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At least one of the participants could have evidently vastly improved his experience by learning how to shift gears on a bicycle. And no, endurance events like

At least one of the participants could have evidently vastly improved his experience by learning how to shift gears on a bicycle. And no, endurance events like these are all about preparation and hours put in. Your yearly training time should be vastly beyond the 5 days here.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago
> learning how to shift gears on a bicycle. I presume you're quoting from the caption: > Jerome Libecki spent more than 300 miles of the bike leg in the wrong gear. He had slipped into the Quintuple Anvil field despite having never competed in a triathlon before. I am confident that the athlete knew how to shift gears on a bicycle. Check his bio here: https://www.crowdrise.com/WineWomenShoes/fundraiser/jerrylibecki https://www.crowdrise.com/WineWomenShoes/fundraiser/jerrylib.... It describes an experienced athlete, and it's entirely possible that in the many running races and biking races, he'd never done a tri. However, a tri bike or road bike does not have an indication of what gear you're in. You check it at the start and then mentally keep track, or look down between your legs or around your hips - and it's difficult on a modern 10-speed cassette to look behind you and know if you're in 5 or 6. You're shifting based on perceived effort, which is obviously distorted after a few hours on the bike. So after the race you might look at your cadence and speed records from your bike computer and realize you went faster or slower than you wanted to.
- revelation 10y ago
  There are no "gear indicators" on there because what gear you are in is quite meaningless, as you correctly noticed ("based on perceived effort"). Aside from a little dance on the chainrings you shift up and down merely to keep cadence in check. And yeah, we might all be guilty of starting to turn over too big a gear as the mind wanders, but surely not to the extent that somebody needs to tell you to shift up, which would of course mean you are spinning too fast with little actual effort.
- diziet 10y ago
  Another way you'd typically do it is some sort of mental estimation based on cadence, slope and power meter output, but even this does get hard after many hours.
- hondo77 10y ago
  > ...and it's difficult on a modern 10-speed cassette to look behind you and know if you're in 5 or 6. For a little clarification: it's not so hard on modern 11-speed cassettes to tell if you're in 5 or 6...unless you've been racing for two or three days straight. ;-)
hondo77 10y ago
> And no, endurance events like these are all about preparation and hours put in. If you don't think there is a significant mental portion to endurance events like these, then I must assume that you have no idea what you're talking about.
kj01a 10y ago
You sound like you're saying that if these athletes had prepared more than they would have been able to finish the event. There is literally no amount of training that will guarantee finishing. If you think there is, then I'm willing to be you've never done an endurance event longer than a 5k run...
- revelation 10y ago
  I don't get it, what do you suggest to increase your chances of finishing, ice cream? I've this year done the equivalent of ten everest in elevation and 5000mi+ in distance. So I'm not sure what the deal is with the personal attacks.
  - kj01a 10y ago
    >increase your chances of finishing Now you're saying something different. Which is it, are these races "all about" preparation, or is preparation only a way to increase your chances? I'm saying there is an upper limit to what you can prepare for. Assuming your 5000+ claim is true, even if a portion of that was part of a marathon or two, you still wouldn't have a metric to understand a race like this. It's in a different class. If you've won a few county fair hot dog eating contests by eating 40 hot dogs, you wouldn't be giving tips to a participant of a contest to eat 400. It's beyond the limits of normal human capacity. So maybe training can increase your chances, but it is not the deciding factor. A fat dude trying this race would have 0 chance of finishing, but the fittest dude on earth would still have a chance closer to 0 than to 1.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago

> learning how to shift gears on a bicycle. I presume you're quoting from the caption: > Jerome Libecki spent more than 300 miles of the bike leg in the wrong gear. He had slipped into the Quintuple Anvil field despite having never competed in a triathlon before. I am confident that the athlete knew how to shift gears on a bicycle. Check his bio here: https://www.crowdrise.com/WineWomenShoes/fundraiser/jerrylibecki https://www.crowdrise.com/WineWomenShoes/fundraiser/jerrylib.... It describes an experienced athlete, and it's entirely possible that in the many running races and biking races, he'd never done a tri. However, a tri bike or road bike does not have an indication of what gear you're in. You check it at the start and then mentally keep track, or look down between your legs or around your hips - and it's difficult on a modern 10-speed cassette to look behind you and know if you're in 5 or 6. You're shifting based on perceived effort, which is obviously distorted after a few hours on the bike. So after the race you might look at your cadence and speed records from your bike computer and realize you went faster or slower than you wanted to.

revelation 10y ago
There are no "gear indicators" on there because what gear you are in is quite meaningless, as you correctly noticed ("based on perceived effort"). Aside from a little dance on the chainrings you shift up and down merely to keep cadence in check. And yeah, we might all be guilty of starting to turn over too big a gear as the mind wanders, but surely not to the extent that somebody needs to tell you to shift up, which would of course mean you are spinning too fast with little actual effort.
diziet 10y ago
Another way you'd typically do it is some sort of mental estimation based on cadence, slope and power meter output, but even this does get hard after many hours.
hondo77 10y ago
> ...and it's difficult on a modern 10-speed cassette to look behind you and know if you're in 5 or 6. For a little clarification: it's not so hard on modern 11-speed cassettes to tell if you're in 5 or 6...unless you've been racing for two or three days straight. ;-)

hondo77 10y ago

> And no, endurance events like these are all about preparation and hours put in. If you don't think there is a significant mental portion to endurance events like these, then I must assume that you have no idea what you're talking about.

kj01a 10y ago

You sound like you're saying that if these athletes had prepared more than they would have been able to finish the event. There is literally no amount of training that will guarantee finishing. If you think there is, then I'm willing to be you've never done an endurance event longer than a 5k run...

revelation 10y ago
I don't get it, what do you suggest to increase your chances of finishing, ice cream? I've this year done the equivalent of ten everest in elevation and 5000mi+ in distance. So I'm not sure what the deal is with the personal attacks.
- kj01a 10y ago
  >increase your chances of finishing Now you're saying something different. Which is it, are these races "all about" preparation, or is preparation only a way to increase your chances? I'm saying there is an upper limit to what you can prepare for. Assuming your 5000+ claim is true, even if a portion of that was part of a marathon or two, you still wouldn't have a metric to understand a race like this. It's in a different class. If you've won a few county fair hot dog eating contests by eating 40 hot dogs, you wouldn't be giving tips to a participant of a contest to eat 400. It's beyond the limits of normal human capacity. So maybe training can increase your chances, but it is not the deciding factor. A fat dude trying this race would have 0 chance of finishing, but the fittest dude on earth would still have a chance closer to 0 than to 1.