man, that was the windiest and hilliiest bike course i’ve ever experienced - truly good training for placid. i thought the run might have been a bit short as well. other than that it was a great race - defintetely will be back next year. i was satisfied with my results seeing as its the first race of the season.
15 122 Justin Baum M 35 Roswell, GA 0:31:40.55 0:00:58.08 1:36:12.90 0:00:50.60 0:33:35.99 2:43:18.13
I used a Hed 3 on the front. Will not make that mistake again. Regardless of the weather forecast, you can always count on a cold & windy morning in Irondale! Always a great race.
yeah, i felt sorry for the guys running disks.
Where are the results posted?
Justin,
Those are some nice splits. This was my first PM, and I consider myself to be a relative newbie even though I’ve been doing these things for a few years now. What type of training did you do in order to prepare for this race on the bike?
I live in Alpharetta and don’t get to ride very often, so I did some hills up and down Windward Parkway, and occasionally road around Columns and up to the CC of ATL. But other than that, I mainly signed up so that I would get my a$$ kicked to force me to get into gear and get serious before Gulf Coast. Mission accomplished. I’m sore today. I now have four weeks to up my bike milage, strength, power, etc. or I won’t meet any goals I have for that race.
Many of those downhills yesterday, I felt like I was hanging on to my aerobars for dear life. In fact, I found if I stayed still on the bike and focused on getting as aero as possible while coasting down the hills with very moderate spinning, I wasn’t getting bounced around as much. Every time I tried to pedal down one or two of the hills hard I thought the wind was going to blow me over. It really threw me off my cadence. The uphills were brutal, but I expected that. I’ll train much differently for this race next year.
The one positive was that I finished the second run within 50 seconds of the first and really was in control on the run. I haven’t gone back over the miles on my Garmin, but I thought some of the mile markers were misplaced. Overall, however, I thought the run course was 8k.
Maybe we need to get Team Magic to do a Powerman Georgia! (Although when you look at the PM Ala race results, it’s almost half from ATL anyway)
I thought I did well (3:12?), but when looking at the results - there were some FAST people there! It’s the first race I can remember when I finished in the bottom 50% in my AG! That bike course was hilly and windy, but those downhills were long and fun! Unfortunately - they were also out and backs which made for long climbs. It was my first duatlon so I didn’t know how to pace myself going from run to bike. I’ll be back.
You and I finished within 1 min of each other and are next to each other in the results.
Did anyone else notice the yellow aero bottle sponges? On the 1st loop there were 2 laying next to each other and on the 2nd loop there were 4? Just as I was wondering what that was about - BAM!! I hit a bump hard. So people must not put those thing in their bottle far enough.
thanks ATL Dad (i’m an atl dad too, by the way). i have an online coach who’s helping me prepare for ironman lake placid. this was just a b or c tune-up race. i ride 4x/wk, 3 of which are on the spin bike. coach has me pushing big gears all the time (80-85 cadence) and we do one interval workout a week in which i work at 40rpm. i think that’s helped a ton. on the weekend, i’ve been riding with a group on the six flags ride (53 miles starting in the vinings). pm me if you want more info.
sounds like you paced the bike well considering you even split the runs. don’t be so hard on yourself either. gulf coast is a much different race - it’s so flat that if there’s not a lot of wind or heat, you can go quite fast. much faster than you (or i) did at powerman. good luck!
BeeHunter- You had some pretty even run splits too. The first time I hit that little bump in the road where everybody was losing the sponges I was pissed. Nothing came off my bike, but I really hit my tire hard. I didn’t make that mistake again. In other races I’ve had my rear bottles launch when I’ve hit such bumps. So you would think I’d learn.
I’ve also done a few DUs now and have learned not to get depressed about results in DUs. There are some really strong runners out there who learn to ride the bike and all they do is focus on those two sports and tear up DU courses. PM Ala is one of the big DU races in the SE too, so you get a good field. I remember doing the Dannon National Championship when it was run in Alpharetta a few years ago and I think I came in close to dead last in the AG. But the athletes were the best of the best.
Justin- Since you are training for Placid, I can see how you tore up the PM course. Your training level right now is at a much different level than mine. Last year I went into GCT unprepared, but I finished. Then when I did spints and Oly the rest of the summer they were easy in comparison. I suspect your coach and mindset are focused on 112, so that a 53k ride to you must seem like a snack. I’m not sure I can make 56 seem like a snack in the next four weeks, but I’m going to try.