Latest / Happy Pace - a triathlon podcast / BONUS: Why You Need to Watch Challenge Roth This Weekend (Records Could Fall)
Transcript
- Jaclyn: Hello and welcome to a super special edition of the Happy Pace podcast. Mardi: This is really just us being trinodes and totally nerding out. Jaclyn: I love it. I'm here for it. That's why this exists. Mardi: Yeah, like people are getting around the FIFA World Cup at the moment. Like this is our World Cup. Jaclyn: I think this is probably bigger than our World Cup, if I'm honest. Mardi: Yeah. Yeah. We have had like such fresh news on Roth this week, which you just do not expect during race week for an Iron Man distance event. we obviously previewed the race in the other episode that we recorded this week, but like this is your this is your call to watch Challenge Roth this weekend. Like this is your message. ⁓ is your reminder. ⁓ Jaclyn: Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm pretty sure we got our f our our last recording and then this news came through and we were like, we must record again. Mardi: Yeah, yeah, this is too good. This is too good. We ⁓ we un we almost like undersold it in the last episode. Whereas like now I feel like this is big news. Hmm. Mm. Jaclyn: ⁓ Absolutely. Huge. All right. So we're gonna preview Challenge Roth, which is on this Saturday. But first of all, let's give you some context about around the race in Roth, why it's such a big deal. Mardi: So this race was once the European Championship. and then I think it was about twenty-five-ish years ago, ⁓ was bought out well, I think the license expired or or they changed tact with that race and ⁓ a local family in Roth, which is a country town in the south of Germany, yeah, took the race license and has run this race independently ever since. So it's been run by the same family, the whole town get around the race. It attracts one of the largest field Man distance races around the world. and it sits independently of your Iron Man T one hundred, world triathlon. It's not part of a series. Like it's not they don't have like a world championship or anything. Like Roth is just Roth. Jaclyn: Yeah, absolutely. So the local family is kind of like headed up by this guy, Felix, and Australian ex pro triathlete Blinda Granger, and they just had like this amazing And like you can see it on social media too. Like Blinda Granger's over there. She's posting on social media. It's amazing. It looks really cool. so it really is sort of I guess it is like a triathlon party, really. Mardi: Mm. Yeah, totally. And I think over the years they've managed to curate some really impressive pro fields. Like obviously now more than ever, there is so many races for professionals to choose from at the iron distance in 70.3. So for them to still be pulling some big names after well, within in the middle of the season, like right before championship season, is just like a real credit to the race's reputation. like yes, there is appearance fees for some pro athletes and you some amount of prize money, but I think you wouldn't just do an Ironman distance race for the sake of it, ⁓ right the build to world champs as one of the best in the world. Jaclyn: Mm. Absolutely not. But I think the thing as well that attracts so many athletes is it's like really a super fast course. Mardi: Mm. Yeah, and it is I'm pretty sure that the women's the women's record's there, isn't it? Jaclyn: Yeah. Annie Hag holds the women's world record with eight hours and two minutes from twenty twenty four. Mardi: That's actually s that's actually nuts. Yeah. That's like literally her finishing the race just as I'm coming into T two. Jaclyn: It's insane. the men's fastest time in Roth ⁓ ⁓ Magnus Ditlev, which is seven hours twenty three minutes, ⁓ is also wildly insane. Mardi: Yeah, that's actually ridiculous. But also I would say, like in my view, that's probably a more robust men's record because the current men's record is held by Christian Bumenthal, which was a little bit faster than that, but that was recorded at Iron Man Cosmel. and that has like a downstream swim. So he came out of the swim in forty minutes, which is like ten minutes faster than any male standard pro time. Yeah. Mm. Jaclyn: Insane. Insane. to just give you a little bit more context, we'll run through the course as well and then we'll chat about what the super exciting news is. So the Challenge Roth course ⁓ ⁓ ⁓ swim or a canal swim. that is basically athletes swim down the river, they do a 180 degree turn and they come back up the river or the canal to get to T1. Mardi: Hm mm. Mm. And then the bike course I think is quite undulating, about fifteen hundred meters of elevation. And the most famous part of the bike course, you'll know where I'm talking about, is Hill. So basically like 'cause the race attracts like hundreds of thousands of spectators. ⁓ Or feels like it versus any other Trothon where there's like twenty people watching their parents or parents or like friends do a race, but Jaclyn: Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Mardi: Yeah, it's kind of like the Tour de France on some of those some of those hill stages where you've got crowds either side, like totally caving in the athletes ⁓ ⁓ just so much support. And it's not just for the pros either, like those crowds are out there all day. You've got age groupers, everything. so it's kind of amazing to watch. Jaclyn: Absolutely. then on the run, it's ⁓ a obviously a marathon, so it's full race, 3.8k swim, 180k bike, 42k run. the first 30ks of the run ⁓ is on basically packed gravel. So like for those of in Melbourne, it's like 30k's on tan track. ⁓ and then the last 10k's are an out and back ⁓ with a climb. Mardi: Mm. Jaclyn: into the finish and I think there's a whole ch whole bunch of ⁓ cobble in there as well. Which obviously makes it hard to run fast. So it's absolutely wild that these fast Iron Man times have gone down at this race. Mardi: Yeah, I reckon it's like just the the energy of the event. So many times you've got an Iron Man distance event and in the footage the leader of the race is like they're winning by a couple of minutes. Potentially they're running in areas where there isn't crowds. Like it would be really hard to push yourself along. And like maybe part of it is just that ⁓ adrenaline that they would get from the crowds, like from their whole yeah, the atmosphere of the race and just kind of that Roth magic that people talk about. Jaclyn: Yeah, insane. I'm excited. get into the news. Mardi: Yeah, so so rare for an Iron Man distance event to have like changes to the race list in ra or the pro athlete list in race week. Normally it's just people dropping off because they're unwell or something's happened. did talk about Laura Phillip pulling the start list w in the last episode ⁓ and sort of said, Yeah, look, that probably just leaves Cat Matthews ⁓ to take the race quite convincingly. ⁓ But earlier week they announced Lucy Charles Barclay to be on the start line as well. Which is insane. Insane. Jaclyn: Wild. and the way that they like announced it, like just like all class, but absolutely wild. Mardi: Mm, just dropping a post on socials, was it? You probably saw it before I did. Yeah. Jaclyn: On like Monday night. It was actually, yeah, it was Monday afternoon, