Armstrong to confirm his ironman status

Schmidthouse

http://www.theage.com.au/news/sport/arm ... 88757.html

ONCE Lance Armstrong has finished his cycling comeback, his sporting career will turn full circle.

Armstrong has confirmed widely held speculation that he will eventually compete in an ironman triathlon.

As a teenager, the record seven-time Tour de France champion was a top-class triathlete on shorter courses in the late 1980s.

But he switched to road cycling, where he has become one of the sport's greatest competitors.

"Whenever I'm done with this (comeback). I can unequivocally say yes to that," Armstrong has told the American magazine Outside about entering an ironman.

"That's a fact and I get asked that question every day. I don't know when it was, less than a year ago, that I got some of these ironman DVDs - I said 'let's see what that's all about'."

Armstrong also wants to be competitive when he tries the gruelling event.

An ironman consists of a swim of 3.8 kilometres, cycle of 180 kilometres and a run of 42.2 kilometres.

The winner finishes in around eight hours and the cut-off time for the late finishers is 15 to 17 hours. "I'm definitely motivated to do an ironman," he said. "We'll go back and I'll be close to 40, but I've swum more in the last three years than before that.

"And I don't want to just do an ironman. I don't want to approach it like I approached the marathons. I want to do it as fast as I can."

Armstrong has competed in several marathons, posting a string of finishes under three hours.

AAP

flattythehurdler

Strange suggesting that he wasn't trying to do his marathons as quickly as possible. IIRC he payed an elite marathon runner to pace him in his first marathon. Doesn't sound to me like he wasn't trying to go as fast as possible.

cougie

Did he pay him to pace him ? I've never set much faith in pacers myself - you still need to be fit enough to keep the pace. I'm sure Lance could do that by himself.

But - it will be interesting to see how he does in Ironman. I cant see he would win Kona or anything, but he will be very competitive. Top 20 maybe even Top 10 ?

DaveyL

No way he could win Kona, with guys like Macca and Alexander capable of running a 2:42 after a 4:30 bike.

To turn it round, I've often wondered how the really good bikers like Stadler, Sindballe and Lieto would get on in pro cycling.

cougie

Wasnt it Spencer Smith rode with the Linda McCartney team for a bit ?

Completely different things though - bunch racing vs 112 mile TTs - he didnt stay at it.

He's blitzed past me a couple of times in Tris. Impressive to see his speed. The git.

flattythehurdler

The German lad (aldag i think) was at lanzarote ironman in '07, but still only finished fifth (beaten on the bike leg by a swiss lady who won the ladies event). I don't reckon pro cyclists are that much faster over an IM course than the top pros. Whether the top IM pros could hack a grand Tour is highly uncertain. The drug testing at IM is notoriously sketchy.

afx237vi

Yeah but Aldag's swimming was very bad. Check out the results:

http://ironman.com/assets/files/results ... e/2006.pdf

Most of the field was doing between 50m and 1h for the swim... the top guys were doing 45m... Aldag did 1h23m!

cougie

IMDE is a bit tighter on drugs testing - but pro cycling is certainly a lot stiffer and still doping has been going on for years.....

I think Aldag was just doing it for a bit of fun ? To swim with the top boys you have to swim god knows how many k per week. Mad.

shakey88

I ain't got time for armstrong the ego or anything he says or does.
The guy is a cheat.
End of story
Can we move on please.
Supporting Cav all the way :P

monkey71

Interesting how you say Armstrong is a cheat, end of story. Move on, supporting Cav.

Armstrong may or may not have been a cheat, who knows, Cav however, is also a cheat. Hanging on to team cars to get over a climb with the bunch then winning the sprint is also cheating. End of story. Maybe that's why he lost the extra pounds in the off season.

There are other ways to cheat other than doping, and they are no worse or better than doping, it's still cheating :shock:

rockmount

shakey88 wrote:

I ain't got time for armstrong the ego or anything he says or does.
The guy is a cheat.
End of story
Can we move on please.
Supporting Cav all the way :P

And you would know

...from watching a bit of the TDF on Channel 4 ..

