Doge

Got link? It should be ending soon - right?

Ttoc6

IRONMAN World Championship Live Coverage - IRONMAN Official Site | IRONMAN triathlon 140.6 & 70.3

The leading men are about 10 miles into the marathon. The women are probably about 3 miles in.

There will be a highlights show on NBC at some point tonight too, I think.

Doge

Thanks - watching now. Fan of Cameron Wurf. Great guy!
Would champion rower, then Cannondale World Tour rider, now doing Tri.
26.68 on the bike. Is that good? Now in 5th.
Looks like he was #1??? maybe not, maybe he was #4 and fell a place. So I expect 26.68 was good.
https://www.ironman.com/triathlon/cov...acker/RM3EVBKD

Ttoc6

He set the bike course record at Kona.

Some background.. Kona is the big show. People want to win this one. Most money, most prestige etc. Also, its notoriously a hard course. Disc wheels are outright disallowed due to the danger of cross winds. Never flat, hot, and humid.

I'd say it's a big deal to go that fast there. Seb kienle (currently leading) averaged 310W for the first 60 miles. That's after spending an hour in the water.

Daniella Ryf (currently leading the women) closed a 5 minute gap to overtake first place within 25 minutes of bike milage. She is on her way to her 3rd in a row championship.

Jan Frodeno (last year winner) is looking like he is going to have to walk the whole marathon due to injury. He came in the 2nd group (remember, ~no drafting~) off the bike.

Doge

Great to see that. Bummer - he's dropping in the run.
If it were swimming, riding, rowing - Cam would win!

Cameron helped my son row and they did a few group ride/races. Just so friendly and happy to help.

Ttoc6

Correction, Kienle is in 2nd. Sanders is in first. Sanders has the weird running form.

hack

Been watching a bit. Sanders' form is unique and it looks like Lange is working hard to run him down. Will be close.

I rode a large portion of the bike leg this past summer (not knowing it was the bike leg, just riding) on a rental with 28mm gatorshells. There isn't anything too steep on the course. Maybe a couple power rollers, but most of the climbs are pretty gradual and doable in the aero bars.

Re: Wurf. Impressive ride and hopefully he doesn't completely fall apart on the run. He's been dropping down the leader board fast though.

Ttoc6

My money is on Lange. Sanders form is bad, but regardless, he is fading hard.

hack

Yeah ... Lange turned it on. Not gonna be close at all.

Ttoc6

Just made the pass. Sanders was running flat footed (heel-toe striking, rather than midfoot or fore foot) from very early on. That's a big tell for me. Even marathon (and some ultra) runners have gone away from that in the last 10 years when the athletes aren't tired.

hack

I saw that too, but took that to be his style. Seems he does everything unique.

aaronmcd

How can anyone watch triathlon? Isn't it a bit boring? I mean it seems way more boring than doing one, and even THAT might be boring!

College - I dont think anyone should feel pressure to go to college at 18 or 19. That's crazy for most people. I got most of my AA degree before flunking out cuz I never did homework and was late to diff eq all the time (why did I sign up for a 7:30 am class??).

Didn't go back for several years when when I met the girl I would marry and figured CAD pays better than managing a few burger flippers. Took a few drafting/CAD classes, got a job, eventually dropped to part time to get a degree in civil to be a structural engineer. Need a degree for that. The masters at stanford was also worth it I think cuz it was almost free, and got me to the bay area and better jobs.

But I could have learned everything I needed in a year or so and skipped all the BS. Plus I can't learn from classes, so I had to waste time sitting through class and then read the book on my own. Although the practice learning in class helped for stanford where there literally was not enough time in a day to do ANY of the required readings lol.

Also, I dont know about this learning how to learn thing. There was literally zero of that in college. I mean I'm an adult, I for sure had known how to learn for a decade or so already.

hack

I did a triathlon earlier this year (won my age group off a doggy paddle swim). It was fun and I could see myself doing a couple more here or there. Watching isn't the most exciting thing, but it is interesting to see the effort and how things shake out.

Ttoc6

I have a life goal to compete at Kona someday. Set it when I was 16 years old. One of those bucket list things to do.

I admire the effort triathletes put in. And I really like the sport and the concept from which it developed. I think it builds great all-around athletes. It's the people and culture that I don't like. Too many people who are happy to just do them and never self improve. The finisher medal collectors. I hate finisher medals.

hack

Likewise. Seems a bit too fun run-ish as a result. I guess it keeps people coming back and the sport afloat though.

