Fred Doucette's Half-Iron and Ironman Focused Group! -CLOSED! (Page 4)

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I live 6 miles from the IMTX bike course where it crosses over 105 in Montgomery.  I rode the north portion of the course 10 weekes straight prior to Ironstar this year.  My main purpose for a different casssette was to make sure I am not missing anything. I am too lazy to change my cassette from my trainer tire to my actual on rode tire that I thought I would purchase another one.  I guess the rsations are close enough that buying a different cassette would not hurt.

Fred and Rusty thank you so much for bike posts. They were not too basic for me and very helpful. Of course I am rather terrified of IMLP bike course as I should be given my lack of experience. I am embarrassed to confess that I currently have a pretty entry level road bike (jam is) with aerobars. From august to November I did some (6?)longish rides on it up to about 80 miles and did run about 4 miles after all those rides. Wish I went over a 100 miles as a confidence builder but didn't happen. For now my working plan is to stick with my road bike because #1 I live in a 1300 sq foot apt with 2 kids!! And don't have garage and #2 I am not competitive about my time ( but do need to make cut off of course!) and #3 I like my bike! I need to look into a bike fit and 100%! I need to get some easier gears (thanks to Fred I had already read about this over on the IMLP board). Now that it is cold I have been using a trainer for the first time (Kurt kinetic) and like it. So also on the topic of inexperience, I also should confess that my swimming needs a lot of work and will definitely be back of the pack there. Since August I have slogged through a number of 2 plus mile swims in the pool just to make sure I could do it but I don't think it looked very pretty, lol. From timing those it seems as if I may be able to do the IM swim in maybe 1:30, although of course I hope to improve a teensy bit with training The good news is I didn't feel too tired after that. My new years resolution is to get at least a few swim coach sessions.I have really enjoyed reading everyone's stories, what a great group!

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Kate,
X2 on not needing a more expensive tri bike. It it the motor that will make the difference. If your plan is good then you'll have enough miles in when the race is here. Build your base and it will pay off when the time comes. I live in Texas and have wonderful roads with wide shoulder to ride on. Most of my rides this "winter" will be done on the trainer to save time and build power.

Edited by Catwoman 2010-12-24 7:48 AM

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x1000 Kate! It has taken me a long time to figure out, but $ spent on the motor is more important than $$$$ spent on the chassis. In other words, get fit on the bike, and spring for the swim lessons (something I wish someone had of told me when I started!). With a few lessons early on you can start doing a few things correctly from the get-go, rather than spending months or years later trying to undo deeply ingrained bad habits.

Personally, I raced tris very well for a lot of years on a road bike with clip on bars, and if you think about it, a lot of folks did (and still do). Seems the all-time greats like Paula Newby-Fraser, Karen Smyers, Dave Scott, Mark Allen, etc, etc, all posted still-enviable times on crappy old road bikes. If you need any more convincing, guess who STILL holds the record for the fastest average speed in a Tour de France individual time trial? - That's right - Greg LeMond, on a regular old road bike with very (in)famous clip-on aerobars.

The fact that you say you like your bike (after 6 hour rides) is a very good sign, btw - for me, that would be really hard to give up! I love, love, love my tri bike and ride it all the time. But if I could only have one bike due to space, $$, etc, I would replace it in a heartbeat with a road bike, without any hesitation.

I look forward to fretting about IMLP together, btw!

Me too - this is one of the things I really hope to nail down before IMLP.



In my personal experience, run/walking is WAY under rated. When I began ultra running, it was the ticket to allowing me to post great times. It is pretty difficult to let all those folks go at the beginning though. Through adventure racing, I learned that walking a bit, even if only for a few seconds, had less to do with fatigue, and more about helping you to keep your wits about you. What I have found is that if you are going to use this technique, it is often best to start early in the race (don't wait until you are tired and "need" to walk) - have a regular interval that you have practiced and stick to it. You can surprise yourself!



Awesome - way to get it in - this time of year can be tough, but sticking to some semblance of a routine, rather than hitting your time, is probably more important right now anyway. AND you gave your in-laws something to talk about! 

