Elevation gain

Personally, I think rollers are tougher.  You can't get into a rhythm as you are constantly changing gears.  On a good climb you can get out of the saddle and hammer away.

opps posted this in the wrong thread....

I Knew that swim was uphill !!!!!!!!!

Ok I'm wondering ( so I must be showing my ignorance again)  but what does the positive elevation gain mean...  Unless it's a point to point race wouldnt' the net evelvation gain be around zero??  if you start and the same place you finish,  my thought was  it doesn't matter if the first 100 miles are uphill on the bike to finish at the same spot those last 12 miles must be downhill, same with the run...   I'm confused...

unless it's that dammable uphill swim

No way Arizona is over 3800

ETA - just went and searched motionbased, looking for an Edge computer.   Only found forerunner 301 and 305s (didn't look at them all), got a range of 11,000 (!!!!) to 1900.  The latter probably more accurate.

acumulated gain, not net gain

doubt it, just looking at IMAZ, bike is probably around 2K, leaving 1800 for the run, which we know for a fact is not true

You're probably right.  I was just reading the ST thread that barnyard posted and there are some good points made there about elevation gain.  A very small gain over a very long distance results in a pretty big gain but that does not necessarily = hard.

Personally, I don't mind roller hills where I can get enough speed on the downhill to make it up the next hill (w/o coming to a crawl).  What I stuggle with are long climbs even if they are not that steep becuase they just wear me down.

I guess what I was looking for is some way to compare the bike courses so I'd have some cofidence that, if I could finish IMKY, then I could finish IMWI, IMLP et al.  But I guess the only way to know for sure is just to do these other races.  Like we say in my business, "one test is worth a thousand expert opinions."  :-)

~Mike

bryancd - 2008-12-11 10:07 PM

Rogillio - 2008-12-11 7:48 PM

I was just reading the ST thread that barnyard posted

Aww, Mike can't spell my name right.

Yet I still laughed out loud barnyard.

bryancd - 2008-12-11 9:07 PM

Rogillio - 2008-12-11 7:48 PM

I was just reading the ST thread that barnyard posted

Aww, Mike can't spell my name right.

barnyard is kind of funny though     you can choose which animal you want to be though

Mike sounds like you like courses like me...rolling hills are easier for me than long grinders. IMLP is a grinder course to me...doesn't really suit my strengths but that didn't keep me from doing it in the rain. You could do it too. I find it a pride issue to some degree..for me I know a flatter course I'd be a lot faster on the bike. But for me IM isn't all about finish time but the adventure and the location is a huge factor too. The stronger cyclists the difference between IM bike times varies less from course to course than weaker cyclists. Many women in my AG that I know from MA that have done IMLP and IMFL their bike splits are hour different between the two courses. Pros or top folks the difference can be less than 15 minutes.

I think we need to do them all to find out which one suits us best but you keep going back to the same one!