Hey guys, I’m the bike tech on the moto for Ironman in the USA. Texas received a lot of buzz and wanted to show you guys what we usually go thru on race day.
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“Hey, can you fix my handlebars while I take a piss?” 
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How did that one dumbass run into that sign?
Thanks for sharing that! You guys are truly impressive and can appreciate as I do my own bike work. One of the bike mechanics saved my race a few years back. I thought my race was done. As a slow swimmer I was trying to work my way through congestion in bike. As a decent biker, I wanted to pass people on a turn around. I shifted a little too aggressively and dropped a chain and didn’t know until I was trying to crank it out of the turn. Bent my derailleur and damaged the chain.
I remember more details about what the mechanic did than a lot of my race.
Looks like he was supposed to ride left of the cones, left of the shoulder and not right in the shoulder.
Great job and the Iden change was just as I suspected. He is a smart guy and wanted to make sure you went up the road to get ready, while he rode the rim so as to lose as little time as possible. You switch was stellar and loved the push off to get him going again…Big thumbs up to you and all your crew there…
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Kept his head down the whole time. He crashed again on the 2nd lap and I just advised him that its probably not his day and should call it, which he did.
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Correct, the shoulder was for staff and emergency vehicles.
Were you given any kind of direction from IM before the race? Were you supposed to stay with the front pack of pro’s at one point?
This is how we usually handle the pros, and most of the pros know this protocol. Generally I will either get a call on the radio to catch a pro and we’ll discuss options and what the athlete needs, we’ll go up ahead to speed up the process. 2 years ago when Sam Long did CDA and he DNF, same protocol, unfortunately we didn’t have disc brake wheels at the time since no one sponsored us and we only had rim brakes.
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The only thing Ironman asks is that a moto stay with Pro Males and 1 moto for Pro Female. No plan of where to be which group to follow etc etc. Its mainly based on our personal experience on where to be. There are pros who do get a little special treatment where we might be asked to stay a little bit. Otherwise its up to me and my team to determine the game plan.
I worked Oceanside a few weeks ago and was also the one who helped KBlum, I received some slack for taking so long, but once people realized I was rendering first aid to pro rider Brock from Canada who crashed at mile 6, once ambulance arrived I chased the lead group and eventually got to KBlum.
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Good insight. Thank you. And thank you for posting this video. I would love to see more of these. I’m getting a kick out of this and I’m not even half way through.
How do we get the IM radio’s part of the race coverage?
When you swap out a wheel do you mark the bib# on it somewhere so you know who to give it back too?
Obviously, maybe not for Iden since he’s a well known pro but for a random age grouper type scenario.
Because of the nature of personal information being shared and sometimes we say funny offensive jokes, definitely dont want that on Ironman live also just different channels and stuff.
Yeah I get that. But it would be very entertaining to listen in.
Yes, generally what I do is take a picture of the bike with their broken wheel so that I have record of it when I get back into transition to swap out. I also radio into command that rider # has a neutral wheel. Theres a lot of information being transmitted back and forth from all staff on course, so everything is documented.
Great Video…the panic in people’s eyes
Great video, thank you for sharing.
I am amazed at the number of people not riding the aerobars.
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Such a great video
You have such a calm demeanor
I’m sure it helps the panicked racers so much