Has Age Group Racing Jumped Up A Level? | The GTN Show Ep. 356

This week we’re discussing whether age group racing has gone up a level – the results from Ironman Hamburg certainly suggest so! Also, we cover the drama from the women’s race at Hamburg, dive further into the Norwegian method, look into some £8,000 wheels, get into race news and MUCH more!

00:00 Welcome to the GTN Show!
00:31 Reacts!
00:43 Drama at women’s Ironman Hamburg
03:20 Sara Svensk almost took out Els Visser!
04:06 Day 27 of 120 Ironmans in 120 days
04:43 Tri News
04:56 Age Group men running sub-8 Ironmans!
07:08 Has age group racing jumped up a level THAT much?
08:40 New Ironman partner: DAZN
10:12 Tech News: What the tech?!
10:22 The Norwegian method
11:47 Rapha Blaerosuit
13:26 £8,799 Evo Pro Wheelset
14:36 Fusion: In-house wind tunnel to develop their clothing?
15:39 Race news
15:47 Ironman Hamburg results
17:26 Race between Sam Dickinson & Jonny Brownlee
20:05 Ironman Switzerland
21:02 Challenge Salou, Gunsan, and the Half Gastiez
22:01 Anticipating San Francisco T-100
23:40 Ironman 70.3 Boulder
23:46 Tri-Spy! We zoom in on a pro
24:54 Say What?!
26:10 Coming up this week

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welcome back to the gtn show yeah welcome this week we’re discussing whether AG group racing has gone up a level yeah this weekend’s results would certainly suggest so wow it was very impressive also we got a lot of drama from the women’s race at Iron Man Hamburg and we have more of the Norwegian method and some 8,000 Wheels [Music] okay kicking off with reacts as we normally do things we spotted on social media this past week just a few really I mean we’re going to get on to the full results from Iron Man Hamburg later on the show but first off and many of you may have seen this already there was a lot of drama out there in particular Kat Matthews seemed to experience quite a lot of it yeah she definitely got her year of the drama although there was a lot of drama somehow in that race uh but yeah as cat Matthews got disqualified uh she posted afterwards an explanation of what happened uh she had already had a problem which she posted about also but she they had race Ranger at this right and if there’s red light shows they had told them explicitly before that if you see the red light and you don’t continue and overtake the red light means you’re within that draft Zone and you don’t continue and overtake you’re going to get a draft in penalty five minutes end of discussion they had also told them that there was a no overtaking Zone and Cat Matthews saw red literally and she overtook because she was terrified of getting a penalty and it was the not overtake zone so she got it disqualified immediately ah yeah like that autopilot just kicks in it is it’s a very brutal one I mean you you definitely have to say those are the rules that no overtake zones are there for a reason for safety especially on the back of what we saw in Hamburg last year which was tragic uh so they have changed the course made safer and then these are the kind of rules they put in place like no overtaking zones to make it more safe uh but kmew is on the receiving end of that and it kind of really affects her season because she’s really going for this Pro Series right the IR man Pro Series and if you really want to go for that you kind of need three scoring n man’s full distances and she’s also signed up for the t00 series so where does she make up the other yeah not there’s not much room between a breathing room I she was having a bit of a tough day um I really feel for her she had a mechanical issue um on the bike it seemed like her hydration Mount or the bottle C snapped off and then she was fumbling on the side trying to take off uh the bottle and pop it in the rear amount and then trying to do something with the cage and all sort I me rules you can’t discard anything on course so she’s got like this broken mount with a cage and a bottle and another piece of whatever it was the mount and she’s going to carry them with it but they’re not attached to her VK anymore and amazing she actually managed to eat back into her deficit that she lost through that and was actually really doing quite well and sort of you know knowing cats run um prow she probably could have gone on to perform very well if not win the race um and then obviously got the DQ say oh man brutal really really unlucky uh there was some other drama there too there’s also this post by TR rating our friend toston uh who who lives in Hamburg and he posted this photo of a very tight 180 turn at the end of the bike where uh yeah SAR Sphinx kind of broke break a little bit too late it looks like because it is just an out and back that section she was down there somebody came off and you just see her actually on the footage just like snaking scared straight into the back of El’s Vis what I was impressed at is El’s visit actually stayed upright I did get a puncture soon after which I don’t know if it was caused by this or not but um yeah quite impressive skills by her yeah we get to the full results of V man Hamburg a little bit later on we’d also discuss the standings in the Pro Series uh moving on with this one as Jonas dman who today should be on day 27 W of a 120 Iron Man’s in 120 days so he’s well he’s not even a quarter of the way there yeah we we did say we wouldn’t necessarily do this in every show but I think we have done it in every show so far but it is really impressive yeah every week it gets more impressive so you kind of want to mention it so and he still he