OldTryGuy

How about from a conversation with him after the race saying that he was nailing it to set the record.

My 2013 IMFL finish time was a slow but none the less respectable 13:31:48 for a first timer 63yo Age Grouper with a right shoulder that needed replacement and 2 years out from a broken neck due to a bike crash.

Dan333SP

Did he say "I rode at 90% of my FTP"? Not sure if you train with power, but Pepe's point is that even at the elite level, Ironman competitors are still limited to a certain percent of their maximum potential output due to the length of the event.

It's not a slight on tri competitors, it's just physiology. Your FTP is basically the max power you can sustain for 1 hour. No one can sustain that same number for 4 hours. If they can, their test was done wrong.

Point is- conventional triathlete wisdom says the elite/pro racers can maybe sustain 75-80% of their max effort for each of the 3 legs, even if they say they're going to set a record. Amateurs are much less than that.

For an example, look at (oh no!) Lance Armstrong. In the 2000 TdF they had a 36.4 mile time trial for Stage 19 (so he was already "fatigued", or as fatigued as you can get while doped) and he did it in 1 hr 5 minutes at almost 33 mph.

As a triathlete, his best bike leg in half ironmans (56 mile bike) was a bit over 2 hours, I think. Can't find the exact number, but that puts him at around 27-28 mph, and that's just a half ironman. Sure, there are issues with this example (he was older, maybe he wasn't doping, different FTP, ect ect) but it illustrates that you just can't go all out for an entire ironman, even as a pro.

Bah Humbug

Ok so to start with, Starky is a super-biker and goes harder than he should on the bike. That's also on a top-level tri bike with a perfect position and equipment on a famously flat-and-fast course. I mean, what do you think, that he went 85% for four hours and then ran a marathon? Come on. Put him on a 40k TT and be prepared to see some real fireworks.

And remember, tri geeks waste no effort on sprint training. He's all slow-twitch, all the time, with god's own FTP but could probably be beaten to the stop sign by the faster people around here.

OldTryGuy

OK, I yield to your expertise and no, nothing about FTP spoken about.

Dan333SP

No one ever accused me of being an expert . Just a guy with the googles.

seypat

The OP's question is rather vague and covers a lot of grey area. It also stirred some good debate. Maybe the race part of it should be changed to competition? I don't really know the answer, but here is something to think about.

Lets take the people on this board and have them show up at a common place on the weekend. On Saturday a course is decided on and there is an informal crit in the morning. Everyone throws $50 into a pot and the 1st 3 places get their share of the pot. On Saturday afternoon, same thing but it is a road course this time. On Sunday morning we go at it again in TT mode. Then people eat, pack up and go home Sunday afternoon.

Are any of these considered races? In my mind they would be. Why or why not? What would it take to make them races? Would it be a fancy name, numbers, Officials, etc.? I don't know the answer. I do know that I would be $150 poorer going home on Sunday!

joejack951

Post a link to Strava or it wasn't a real race.

velociraptor

I totally would but unfortunately Strava's KOD (King of the Donuts) feature is still in beta right now.

Heathpack 

Maybe for this guy, because he is super-elite.

However, generally speaking, when someone shows up to a 20 or 40K TT with "Ironman" schwag, I used to be intimidated. It didn't take me long to figure out that training for 100% TT efforts leads you to a different place (preparation-wise) than does training for Ironmans. Tri training prepares you for tris, TT training prepares you for TTs. Go figure.

My impression is that just throwing out a 1hr 100% effort is not that easy when you've optimized your training to produce 65-80% efforts of 4-7 hours. Because Ironmen don't dominate TTs, they are very beatable by even newby TTists like me.

And for cripe's sake, they don't even remove their bottle cages for the race!!!

Now pre-race, I chat people up that I don't know, maybe tell them a little something useful about the course if I know it and they don't. Try to figure out what they do on a bike. Ironman? Now that doesn't worry me too much. If I miss someone I just check them out on the line. Wearing a watch? (OMG I obsess over where exactly on my wrist/hand my skinsuit sleeves fall and wonder if I should get my suit altered to be more optimal. And someone shows up with a big fat watch! Triathlete!). Watches = beatable.

And Dan, prepare for your mind to be blown. The FTP concept is developed based on a bell curve of cyclists and the entire concept really revolves around cyclists racing traditional types of races- road races, circuit races, crits. The reality is that there is tremendous variability in human physiology and you start to look at people on the trailing edges of the curve, you might start to see that the concept that "a person can hold FTP for exactly one hour but no more" may not hold. Their FTP might be set correctly and they might be able to hold their FTP for substantially longer than an hour. The key to these training metrics is to not get too caught up in the "rules" of physiology. Sometimes it is better to free your mind, understand the basics, but don't be limited by these concepts. Still explore the boundaries of what is possible, because we're not all the middle-of-the-bell-curve-guy.

