Hi all,
I recently ran across an article on the web with the above title (or something like it). Looked informative, but I never got a chance to read it and have since lost where I found it in the first place. Does anyone remember seeing this, and could you point me there? It was a pretty recent article, I believe.
If you have read this, what do you think about the suggestions?
Thanks!
strangely enough, that’s exactly the same topic but a different article. Different conclusions too - makes me want to find that original article to compare/contrast the findings.
I have all kinds of problems with that list. An aero helmet is less beneficial than a Tanita body composition scale??? How do they calculate the seconds saved by buying Triathletes Training bible?
Not the scale itself but I imagine that weighing less is the most cost effective way of going faster for 99.7 % of us…
or how about training more??
eating less actually can SAVE money and time which is easily more cost effective than training any way you slice it. Whether it is more 'beneficial", I leave that up the truly smart folks that are able to determine how much time you can save by buying a book etc.
“Aerodynamic performance gains verified by slowtwitch.com and MIT wind tunnel testing.”
.
or how about training more??
now that’s just silly… everyone knows that equiptment is what’s important.
but if you do limit it to equiptment, it’s hard to beat covering the vents in your helmet w/duct tape.
from a thread a bunch of years ago, where rappstar guesstimated the time savings at 5seconds over 40k.
it’s not huge savings, but the cost is pretty minimal - assuming that you already have a vented helmet, and that you’d used the rest of the duct tape.
or how about training more??
Agree 100% with that philosophy. You’ll be glad to know that I’ve been doing tri’s, and placing in my AG, with a ~15 year old bike that my LBS told me would fetch “about 100 bucks” on ebay - so i’m not one to default to just “buying speed”
However, there’s a couple underlying assumptions to the question: (1) most of us have day jobs and otherwise busy lives and are probably already pushing the limit of time spent on training without risking getting fired/getting divorced/losing your friends; and (2) Almost every triathlete I know has a massive gear buying addiction and will almost certainly be buying stuff regardless of the amount they are training - so might as well spend that money wisely.
Besides that, I’ve got a bad chest cold right now and am desperately searching for ways to go faster using only my mind and wallet while my body is out of commission.
Not the scale itself but I imagine that weighing less is the most cost effective way of going faster for 99.7 % of us…
Agreed. But i don’t think you need a high-priced body composition scale for that. You’re standard bathroom scale, wh/ most people already have, will do fine. I get the feeling that the person who wrote that list has an agenda beyond helping people get faster.
Well, it won’t hurt your marriage to eat less…so put that in to practice…I don’t know you though, perhaps you have no more to lose. And while losing weight you may temporarily get slower. That can be easily solved by eating extra on the day before a race to ensure you have a calorie surplus heading in to the race.
With the bike that you describe you can easily plan on gaining 5-10 minutes in a 40k ride with a $2k+ bike. (I’m assuming your current bike is a road bike and you can gain every possible aero advantage when going to a new bike).
This?
http://www.tri-talk.com/Top20.asp]
Creatine? Number nine for cost effective ways to go faster? Looks like the list is prepeared according to their advertisers.
**or how about training more?? **
Now that’s plain crazy talk.
so i was up late last night watching stage two of the Giro and low and behold an infomercial for an all natural colon cleansing product came on and it was shown that people can drop up to two pounds of waiste that they normally carry in their bodies and i thought “Hmm, that’s two pounds lighter without losing any energy and in fact gaining some along with your immune system instantly sparking back up to par, that’s got to be good for everyone…”
should work for athletes, make them a whole bunch faster.
**or how about training more?? **
Now that’s plain crazy talk.
This is triathlon, we don’t do that.
With the bike that you describe you can easily plan on gaining 5-10 minutes in a 40k ride with a $2k+ bike. (I’m assuming your current bike is a road bike and you can gain every possible aero advantage when going to a new bike).
It is a road bike (old school Trek 2300) with clip-ons and a forward bent seat-post. Not terrible, but far from good. That particular upgrade, however, is already in progress. I’ve been drooling over the P2C and others of that ilk, but I challenged myself to use my “mind” more and my wallet less. I gave myself a budget of $1k to put together a high-performance tri bike (not including race wheels) from used equipment. It’s been an interesting project - so far I’ve scavenged a nice TT frame/fork combo, dura ace drive train and shifters, aerobars, training wheels, and the adapters that make the pieces work together (shims, spacers, braze-on FD) with about $170 left to pay my LBS to put the pieces together. Whether it works great or falls apart completely on day one will be the subject of another post (presumably along with pictures and lessons learned in the process). Hoping that it’s the former and not the latter outcome, and that “working great” equals saving ~5 minutes, it would be $3.33 per second saved - making this upgrade 11th on the above website’s top 20 list.
Surprising that even being fairly thrifty with the bike upgrade that there’s 10 other things I should have done first (if you believe the list).
or how about training more??
Quiet you.
Thank goodness I’m poor, all I’ve got is training.
Are you sure you didn’t read Bicycling Mag or Men’s Health? They have all kinds of “top 20 this” and “top 10 that” articles.
More recently triathlete.competitor started to have “5 ways this” and “10 reasons” that stories.
H