still seems in High Spirits which is great and we are going to actually catch up with him very soon out with challenge Roth and he’ll be literally halfway through this whole challenge so yeah stay forward to that maybe not do the whole thing with him but some of it right now for the TR news uh this week we’re going to discuss IR man Hamburg and not the Pro Racing though we’ll get on to those results uh very shortly but for once we’re can actually talk about the age group racing because it was fast okay so for example the top three age group Men went sub eight hours the top five age group Men ran 248 or quicker with two guys running a 241 only one guy in the top 10 ran slower than 257 that’s insane has the age group racing just gone up a level I yeah I don’t know that is insane I mean the fastest age group at this one L vicker who was actually on the zon academy uh said a new Iron Man amateur World Rec called is the fastest time ever by an amateur uh now he does have an engine and we’re not terribly surprised that he’s going fast but this fast he actually went to the real Olympics in the men’s coxes for for rowing so he knows how to work hard and he knows how to suffer the next cam worth although he’s 37 so I don’t think he’s going to go pro now still it is incredibly impressive and the thing is it’s not just him now it was a fast day of racing wasn’t it it was yeah and now before we get onto that I mean people are going to jump in and go yeah but it’s a short course and various things like that we’ve actually looked into this and we’ve had a look at various athlet straa files and various stuff the swims on the most part are between 3,900 to 4,000 MERS so if anything a little bit long on the bike yes a tiny bit short between 176 to 178 km and On The Run between around 41.7 to 42 kilm so yes a little bit short but not half an hour quicker and it’s well within sort of the parameters that we see a lot of other events running within so yeah definitely I mean I don’t think you can really say this was this fast because of the short course Hamburg is a fast course and it was a new back course they did change it from last last year because of that accident and it’s changed previously since a while ago when they first started the event so it’s got faster and faster and the run is also ideal for fast run times it’s leps so you can really take them off it’s flat and it’s around the the bay and it’s also protected from any wind so the conditions were ideal but still has age group racing jumped up that much I mean we’re actually looking back because you’ve won this race before albe it on a slightly different course we can’t um exactly yeah but I went over eight hours to win the pro division then I mean different course but still like you’re barely winning the women’s Pro one in8 hours now the women’s winner was 819 which is the fifth fastest ever uh women’s ey distance race so it was a fast day it is a fast course but seriously has AG group racing gone up that much I mean is there something we missing here it is scary isn’t it I mean um are these top age groupers basically training like pro athletes is that what it takes these days to go and win your age group um I think they always have there’s always been age groupers who you know have trust funds or whatever and train a whole lot or have the support of something like with Triathlon Academy and really train hard and then post fast times but this is just Next Level it’s very impressive and we’re not suggesting anything more than this it’s more just wow uh things seem to have moved on significantly and we got put the question out there to you guys leave your comment down below if you think you have an explanation for why it is this one was so particularly fast and why the level of it seems like everybody in the age group is is so much higher at this Tech maybe it’s the tech these days we might ignore the third place finish to be fair I didn’t I didn’t have super shoes back when I want they didn’t exist then well that is a major thing that is a major thing all right moving on and I men have announced a new partner uh now I’m going to ask Mark to to pronounce the name of this partner that I men have joined with before I tell you what dazen that’s not right sounds like a washing detergent or something don’t know dazen da it’s it’s not what is it it is Doone oh of course yeah of course oh sorry ZN yeah to be fair I had to Google it went on YouTube and they had a bunch of pro athletes who were like how do you pronounce this and they were all like Doone obviously done obviously here’s their check for $1,000 I had no idea apparently uh maybe genen Z can leave vows out of all their words and know how to pronounce them but I certainly didn’t it’s called The Zone it’s kind of like YouTube for sport so it’s a free streaming platform where you can stream all different kinds of sports and now they’ve partnered with Iron Man so they’ll be pres presenting all the Iron Man Pro Series for the rest of the year and for the next two years uh so you can watch them live streamed around the world excluding the USA Canada and China I believe but everywhere else in the world you’ll be able to stream it on this platform uh those races which is a pretty cool partnership I they’ve gone all it’s been all over the place right trying to find where the where the coverage is for Iron Man events Etc and now it’s all going to be in one place it’s going to be on this platform where you where you can see it and the coverage is also getting better as we saw this weekend at at Ironman Hamburg so uh yeah it’s moving in the right direction pretty cool partnership that one all right now time for what the tech and a few quick bze chunks of tech this week starting with the Norwegians who have put out a new video about their process of getting ready for the Olympic Games and getting uh gusta Eden back to Fitness because he’s obviously not going to olymp games uh in fact we’re not sure when he’s going to race again but he is trying to get back to Fitness uh they’ve put out a whole video about what they’re doing at altitude Sierra Nevada mountains and getting ready they’ve got core sensors all over them they’re using body rocket technology Etc you could watch the video it’s a lot of explanation about everything that they’re doing and how they’re getting ready what are we saying Mark is Christian BL defend his gold medal I mean be hard to bet against him I was I was going to say but with Alex Y and Hayden wild he’s not been in the same form he was leading into Tokyo either I mean leading into Tokyo he was doing a bit better than he is now and obviously he’s done a lot in between that that makes him one of the best Tri athletes in the world has ever seen but he’s not quite at the form World Triathlon but you can’t argue with them leaving no stone and turned I mean gez they do a lot of testing and we’ve seen it all over the social media body rocket and various people doing all this testing so if they don’t get any more results though does everyone going to just go you know what the Norwegian method do didn’t actually work and just go back I mean cor James they’ve had pretty good result pry good results too I’m excited to see obviously the surpass suit with the the core temperatures under so it’d be interested to see what comes of all of that testing moving on and also this weekend was a big weekend in the gravel world we had the Unbound gravel event now we’ve spoken a lot about gravel racing on the channel before and they are becoming more and more upset Ted around aerodynamics and various things that we’ve seen them using aerob bars during racing bit like following Tron 30 years later down the line kind of and you’d think very different events but actually there are some similarities I guess longdistance events very much self-sufficient and this whole kind of push towards aerodynamics and things like that like Triathlon 30 years ago yeah exactly now we have seen the athletes ping bladders down the front of their suits like they have in Triathlon they’ve actually brought out a couple of products or some brands have uh this last week for the Unbound gravel event so castelli with their unlimited Pro Jersey and Rafa with their blero suit and basically what they’ve got is a pocket on the back of the jersey that you just slot the bladder down and then bring the straw around it just got me thinking is that kind of design we might see coming into Triathlon maybe Sanders really try that in cona here yeah I mean mean a lot of people have done it with r Artis did it years know but a lot of them are doing it and they’re just chucking bladders down there but there’s no specific design for holding the bladders yet not that we know of that are kind of produced for Mass Market or people to buy I’m just saying it you know there are some cross we see someone riding a Kenyon Speed Max imagine we did we did debate and all blend together into yeah anyway we really enjoyed gravel Triathlon so maybe they should just merge them together exactly and mov be on we have some rather exciting Wheels coming up so from German wheel specialist light weight they have just announced and released their Fern Evo Pro wheel set which been described as being designed for Riders who have tried the rest and are ready for the best and James guess how much you pay for those I should have think Mark £ 8,799 yeah for the wheel set I mean that’s quite you know two wheels not just one wheel how can you justify bringing those out of your G something something might happen to them so the pro version shave a whole 130 g off without sacrificing stiffness responsiveness or strength wow I mean I would need in writing from the race director before I started racing that there were no Pooles in and I’d need in writing from lightweight that it’s guaranteed 100 Watts yeah at least for that kind of money yeah I mean we we do our calculation that we did on the on the cheap Triathlon or how many watts we save per per to per dollar or per Euro and see how much you get for those all right final one um Fusion the clothing brand that sponsor the likes of Sam ladow and Daniel Bard and various others have claimed to be the first to have their own inhouse wind tunnel to help develop their clothing products so they’ll literally be able to do prototypes and then just go straight into the wind tunnel every single day should they want to they said as as far as we were aware Fusion will be the first clothing brand globally to build and finance an in-house wind tunnel making it available for daily testing and fabric development and you have to kind of go well yeah because nik’s just never really seen the need for it or Adidas or any of the other brands I mean I mean it is crazy it’s amazing it’s very impressive I mean I’m scared for everyone that’s not wearing Fusion if I’m honest right now well yeah me what yeah they’re definitely going to come up with faster suits if you can try it on put it in a wind tunnel change a few things try it again I mean that’s uh yeah but a lot of money invested very much how much of those suits going to cost that’ll be fast though and onto the