That’s a fair assessment. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Sam has signed with Roka.
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Chatty is a surprisingly decent field though, and Sam should be the favorite but I don’t think it’ll be a walk in the park. The downstream swim, maybe even wetsuit legal this year helps him a ton and he will get to the front in no time. But that bike is hard to split apart in the first half until Andrews halfway through. Even then the groups stay together without long climbs and its kinda hard to get large gaps. The you’ve got someone like a Jason West that if on form can run sub 1:10 on a tough course. Last year Matt Hanson won with a 1:09 (which on that course is crazy btw not a fast run course at all!).
IMO he’s going to try to bag a W and get sponsor bonuses and social media attention, which is worthwhile in general, but I’d rather have him do that AFTER this block of T100 SF and Vancouver. I think he’ll have to work pretty hard in chatty, and SF is his chance for his best T100 result this year. If you wanna go bag a 70.3 W, go to Boise or another summer non-pro series NA 70.3.
Of course there are some good guys there, but as you say the swim is almost a non factor, and sam can outride all the guys you mentioned by 10 minutes. I expect that he does a very hard swim/bike, but it is always how hard you have to run that dictates your recovery period afterwards. Even if he just has 4 minutes on a West or Hanson, it would be a pretty easy up tempo run for him to still win. I expect he will have a lot more in hand at T2 to make it even easier on him…
My thought is he wasn’t expecting to be so competitive going into SF and either had taken a training break after earlier successes or was training hard into the race, sick, etc. I think he just blew an opportunity that he wasn’t expecting to have. Not that he suddenly just didn’t have the legs to ride.
But if it was the case that he was properly trained and tapered for the race, then maybe it really just was the constant hills without the long downhills to recover and widen the gap like he can in St George that did him in in SF T100. I could also see that case that if he’s standing on the pedals every climb mashing out watts and then doesn’t have the benefit of a solid descent it really screwed with him. Almost the same dynamic (but worse) as what he described as riding in the pack with Wurf etc.
But, I’m also just thinking Sam tends to peak early and usually doesn’t do as well in the middle of the season.
Do people think SL strava is accurate and where he posts all his training? His swimming looks light compared to Hoff’s
I doubt everything is there - his biggest week this year is 22 hours and most are under 20 hours. For someone who was trolling Lionel and who was at 19hrs max per week, it would suggest that he’s missing a chunk of training on Strava.
My brother is racing Chatt this weekend. He just told me the swim is cancelled due to incoming weather.
Sam just racing his Semi-annual Chatty Duathlon TT.
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