I found the athlete tracker, after much digging. http://ironman.com/...id=161&year=2008

If you take out your 42 minute outlier, maybe it also makes sense to take out your 11 second outlier as well? FWIW, glass houses and all that, I slowed down 7 minutes on the second half of the run. Nearly all of that was in the last 6 miles, too, I'm sure :-) An 11 second fade from lap 1 to lap 2, rather than my 7 minute fade, would have put me in a sprint with Petr V. for second place. You can bet that I will be thinking hard about pacing in the next several weeks!

Rich,

If you go to "track an athlete" and select the specific athlete, you will be able to access the
half bike and half run splits.

Hugh

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Regardless of what the rest of the field did, a 12 minute fade is not very good.

Agreed, when talking about an individual athlete, a 12-minute fade is far from optimal. However, when you have a group of athletes executing according to the same (or, at least, very similar) foundational principles, then that 12-minute fade -- and how it compares to the rest of the field -- becomes "interesting."

Most, if not all, of the field in an IM slows down at the end of the run. Assuming that the athletes weren't walking to begin with (and in the 10:00 - 13:00 range, they likely weren't), a 12-minute fade means they were probably still running most of the second lap. If I were a first-timer, I think I'd happily accept that over the prospect of doing it my own way and possibly facing the lap two death march.

cramer

Yeah, I was thinking about that, as this is data we will collect for each race. I failed the stats portion of my Math for Marines course so someone help me come up with a method that is statisically acceptable. This is my stab:

Drop the high (42') and the low (11")
Our folks finished 10:08 to 13:11. I will sample within that range of finishers.
Sample every 5 folks? Every 10? At random intervals for a total of x samples?
Is there some double top secret results website that will do this for me automagically?

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Rich Strauss
Endurance Nation Ironman 2013 and 2014 World Champion TriClub, Div I
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The bootstrap is your friend.

Your boys and girls were going strong when I saw them.... well apart from one bloke called Gerald who had earlier screamed past me up a hill out of Keene on the second lap. Maybe it was because I'd tried to engage him in post-hoc discussion of his VI in a non-prescriptive way.

"Yeah, I was thinking about that, as this is data we will collect for each race. I failed the stats portion of my Math for Marines course so someone help me come up with a method that is statisically acceptable. "

Figure out your average finish place and the std deviation for place. Use that to generate a set of random places. Then for those places look up those atheletes in the results. Figure out their average split differential and their std dev the random athletes. Do the same for your athletes and then you can do a hypothesis test to see if their is any difference in the two samples. I'd leave in the outliers.

If you post your average split difference and std dev and the same for the random sample, I'll run the test for you.

This is exactly why I said, "let's be very clear here...." The question I had was: exactly how long of a brick and, of equal importance, how frequently? I don't think it's a function of miles but of hours, correct? When you originally said, "I mean riding greater than 100-120k and then running at goal IM pace for greater than 15k" then I'm thinking that 10miles of running is an absolute minimum. If all we're talking about here is a 4hr bike and 1.5hr run then doing that 2x over a 4-6week is more than reasonable, imho.

Having said that, I'm struggling with how valuable this type of race rehearsal is given:

1. my experience says that most bike and early run pacing mistakes aren't evident until closer to 16miles or at least 2hrs into the run. I've spoken to countless individuals who said, "I felt awesome until I hit mile 16 - 18 of the run...."

2. I still think the nerves of racing play wicked tricks with the mind. A couple of race rehearsals just don't simulate that, imho.

I'm not trying to make a big deal out of this but I'm trying to get a good sense of how important you think these race rehearsals are given your statement:

"2) This is the important part. You make your prescription of C based upon A, but you actually make your prescription of B based upon race simulations."

I guess I just don't think that the prescription of B should be based upon race sims. I think 2x race sims as you describe are potentially good data points but I'd view them more as a good confirmation of the results of an evaluation of the athlete's training and racing data as a whole.

Thanks, Chris

I'm not sure but maybe the other 99% of the people out there who don't do long bricks can answer that question better than I did. I can add that I have never done one long brick in my life and it certainly hasn't caused a problem with my ability to successfully pace an IM. But then I'm just one data point...

Thanks, Chris

I don’t agree with your logic here; just because the majority of the field either 1) doesn't have the fitness to be racing IM in the 1st place, 2) poorly executes the bike/run or both it doesn’t mean the run pacing strategy suggested by EN nation in fact resulted in athletes ‘running so well’ when the spread is 12 min IMO.

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Jorge Martinez
Head Coach - Sports Science
E3 Training Solutions, LLC
@CoachJorgeM

Exactly - I think the point that some are missing is the type of athletes you are referring to with these long brick sessions: the 13+ hr finisher. If they can't successfully handle a couple of this long 5-6 hrs efforts in the 1st place then are they really in shape to tackle an IM? I am not saying they shouldn't ot that it is not possible to finish one with minimum training and much shorter race rehearsal(s), however at what's cost (wear and tear) for the body?