race news we’ve discussed it many times already in the show Iron Man Hamburg finally we get to the pro results for you yeah the Iron Man Pro Series and yeah points on the line for for the pro series after all of the drama that unfolded Jackie hearing took the win and this is interesting because it’s actually her first full distance race in nine years wow yeah well what a comeback so yeah she’s back on top zip she’s uh uh very impressive day all around as we said very fast 8 hours 19 and4 seconds May stage Nelson in second Daniel blal in third with finel langri who was the leader for much of the day dropping down to Fourth uh and El Vera who had that puncture and was crashed into finishing in fifth which means uh on the Pro Series standings obviously going to the men’s because they haven’t shifted that much this weekend uh but on the women’s side for language jumps to the top of the Series standings now uh obviously a lot of the series still to go and quite a few people who don’t even have enough scoring races yet so it will still shake out but that is pretty interesting Jackie hearing jumps up to second on those same rankings so uh yeah we’re watching the series every time they race the series gets more and more interesting doesn’t it definitely yeah interesting Jackie earing actually posted this post or the Iron Man posted this post she literally couldn’t stand on the the podium so they had these big boxes first second and third and second and third went up and then they called Jackie Aron up she literally couldn’t get onto the stage she like was trying to climb she was trying to do it this way she was trying to do it that way and then she just gave up and sat on the first step so yeah well you can’t question whether she left it all out there yeah definitely did um another very exciting race we had this weekend it kind of went I guess under the radar a little bit because it was just a European Cup really um was this race between Sam Dickinson from Great Britain and Johnny brownley now you might remember that we only have two spots for Great Britain for the men um Alex he has one of them his final spot you would think a previous Olympic medalist Johnny brownley would be just that would be signed done deal but it’s not really worked out that way for him well he hasn’t really proved his Fitness he’s not been doing very well he only got I think 39th at yokoh and kagari wasn’t much better and uh he’s also got Sam Dickinson who’s done really well at a few World Cups and doing really well Huga Milner who’s running incredibly well so essentially the selectors after kagari last weekend were like well there’s a spread distance Cup in Poland this weekend go there and the one who does the best will have proven to us that they are the best selection at least for the Mixed relay if not for the actual uh individual event I don’t think it necessarily cleared anything up though see what’s happened now I mean thrilling race absolutely thrilling race Johnny brownley versus Sam Dickinson uh and it came down to a Sprint finish and there was three seconds in it between Sam Dickinson and Johnny brownley uh so Johnny brownley ended up in third Sam Dickinson in in first with Henry cruff uh from Germany uh in between the two of them sping and they’re all in a Sprint finish now on paper that S dickson’s faster than Johnny brownley and therefore you have to choose him right but then Johnny browny’s got the experience having raced at multiple and he only three seconds faster which in a mixed relay is not really a meaningful difference is it whereas the experience of doing previous mixed relays even winning a medal in the previous mixed relay definitely counts for something right I mean Johnny brownley is knows how to get ready for the day knows how to turn it on on the big day without getting stressed like yeah as we’ve said many times we would not want want to be in the selector shoes right now and it definitely it does literally just come down to their discretion now um and it as we’ll see with other nations as well sometimes it may seem unfair because actually the rightful athlete in terms of who finished higher in certain races may not necessarily get it because they’re thinking about the bigger picture as we’ve seen in previous games where they’ve selected a strong swimmer to help support their medal hopeful for instance so I’m not sure I’m not sure either of those boys can necessarily help Alex no anything in particular but maybe in the mix relay so yeah tough decision for the British selectors okay moving on we also had 7.3 Switzerland and rville this past weekend uh Swiss athlete Judy jiren took the win there on the woman’s side ahead of Alana cfet and Lena mesner in third on the men’s side Leonard Arnold took the win there ahead of Ruben zun with Fabian Muson in third and interestingly uh Andreas silverburg who you might remember from his spectacular Dismount at the Olympic Games in Tokyo you remember that yeah I forgot had forgotten about that he was on top of the world then almost uh but uh he’s had some real health issues uh undiagnosed or unexplained uh fever which has completely sidelined and B him all the way back to square one in the last four months he’s finally got back to some kind of exercising training and he just smashed out the park to come back and get 10th with a very impressive bike and run uh for someone who’s hardly done any training now hopefully this is the end of his health worries and we see him back at at the best so yeah congratulations to him yeah good stuff we also had challenge toou this