Ironman Coeur d'Alene : Official Thread (Page 65)

Turning off the GPS and relying on the bike computer is very easy to do, and will greatly lengthen battery life (I'd recommend testing as well - use it with no GPS for a long bike ride, then turn GPS on and set it outside until it dies.  Check in training peaks or other softward to see how long the battery lasted). 

To turn off GPS: Hold down "MODE" until the screen letting you choose between disciplines appears.  Scroll to the bottom and select "indoor mode" -- to turn it back on repeat the process and select "outdoor mode"

Interesting.  I was not even planning on wearing my 310xt during the swim.  Too much downside if you get your head ripped off and it sinks. 

That's the truth.  Once you get to mile 18 or so on the run, I'm sure I really won't care what the watch says.  In fact, I may not want to know what it says. 

I was planning to wear a timex on my other wrist to keep track of my overall time.  Does anyone else do this?   

It was only a flesh wound...

Nice one Britt!

http://www.zazzle.com/black_knight_merely_a_flesh_wound_tshirt-235121813438893329

This reminds me. We did BT shirts for IMFL for 1. sherpas and 2. triathletes. Are we doing that for IMCDA? See above for an idea haha

Thanks for all the advice on the run course elevation and garmin options, very helpful to hear vets experiences and work these small nits out ahead of time.  GREATLY APPRECIATED!! 

I'll do some testing and thinking through these options in the coming weeks.  Since no one recommended the Timex Global Trainer, I assume the Garmin FR310XT is best option.

I have the 305 and 310xt.  What's interesting about the difference other than the battery life is the GPS lock.  I swear I can get the 310 to lock a signal in places where the 305 is always searching. 

Damn.  Never seen this chart before. 

How do they determine how "challenging" the race is?  I'm baffled by some of those ratings.

The most common sense way, for me, to rate how hard a course is would be to look at the average finish time of the top X male and top X female finishers.  I'd probably choose 100 or so.  By that metric, that chart is way off. 

Also -- what makes a race challenging for one person might not impact another person at all.  Just as a quick example I don't really mind a hilly bike (Lake Placid was my first)... in fact I prefer it to keep the race legal (break up draft groups).  But put me in Louisville heat/humidity and I am a likely DNF.

To eliminate the subjectivity, I think the best metric is finish times.  Since all these courses are 140.6 miles long... if it takes longer to finish race X than it does race Y than it does race Z, then they deserve to be ranked in that order of difficulty IMHO. 

I can see finish time on his X-axis... but I'm not sure whose finish times they are. 

If it's the same person who has done 25 different races, then it's balogna because it doesn't account for fitness.  I can't figure out where the numbers come from since it's obviously not the overall winner's time.

The chart is obviously messed up, because of the fact that CdA only attracts the fastest, strongest, nicest and best looking athletes.

Josh

When I hit up that site, my memory may fail me, but they took into account a lot of factors to determine difficulty of IM and there was some onging process of taking input from the st.com crowd and editing until they got to that place. Have a look when you get time. Not to say certain courses don't suit certain triathletes (See Friel's new book for that discussion in Chapter 1), but I think its an aggregate thing...

here is the cut and paste

Hardest Ironman Course? Easiest? RunTri's 25 Toughest Ironman Races

By Raymond Britt -- RunTri analyzed nearly 50,000 triathletes competing in 25 Ironman distance triathlons to answer the question: which Ironman triathlon is hardest? Easiest? Results: Top 5 Toughest Ironman Races: Kona, St. George, Wisconsin, Malaysia, Louisville, China.

We expect there will be much discussion about this list, and we are pleased to spark the conversation. We've finished 29 Ironman triathlons, including nearly half the races in this analysis, some multiple times, and are more than familiar with the difficulty of many others. There's a lot more behind the data and rankings. Read extended notes below, click on links to get into the numbers, race by race.

• For further details and links to data for each race, see Detailed Comparisons between races.
• For similar comparative charts, see our Toughest/Easiest Swim, Bike, Run analyses.
• Wondering if the list differs by Age Group? It does, somewhat. See our AG Analysis.
• Another alternative view: look at Kona Qualifying times by Age Group
• For even more, see  details by race and by age group 
• What about Kona? DNFs?  Weather? Speedsters? Europe? Cut-off Times? See our notes below.

Still not impressed.  I prefer several of the alternative metrics, most noteably the table you previously posted with the KQ cutoff for each age group and each race.