Ttoc6

Most competitive race I've ever been in was actually a Tri at age 18. It was the Junior nationals qualifying race (draft legal) and I thought I was coming in with a huge advantage being about 2 years older than any of the other competitors and have just come off my first season of bike racing with (mild) success. I thought I had a decent enough swim based on how I usually did in local tris.

At the last minute they called the swim wetsuit illegal (Water was too warm). This was my first time ever swimming in open water without a wetsuit. It didn't go well, and my lack of swim fitness showed. I came out of the water 2nd to last and chased hard on the bike. As the pack got closer and closer the lead moto passsed me and I got pulled. I was ****ing pissed. I came in hot headed and brash and got shown up by 15 year olds that know how to swim.

I've only done a handful of tris since then. I have enjoyed exactly one of them where I was competing against my brother and I jumped in at the last minute just for fun. I hadn't swam but 3 times that entire summer, but had good run (and of course bike) fitness. I won that local (draft illegal) race by many minutes from the gun despite a pretty bad swim. Goes to show the level between national and local competitors.

Doge

Just like those 5+ hour road races. Too long.

Doge

Thing is 17,18,19 is too early to decide to become a pro athlete too - and it really sucks as a job. Although it is apparent to all of us, that there are choices that affect other choices. Makes me sad and proud altogether.

That said - it is not what you learn in college. It is the entry to other things. I expect your Stanford masters will be useful to you.

tetonrider

the thing is, unless one is at the very sharp end, triathlon is rarely ever a race that involves tactics.

if you and i get off the bike at the same time and you can run 6:00 miles and i run 6:30, i can't trick you into running 5:30 and blowing up, and we know the outcome.

yes, people make mistakes in nutrition or they over-bike and suffer, but the strategy is *individual*.

i'm specifically talking about the finisher medal thing here; few people -- even the ones who come in 3rd in their age group (amateurs), are actually doing anything that resembles *racing*. they are executing on their training. it's impressive.

i think one has to be careful talking down about the finishers, because that person in 3rd AG has more in common with the back of pack participants than the handful of people actually RACING an ironman -- they just don't know it.

triathlon is smart: they collect lots of money and offer an experience for those individuals, and it allows a small race with almost no fan/media appeal (not compared to other sports) to exist. amateur cycling would do well to model it; the gran fondo could keep an otherwise unprofitable p/1/2 race afloat.

(i admit i like watching some events (ITTs) that are only about the individual and his/her strategy, so there's some cognitive dissonance there.)

mattm

What did you get a degree in?

I went to college wanting to be a hacker, but it didn't really pan out.

When I graduated with a shiny CS degree, I couldn't even get an interview anywhere. I assumed I'd jump right in to making $80k/year right off the bat.. not quite. Ended up working in a cheap Chinese restaurant as a waiter, making $2.35/hour OR tips. Waiting tables was tough, and I was really bad at it to boot.

tetonrider

you obviously didn't graduate into silicon valley in the late 90s.

it was so damn hard to hire people due to massive shortages of talent. any programmer with an acronym (anything!) on their resume could get hired well into the 6-figures.

interesting times.

topflightpro

Based on the fact MattM and I are the same age, I'm going to guess he graduated right when the .com-bubble burst in 2000-2001.

Of course, I bagged a career on Wall Street to go to grad school for a masters in journalism - an industry that was already declining but would soon be decimated by Craigslist. (Yes, the free classifieds on Craigslist did more to hurt newspapers than anything else. Classified ads typically accounted for 30% of newspaper revenue prior to CL.)

rubiksoval

I have a degree in Business Admin which I got because...it seemed the most flexible, I guess. I saved up as much money as I could my last two semesters at school and once I graduated I went to Guatemala for a few months because I had no idea what to do next. Then I came back to the U.S., worked in a bike shop for a couple more months, then moved to Asia for the next six years.

Hope to move abroad sometime again in the future.

himespau 

I had a buddy graduate in 3.5 years with a degree in computer engineering and get right in with a great salary at Microsoft (he's still there). The rest of the guys I lived with who got CS/CE degrees in the full 4 years missed out on the bubble and had a lot harder time. Those extra 5 months made a killer difference.

globecanvas

CS degrees didn't really exist in their current form when I went to college in the 80s. I got a math degree but spent a number of years as a musician and carpenter after school. In 1995 I got an entry level (as in, mailroom and phones) job in a tech-related field and within a year was being paid to learn to how to program. That ended up being a ridiculously great job and I've been a computer programmer ever since.

My current business partner is the classic stereotype of a hacker, dropped out of college in the 90s, did a bunch of quasi-legal startup and open source stuff, got rich and got out right at the fattest part of the bubble.

So neither of us came from a traditional CS background but we were both in the right place at the right time.