How would you ride this course? (Ironman Muskoka Elevation Profile)

Dave Tallo

Take a gander at the bike profile for Ironman Muskoka.   Given the sawtooth nature of the elevation, and absolutely no flat, how would you ride this course?  Are there any key tactics you would employ?  

http://www.strava.com/routes/746319

The following stands out to me, but I welcome input.

-11-28, compact, be prepared to shift all day

-plan to carry speed from descent into next hill

-most climbs probably done in 'gear 4' - only a few sustained in 'gear  3'

-be prepared to sit up on climbs more than you would like

-on descents, clearly identify the speed you will spin out, choose to easy pedal, choose to coast, etc

-on descents, look for every opportunity to ride tangents, take aggressive line  

 

 

 

 

 

tim cronk

Dave I would spend some time on bestbikesplit.com .... punch in all your numbers , specially the IF you intend to ride and the %max of the IF you would like , then dont bother looking at the race intervals there will just be too many , but instead just look at the cheat sheet power numbers to give you an idea of what to ride and where , also play with wind direction based on the forecast as this changes how you would apply those numbers as well.... The only other thing I can think of and I'm sure you'll get to it , if you havent already , is go ride the course a couple times to familiarize yourself of where you can punch up and over the next rise with momentum and also what gears to use throughout the course...

John Withrow

Wow! ~8,200' of gain. That is going to wear a lot of people out. You're super fast, but this isn't going to be a fast course. Therefore your TSS numbers on the ride will simply be higher than normal from a longer time on the course. I'm usually the one to err on the more aggressive side, but if there's any course to ride conservatively, this is probably it... I'd make sure you're in a position to really crank it at the tops and crests of the hills so you can get up to speed quickly on the downhills. Certainly descend as much as you can in the on the aerobars, provided it is safe. Have you recon'ed the course? Any crazy blind turns on the downhills? The hills all look "punchy" on the Strava profile, but I'll bet they're longer than you think My guess is that you'll be doing "most" of your climbing in gear 3, not gear 4. Certainly carry as much speed as you can from the downhills up the start of the uphills. Maybe review Coach P's thread from last yr about riding rollers in the big ring, but I think that will only apply for the bottom parts of each hill.

Looks like an awesome bike course! Good luck!

Jeff Sullivan

Listening to some locals who did the 70.3 last month....I understand the road conditions to be suspect as well....lots of pothole repairs & reverse potholes (like a pimple) due to heavy frost heaves this past winter....not many straight sections either...good luck

svetore

Dave, It's diffidently a challenge course, I raced the half there last month and the half is longer than the normal 90km, it's actually 94km. I absolutely know this course hands down. Yes, hitting this course twice would mean a much well reserve when rounding the 1^st loop. Gear 3 would be a wise choice for sure, although once you finish the mixed set of climbs and rollers (North Portage & Dwight Beach Rd) at the start you hit hwy 35 which is about 40k in. This part is pretty smooth in most stretches and joins in with hwy 117 which they just recently paved. A caution too when you reach Dwight Beach Rd, this descent is pretty uneven and badly needs to be re-pave. Coming off Hwy 117 to Brunel Road you again are in more climbs, the last section heading on South Portage Rd you can get some good speed off these rollers. This section is a little like IMMT coming back from the last out and back at (Lac Superieur) but the climbs are much tougher. I rode this too with a 11-28 and my descents mostly did carry speed to the next hill. I wasn't up too often maybe on a few end climbs and mostly in the big ring. I see you are from TO I'm close by in Markham, were to you usually ride? If you ever want to hook up for a ride I'm close to the Major Mack and the McCowan area. I would usually be riding up north this weekend in the Muskoka's but work has brought me back to TO this week finishing off the ParaPan Games. All the best in the race on the 30^th!

Al Truscott

I would defer to those with actual on-road experience, but looking at this course on Ride With GPS : http://ridewithgps.com/routes/8556637, which allows you to microselect very short intervals and examine the gradient almost meter by meter, this course is probably quite amenable to being ridden a LOT in the aerobar. *Most* of the distance  the grades are well under 7%, which is my personal trigger for beginning to get out of the bars. Here's an example (sorry its not metric, thats what I get here in USA):

A lot of the saw teeth appear to be more in the nature of what I would call rollers rather than dramatic steep pops. So here is my off-the-cuff advice based on a brief look;

Selected distance:	1.0 mi
Elevation:	+117/ -84 ft
Max Grade	4.0 %
Avg. Grade	1.0 %

• Ride this as if you were Rich Strauss at Wisconsin - this course has a gazillion opportunities to make small mistakes which by their sheer number will add up to a rough run is you;re not careful.
• This course would be best ridden with electronic shifting - if you;ve got Di2, make sure you start with a full battery, cause you'll be shifting A LOT.
• Except for a few steeper sections, you should be able to stay aero and within 1-2 % of your planned IF.
• Avoid the temptation to hammer up the shorter rises - there are simply too many of them to make that a viable strategy for a 112 mile ride. Unless you;ve got thighs the size of Withrow's, I guess.

