The IM to marathon comparison thread got me wondering. I go sub three for a marathon, but have never really tried to go sub 4 for a century. I noticed at the Durango century like 5 or 6 went sub 4. When I do centuries, I usually just aim for sub 5 and am sucesful most of the time.
I’m not a math guy but I’d wager that if you were to take a flat (or mostly flat) marathon and a flat century that a smaller percentage of people could go sub 4 on two wheels.
At the risk of sounding like a sexist pig, many women can do a sub 3 marathon (lots of women posess a high VO2 max and strong CV systems) but how many women have the physical strength to kick over a 53 x 15 gear @ 90 rpm’s for 4 hours straight? Fast running is less dependent on muscular strength than fast riding is. So by effectively eliminating half of the population my guess is that sub 3 is easier than sub 4.
i agree with you… but just to make thing sounds a bit better, when you say: **physical strength to kick over a 53 x 15 gear @ 90 rpm’s for 4 hours straight, **what you really mean is Endurance… strengh isnt a limiter in most of the population for something like this… it s a endurance issu.
what you really mean is Endurance… strengh isnt a limiter in most of the population for something like this… it s a endurance issu.
yes i suppose that is more accurate. i should have defined “strength” as the ability to resist fatigue and therefore not slow down (which is endurance).
I go sub three for a marathon, but have never really tried to go sub 4 for a century.
This is purely speculative but my guess is that the effort required to go from a 5hr century to a 4 hr century is probably similar to the effort need to drop down to sub 2:30 from the 3 hr marathon neighborhood…ie it’s exponentially more diffucult as you get faster.
How many century rides are completed solo? Lots of folks go sub 4 for a hundred miles, but they have the help of others who are likeminded (and of similar strength).
Umm… I wonder how many people here can break 60 for the 40k TT and then when you consider that a sub-4 100 mile ride is that task times four! Dude! That’s not even close to running 6:52 for three hours.
I was thinking the same, I agree with all of you, man, that would be cool to crack 4 hours for a century!!!
a sub-4hr solo century is an pretty amazing accomplishment. there are not many people who can do this. its much, much, much harder than a 3hr marathon. it also depends hugely on the course. even a relatively small amount of climbing will make the task even more difficult, ditto for some headwind.
as an aside, i had an interesting email discussion with someone at the UMCA last year about 100 mile records. the UMCA currently lists the 100 mile road record as being held by Dan McGehee, at 4:10:09 (23.99 mph), performed on the Sun Valley Parkway, Phoenix AZ. I pointed out that quite a few triathletes go faster than this in a variety of IM races, and asked whether this made the record somewhat silly. the response was that (a) ironman courses are rarely certified with the same precision (b) its not clear that they are totally draft free (c.f. comments about pace cars/bikes etc) (c) the courses are rarely circular, so even a small amount of wind can affect the average speed up or down. he didn’t actually say what i think is a more important point - doing a solo 100 mile TT is much harder than doing a 100 mile TT race.
anyway, i disagreed with the respondent, mostly noting that i thought it pretty absurd to suggest that these differences could explain someone like stadler being able to ride 112 miles (plus or minus) in 4:18:23. by the end of our conversation, the UMCA official seemed to broadly agree with me and said it would be nice if some of these riders would perform on a certified course. Given that Stadler was in the middle of an IM when he performed at that level, it seems entirely likely that a world class pro peloton rider who trained properly for this could outperform this by quite some margin. they simply have no motivation to do so, it appears.
the gist of all this is that to go sub-4 for 100 miles, you basically need to be a world-class athlete, and doing it solo to just see if you could is even harder than doing it in a race.
what you really mean is Endurance… strengh isnt a limiter in most of the population for something like this… it s a endurance issu.
yes i suppose that is more accurate. i should have defined “strength” as the ability to resist fatigue and therefore not slow down (which is endurance).
Sorry to be anal, but that is not how strength is technically defined: it is the ability to generate maximal force. Since it concerns maximal force, it is of no use to someone doing a 4hr century ride. I think you mean power. Force is only one component of power, and the other is the velocity at which it is applied - this is equally important to what you are calling “strength” above.
You don’t need big quads to do that sort of a ride, but a lot of training …
Hey Lobo, here’s one in middle Tennessee where they are emphasizing the 4 hour century. Give it a whirl?
