Good luck.............when I was there in 2001.....the winds hit 50+mph......saw a guy get blown off of the road.

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I shall never misuse Rex Kwon Do
I shall be a champion of freedom and justice

Go there before the race and ride the Queen K. Seriously, it's pretty hard to simulate the heat, humidity and winds anywhere else. May be worthwhile to go over for a long weekend and ride it.

I will be there from Oct 5th-16th, i'll ride the Queen K that week, but i'm concerned about training for the wind NOW!!! Is hill training enough??

THX







http://ironm4n.blogspot.com

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http://www.konashelley.blogspot.com

you may want to come to El Paso for our training camp sept 12 to 18th.
You'll get plenty of winds for a week...really. if you need gusts, we have that too. if you need heat, we sure have it as well. humidity, not so much...sometimes we get 20% which is humid for here :-)
wind speed, 30mph constant is common and in sept high 80s to low 90s

One word: Powermeter.

They take the wind all but out of YOUR race equation. If your IM power is, say, 170 watts...then it doesn't matter if you are doing 28mph with the wind or 12mph against it, as long as you are staying around 170 watts (moderated by perceived exertion and hr)...then you are doing all you can do on the day. It sure beats trying to chase some split time, average speed, or even hr.

but it's pointless too to try to achieve constant power with a lot of wind...

Race day in 2001 had really bad winds, but earlier in the week was an eery calm. Even the climb to Hawi had just gentle breezes, nothing like race day, so riding the course early may not give you any feel for the potential race day conditions.

Prepare for wind and lots of it, from all angles and very gusty. If the conditions are better than that, you'll be that much faster!

Of course you are correct, Francois. I didn't intend my statement to mean that you just ride, in that case, with 170 pegged on the display. You can no more do that than I can ride my long ride main set wattage of 220-225 by pegging the Powertap on that number. The terrain is short, steep rollers here in Quantico VA area...to achieve my target effort I ride the flats at 200-205, downhills at 190-200, and let the short uphills hit 250-260...hills over about 1k are ridden at about target watts...

But that makes it sound more complicated than it is, doesn't it? You certainly aren't going to be able to blast along at 250 watts for an hour into a stiff headwind without consequences later on in the race if you are only capable of about 170 avg for your IM effort. But thats just what some people would find that they are doing if they had a powermeter when they are fighting to hold 14-15mph into those headwinds because they are chasing a bike split or average speed. The inevitable consequence is that they blow up and death crawl the run.

At the Virginia Duathlon this year, the winds were 20-25mph sustained with gusts 30-40, if I recall the weather reports correctly. Lots of folks blasted out of T1 trying to hold their usual average speeds...lots of the usual 23-25mph crowd around me blew up in the last 1/2 of the ride. Having the PowerTap helped me keep a lid on my effort when the headwinds made even 15mph a seriously hard effort...I passed many of those folks in the last 5 miles into T2 who had earlier blasted by me out of T1. That day really drove home the value of a powermeter to me.

That said, I have a friend who uses one who I think lets it (his powermeter) hold back his cycling race efforts too much. He's stronger than me on the bike, but at PM NC I out-split him on the bike by 2 minutes. The bike was hilly, like here in Quantico, but the wind was tame, at about 10-15mph, if that. We're fairly close on the running, but he went on to outsplit me on the run by almost 2 minutes. I think if he would put away the powermeter during races and just let his power training inform his race PE...that he'd really hit his potential. He did this somewhat at USAT du nats a couple of weeks ago and ended up winning his AG (30-34).

[reply]I will be there from Oct 5th-16th, i'll ride the Queen K that week, but i'm concerned about training for the wind NOW!!! Is hill training enough?? [/reply]

Shelley,

Hundreds of people every year do it without the wind-specific training. Think of everyone in the Southern Hemisphere who have to worry about heat training in the winter.

clm, who will have wind but cold temps all summer

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

Thanks CLM!! I will just get out there and ride my butt off!! Ill try to sending you some of OUR heat!!

SAM



http://ironm4n.blogspot.com

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http://www.konashelley.blogspot.com

Send the heat please!!! On my ride Wednesday morning I had on knickers, arm warmers, jersey and vest and on the downhills in the first hour I would have liked to have leg warmers. July/August will only be worse when the fog hits.

clm

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com