It's common for Ironman athletes to "shop a bike course," searching out information on the relative difficulty of bike courses and usually focusing on the total elevation gain. However, in our experience, elevation gain doesn't tell the complete story about the relative difficulty of Ironman bike courses.
Rather, the primary consideration should be how easy or difficult the bike course is to "figure out." That is:
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A 140.6-mile race is too long of a problem to solve with fitness alone. Rather, success at the Ironman distance is about the application of your fitness to the course via excellent race execution skills. On race day you put this fitness and your race execution skills in a box, drive that box around the course, and make decisions all day.
The contents of this Race Execution Skills Box are:
The Ironman bike course will present you with several types of decisions to make on race day. Below are our notes for each:
You're used to seeing a heart rate of X, power of Y, and Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) of Z in the temperatures you've seen in training at your goal Ironman effort. That effort has an associated nutrition and hydration plan.
But on race day it's much hotter. You must make an adjustment to that plan, deciding on a course of action and then executing that action. So while the frequency of that decision is very low, the length of time across which you apply that decision is very long, all day. Smart, disciplined athletes with opportunities to adapt to the heat want hot races because they will make good choices while their competition makes poor choices.
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Whether you're confronted with a head, tail, or crosswind, you need to make an adjustment to your pacing plan. Or do you? Actually, you don't, and shouldn't, and here's why:
These may appear to be particularly dangerous but they're not. Why? Because they are relatively easy to identify and figure out. That is, it's relatively easy to understand that when you make the left in Wilmington and start riding back into Lake Placid, you'll be mostly climbing for 45 to 60 minutes.
Sure, there are some grade changes in that stretch and it's not a grinding climb, but most patient, disciplined, smart athletes can wrap their heads around the fact that they'll be going mostly up for the better part of an hour and that they should just chill.
These are the killers of Ironman run splits. Why? Because short, steep hills force you to make many, many decisions. It's very easy to make wrong decisions—too much power—on these hills, and they are short enough that your heart rate probably never rises to a level that's a true reflection of your effort.
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