Category: Racing

2024 Ironman Texas Training Review

paschmann

It has been a great 16 weeks training for Ironman Texas coming up next week. One small injury (foot) from either running or pushing too hard off the wall while swimming. Some interesting stats through these training blocks:

Longest week: 18 hours
Max CTL: 116
Max TSS: 144
Cumulative Miles: 2161
3 week blocks, with 1 week rest. 2 week taper into the race.

Compared with past Ironman races, used the sauna during the last 3 weeks to get more heat adapted, and did a little more strength based workouts. (Not tracked in Intervals). I also focused more on Z2 efforts while running. The Oak Island Half Marathon got me running a lot more early season. Overall, I had some good PR’s during the last 4 months: read more

Reynolds Disc Wheel Cover

paschmann

I could not justify spending $1500+ on a aero disc wheel, so I went with a more budget friendly alternative from the company EZGains. It is essentially a disc cover which can be attached to your existing wheel set with nearly identical benefits as a traditional disc wheel.

Below are some interesting statistics regarding disc wheels and these types of aero gains: (From EZGains website)

Tests 31st January 2023 using rim tape and a rider holding the exact position within the green lines set out from base ride.

The idea was to validate that putting one of these covers on your wheel actually makes you faster. Spoiler – it does! We had an array of quality carbon wheels of different depths with EZDisc covers for each, one aluminium box rimmed training wheel, one relatively cheap disc wheel and one relatively expensive disc wheel to play with. The test itself was with the wheels on my TT bike, with the wheels spinning, without a rider. Why? The rider adds far more drag than a wheel so unintentional movements can mask the differences the wheels make. We tested with wind speeds of 30, 40 and 50kmph, with wind angles of -15 degrees through to 15 degrees. The results were unequivocal! This graph shows lines, one per wheel, for the aerodynamic drag (the “CDA“), including the bike, against the wind angle (the “yaw”). It’s averaged across the wind speeds. The lower the CDA, the better. As you’d expect the training wheel performed worst (the top line in dark grey).Then there is a group of all the carbon wheels. Surprisingly the depths from 38 to 88 all performed similarly, with the deeper rims just outperforming the shallower ones at higher yaws. Then there is a grouping containing the real disc wheels and the disc wheels with covers. There’s very little difference between these. These distinct groupings show the disc covers improving the aerodynamics of the wheels up to the same performance as normal disc wheels! Bearing in mind these are a fraction of the cost, this is a pretty big finding! What do those figures mean in terms of racing? Plugging the differences between the wheels with and without the disc into a calculator or directly using the formula you can work it out the saving. read more

2023 Ironman – Texas

paschmann

Reasonably last minute, 11 weeks before the event, I decided to sign up for Ironman Texas … a full distance Triathlon has been on my bucket list for a while now. Overall the race did not go according to plan, but most importantly I finished and it was very rewarding experience. Doing something this long for the first time is hard 🙂 Here are a few photos from the event, my favorite was the fun area of “Hippie Hollow”.

Endurance Racing – Sweat Loss

paschmann

As one of the three important Fuel and Hydration, sweat loss, and more specifically, the replacement of fluids, is an incredibly important aspect of endurance racing, and is strongly correlated to race day survival, performance and recovery. The other two aspects, fuel (primarily carbohydrates) and electrolytes (primarily sodium) are the other two components. Without any one of the three, long distance and endurance events, or races, become considerably more challenging, and the chances of you finishing, drastically diminish.

Understanding how much fluid you have to consume during an event is determined by a variety of factors and variables. A few of the variables:

Time of Day, Heat, Humidity, Diet, and Effort. In addition, your sweat rate is unique and may also change throughout your life. Unlike your relative sodium concentration, which generally is constant throughout your life and in the majority of circumstances. read more