Averaging EVERYONE's finish time doesn't test the difficulty of the course.  It demonstrates the propensity for each race of people to show up well trained.  In other words, it assumes that in general there is the same percentrage of people who show up to each race with respect to fitness/ability/age/preparedness.  Plus the mitigating factors he mentions (eg, weather) are "corrected" but he doesn't say what his methodology was for that.  In fact, i don't think it should be corrected... propensity for bad weather should show up in the "challenging" index, and it will if you simply look at the finish times of the top athletes (or if you prefer, KQ cutoff).

In the end, I cry BS and say they've overcomplicated it.

I like their stuff but yes, its a matter of deabte. ANother issue I am looking at is caffeine use on IM days. Jorge first promoted a caffeine taper but recent research seems to counter the caffeine taper. Nobody debates that it has a performance and possibly recovery enhancing effect. Friel tweeted a link to this today

http://www.endurancecorner.com/Mimi_Winsberg/energy_drinks

Key point is that "Performance enhancing doses of caffeine are in the range of (phatknot add: i think a standard cup of joe is about 80-90mg) 100-200mg 30-60 minutes before the onset of exercise and then 100mg every four hours after that. Athletes must be aware of the doses of caffeine in energy drinks, gels, or other supplements, and manage their doses accordingly during workouts and races."

What are your thoughts on caffeine on the big day?

Umm, so I love caffeine. It and endorphins (or whatever it is our bodies create) are my favorite drugs. I don't try to overdue it on the caffeine, but I do us it in daily life and in training. I like the caffeinated gels (Espresso Luv...mmm), and I have caffeine in my Infinit mix.  My body is used to it, and I can tell in long distance racing/training, how if I don't use it that my body starts to get sluggish.  Do I have a specific caffeine plan? No. Maybe I should? Either way, I use it.

Infinit- I've gone as concentrated as a 3.5 hours in a 20 oz bottle.  Not sure if I'd want to go more than that though...hmm, definitely helps with less to carry on the bike (I did two bottles for IMAZ last time and just picked up water at aid stations and dumped it in the aero bottle).  I do know, towards the end of the bike, while I didn't have any problem taking in the Infinit still, I started burping it, and that was a little odd--not sure if concentrating it would make that less of an issue or no.

I have yet to figure out what my nutrition issues are.  The only thing I had constant in my last two races (Bolder 70.3 and Denver Rock and Roll marathon) were Gels.  For my Marathon I used Gels and water with some Sports drink.  At the end of both I wanted to give my lunch up. I’ve been told to cut caffeine and not use Gels for 70.3 CA.  Hopefully I’ll have it spot on for IMCDA.

In addition to what I saw listed on their website, some of the run aid stations also had soup broth and potato chips.  So you can get additional salt even if you're just living off the course.

Just a factual correction - you'd need to learn to like Powerbar Perform, not "ironman endurance" (I suspect you meant gatorade endurance?).

Nutrition is highly personal, and I'm not one to suggest people give up what's working.  I will simply say that to the extent you can live of course, you'll have an easier race.  I had a regular gatorade in my aero bottle at the start of the bike and a cliff bar in my jersey, but otherwise lived completely off course for my IM.  Just shy of a full bottle of PB perform and a swig of water (the rest dumped over my head and ditched) consumed between each aid station was the perfect amount of calories/electrolytes/water for me (at my speed, given the weather on that day).  I felt fueled and not thirsty and was not forced to urinate on the bike.  I did eat about half of my cliff bar on each lap as well, and backed off on the amount I was drinking... basically skipped the last aid station to allow my stomach to empty some before the run.

Likewise, a cup or two of whatever I felt like at each run aid station go the job done.  I tended to gravitate more towards coke on the run, simply because I was tired of PB perfomr (even though they had different flavors on the run than on the bike).

I've given some thought to whether I would have been able to adapt using just on-course nutrition had it been hotter or colder, which would have required an adjustment to the ratio of calories/water consumed.  Not sure of the answer... just wanted to provide a n=1 example of living of the course successfully.

MOST digestive troubles result from a combo of two things... eating/drinking too much, and going too hard.  For most of us, I do not think there is anything magical about the ingredients in two competing sports drinks that are essentially nutritionally identical.  I'm not saying that about infitinit, which I understand can be customized some... but most people who loved gatorade endurance and blamed PB perform were skapegoating the drink for their poor nutritional/pacing execution... IMHO.