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Jorge Martinez
Head Coach - Sports Science
E3 Training Solutions, LLC
@CoachJorgeM

Hi,
As an update, a very smart member of the forum (you guys know him) has taken the run data of our team from IMLP and has begun to do some analysis. I'll refrain from further comment until that is complete and he gives me the green light.

In the meantime, we're happy to be the first coaching gig, that I know of, with a squad of 20+ athletes at a major race to drop their collective shorts and have their race execution guidance measured with a standard deviation ruler :-) If our stuff is no better than the next guy's, we'll acknowledge it here and improve it. If it's appears to be effective, I'll be sure to update you.

As I and EN were sorta called out in this thread, I think it's important to point out, again, that we feel the issue of Ironman execution is a broad topic that is best approached from start to finish, from many angles, not only focused on the nitty gritty of bike execution. Not rocket science, that sentence, I'm just sayin'. That said, we've learned a lot from this discussion and as soon as we close out a few projects, Patrick and I will dig deeper into Paulo's discussion and very likely ammend our guidance. Those of you who've seen me around for a while have likely seen that I'm not wedded to any one particular method. I used to be in the AeT/Steady camp. I learned and have changed my stuff. I've updated my plans every year, sometimes twice per, as I saw opportunities to improve on them. Likewise, if we determine that our power guidance is completely fook'ed, I'll shitcan it and start over. That said, MANY people have had successful races with our tools.

Going back to that broader execution focus above, we have been laying out our race execution system via a series of articles on our blog and on Xtri. Parts I through III are up, just follow the links at the bottom of this blog post. Each post includes a 15-20' podcast by Patrick and me.
The Endurance Nation Long Course Racing System, Part IWe will very shortly publish our training philosophy online, for all to see, in the form of a web-based book. A pretty cool tool that we've been working on for a good while. Our intent, with all of this, is very simple:

• This is how we train our long course athletes, read this online book above.
• This is how we teach our folks to execute on race day. See this Long Course Racing System above, or purchase our DVD, or purchase the Power Webinar, or you can hear us deliver it to you live at the races. We (or I) go to every IM in NA.
  
• These are the results we've achieved: Budget Page, DataTool (just went live, still in process)
• Create a trial membership and take us for a spin. Get to know us, our athletes, and see if we are a good fit for each other.
  
• If you dig the value and vibe we've created, we hope you decide to join the team. If not, that's cool, we'll see you at the races.

Anyway, this has been a great discussion and I learned a lot. See you at KY, WI, Kona, FL, AZ...then is starts all over again... :-)

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Rich Strauss
Endurance Nation Ironman 2013 and 2014 World Champion TriClub, Div I
Create a FREE 7-day trial membership

Endurance Nation: we may not be fast, but boy do we have a low standard deviation...



You don't deserve it, but couldn't help myself, sorry! ;)

Yeah, we suck:

• 37 EN athletes have raced 2 IM's in the last 6wks.
  
• 10 of these have gone under 10:50.
  
• 3 of these under 10:10.
• 4 Kona slots, 1 podium.
• Almost all of them training with the same 2-3 stock training plans. Most all-in to us for about...$100-200, total.

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Rich Strauss
Endurance Nation Ironman 2013 and 2014 World Champion TriClub, Div I
Create a FREE 7-day trial membership

Hey, I did say you didn't deserve it! Seriously, those are great results worth talking about. Something like run split time rel to daniels e pace is worth comparing. Standard deviation of difference in run splits? That'll get you a reputation!

You're the Wal-Mart of triathlon coaching: Save money, live better!

You're right, sorry. FWIW, my actual involvement in this effort has been pretty minimal, as I can barely spell statistix. I'll collect the e-pace stuff as well and see how they did.

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Rich Strauss
Endurance Nation Ironman 2013 and 2014 World Champion TriClub, Div I
Create a FREE 7-day trial membership

I think you (and maybe many others) are missing the point a bit. It's not whether they can handle it or not, it's whether 2 or so of those type of workouts are fundamentally important in determining proper IM pacing. That is the specific issue we're debating. I think it's well understood that we have to put in some critical long workouts to make sure that we're prepared both mentally and physically for race day. Now, how much one should emphasize the results of those 2 or 3 workouts when determining a proper IM pace plan is a completely different discussion.

I simply contend that the execution results from 2 or 3 race sims is not critical in determining proper IM pacing. Is it useful data? Absolutely. However, it's not fundamentally critical due to the reasons I already cited. Not to mention:

1. who does race sims when they are equally well rested as they would be on race day?
2. who does race sims where they swim 1hr first and transition to the bike within ~5min?

If you're going to do a race sim then it's got to be a RACE SIM. It's not a 5 - 6hr session. It needs to be very very specific, imho.

Thanks, Chris