I suggest you look at the Ride With GPS map/elevation profile and play with the micro selection (just drag along the elevation profile any segment you like, as short as several hundred meters). And of course your pre-ride experience on the course itself will trump all of our advice.

jaleslie

Holy crap.  You asked how I would ride this course...(after IMC bike just kicked my butt)....I would NOT ride this course! (unless I did not need to run a marathon afterwards).  I have nothing helpful to add due to lack of experience/strength/knowledge of this course and IM in general, but it looks brutal.  Hope the road conditions are better than reported and that you can ride it before the race.   Never flat seems like the best explanation of this one. Good luck and skill!  

Dave Tallo

Thanks, guys. This is gold.









@Tim: I'll deep-dive Best Bike Split this weekend. And I'[m suitably convinced to get on course next weekend ... as much as I loathe the 5 hours of driving it'll entail. Cost of doing business, I suppose.




@John: Good insights. Based on your comments, I'm going to model my ride on course as loop 1 = hills done at lower gear 3, loop 2=take feedback from body and numbers in loop 1, and either try gear 3 or 4. But my main takeaway is 'if there were ever a course to ride conservatively, this is it."




@ Jeff/Steven - thanks a lot for the intel. Steven, I actually ride McCowan and the Warden / Greenbelt circuit up to Lake Simcoe every weekend, year in, year out. I'm the grumpy looking dude in aero position yelling at the fifty-or-so peletons on Warden to share the road. We should definitely get some riding done on our local roads!




@Al - thanks for the Ride with GPS pointer. I'll do that. And I know exactly what you're getting at with "Ride like Rich in Wisconsin" - this was actually one of my starting points for strategy! Last, I'm surprised with the observation that this is a course that could be be ridden in aero - from the high-level profile, I didn't expect that at all, but you've done the analysis much more thoroughly than I have, so I'm going to use your comment as a starting point, and view the RwGPS/BBS/actual ride on course from this perspective.




@Jeff - thanks. Some of my strategy points on this will be the same as Canada (although that was a sh*tshow for different reasons ...); mainly, it's 'ride without making mistakes, and remember that no matter how long the bike actually shakes out as, there's a marathon that you have to run, strongly, after that.'









Thanks again, everyone, for the great insights. Definitely game-changing, or at least game-shifting, advice here.

Dave Tallo

Postscript: Definitely worthwhile to have spent the day riding this course. There's a lot going on, that's for sure. What stood out for me:

-Although there's a ludicrous amount of climbing, I was able to bring my if to about .68 when taking the more significant climbs as gear 3 default.

-the course has a section that's a good hour (x2 loops, so a total of 2h) of rolling, but 100% could be done in aero at a good sustained clip

-I count just short of 2 hours at 37kph or faster (on non-aero setup ... so add some time). Having a descent strategy, being able to find and maintain a head-down, shoulders-shrugged aero position, and taking the plug out of the Garneau p-09 (it's faster with no plug at >36kph, sez science) will exploit this.

-I found a few "Rich at Wisconsin" style sections where pushing to maintain momentum across crests, carrying speed into corners, etc, will be worth a minute or so. Maybe another lap of the course in the car will find a few more seconds here or there.

-I'll be riding a lot of the course with my sunglasses on my nose ... the technical bits are in the shade of large trees, and it will be massively risky to have anything except of perfect view of the road imperfections.  They are plentiful and dangerous. 

-Ride the many, many tangents in kms 1-15, 70-90, 100-105, and 170-180.    

-there isn't a flat to be found on the run. Cadence and mechanical advantage will be better than muscling it through.

-know where bottle handoffs occur, and don't carry unnecessary weight if you can avoid it.  

jaleslie

Dave....so cool.  Sounds like a fun course, provided the roads are closed to traffic and/or the lanes are wide enough to pass.  Mostly big chainring?....or back and forth from small to big?  I always find it tempting to stay in the big chainring and give up some cadence when it's a "close call"....but I know that's not smart racing.  You obviously won't have as much issue with this as a low w/kg guy like me!

Looking forward to seeing you race this.  This is a first for this site at full distance right?  

JL

Dave Tallo

I was all over the place between small and large chainring. Too bad, because I secretly had hoped I could use a single up front, but this is definitely the wrong course and time to try that experiment. I definitely need whatever will keep me spinning and in the saddle. And yes, this is the full distance, and the link at the top shows the whole profile as 2 x loops.

svetore

Hey Dave....great to see you got a feel of the course last week. A bunch of us are heading over Sunday to spectate, it will be interesting to see how many athletes will be challenging this full distance course for the first time. Weather is looking fantastic too for Sunday...looking forward in seeing you race this course! 

Dave Tallo

Good stuff, Steven! Look for me on course - I'll be the guy with the glazed look and white EN run jersey.