Is this going to keep happening?

I stumbled across a small article from Bevan Docherty just now.

It’s an interesting situation that myself and a lot of other athletes are finding ourselves in. The races just keep following the same trend at the moment. Fast swimmers get a gap in the swim, motivated they give their all on the bike and we don’t ever see them again! Until they are running in the opposite direction on the out and back section. These days, everyone can run under 31:30 so there is not chance to catch them.

A lot of people ask me why the hell cant a group of 20 catch a small group of 5. The main problem is these 5 guys are very strong and very motivated… They never miss a turn, there is never any thought to what is happening behind them, they are fluid and give it their all! Behind them is a group of guys some strong and motivated to catch, some can’t ride hard enough to help and just get in the way, some have bad legs and want to miss turns and some don’t care because even if we did catch them they wouldn’t beat them anyway… So we end up just losing time because it’s just not organised and we’re not flowing for more then one lap at a time. When everyone sits up and stops working… that’s when the real damage is done and we lose 45 seconds a lap.

Triathlon specifically is a nightmare to motivate people and get an organised chase. There is always someone who’s not pulling their turn. What is the point in me busting my ass to bring back a chase when there are heaps of guys not pulling their weight who come the run will be faster with their fresher legs? I wish we could get organised. Ideally we would act like the pro cyclists, give them the gap and leave them out there… then bring it back just before the finish so they have been working their asses off the whole 40k and will be smashed at the end!

Des Moines is 2 days away… and there WILL be another break away and they will try to get a gap before the run. With $1,000,000 of prize money to race for I hope that we don’t sit around waiting to race for 6th again! What can you do though!?

Categories: motivation, race report, race strategy

Tags: Bevan Docherty, drafting, ITU rules, motivation, triathlon strategy

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 3:41 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.