No contest (as has been pointed out). A sub 3 marathon (I’ve done) is about equal to a sub 5 century ride. There is no way in this lifetime, even if I concentrated soley on it, that I could ride sub 4 for 100 miles (and I’m a decent cyclist)
a sub-4hr solo century is an pretty amazing accomplishment. there are not many people who can do this. its much, much, much harder than a 3hr marathon. it also depends hugely on the course. even a relatively small amount of climbing will make the task even more difficult, ditto for some headwind.
as an aside, i had an interesting email discussion with someone at the UMCA last year about 100 mile records. the UMCA currently lists the 100 mile road record as being held by Dan McGehee, at 4:10:09 (23.99 mph), performed on the Sun Valley Parkway, Phoenix AZ. I pointed out that quite a few triathletes go faster than this in a variety of IM races, and asked whether this made the record somewhat silly. the response was that (a) ironman courses are rarely certified with the same precision (b) its not clear that they are totally draft free (c.f. comments about pace cars/bikes etc) (c) the courses are rarely circular, so even a small amount of wind can affect the average speed up or down. he didn’t actually say what i think is a more important point - doing a solo 100 mile TT is much harder than doing a 100 mile TT race.
anyway, i disagreed with the respondent, mostly noting that i thought it pretty absurd to suggest that these differences could explain someone like stadler being able to ride 112 miles (plus or minus) in 4:18:23. by the end of our conversation, the UMCA official seemed to broadly agree with me and said it would be nice if some of these riders would perform on a certified course. Given that Stadler was in the middle of an IM when he performed at that level, it seems entirely likely that a world class pro peloton rider who trained properly for this could outperform this by quite some margin. they simply have no motivation to do so, it appears.
the gist of all this is that to go sub-4 for 100 miles, you basically need to be a world-class athlete, and doing it solo to just see if you could is even harder than doing it in a race.
The UMCA record is a joke. 100 mile TTs are run regularly in the UK, and the current record is 3:22. No one from the UMCA has any credibility if they defend this record with any seriousness. Some folks criticize UK records as not being legit because they are on open roads and riders get some draft from passing vehicles, but that only goes so far, if you don’t think that 3:22 is possible then you don’t realize just how strong top road cyclists are. I’d guess that anyone that can put in a 40K TT in the low 50s and has decent endurance in long races can break 4 hours with appropriate pacing, nutrition, and a fast course. Breaking four hours for 100 miles is very good but not world class by any means.
It’s tough to compare difficulty of times with a standalone marathon because speed in a long time trial can vary dramatically depending on technology and aerodynamics. I’d probably rate breaking 4 hours as harder than a 3 hour marathon, but not by as much as you might think.
OTOH, averaging 25 mph in an ironman is unquestionably world class, it’s way harder to do this in the middle of an 8-9 hour event that ends in a marathon than as a 4-hour effort.
what would you call world class? i ask because I’d call the TT’ers in the UK who do 3:30 plus or minus 10mins pretty much “world class”, mostly because there’s not much evidence of anyone who can beat them. yeah yeah, we all know that in theory lance and co. could beat this sort of performance but they don’t because the idea doesn’t appeal. that might be true, it might not - for now, those 100 mile TT’ers in the UK are the world classs as far as i can see.
finally, just one small note: doing a 100 mile TT race is pretty different than a solo 100 mile TT. obviously, these events are always small anyway, but the small extra push provided by competition can make a big difference over that distance. not enough to explain the absurd UMCA record, of course.
I don’t really know what’s world class and what isn’t, but I think it’s fair to say that 4:00 isn’t (in the US this seems to be achieveable by riders in the category II range, and I don’t think that’s world class) and 3:30 is.
The average speeds of the various UK TT records seem to be in the same range as what top pros do in standalone TTs, they probably could be bested if 100 mile TTs became popular for top pros, but the times wouldn’t be totally blown out of the water, either.
Even if one wasn’t aware of the UK time trial times, you’d know something was wrong with the UMCA record when pro triathletes achieve faster average speeds in an IM bike leg and then jump off their bike and run a marathon.
I believe Micheal Hutchinson’s (probably the best regular on the UK time trial scene) best 100mile time is 3hr 23m 33s. From what I have read his 1hr power is about 400 watts, I have also hear guestimates that Norman Stadlers 1hr power would be about the same. I don’t know how there weights would compair, if similar one could estimate that Norman is probably not far of the level of the top riders competeing on the domestic UK TT scene. This article by Dr Jamie Pringle aims to compare Hutch against the top tour riders: http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/Fitness_How_powerful_are_the_pros_article_91663.html
I Think one can say the likes of Hutchinson and Kevin Dawson are world class but still a way from the best. I would think that Bike riders that can go under 4hr are not World Class pro’s but perhaps Triathletes who can TT under 4hrs are getting towards the topend?