Ironman Cd'A topography
Hi all,
I'm trying to get a sense of the actual grade of the climbs on the Ironman Coeur d'Alene bike segment and wonder if anyone who's done the race can help? How does the bike compare to Wildflower (Long Course) which is by all accounts hilly or Big Kahuna which doesn't appear hilly but in fact is ? If you're in the Bay Area, does this compare to Foothill Expressway or the Alpine/Portola Loop?
Thanks!
0
Comments
Hi!
Good luck with CDA this year. I had the chance to do it last year.
All up to the race, I kept hearing how incredibly hilly it was. Maybe it was all the warnings, but when I got there, it didnt seem too bad. Now, this is from the guy with a slow azz bike time of 7:03, so this may be different if your planning on a 5 hour ride. In general, when you start, you go through town for about 4-5 miles. Pretty flat and lots of crowds. Then you head out of town and have some mild ups and downs with a low grade. After about 8 miles you flip around and go back to town on the same course. More flat and crowds through town. After a few miles, then you head out of town into the real meat of things. From memory, there are two main hills at the beginning of this section. The first starts out pretty steep and levels off. The next one starts off steep again, and then the grade backs off a little for a nice long climb. After those two, you essentially have a back to back series of smaller, less steep climbs until you start approaching town again.
I think the most important thing with the bike course is not to kill yourself with the first hill section or on the first two hills of the second hill section. Also great to ride the hills once before the race. I went out with my bro during race week and it was an invaluable experience.
One more thing, the flip side of the hills is that there are some screaming downhills. Nothing technical, but pretty fast. If your comfortable roaring down hill, this may work in your favor. For me, I just wanted to not crash so I took it easy.
On a side note, is anyone out there just going for training during race week? I only live about three hours from CDA, so I am planning on heading out race week to swim the course before the race as well as ride the bike leg. Anyone want to join me?
Hope this helps,
Greg
one more thing to add: for every big uphill, there is an equal payoff on the downside with a fast descent. a fun ride fo sho!
Having just moved from CDA to SoCal and riding the CDA Course for last 4 yrs.....hills here much harder. Longer, steeper, etc. CDA is more rolling hills, but they are back-to-back on North end of course. No place to really be down in the bars and just cruisinig. The trip back to town is often into the wind. Boise is much like CDA. The climb up to the Birds of Prey Center is short and steep like first two hills in cda. The long climb after Birds of Prey is representative of long climb on Hayden Lake in CDA. Go with the 23 or 25.
See the Ironman Gearing Thread (in the Wiki?) for our gearing recommendations. Any TeamEN found to be racing IMCDA, or any other Ironman, with a 23-11 will be shot on sight, no exceptions.
.
We have a TON of stuff written on CDA. Search the blog, the 3.0 forums, etc.
The bar has been raised from a kick to the nutz!
Rich - No worries, I'll definitely have appropriate gearing and have seen the wiki on this subject. My thoughts are :
Do I need a 27? I'm on a 25 now and can get up most anything around here (NorCal).
Should I instead switch to Compact? That would mean selling off my SRAM/Quarq 53/39 and will cost me a bit more than the cassette, but maybe that's what I should be on regardless....
The Original Post was more to see if there are any climbs or roads with a good rise in the area that would compare, kind of using those as a benchmark for power, cadence, etc.
I loved me some 27 on them climbs. Of course, me ride bike long time.
Here's a shotgun at the course:
I would say the nets are:
That's a rather involved switch unless you have someone ready to take the 53/39 off our hands. Honestly though, there really isn't much reason for any AG triathlete not to ride a compact. Hell, I live in the flatlands of Virginia Beach and ride compact on both my bikes. Compact and 12-25 is a good combination for most any course that isn't flat. I also have a 11-21 that I use on flat courses. I've never found myself wishing I had bigger gears but I'd never complain if I had more gears. I tend to be a spinner though...I race at 980102rpm and anything below 90-92 feels like I'm grinding.
I reviewed my Garmin and iBike files from the race, and can report the following. Between miles 22 and 44 there is a relentless series of NINETEEN hills of various lengths, generally from 4-8% in steepness, ranging from 50 to 300+ vertical feet of gain, a total of 2300 feet in those 20 miles. This section (especially on the first loop) can ruin your race, unless you pay strict adherence to EN guidelines for wattage while climbing each of these buggers. Any one of the hills by itself is nothing; collectively, they will quickly sap your reserves unless you rein in the urge to surge up them. Below is a partial elevation profile miles 15-35 - there's another 10 miles of hills not captured in this); Y axis increments are 25 feet, x axis is in miles.