TDF 2024:- Stage 19: Embrun – Isola 2000, 144.6km ***Spoilers***
Comments
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Not sure long stage necessarily means hard stage. It all depends how it's raced.
e.g. people run marathons for fun, but no-one does the 400 hurdles (aka the "Mankiller") for fun, as the latter has to be done pretty much flat out.
Likewise, people swim across Windemere etc. doing front crawl or breaststroke, but no-one swims more than 25 meters of butterfly for fun. (Folk race longer distances over butterfly because they are forced to by parents / coach, or because they are good at it, and will endure the awfulness for the chance of winning a gong etc.)
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After doing 10x100 reps in training, 100 or 200m fly isn't so bad. It's like what Kelly used to say about riding in bad weather. Some folks are mentally beaten from the gun.
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I wasn't really talking in terms of mentality. I was just talking about the physical realities of various events that break any automatic link between duration and difficulty. There's no realistic way to run a 400 hurdles or swim the 200 fly "easily" in the way one can spin up a HC climb in a low gear or jog a Marathon. Obviously, as both are Olympic events, they are clearly manageable for a meaningful number of folk, but after years around the swim world, I think it's fair to say that no-one would choose the 200 fly as their best event!
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