.24, and even better for a few.These guys almost all have very refined positions these days, with very trim bike setups as well. CdA of .27 is almost road position.

UCI bike but with favorable “dual carriageway” conditions, there are Brit TT folks doing 30mph around 300w. Lowest I’ve seen on an out and back was about 270w, again with cars buzzing you probably helping.

Without the dual carriageway “help” I’d suppose a tad over 300 is doable.

Once you reduce TT to survival to get to a run versus all out, I really don’t see the point versus tossing lots of elevation at folks instead. I’d like to see what happens at a Kona level event with 11k of elevation. No matter how you slice it for the bike leg, a 200ish pound rider being competitive is a bit silly outside of track racing.

The TTs over 400w are over 30mph. A good amount over relative to the cubic wind resistance.

Noted re. Google... I was just hoping some experienced people here would be able to put it all into context for me as ive read so much conflicting stuff on FTP/Speed etc over the last few months, trying to learn about the sport and how to train for it etc, and just looking to establish what the actual limits are. I know these guys are superhuman so I shouldn't really compare, but ive read several times for instance about a 300w FTP being crazy high or not achievable for most etc, then you see Kienle as you say put out 320w for hours as a comparably small guy.



Thanks for that! Trying to digest all the numbers and understand them better.

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@the.lazy.triathlete

https://www.strava.com/athletes/18691068

It's sacrilege, but I always thought the IM champs should be rotated among courses. The current one selects for people who handle heat well, and can pace raw power on the bike.

Throw down some altitude, colder water or weather. Some different winds. Some legitimate climbing (both bike and run). Make the likes of Ryf and Lange demonstrate some range in their skills if they want to repeat.

Ryf and Charles weren’t riding solo. There were men around them, and the tracker showed that yesterday. Only Cam didn’t have riders in front of him for most of the day. What doesn’t pass the sniff test is that Ryf’s last 53 miles was only 16 seconds slower than Lange’s (and he was in a very fast bike train)
and she outsplit quite a few men in the top 20 for that segment, plus Sanders, Kienle (both who mainly rode with one or two other riders), Van Leirde, etc.

Was anyone at ST there yesterday? It would not surprise me if there was drafting off other top men and/or event/media coverage of the event that was impacting her speed favorably, like lead vehicles that are too close to the athletes- which has definitely helped okay bikers turn into Uber lead bikers.

No one in the train wants to be the fool that leads it. Everyone wants to sit in and benefit. But not this year. Lange's domestique was there to pull Lange to a fast time, so that accounts for some or much of the TY/LY delta between the train and Cam.

I watched much of the feed. Every time I saw Ryf and Charles they were solo on the road. If they benefited off men it was few and far between. And, it appeared to me the marshal and media vehicles did a good job of staying in the left lane. All in all, it looked pretty damn clean to me, and there were an awful lot of helicopter shots that would have shown otherwise.

I concur. Have Kona be every 4 years like Olympics and do elsewhere all other years like World Championships.

According to training peaks they said sanders was 5 watts lower

What was his bike time compared to last year?

Performed the same calculations, calibrated on precise measurements :
27 mph is 43.4 km/h

being 77kg, 6 feet high
CdA/SCx = 0,21 in perfect (for me) Tri position (over 90 km, i move a bit, drink, and average goes to 0,225)
P3 (2014) + 55mm Giant SLR0 aero wheels
GP4000s2 25 mm at 7.5bars

On my usual training road (pretty crappy) : 312 watts
On my favorite wood olympic track : 286 watts (just from rolling watts :-))

Cody Beals recently published on twitter its power file from IMMT : average 262 watts wit NP 273 watts (for average 39.3km/h)
Previously he also published some CdA results, better optimized result being also around 0,21

Could be any number of things:
Ryf probably wasn't the only one stung by a jellyfish.
People raced hard for KQ, and did this as a tourist/participant
Non-wetsuit vs wettie race?
KQ'd at some race w/ downriver or shortened/cancelled swim?
All the "5%" non-KQ'ers who got in by other means, and weren't up for it?

When I did Kona, there was a fairly substatnial tidal current "headwind" after the swim turnaround, which got stronger as you got closer to the pier.
For strong swimmers, this likely had a minimal impact (maybe a handful of minutes), but for a rockfish like me, it definitely added a chunk of time to my swim split.

The Hoyt's missed the swim cutoff that year due to the conditions, something that rarely happened to them.
(which makes sense, since pulling that raft would be impacted by tidal currents even moreso)

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float , hammer , and jog

what are you still doing here?

;)

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

He's put it on Strava. 297W Avg - not much drop off.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1903697525

I'm not an expert, can't say much else, will leave that to you :)