https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/oct/23/lucy-charles-ironman-triathlon-british-swimming

I hope she stays patient.

“Most competitors do really long days at a pace that is pretty comfortable. But because we have such good endurance already from our swimming backgrounds we like to work at the top end and really be hurting in our sessions.”

Hmmmm not so sure she is going to last very long if this is her training philosophy. Yes, she has a huge swimming endurance, but where is her run endurance base? She’s already had one stress fracture.

No pain, no gain is outdated.

I guess we’ll find out.

Lucy is a talent, no doubt. Before the race it was no secret she would disrupt the front end of this race with her swim ability and bike ability. Yes she's a solid biker now, but not even close to Ryf. I was on the course with some colleagues and clients in Kona, and one of Sutto's crew mentioned a strategy of holding under a certain level until about the last 40K or so. Obviously these athletes have to make calculated decisions during a race as they come, but I firmly believe Ryf had Lucy under control the entire race.
Lucy is young (good and bad) but remember Daniela is only 30. Lucy is the next wave of dominate IM athletes but she's going to need to wait a bit for Daniela to step down.

Hi, Richard here, Lucy's manager – several good questions raised that I will do my best to answer.

Sponsorship: we are in the lucky position of having negotiated some very good endemic partnerships for Lucy prior to her racing in Kona. Following her results in Samorin and Frankfurt (both with good live coverage) it became clear to several major brands that Lucy will be spending plenty of time at the front of Championship races going forwards. Obviously, the result at Kona has attracted plenty of further interest and we are assessing those approaches with regard to finalising her roster for 2018. Current focus for us is non-endemic brands and again there is good progress on that front.

Website: as most of you have noticed, Lucy has a new website lucycharles.com - this has only been live for around 10 days so the SEO optimisation will take a while to propagate. We plan to keep it simple and professional, we'll add to it over time but as with any 24 year old most of Lucy's online presence is via instagram where she has 24k+ followers.

Bike position: I have enjoyed the commentary on this, not least because as some have mentioned, I did the bike fit for Lucy on her Shiv (my day job). I wholeheartedly agree there is room for improvement. Watching the coverage online we echoed many of the comments you have made here, particularly chinstrapgate.

A bit of background. We were provided a test Shiv by Specialized one week before Frankfurt so the focus of the original fit was to replicate the position that Lucy had been riding on her previous bike, a Boardman. We felt we achieved this pretty well and her second place there with no undue discomfort on the bike reassured us that it was a good start point (photo below from the studio session).

As I am sure you are aware, the Shiv is a relatively tall/short frame and it was a challenge to get Lucy low enough, we are at the extreme of adjustment without resorting to negative stems etc.

My view watching the feed at the time is that Lucy has a habit of moving forwards on her saddle which results in her upper arms becoming overly vertical, raising her torso and this also makes it difficult to keep a lower head position. It is something we worked hard at in the studio but there is still plenty of work to do here and gains to be made. We also suspect that Lucy's swimmers shoulders make it more challenging to achieve an optimal shrug/head position.

Plans are in place to get Lucy in the Specialized Win tunnel over the next couple of months, we are acutely aware there is plenty of room for improvement, so watch this space.

Good spot by whoever mentioned the large size helmet. Lucy found the S/M helmet uncomfortably tight so is wearing the L/XL version currently.

How good can Lucy be? It is fun to speculate on this, the key unknown factor is how a 24 year old will endure concurrent seasons of top level ironman racing, to our knowledge it is an unprecedented situation. If she stays healthy we firmly believe there are good gains to make on both the bike and run and that will be the focus for 2018. If she can get closer to Daniela, a legend of the sport, then it will be very good progress.

You can not be serious, in fact I'll say the total reverse, that 2017 was Ryf's LAST WIN. Lucy will blow her away next year and Ryf won't be within sniffing distance after the first 50 meters of the swim. Lucy will lead wire to wire and dominate the sport for as many years as she wants to train hard. There has never been another female swimmer to come into iron racing with her distance swimming resume (read BIG ENGINE), and she's going to ride her first OOTW all the way next year, and in years to come. She can prob go 8:30 at Kona on a fast bike day like this year. She'll make Paula, Chrissie, and Ryf look like rank amateurs.