weekend which is traditionally quite a competitive race um on the women’s side it was won by Aurelia Bolinger and in second we had Rachel Brown and in third Natalie Lawrence the men’s side was won by gillim Morino um in second Kurt McDonald and Thomas Davis in third and then there was also challenge gunsen which was won by Regan Holio and Jack Moody respectively on the women’s and men’s side and finally there was a half gasier which is quite a famous one actually in uh in Spain uh interesting no not such a big race but big in Spain uh the woman’s side was won by Helen Sol Lulu but interesting in the men’s winner have you gas yay he’s back he’s back he’s suppos he’s actually racing the t00 in San Francisco this coming weekend so he’s definitely fit again which is great to see U we look forward to him mixing up with the uh the rest of the top in the world this coming weekend San Francisco is coming up the t00 what are we saying about this one uh I’m excited about it um I feel like it’s been building up and building up and there’s been a little bit of a bigger gap between this it does feel like a long gap between feels like kind of that anticipation has built up I will still be honest I’m a little bit gutted about the course um I will still be watching um I’ve heard that it’s a spectacular views on the course but I personally would just love to see them doing the traditional escape from arra course the course will be they will still jump off the fery near the alcatra island swim 2ks directly into the into the uh uh transition now the thing with this is they have to start the men and women together so not separate races like they’ve had in the other T 100s also the water is by all accounts Baltic yeah like they’re allowed to use gloves and booties which in every other race in the world you’re not allowed to use because they do give some kind of Advantage uh but they’re allowed to because it is literally so cold well I remember a lot of wet suit Brands were making wet suits back in the day for escape from alcatra because it was so cold people were just going we need thermal wet suits yeah but you want it like a surfing thermal wet suit cuz you can’t swim yeah so that’ll be interesting to watch at the very least and then it’s six laps on the bike of 13 K which does have some climbing in it some some Punchy clams so I don’t think it’s completely Bor I don’t think it’s as boring as marks making no I think I’m just uh Clinging On to my um hope that they should take original races instead of changing them all to 100ks just do the do the ladder the sand ladder I hear you but I still think this is going to be a very watchable race and I’m looking forward to watching it for sure we we also have IR man 7.3 Boulder which is another Pro Series event coming up um more points in that Pro [Music] Series now it’s time for our new game TR spy is that the name we’re sticking with try spy it is yep we we zoom in on a pro uh and you have to to tell us who it is so last week we had this image of someone’s tattoo do you think you would have got this no not a chance I actually don’t think I would have attention to anyone you guys did very well we had a lot of people guessing this correctly um a lot actually um it was Laura Phillip yeah and not you could see that because she’s holding the banner above her head so yeah they probably like who won this weekend bit too obvious okay well we’ll try this one then hopefully this one’s not so obvious we got a bit ridiculous now I mean are we going to it’s got you got some clues in there end up an eyelash or something soon um well if they still get it we’re just going to have to keep making it harder and harder till we get a week when no one can get it then we’ll then we’ll calibrate it back again yeah yeah well know who you think it is in the comment section down [Music] below say what okay looking at some of your comments under our videos and picked out this one this week uh # gtn Coaches Corner my name’s Mark and I increased my training load by 200% in a week is that bad that’s by Larry LM uh under Mark’s video where he ran a professional runners training week or one of their biggest training weeks in the leadup to the Valencia Marathon basically on no training whatsoever yeah which is what could possibly go wrong say as I do not as I say as like no do as I say oh my God say as he do say as I do do as I say not as I do yeah that’s advice maybe just don’t take any of my advice yeah yeah um yeah I yeah I probably wouldn’t advise um following what I did there no um definitely don’t do what Mark did but it was entertaining to watch anyway if you haven’t watched that video already Mark attempted to run an entire week of a professional athletes training which amounted to over 200 kilm of running in one week which is it was quite interesting to see what goes into it and why certain sessions are in that place so yeah check it out coming up this week on the on the channel I play Jenga with Daniel Reef whilst also gr her about her career and everything else did I finally find something that Daniel reef is not good at I’d like to say yes but we watch the video also we have um our final swim with Harry um who’ve been teaching to swim final swim Mark what what you were teaching him to swim and not what he’s not he’s not swimming anymore or failed to teach him he safely returned from the pool um I’d like to point out when I say final we accomplish final video on okay yeah final video on the learning to swim with Harry is coming up yeah cool watch that thanks for watching everyone see you next week