Sanders and Keinle two minutes down in the swim to the leaders

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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.”

Lionel swam 1 min faster than last year. Last year he was 3 min down to Appleton, this year only 2 minutes, and there's no Brownlee in the field.

I'm rooting for Lionel and Sebi on the men's side, and for True on the women's side.

I noticed that Talansky was only 3min down on the leaders.

I attribute the 1min gain by Sanders more to the lack of a Brownlie than swim improvement... what do you think?

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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.”

Sanders

No, he actually swam 1 min faster: last year he swam 26:25, this year he swam 25:21.

He lead a pack of three that inluded him, Sebi and Nicholas Granet.

Funny fact: Sebi swam exactly the same time both years, 25:23

leading the chase pack instead of last guy on the lead pack.... almost there. Just a little more 200m speed and maybe he gets there.

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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.”

1- Sanders
2- Reed
3- Appleton

I’m rooting for a war between Sanders and Sebi and Paula Findlay for the woman.

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Dan Mayberry
Amateur a lot of things, professional a few things.

We had a thread on this here with predictions: https://forum.slowtwitch.com/...st%20george#p6624080

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this is the official race thread now...

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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.”

Sanders has this in the bag at this point.

So talansky appears to have not swam as well this time but did have the 4th best bike split. Still 2.5 min slower than sebi and Lionel though. And not running anywhere near pro pace still.

TriowaCPA (Matt) threw down a 2:11:51 bike split which would have been the 10th fastest pro split.

I have become a massive Lionel fan, but I don’t see him ever making that gap personally. As an ex national swimmer myself I have coached plenty of adult onset swimmers over the years and most lack the finer details (for example ankles and wrists, so important in swimming but so difficult for adult onset swimmers to develop truly flexible ankles. Especially triathletes, they always try to just not use their legs, which is fine, but if those feet aren’t properly pointed they will slow them down)

Sanders can keep going at close to threshold on the swim, but he’s doing so much endless pool work that all he’s doing is thoroughly cementing minor stroke issues instead of the kind of constant evaluation that comes with full on swim coaching.

Well done.

.. a broken clock...

Been a fan of Paula ever since her rather memorable olympics. She’s quite a talent. Happy to see her around.

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Dan Mayberry
Amateur a lot of things, professional a few things.

well done
She deserves that after so many tough years.

Thanks for the shoutout! Now if I could just run faster off the damn bike. Even backing off 5% today didn’t make me faster!

Those hills are insane on the run. Unreal pace thrown down by the pro men.

Facts are last year he swam 26:25 this year 25:26, leading Sebi out of the water last he was a minute back!
Last year Sam Appleton swam 23:22 this 23:15... so he close the gap from 3:03 to 2:11... I see a nice improvement of 52 seconds that's huge for a swimmer such improvement of 3% and alone I mean not because he draft a pack.

Also, he was realistic in terms of closing more the gap saying it would require another 4 years. He might never swam on Frodeno, Amberger or Gomez feet but he has better chances of closing the gap than the group just mentioned extending their lead.

We have absolutely no idea, how hard was his effort during his swim today... We don't know where he is in term of periodization... might have not came fully fresh to this race... In his training cycle was the last block a swim focus or more turning ever stone on the bike since he was pretty unhappy with his bike in Oceanside.

Bottom line, he won today... different race then last year not having to chance Alistair instead he was in control, he didn't need to run any faster so probably save racing energy that he might require in October. Going too hard, too many in a season... will burn even the greatest.

I'm confident he will do the best preparation he think is going to be required to give him a chance to win Kona. It's going to be a different race this year with the Triple-J mafia in front (Josh, Javier and Jan)... Those 3 will make massive damage during the swim and bike... Last year, he caught quickly the front pack but I think it's going to take more time this year.

Daniela got her hands full with the fast swim-bike duo of Lauren and Lucy...

Are they expected to be going to Kona? If so it could be an epic battle between them. Lauren and Lucy are such phenomenal swimmers the race should get really exciting from the start.

They both raced Kona last year. One and two out of the water.

Fully concur on the ankles but wrists???

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Sorry, should have clarified there, I don’t mean flexible wrists, I mean an effortless sculling motion. Long term swimmers have this without thinking, constantly moving their wrists and engaging their forearms to the max, essentially maintaining traction in the water. It’s not as difficult for adult onset swimmers as flexible ankles, but I’ve never really seen anyone pick it up to the level of an ex swimmer.

Also I should point out (because the oh so typically slow twitch - read: combative - response of MTL suggests I’m somehow knocking Lionels performance) that I’m not ragging on Lionel by saying this, hell im not even saying he needs to make the front pack on the swim. But regardless of his improvement up to now I’m saying I highly doubt he will ever make the top pack, in fact I’d suggest his improvement is likely to stall sometime soon.

I will be the first to admit he has done admirably in the pool, not denying that for one second. What I’m saying is that while he has done great to close the gap from 3 mins to 2, closing from 2 to 1 is going to be a hell of a lot tougher. When it comes to Kona they won’t LET him get to the front pack, if he was there after 200m any of them could and most likely would drop him. At this point he’s just expending extra energy for little time gains.

Maybe I’m wrong, time will tell, but as impressive as his swim improvement has been, I think he’s approaching marginal gains.

Oh and those flexible ankles? Great for swimming, but I’ve always assumed they don’t help a run, as far as tri goes the run is more important anyway. So I’m really not saying he needs them!

Matt,

I'm wondering what was your projected/goal time for the run? It was a tremendous bike split, but do you think you overbiked? Or did you run pretty close to what you thought you would?

Pretty sure he wrote that he backed off the bike power a bit and still didn't run any faster, so I am assuming he didn't overbike.

I have literally been working to take sculling OUT of my stroke for a few months...and I have been going slower recently because of it...I didn't realize it was a good thing.