Edited by TankBoy 2010-12-24 8:48 AM

I'll come back to the cranks/cassette questions in a moment, but I'm curious about your bike fit.  Fred, you mention that you don't have that much drop, but are FFOP on the bike - so a couple of questions.  What kinds of watts/kg are you maintaining, and have you figured out your watts/Cda?  There were a few discussions earlier this year about how much more important aerodynamics is vs. pure power.  While I believe that to be true to a certain degree, I still firmly believe that power trumps the aero position.  I could have the best position in the world and would expect to be schooled by someone who pushes more watts and is not as aero.  I'm not discounting the aero position in anyway, I just have a hard time buying that I can be that much faster by hiding some cables, not having a water bottle behind my seat, and riding in a lower position.  Looking for the groups thoughts on this - and feel free to challenge my thinking on this.

As to cassettes, how often do people swap out their cassettes for different races or rides?

Another thing to think about relative to cassette selection is that even though we talk about them like "11-23," "12-25," etc - there are a whole bunch of other gears in there to think about. Unless you are riding on a crazy hilly course, most of us will hardly ever find ourselves riding in the extreme big gear or small gear, instead these middle gears get utilized a lot more. For instance, a 12-25 most likely includes:

12-13-14-15-16-17-19-21-23-25

while an 11-25 consists of:

11-12-13-14-15-17-19-21-23-25

Simply because I am too lazy to swap my cassette back and forth between training wheels and race wheels, (unless the course REALLY demands it) and too cheap to purchase a new cassette right now, I train on a 12-25 and race on 1n 11-25 (compact cranks, btw). when I switch to the 11-25, I do find myself missing the 16 a bit.

So, just as a suggestion if you do start messing around with new gear combos, spend some time first paying attention to what middle gears you utilize the most (where your "sweet spot" is - we all have one) and then make sure you will still have that gear in your new setup.

While it is not really a recommendation - your mileage may vary, on the occasion when I go ride big mountains, I even have a kind of Frankenstein cassette that I have put together from a couple of different ones that gives me a 11-27, which is great for those epic climbs with a bomb down the backside.

Edited by TankBoy 2010-12-24 9:43 AM

I don't think either trumps either. They are both factors of the equation that will give you speed. I'm embarrassed that as an engineer I don't know it off the top of my head, but the cda factor squares with velocity while the power factor is linear. Thus as speed goes up, cda becomes a more dominant term (please someone correct me if I'm wrong). It's not exactly apples to apples either comparing cda to power, so it's tough to say one trumps the other, but they are both very important and there might be a slight trade off of each to get the fastest result. It's probably a very personal thing to figure out watts lost per cda gain (or vice versa). It would be impossible to say if it's faster to be more aero or push more watts without knowing exact numbers, but more or less, more aero is better (to an extent obviously). I change cassettes depending on the race/ride. I train in two different areas, one I like an 11-25, one an 11-23 (I go north for hills, south for flatter). I do the same for races and have raced on both. I only ride the 11-25 if absolutely nexcessary because I don't like the extra 2 tooth jump between gears. I ride a compact, btw and love it. I think I'm a fairly sting cyclist, but having that low gear (without having to get a very wide spread cassette) is awesome for spinning up hills and a big help on hilly courses.

Ok, I'm not quite right (I'm posting from my phone and haven't gotten out of bed yet). It may be better to say that the amount of watts needed to overcome air resistance Is a function of velocity cubed (not squared). So at a high velocity a change in watts is small because most if going to fight the air. A change is cda is big though since it's being multiplied by velocity cubed. I should let someone else explain it better as I'm probably butchering it. Maybe when I manage to get out of bed I'll look up what smarter people than I wrote about it on the webs.

Riding in CO, I learned last year that having two different cassettes was a great help! The only frustration I had at moments was spinning out on the down hills but even then I was passing people so...    
Beyond that I have nothing to add to the cassette/crank discussion as I have no idea what some of you are talking about .   I am about as far from an engineer as you can get. Maybe I will learn something along the way.