As long as she stays healthy, I agree. The good news is it appears (from watching IMSA) that Lucy has become a student of the bike early on. Her position and setup might not be absolutely dialed but you can see she's put thought and effort into it. If she continues to refine her setup/position and continues to build her engine, I don't think Ryf will be able to catch her in 2019. Heck, LC swims so damn fast that I wonder if she couldn't hook on to one of the pro men's groups on the bike.

Really well done here Richard! Can you speak to how much of this was experimental? With it only taking her 45 seconds longer than everyone else in T1 I have to imagine y’all will employ most of this going forward?

Ya, for sure espec if they were to start the male and female pros together, she could bike with male pros the whole 112 miles. AGers could start 45 min back with adjustment to the midnight finish time as needed. In any case, i'm stoked to see a real world class swimmer in triathlon!!!

...

I really respect the work LC has done with Matt Bottrill on position and she's definitely improving. BUT, she biked 4:57 compared to the good men (outside of Wurf riding 4:19) was in the 4:31 range. Last year she came out with Kienle, Sanders, Wurf, Thomas, etc and wasn't close to them - it's a different level.

Daniela was suffering from a back injury most of last year - even though she killed everyone at Chattanooga, the bike power was still not really there for Kona until she STOMPED the final 40k and ran to the win. This year, they are focusing on Kona and not the million dollars, so to count DR out is a big mistake.

DR might not win Kona this year, or ever again - but what LC brings to the table is the chance for a real women's RACE and not an uber impressive time trial, where two women blow the course record and push each other to a whole new level. I expect DR to swim faster than last year by a couple minutes, and LC has to be ready to run 3:00 to win for sure.

I was stoked with Lucy's race in SA, and it's going to be incredible at Kona, but DR is FAR from done. Last year was making due with injuries and still managing a pretty convincing win, with increased focus only on Kona, she will be hard to beat.

Brent

Freespeed wrote:

Thanks for the kind comment but all of the kudos here is down to the extensive work Lucy has been doing over the winter with Matt Bottrill. For those unfamiliar with Matt, he is a multiple National TT Champion here in the UK and has been quietly doing some great coaching work in the triathlon space, Tim Don being his most notable success to date.

https://stories.endurasport.com/matt-bottrill

Lucy is sponsored by Endura who are unusually obsessive about the aerodynamic performance of their products and they also work very closely with Matt who advises them on product development. Overshoes and calf guards are standard issue on the UK time trialling scene and are a viable option in an Ironman when you have the luxury of a 5-8 minute lead out of the water.

In terms of her bike position, the biggest change has been Lucy's ability to sustain a lower head position and a better 'shrug'. The bar setup and higher hands is a work in progress that we plan to validate in a wind tunnel in the coming months, there is always room for further improvement.

As an observer, what pleased me most about Lucy's performance on Sunday was her continuing improvement on the run. 3.15 in Lanzarote, 3.12 in Frankfurt, 3.08 in Kona and 3.05 on Sunday. Reece, her coach and partner, predicted a 3.05 for this race and we are confident, as Monty alluded to, that a sub 3 is not too far away.

LC is a huge carrot for DR, as apposed to the MC stick!

I think the potential, given good weather conditions, to break her record is there for the taking. Riding away from the field, trying to build a buffer is nowhere near as much fun as chasing the dangerous swimmer seven minutes up the road. This race psychology suits anyone, and especially a super competitor such as DR, far better than a more tactical approach. For DR, having the helicopter up the road on LC is golden. Like last year, she knows that she needs to catch her by T2. Both will have stronger rides and MC will be twenty plus minutes in arrears.

I also would not count Ryf out just yet. She has run 3 x 2.57 in IM and I think she once mentioned 2.52 as her goal in Kona. On a good day her bike can still be faster (she went ~4.45 in Zurich and 4.30 in Roth) and she only needs somebody to swim with to limit the damage.

Also agree on the carrot part, Ryf always says she is interested in finding her limits.

Anyway, will be more interesting than last couple of years and I'll be there to see it! Last time (2016) I tried to figure out the difference between her and the chasers on Ali'i and Queen K, but figured I must have missed the others. (Sorry, had to get that in there)

Also, while I'm an LC fan, I wouldn't be crowning her for a decade of domination yet, I suspect that the women's race can get even more exciting if Anne Haug starts to throw her hat in the ring at the full distance... I'd love to see the shootout if Charles, Ryf, Carfrae and Haug all show up healthy and Fit...