(Now the 41 jumps in and tells me that not only am I not racing my bike, I also do not understand training metrics and physiology. Lol.)

therhodeo

Thats explicitly not how FTP works.

Dan333SP

TL;DR. You aren't a real racer so I ignored this post.



You are right about the Ironman intimidation factor. I can remember a crit last year where I lined up behind a guy with the tattoo on his calf, apparently from finishing Kona. Looked the part- lean, super-muscly, deep aero wheels on his race bike. I figured he would be a frontrunner.

He was off the back after 2 laps because he couldn't hang with the surges in a 4/5 crit.

therhodeo

I ride with several very strong tri people. They've tried racing a bit. It didn't go well. One said specifically that after about 3 big surges and he was done.

Jasper Storm

This is no BS, I'll vouch for it.

Every year, some unattached cat 4 or 5 triathlete only shows up at State ITT Championships, and blows away everybody else, not to be seen again for a year.

Once, I beat a guy like this in a 40k, by like 8 seconds. 3rd was 45+seconds back.

Tri guy was so pissed he just left. Wouldn't stand for podium shot. Everyone else, even those with poor performances, stuck around and BS'd/shared stories.

Heathpack 

The thing is people see this happen & they think: triathletes suck, they're not real racers.

Nope. They're not trained to a crit effort. They don't make power off/on. They don't surge. They don't sprint. They don't draft. They don't ride technical corners. They don't ride in a peleton. No reason they could not learn to do these things & train to optimize their own physiologic attributes in the context of crit racing. They might have better luck right off training for TT efforts & then moving on to crits (based on the likelihood that a successful triathlete probably naturally is best at producing long steady power vs surgey crit power). But still, they could train for it and likely do way better.

Why don't they? I think most people don't naturally realize what they've trained themselves to do and how different they wind up as far as their optimized physiology. They don't think too deeply about it and just think "I'm bada$$ strong, I can race anything!"

And then some of them get too caught up in the physiology rules and the definitions some other guy set of various training metrics. "But FTP by definition is the power you can hold for exactly 1 hour! You can't do that longer!" It's an advantage in life, I guess, to be the kind of person professionally who makes definitions that other people live by. Because you fully understand that rules never apply 100% universally. Let the other schmoes live by them & be limited unnecessarily, that's nothing but a win for me.

velociraptor

FTP ftw!

PepeM

Actually, there is an easy way to solve these, the good ol' e-wank chart:



It clearly tells you right there if you are a 'non-racer.' People without a power meter are obviously not racers by default.

caloso

This was me. I came to bike racing from triathlon. I could motor along all day but would get dropped after the third surge. It took a while to learn how to bury myself and recover.

Not to mention, I couldn't ride my bike worth a lick. I thought it was just a matter of pointing the bike in a general direction and pedaling. Couldn't corner through the apex, couldn't spin up a gear without mashing, couldn't stand without throwing the bike back, couldn't drink without wobbling, couldn't bunnyhop, couldn't pull without surging, couldn't echelon, couldn't bump elbows without tensing up. The list goes on. But I eventually learned these things by racing, and riding with racers.

Bah Humbug

Well yeah, Ironman training and crit training are pretty much complete opposites.

And to that point, how would you do in an Ironman? Front-runner because you can ride a crit better than him?

Bah Humbug

Newp. The whole point here is that the word "race" does not inherently mean "mass-start road cycling race", and it's not incorrect to use it for other purposes.

joejack951

Only incorrect to use it for purposes not deemed correct by the BF powers that be

DustDriver

Only thing slowing me down is intersections and pedestrians.

PepeM

Look at the avg. speed of this noob lol:

https://www.strava.com/activities/64...prclt=VU2p7dKg

kbarch

I like this approach generally, but it suggests that people commit to being a part of, or are confirmed members of just one of these basic categories, which isn't always the case. I, for example, have a USAC license and am a racing team member in good standing. Races are my favorite rides. However, I don't make dietary choices on the basis of how they affect my cycling, let along racing (except on race mornings and the night before) and I enjoy casual rides along a MUP as much as anyone - with bells on, too! So I'm more than a "bicycle rider," or "cyclist," but not a "pure racer." Hopefully I'm a decent "all arounder."

StanSeven

I understand both what you and ML are saying. You're looking at the same thing with different perspectives.

In case you didn't know he's very experience in racing. I think he's a Cat 3 and has raced for years.

wphamilton

Sanctioned race, organized race, casual race, tri race, mup race, it seems like we always have to use a qualifier to put it in context before we know what "race" really means. Looks like pages of semantics to me.

I know this much though. The strong recreational riders who beat everyone they know in their local circles but who have never competed in organized races will perform at the lowest levels of sanctioned competition. Excepting the rare freak of nature. That's not from any special knowledge of bicycle racing, but because it's always that way when humans organize competitions. In fact, it usually goes way beyond that even - at the podium level there's usually deeper game going on that the mass of competitors are not even aware of.

Is that what this argument is really about?