Not to change the subject but I would love to talk about bike shoes and pedals at some point. Since I am going much longer this year I am starting to consider what others have told me about getting a road shoe vs the mountain bike shoes I currently use.  I really like my shoes and the ease of being able to clip in and out on both sides of the pedal (SPD) but having a larger pedal surface might help. 

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Oh, yes - I agree 100% for races with like Lake Placid, Savageman, etc. depending on where I am come end of July, I may pack that 11-27 I mentioned earlier, just in case!  Another thing to think about to some degree is not just terrain, but also wind. I have a couple of friends that have made cassette changes just for Hawaii as an example. A couple of days ago I found myself riding into a 35mph headwind, downhill, in my small chainring... not.much.fun.

Kathleen, I'm with you on gearing discussions and mechanical issues. I'm excited to have a group that will explain gearing.

I have a compact crank on my Cervelo. What are your opinions on compact vs standard cranks.

All of our local races are flat. Which is why IMFL was my first choice for IM distances. However, I would like to race hillier courses in the future. When I went to Patriot in MA this summer it was a difficult course. I'm not used to riding on a hilly course even with a 12-25. But I believe the problems were also from a power management standpoint too. IMTX will have more "hills" than we train on or am used to.

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Kathleen,
Since we both ride some of the same courses, what crank/cassette combos are you using?  It was obviously effective, since you passed me looking comfortable on the 2nd lap of the Boulder course  

Completely OT, but if we ever need another discussion topic, I'd love to hear more about AR.  I'm going to try and find something around here this year to do that doesn't require a kayak or MTB.  I am without either of these!

When do you guys usually dump the big ring?  I am still figuring out when to switch for climbing, recovery after ascents, etc.  I don't link to cross chain the big ring, but have to jump up 3 gears when moving from big to small ring.  I have found 34-13 and 14 to be a pretty comfortable gearing for most of my rides on my roadie, and am really favoring the small ring quite a bit lately.

When I first started tris and purchased my road bike, I knew nothing about cranks or cassettes. When I decided on which bike I wanted I was at first disapointed that it had a compact crank on it as I thought I was missing out on something by not having a triple   You know the more rings the better.  Once I learned a little bit about the compact crank, I was happy that I had it. My bike also came with an 11-25 cassette which does not seem to be the norm at least amongst my friend who also purchased bikes around that time.  I never knew the difference between an 11-25 vs a 12-27 so I wasn't missing anything and with all the climbs we have around here, I think it helped me get stronger. Last year I did a tri that had a very steep climb and I knew I wanted/needed a different cassette. I bought a 12-27 and it really made a difference! Of course I spinned out pretty quickly on the decent but there was also a speed limit in place so I was ok with it.  When I was shopping for my tri bike last year, the one that I wanted (fit me best) had a standard crank on it. After receiving the guidance from Fred and the others in our other group, it was clear that I needed to go with a compact. I can't imagine ever needing any other type of crank then the compact. With all the cassette options, I can make my ride as difficult or easy as I want.  and since I don't ride on flat courses, I have never felt that I needed  an 11-23 or below, that is except for the race I did in Miami that was totally flat.  (that was a nice change I have to admit). With my limited experience, I say that a compact is the way to go if there is going to be any hill climbing in your usual rides.

While I didn't use the 12-27 all that much, I can see that continued use of it would have caused me to lose some bike fitness. Actually almost all the tris I did this past summer were pretty flat for Colorado and I knew I lost some fitness when in the Fall I road a course that I hadn't done in a year and could barely make it up the hill.  This year I will be riding those hills in training again!

Steve, I had the 11-25 on my bike during Boulder 70.3   I would have been extremely frustrated with the 12-27 because I would have spun out way to quickly on the fun parts of the course

I have to admit that I cant remember which casette is on my bike, and im an engineer :-).
I got my first tri bike in may, it has compact cranks, and the casette that came with it has suited me fine. Denmark i pretty flat, so i dont use that many gears when im riding. Now I have to go and check out what casette im riding. Just did 1:45 on the trainer this morning. I do really look forward to getting on the road again, but it will be a while. Today we have -12 deg C and snow.