I have never biked Devil’s Hill. This will be my first time doing Mooseman.
Maybe we can throw in some high wind/heat/humidity on race day since the bike course looks so easy.
We did that two years ago when it was 98 degrees for the run!
I’m all for high wind, heat and humidity to be added to the Mooseman course.
For Stelvio’s, as a point of reference, with a “climbing outdoor sitting” FTP above 260W (vs aero trainer FTP at 250+), I did Timberman using my lowest 34/25 multiple times and was over 280W on the steeper climbs. 260 is around 4.2W per Kg for me. Unfortunately I can no longer find the results archive for Timberman, but I believe I was 2:27 or so on the bike, however, I can say that I ran out of gears on the steeper climbs, even with a 34/25
95% of the field have gears that are too high and it hurts the back half of their bike and the entire run.
2009 Timberman results
https://www.lin-mark.us/results_files/tm70309.txt
The Timberman hill was more difficult than the old Mooseman Devil’s Hill but I don’t think either will compare to what lies ahead.
As a point of comparison, how would you say the hills at Timberman compare with Fortune hill?
Am going to be running a 39 - 27 combo as don’t have a compact…
I don’t have a compact either.
I am running Campy 10s so my choices are going to be limited, 12-25, 13-26 or 13-29. That is if I can find them. I have yet to see the 13-29 anywhere only listed as a possible spec.
Timberman bike course is quite a bit easier than Moose, 2010 version. This year, Moose is a tough bike course. It’s always been tough, but the hill on Groton/North Groton road is rugged.
Essentially, our plans for the 1 loop course (and only climbing the hill once) were thwarted when the paving on the descent of North Groton Road was put off until August of this year. We couldn’t continue to have the bike/run overlap on West Shore Road, so this was by far the best option.
Most likely, we’ll go to the 1 loop bike course next year, which is tough…but not as tough as this one.
It’s a really great course, and incredibly scenic. But easy, it’s not:)
The good news…water temp is already 55!!!
Keith,
What’s with making the bike course easier next year? Nothing like a classic course…without having done it (and I will likely regret my words), keep the harder bike course!!!
If people want “easy” there are Eagleman, Esprit (Montreal), Canadian (Ottawa), and Clearwater. Plenty of “fast flat courses” to get nice PB’s on.
Dev
Having done the old course in 2008, the 2011 course will still be more difficult, just less difficult than this year.
The interesting thing about the “flat easy course/vs hard hilly course” discussion is that if you actually pace things on the bike, a hilly course is easier on the average because you have downhills to recover. On a flat course you’re at your limit (for the race distance) the entire way. The only diff is that a flat course takes less time than a hilly course, but the actual average effort at any moment in time (power), on a hilly course, should not exceed what you’d do on a flat course, assuming you have the right gearing. The assumption of “right gearing” is usually a bad assumption for most people.
On a hard hilly course like Wildflower where I had to fight gravity a lot, my total energy consumption was 2200 Kjoules over 2:46. On a flat fast course at Esprit my consumption was just around 1900 Kjoules over 2:19
The diff of 300 Kjoules is barely 1 gel of consumption.
So it’s really 2200 Kjoules over more time vs 1900 Kjoules over less time. The two efforts really are not that much different…one just ends earlier than the other, but they way people talk about hilly courses, you’d swear that they got hit by a ton of bricks…and its mainly due to bad gearing options and bad pacing !!!
A hilly run course however is always harder than flat one, because you cannot coast the downhills and are penalized by eccentric loading which you don’t have in biking.
Mooseman has always been a tough bike course. 2010 is tougher than 2011’s, but both are tough…and, RobAllen is correct…both 2010 and 2011 versions are tougher than the 2009 version
i wonder if a road bike would be better than a tri bike on this course –
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I wouldn’t mind saying, but I have no idea what my FTP is. To be honest I neither have the money nor the motivation to truely utilize a power meter (as much as my engineering dorkiness desires one). As for gearing I had a standard crank and 12-25 casette. And don’t plan on running anything different for the race.
I was out of the saddle quite a bit (Im sure more than I should have been) but the long downhill provides ample time to rest the legs.
As a bare minimum, do yourself a favour and borrow a 27 tooth cog, or better yet, just buy one and get rid of the 12-25. You can’t go wrong with ‘too many gears’. It’s just weird that people have such an aversion to low gear options. You can get a Shimano compact from Harriscyclery.net for only $120. Considering how much it costs to race Mooseman, or any other race, why not go with more optimal gearing?
The downhills are never enough recovery to make up for massive efforts on uphills due to huge power spikes. You literally need a nite of sleep to recover properly from constantly going over 100% FTP to do a proper run. A few minutes of downhill, won’t help that much on the recovery front.
Dev
“i wonder if a road bike would be better than a tri bike on this course --”
You’re still going to be spending ~2 hours in the aero position. Go for the tri bike. I don’t think it’s even a close call.
I’ll be there for the first time and appreciate everyone’s insight.
Dev - no matter how hard I train you are always ahead of me on those monthly challenges - damn you 
Based on what you’re hearing about this Mooseman bike course, how would you compare it to a lap at Placid and how would you set up your bike differently between the two?
dev
as mentioned by another poster, can you compare the course to a loop at LP?
thanks
I can’t cause I’ve never done a hard loop of LP at half IM race pace and I’ve never done Mooseman. I’ve done the IMLP course 10x in racing and another 15x in training, but 2 loops at IM pace is not even the same ballpark as one loop at half IM pace…2 different animals.
Mooseman has always been a tough bike course. 2010 is tougher than 2011’s, but both are tough…and, RobAllen is correct…both 2010 and 2011 versions are tougher than the 2009 version
I thought last year’s Mooseman was an easy course. Certainly far easier than Timberman. And that’s coming from someone who is a weak cyclist. But this years Mooseman is just plain evil. I rode it a couple of weeks ago and was on 34 x 25 and really had to push it hard, out of the saddle to make it to the top.