Mary Cain to race triathlon this weekend

I'm calling your BS, you know nothing about biking. If you did, you can see from the results that Mary Cain got passed by tons of women during the bike leg, not just a slow transition. Mary Cain simply can't generate enough power to even stay on the wheels of those that passed her during the bike.

No concrete support for this at the moment, but Cain may be playing the long game here, using tri to gain total-body fitness, to (re)build her running body, as Magill might say, before a return to running. Whatever her tri results, elite 10Ks & marathoning could be the ultimate goal. Agassi took a similar path before before his latter-career resurgence: matches on the challenger circuit, endless hill reps, nutritional & psychological reboot.

The biggest challenge for Cain will be that the bike is the most important leg of the tri. It is by far the longest leg. And unfortunately it is her weak leg. It's hard to be good at the tri with a weak bike. It is much easier to be good with a weak swim.

I think I've done about 5 triathlons, one half ironman and the others olympic distance. I'm kind of surprised she finished this poorly if she went into it with her eyes open. Many fail to understand that open water swimming requires navigation skills and the ability to keep going after you get kicked in the head and swallow some water. Many also fail to appreciate that cycling at 20 mph or higher for an hour or more requires some skill. I don't know about everyone else but I mash the pedals and certainly don't spin circles. Having a huge aerobic engine and running ability helps but getting in and out of transition quickly requires some practive. There is a reason why top ironman triathletes train all 3 disciplines as much as 20 hours/week

Elite cycling and running are hard. They are both hard in different ways. Elite cyclists would get demolished on the track and elite runners would get demolished on the bike. Triathletes have to be good at both, but don't compare to the best at the respective disciplines. Just look at Gwen J, the best triathlete in the world and arguably the best of all time on the running leg, she couldn't even hold her own against the top 10 American women distance runners.

Lol. This is too funny.

Yup! She helped foster the idea of being a victim.

Who will have the better triathlon career, Alan Webb or Mary Cain?

Webb started out a hell of a lot more competitive than Cain.

triathlon.org

Results: Alan Webb (USA) – World Triathlon

World Triathlon

View Alan Webb's (United States) World Triathlon race results.

Open link

Andy has only been riding since December 4th.

I can start a new thread on Andy’s exploits if anybody is interested in hearing what is actually happening.

All 4 parts are critical in draft legal triathlon. the Nike is the least critical. Unless an athlete comes out of the water and into the bike in the appropriate position, the race is over…..especially in the World Cup races. Then, of course, one has to be able to run to win. The bike is teachable to almost anyone that has the ability to swim and run at a high level.

Yep. I’m interested.

I posted a new thread "Andy Truard in triathlon"

Wasn't Ryan Hall going to do tri as well?

I feel more should look at Swimrun.

This. Two tris is all it took for me to say "F this S"

I only did 1 triathlon, and just for fun. Nobody kicked me because I was swimming so slowly that the entire field had to go wide around me. Strategy!

I find this hard to believe. She has been biking for a mere months and I would assume a lot of it was indoors on a trainer. Her much bigger issue seems to be that she doesn't yet have the bike skills to ride even in a conti cup level bike pack. If you are brand new to biking, it's downright scary to be riding at 25mph with bikes inches away from you on all sides and heading into a turn. Being able to ride efficiently in a pack is a skill that takes time to acquire and there is no way she has it with so little riding to date. Moreover, even a conti cup race will have huge spikes in watts, which will shred one's legs and which isn't something that one can handle with so little riding. Power is not her issue. Learning how to ride, which takes time, is much more likely her issue, which is fixable.

You find it hard to believe that Mary Cain got passed by tons of women on the bike leg that were behind her in the swim? Well, just look at the bike splits and results. She has neither the power nor the bike handling skills to even be considered in the same category as the other women triathletes at the race. Generating power efficiently on a bike is world's different from running.

You have no idea if she wasn't putting out enough watts on the bike and are just talking out of your you know what. She definitely does not have bike skills to be comfortable in a draft legal race (with mostly newbies to boot who also are shaky on the bike). Without question she has a world class cardio system so it is going to take many hours in the saddle to become strong on the bike. It took Gwen Jorgensen a good 4 years to go from horrible on the bike to taking pulls in the lead group on the bike.