Ironman Coeur d'Alene : Official Thread (Page 90)

My Felt B10 has a 52/38 & 12/25.

I am a 'shoulda' 6 hour+ Rider.  Maybe a 'coulda' 5.5.  But I have relatively slow cadence and I mash them potatoes.

Should I get the LBS to change out my cassette? I am not even really sure if that works with Di2.

The food at the athletes dinner is definately not the focus. Not bad food just not what you would expect for $30. Now the motivational portions along with introducing 1st timers, biggest losers, youngest oldest and all the other hoopla make it a must in my book.

Not sure if trying to have a meet up there will be the easiest. A few thousand type A personalities on edge with a race 36 hrs out makes for plenty of commotion inside a tent.

Welcome to the group. We are still getting more people trickling in as we get closer. Curious how big our group is now?

Since so many are asking gearing questions, I'll summarize what I've typed before.

You have two basic choices for getting easier gears on your bike... they can be done independently, or for the greatest impact, together:

1) trade your cassette for something with a larger ring.  This is a sub $75 fix for an ultegra cassette.

2) trade your chianrings (or most likely your whole crankset) for a compact crank... 50/34.  If that's not enough you could get a triple crankset, but that would requie a FD change too.

3) wait you said there were only 2... well you could ride a bike with smaller wheels, but I'll assume that's not an option for most.

Some examples... first a compact (50/34) paired with a wide cassette (11/28)

50x11 @90rpm = ~33mph... @100rpm = ~36.5mph
34x28 @90 rpm = ~9mph... @80rpm = ~8mph

You should be asking yourself if you'll ever need a harder gear than 36 mph.  In my opinion, the answer is no.  If you are going faster than that on a downhill, you're better off conserving your energy and tucking into as aero a position as possible (stop pedaling).  Save your legs.  So you'd have all the gears you need to go as fast as you're ever going to go on course without spinning out, but also a small enough gear to let you spin up the steep climbs.

Alternatively, you should think about whether any of the hills will make you get into single digit speeds.  Here are the numbers for a standard front (54/39) paired with a narrow cassette (11/23).

54x11 @ 90rpm = ~35.5mph... @100rpm = ~39.4 mph
39x23 @ 90rpm = 12.3mph... @80rpm = ~11 mph

With that combo, you'll be able to pedal at nearly 40mph without spinning out (imho you should have stopped pedaling and tucked long ago), but if you plan to go 10mph or less up any of the hills it means you are going to be smashing the pedals at a very low cadence.  Essentially you are going to run out of gears on the hard climbs without ever needing the bigger gears to go faster on the easy stuff.  And stomping up those climbs is going to take it out of you on the run... and maybe even on the latter part of the bike.  You're just beating your legs up unnecessarily.

My advice - unless you plan to ride sub 5:30 on race day, you'd benefit from both a compact crank and a wider cassette (one with a granny gear).  Lots of people will ride slower without one or the other, and they'll finish... but imho not as fast as they could have. 

If you only do the cassette change (many people unwilling to spend the cash on a compact crank) and have standard cranks, I'd recommend a 28 tooth cassette.  If you have a compact crank, you can likely get away with a narrower cassette (my tri bike came with a 12/25 and I'd feel comfortable on that with a compact crank at CdA... but I'm a 5:20 rider).  Just look at the slowtwitch thread I linked earlier and you'll find a bunch of people faster than that who still ride the compact + granny combo.

This is going to sound really snobby, but my ultimate answer is "if you have to ask, you should be riding a compact + wide cassette."  On hilly IMs, I believe incorrect gearing and pacing (and they are related) is one of the leading causes of people wondering why their marathon went south.

3 or 4 weeks of this is taper so think of it as just a month of really juicy training !!!  I'm still really excited to be starting peak training.  Now if only the weather would start cooperating (It snowed here today).

My take on the gearing is a person should really know what type of racer they are. I personally am not strong on the hills so I purposefully bought at 12/28 for the rear and I have 50/34 on the front. Having the bigger rear cog (28) is more important than a smaller cog (11) for the downhills. Once I hit 35+ on my bike Im watching the road surface and making sure im clean with my line. A few more MPH downhill wont do much for my time but if I cook my legs on the uphill (with a smaller rear cog, say 25) it will likely ruin my run. My plan has always been at least 50% training time on the bike because a bad bike will mean a bad run. Right now Im 20% swim, 56% bike and 24% run and Im very happy with that.

My week (though not finished of course) will be:  total of 16hrs or so

8450y swim

151mile bike  (tomorrow doing 90miles on the bike and 5 mile run after)

22mile run

Ive lost some weeks with viral bronchitis (mid-march) which then gave me alot of chest pain to the point of skipping workouts and even having a EKG and an EchoCardiogram to be sure the chest pain isnt heart related. It isnt heart related as its just residual pain that Im dealing with. Really doesnt affect me until Im running as the run is more lung-taxing. My cardiologist gave me the green light to continue. But it wasnt like I wasnt training anyway  ;-)

The only issue I see is im not getting my long runs in like I planned. But again my focus is on the bike so I just deal with it. I have swam a straight 2.4mile in the pool in 1:26 which I was happy with. Obviously not near the chaos in the open water that I expect but its a milestone anyway. My 1.2mile pool swims were actually slower than my 2 HIM swim times (39:xx and 40:xx) last year and I know im more efficient now than before.

