. . . to loose bike fitness. At least it is in Scotland. With the various injuries I’ve been having I’ve had the chance to push the turbo training however and have been doing long rides indoors and breaking my previous bests by some way.
Not as stable as you might expect from a turbo ride but no one is perfect! I’ve been doing 1hr warm up to 300 watts then a main set of 3x30min at 300-320 watts, here averaging 308, 309, 295 so you can see I was laboring by the last one. It’s not just the legs though, it’s other parts of the anatomy. The red stars indicate where I’ve needed to stand for comfort reasons. In the 1st couple of hours that’s only every 10min but by the 3rd it’s every 5 making the power much more erratic. 273 for 4:30 is enough for an Ironman on a reasonably fast course so I’m pleased to be riding or at least have the potential to ride like this in December.
I’m picking the bike up with the SRM dura ace crank latter so I’m hoping for an ego boost as it always reads higher compared to the powertap I was using here.
Whatever records have been set and however hard we work to break them there is nothing surer than that someone else will be working harder and longer to break them again and again. That is the nature of records unlike rules they are they are not just meant to be broken but have to be broken.
There has been a lot of articles and analysis over the last couple of years (such as this or this) on the limits of human performance trying to model or predict the fastest possible marathon. Most predictions sit at just over the 2hour mark a feet that would have been considered unachievable 100 years ago. Haile Gebrselassies almost incomprehensible 2h03:59 in Berlin in 2008 was fast but the very act of breaking 2hr4min has made it inevitable that 2hr3min will be broken. The target has shifted and the athletes will believe more is possible. Will power and belief will win over biology at the limit of human performance I’m sure.
Beyond the limit of human performance, a former Dundee researcher and formerGerman triathlon team member Henning Wackerhage went on record in the press after a conference saying a 90min marathon was possible if we adopted all the genetic enhancements that are known to boost performance and metabolism. This was with the caveat however that the combination of genetic alterations would probably be fatal.
Something like this guy but well. . . . a bit faster?
The reason I’m thinking about this is of course because the Scottish Ironman record was broken by Scott Neyedli this month with an exceptional 8:17:47 at Ironman Western Australia, you should read his blog. I wasn’t surprised to loose the record because Scott had certainly shown the potential to go at least as fast as this over the last few years while targeting perhaps less competitive slower races.
The truth is the Scottish Ironman record is in the 1920s, we are not close to the limits of human performance just yet neither myself. Scott was the first Scott to break 9hrs believe it or not but I now hear he wants to be the first to break 8hrs. If he does that we’ll be in to the next century and although I’m not sure that will happen the very act of believing it will get him some of the way there. Of course I don’t think it will take 80 years for any Scott to break 8hrs but that’s because there’s obviously talent and motivating factors that reach further outside Scotland such as the world championships or the much doubted world record of 7:50:27 held by Luc Van Lierde.
Part of my justification to myself for continuing sport was that if I can break records I must be able to play a role in the development of a sport in a country because a record will drive others to beat it. I still believe that as I’m finding a new drive now myself.
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