My Week in Tri: 9 October
Results, 5 Bullets and West paces plus Ali vs Youri.
Aero MaccaFrodownlee
October 09, 2023
My Week in Triathlon
My triathlon thoughts and learnings over the last week. It’s KONA week finally! Anyone else have a friends wedding on at the same time?! I may have to leave the dancefloor and find a quiet place to watch 🤫
70.3 Langkawi: Full Results here
|Women: 🏊️Lemmolo exited the swim first with Gentle, Lucas and Watkinson close by. 🚴 The four leaders rode together for the whole bike finishing over 16min ahead of Simpson in 5th. 🏃 Gentle had established a 30s gap within the first 3km. This was well over 2min at 10km and almost 6min at the line. | Men: 🏊️ Similar to the ladies race, 4 men were in the front: Amberger, McDonald, Phillips and Costes. 🚴 Costes lost 1min early on after crashing, leaving Amberger, McDonald and Phillips up front. The trio finished together over 5min ahead of Costes in 4th. 🏃 Amberger trailed early on but hit the front at about 10km in and ended up winning by over 90s.
Women
🥇 Ash Gentle (04:10:17)
🥈 Amelia Watkinson (04:16:05)
🥉 Lottie Lucas (04:20:59)
Men
🥇 Josh Amberger (03:50:47)
🥈 Mike Phillips (03:52:23)
🥉 Kurt McDonald (03:54:33)
Challenge Barcelona: Full Results here
| Women: 🏊️ Buckingham and Perez-Sala finished the swim 1:20 ahead of Simmonds. 🚴 Perez-Sala dropped out at 30km (illness) leaving Buckingham in front for the whole bike. Pohle joined Buckingham nearing half-way and Simmonds caught them nearing T2. 🏃 Simmonds took the lead immediately and never looked back. | Men: 🏊️ 9 athletes finished the swim within 20s of each other including Brownlee, Royle and Keulen. 🚴 A lead group of 5 was established and, driven by Brownlee and Keulen, came into T2 with a 2:30 lead over 6th place. 🏃Brownlee lead from 1km to 10km but Keulen was always a few seconds back. Keulen made the pass just after 10km but Brownlee stuck with him. They ran the next 4km side-by-side until Keulen eventually managed to get a surge to stick and broke away.
I didn’t pick this up before the race but the distances were: 1.5km swim, 60km bike and 15km run.
Women
🥇 Imogen Simmonds (02:49:44)
🥈 Lucy Buckingham (02:52:38)
🥉 Caroline Pohle (02:53:09)
Men
🥇 Youri Keulen (02:29:15)
🥈 Ali Brownlee (02:29:36)
🥉 Wilhelm Hirsch (02:30:55)
World Cup Rome: Full Results here
| Women: 🏊️ The swim had some large gaps. A group of 5, led by Seregni, exited over 20s ahead. Eim, Klamer and Holland were 50s back! 🚴Vermeylen, Gautier and Mathias led for the whole bike and took a narrow 10s lead into T2. 🏃 Vermeylen lead early on to try snatch victory but eventually tired and Eim, Gomez-Goggel and Schar caught her. Eim pulled away with 500m to go. Shout out to Noelia Juan with another great result in 5th | Men: 🏊️ Strada led out a big group on the swim. West lost time in T1. 🚴 After the first lap there were 25 athletes being led mostly by Van Riel, Stornes and Henseleit. 30s back was the first chase pack with West over a minute behind. Van Riel and Pozzatti crashed into each other on the last turn. 🏃Typical of this racing, all gaps are mere seconds apart. Lehmann and Vilaca were the front runners. Vilaca made his move to take the lead but lots of jostling behind him saw another 3 athletes finish within 9s of him.
Women
🥇 Nina Eim (00:59:26)
🥈 Marlene Gomez-Goggel (00:59:31)
🥉 Cathia Schar (00:59:35)
Men
🥇 Vasco Vilaca (00:53:39)
🥈 Arnaud Mengal (00:53:43)
🥉 Simon Henseleit (00:53:45)
Other Bullets:
RIP ObsTri: Popular triathlon website The Obsessed Triathlete has been shut down. It was run by Christophe Balestra who has great success running a computer game company. After resigning/retiring, he even took a role as the CTO for the PTO in 2021. View the self-authored obituary here. The website was most loved for it’s Fantasy League.
Lionel being Lionel: Lionel is back at it with his 20:20 hindsight vision in his latest video where he is, once again, his biggest critic. Some nerdy aero testing and debate between “high-hands vs low-hands”. Video here.
Strength training structure: I’ve always battled a bit with fitting in strength training when i’m already seemingly fatigued from swim, bike, run. This video by Dr Kate Baldwin gave some do’s and dont’s. Video here.
Skipper complications: Sorry another YT video! This one by Joe Skipper in his debrief after a poor performance in Nice. My biggest take-away was his issues with his gears the week before the race - I really didn’t think the pro’s would have these sorts of struggles. Similar to Jan Frodeno also doing some lastminute dot come fitting with his race suit. Video here.
World Record and Bias: Eliud Kipchoge’s world record was smashed yesterday at the Chicago marathon - article here. For years, “purists” have been cynical towards super shoes “perverting” the sport of running. I’m a massive Kipchoge fan and have always been supportive on the super-shoe innovation. Now that my hero has lost his world record by a 23yr old in his first full year of marathon running…not so much. Us humans are funny 😎
Data
Following on from my analysis on Jason West’s short course run time, I thought I would see if the pace for this weekends 15:03 5km run was out of his comfort zone, given that he’s been training for the PTO distance races. Turns out it’s not!
Then after the epic battle between Alistair Brownlee and Youri Keulen, I had to have a quick look at their “Head to Head” stats from the PTO. Alistair has had a really tough few years, BUT, the history books have Keulen as the faster runner 3/3 times now:
That’s it for today.
Yours in low CdA,
Aero MaccaFrodownlee
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