Good luck to everyone as race day gets closer. 8 weeks after this weekend which is really 6 weeks of hard training and 2 weeks of tapering.

Certainly didnt plan on doing an Ironman 4 years ago when I did my first 'super' sprint tri.

Ugh, hope you get well soon.  I went through a bout of bronchitis last year that took forever to come back from.  I ended up running the Disney marathon with it, and while I survived, the results were not pretty.  Glad to hear it isn't your heart though, that would be scary!

Not doing CdA but chiming in on the gearing info Josh shared from a BOP point of view.

Most tri bikes can't accommodate a triple in front due to design of the bike and it very expensive to make that change. I talked with quite a few shops to come up with another alternative.

I've done LP, Canada and FL. Biggest mistake I did in my first IM at Lake Placid is ride hills to hard as that is all my gearing would allow. I train with power so spent way to much time close to my FTP even in a 34-28 and low RPM my power was to high.  What did that mean? I walked last 20 miles of the Mary. My bike time 7:52 and at the time of the race my FTP was about 193.

So what did I do for my next IM at Canada? I got a 11-34 cassette and put a MTB derailuer (yes it was 9 speed on 10 speed bike). Shifting worked okay, but if not I could always switch to friction.

What the 34 instead of 28 did was allow me to spin more up the hills and not spike my power. I went for change of gearing equal to 6 gears...similar from going from 11-23 to 11-28 but that is only 5. It made all the difference...I did get sick on the bike but that has nothing to do with my gearing. I had my best IM run even though I had been puking on the bike for 4 hours, boned pretty badly and was behind on my nutrition.

Proper gearing is being smart and allows you to ride your race even effort. It comes down to your power to weight ratio what it is not some wish or comparing yourself to others and what they do.  If you are comparing yourself to someone else and their gearing consider do you ride the same speed on similar course? Do they weigh the same as you do? If those two things aren't similar their gearing may or may not work out for you.

The new Sram Apex group allows you to use cassette up to 11-32 with their mid range derailuer. If you have a Sram bike you can swap out derauiluer for $60 and change cassette for $60 so $120 makes your bike similar gearing to triple and almost 1:1 ratio in easiest gear. If your bike is Shimano, you would have to buy new shifters in addition to rear derailuer and cassette so up to $100-120 more to use the Apex line. Or you could do like I did change rear derailuer to Shimano MTB derailuer and use an Apex cassette...prior I used off brand cassette designed for tandems but isn't machined well.

This is ideal for slower folks who really need a triple..if you are a 7+ hour IM biker and not super light...great way to go.

If you are asking you should get easier cassette. I don't think in all the years I've been on BT anyone has said after a hilly IM, boy I wish I had a tighter cassette.

Yea its a different way to train when you arent 100%. When Im on the bike and swimming I really dont feel the issue (except when Im really pushing it in the water) but its the run where it comes to light. If anything its making me keep my HR and breathing under control.

Not sure what your training routes have been (being in Seattle) but Ive been doing the Lake Washington Loop which seems to be a pretty good representation of CdA Bike Course. The LW Loop is about 53miles with ~1700 to 1900 feet of elevation gain depending on your exact route. My garmin put it at 1950 elevation gain. From what I gather on mapmyride.com (http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/1129635) one loop of CdA is 56miles and about ~1450 feet gain. So it fits right in. There is some traffic to deal with (as always) but its not a bad route. I usually go from Kenmore clockwise. I will be there tomorrow!

Another bit of math that Ive been using to compare is this:

Total elevation change (ups and downs) for CdA 112 miles is ~5800.

5800/112=51.7 feet per mile

I did a 82.7 mile Extended Loop ride last Saturday and did 5500 vert ft which is 5500/82.7=66.5 feet per mile

Some might think this is a bit overkill bit it tells me im doing MORE hill work per mile than the CdA course. It is an easy way for me to compare. I would rather be doing more hill work than less!

Well said ^^^^

For what it's worth, I did it last year on a 53/39 + 12/25, 6 hours and change.  This year my power numbers are higher, best guess puts me around 5:30-5:45.  I'm still swapping to a 12/27.  And I'm a climber at heart (6'1" / 150lb).

There is really no downside to the cassette swap.  You gain easier gears at the cost of a little more spacing between a couple of them.  But on CdA's short steep hills that I was regularly using the granny gear to stay within my power target anyhow.

Guys,

First, let me thank you all for the helpful info in this thread and just seeing that there are other people with the same problems (yellow cards) and crazy training hours is just AWESOME and very supportive.

Second,  I do have a quick bike course related question. I was thinking about "learning" the bike course. Since I will not get a chance to ride it, I want to be able to know if I'm going up / down / fast enough / too slow. Does this make sense ? What info should be helpful to know other then grade ?

Thanks

I forgot how much racing hurts. Dang! I did a sprint today with the local crew and it was great fun but a pain train!

Hope you all are doing well. Wish nerdjock well as she does Wildflower!

Monthly totals are in. Was hoping for 800 mi bike but the run surpassed my biggest months ever, and I was a single sport runner before going into tri. Go barryP!

Swim is down but I swam decent today in a wetsuit compared to solid swimmers. I still need to get my act together in terms of getting more frequent lessons:

Friday - 100/5

Saturday - 19 mile run

Sunday - Run/Bike/Run brick <----distance TBD depending on how many beers I drink watching UFC 129 tonight. 

* Weight hit an all time low today.  Any ideas other than eating more food and drinking more water????