...no wait .. from hearing someone else, who heard someone else say it ..

colint

Jalabert has done a few ironman events, does well on the bike as you'd expect but not fantastic on the swim:


Jalabert has also taken up triathlon. In January 2007, he competed at Ironman Switzerland and finished with 9 hours 12 minutes. He exited the water in 1:16, which put him 966th after the swim. Once on the bike he made up significant ground with a 4:39 bike split, which allowed him to climb to 91st overall at the run transition. A 3:11 marathon was enough to gain an additional 69 places and finish 22nd of 1,850 participants. After Switzerland he qualified for the Ironman World championship in Kona, Hawaii, finishing in 9:19 and 76th overall.[3] In June, 2008, he finished 12th overall at Ironman France in Nice, improving his swim time to 1:06 and having the second fastest bike split

colint

shakey88 wrote:

I ain't got time for armstrong the ego or anything he says or does.
The guy is a cheat.
End of story
Can we move on please.
Supporting Cav all the way :P

no time for amrmtrong but time to comment on an armstrong thread. If you're not interested don't read the thread, start one on Cav if thats the flag you want to wave

shakey88

no time for amrmtrong but time to comment on an armstrong thread. If you're not interested don't read the thread, start one on Cav if thats the flag you want to wave. :roll:

Just expressing MY opinion.No need for all the hostility.
I realise the Armstrong doping allegations are a sensitive subject for some and if he wins the tdf by some miracle and is proved totally clean,i'll take my hat off to the guy.

colint

No hostility meant, sorry if it came across that way. Just seems streange posting on a thread about armstrong saying you don't want to talk about armstrong

andy_wrx

cougie wrote:

Did he pay him to pace him ? I've never set much faith in pacers myself - you still need to be fit enough to keep the pace. I'm sure Lance could do that by himself.

Did Lance have pacers ? I'll say he did : 2006 New York marathon
- Alberto Salazar : won the New York marathon 3 times running in the 80's, with 2:08/9 times
- German Silva : 2 times winner of New York marathon, again 2:07/8 times
- Joan Benoit Samuelson, women's Olympic marathon champion, one-time world record holder, winner of Boston, Chicago, etc
- Hicham El Guerrouj : won Olympic golds in both 1500 & 5000m in 2004, world record holder, etc, etc
Aparently Benoit Samuelson was ahead of Armstrong, elbowing people out of the way.
http://www.newrunner.com/article/0,7120 ... -3,00.html

I wonder what I could take off my mara PB with help like that ?
(-if I'm honest, probably not a lot... :oops:)

DaveyL

Re the recruitng of famous guys to pace him - I think part of that was publicity. I think that there are pacers anyway in the New York marathon.

andy_wrx

"Part of it was publicity" ?
- ALL of it was publicity.

There are indeed pacers - for the front of the race.

What we're talking about here is 4 world-class-from-a-few-years-ago athletes pacing someone expected to finish about an hour after the winner in 800&somethingth place...

NY 2006, with these pacers, he managed 2:59:37
- his target was sub-3:00, so he managed that (good for him !) but needed a lot of help and pushing by these pacers to get sub-3:00, needed 4 months to recover - "without a doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done."

NY 2007, having trained better and lost 3kg, 2:46:43 without pacers

Boston 2008 2:50:58

(he's about 3/4 hour quicker than me...)

cougie

I know he had pacers - I was questioning whether he paid them or not. I'm thinking Nike may have sorted it for him - more for publicity rather than Lances PB ?

If I was Lance I'd hate for my pacer to be a bloke who can run about 50% faster than me ! You'd be dying on your arse and he'd be wittering away without a care in the world !

DaveyL

andy_wrx wrote:

"Part of it was publicity" ?
- ALL of it was publicity.

There are indeed pacers - for the front of the race.

What we're talking about here is 4 world-class-from-a-few-years-ago athletes pacing someone expected to finish about an hour after the winner in 800&somethingth place...

NY 2006, with these pacers, he managed 2:59:37
- his target was sub-3:00, so he managed that (good for him !) but needed a lot of help and pushing by these pacers to get sub-3:00, needed 4 months to recover - "without a doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done."

NY 2007, having trained better and lost 3kg, 2:46:43 without pacers

Boston 2008 2:50:58

(he's about 3/4 hour quicker than me...)

I recently read Haruki Murakami's book "What I talk about when I talk about running" and I am sure he talks about starting off the New York marathon following the 2:45 pace runner and dropping back to the 2:50 guy after several miles.

Is that the front of the race?

flattythehurdler

afx237vi wrote:

Yeah but Aldag's swimming was very bad. Check out the results:

http://ironman.com/assets/files/results ... e/2006.pdf

Most of the field was doing between 50m and 1h for the swim... the top guys were doing 45m... Aldag did 1h23m!

I meant he came fifth on the bike leg/split. His swim explains how he overtook me on the bike. I thought it was my burst of speed over the first 20k.