Whirlpool Steelhead 70.3 Triathlon (Page 12)

There may not be room next to your bike.  In the past, they wanted transition bags etc. over near the fence. 

I was wondering about the whole pump issue.  I usually need to add some air every time I ride so I may just rack my bike Sat. morning but I really like the  idea of not having to deal with it.  Do a lot of people bring their own pumps?

Also, I'm thinking about riding the run course Thursday afternoon when I get into town.

I brought my pump the last 3 years and did not have trouble leaving it beside my bike. They put stickers on the rack with your number, and whichever side of the rack your sticker is facing that is the side your front wheel goes on. Because of this alternating arrangement with the bikes there is usually some room behind your rear wheel for transitition stuff as long is it does not stick out into the aisle.

In my experience Steelhead is not the best organized race, it is a large race with long lineups for everything, and an awkward transition area (at least it was the last 3 years, I have not yet seen the changes that they have made). Are you going to try and drive to transition to drop your bike off in the morning? The lineups will be really nasty if they let you line up on the road and drop off the bike, and the parking lots were all used for transition areas last year. Unless they have changed things a lot there is no parking at transition and you could only stop at the side of the road to drop off a bike. Are you going to try and ride your bike from the parking lots where you are allowed to park your car? How do you carry everything? When I got off the shuttle bus from the parking lot last year it was completely dark and there were no lights until you got to the floodlit area in transition. I don't think that you could ride that area without a light on your bike.

Trying to get my bike into transition last year on the Friday there were huge lineups because of all the people who were being stopped because they did not have all of their numbers on their bikes in the proper places, or they did not have their wrist bracelets on to get into transition. I don't want to deal with that at 5:00 am.

I have never done a 70.3 or IM where you did not have to rack the day before, and Steelhead does not seem to me like a good place to try it.

Thanks, that kind of explains why they are allowing you to rack on Saturday as I don't think that it could have worked with the old layout. I can't picture where they put everything as the park is not that big and I heard that part of it was turned into a golf course. There was so little paved parking there before that they tried having the transition in a sandy field, but that was not a popular idea.

I see that the website still says that the transition area map will be available soon

Hope this helps.

Greg

I aim for a bottle of GEF (about 150 cal) an hour and a gel every 45 min (130 cal an hour), which gets me close to 300 cal an hour. Try to not to run too much of a calorie deficit on the bike as it is much easier to consume calories on the bike. On the run I try to do GEF at aid stations 1 and 2, gel and water at 3, then repeat.

At this point it is too late to safely change what you have been doing. It is better to do what you have done in training, even if it is not optimal, than to make a change at this point. If you take in more than your stomach can process, then your stomach won't empty and you will have a sloshy, burpy walk to the finish line

For most people, their LT threshold on the bike is a little lower than it is on the run (which makes sense if you figure running uses arms, legs, and core a lot while cycling uses legs a lot, core some, and arms very little).  As such, I'd expect to burn fewer calories per hour riding than running.  The 660 for running is certainly in the range I'd expect.  Cycling maybe 10% lower. 

Start with a full tank, replentish as much as practical (probably 200-300 calories per hour while working out) and hold on as long as possible.  Yea, on a 6-hour race, you could be 1800 calories in deficit at the end, but proper nutrition during the race keeps blood sugar in a reasonable range.  Endurance sports is all about managing the deficit. 

I know some plans have been discussed, what are the details for a meet-up Friday night for dinner?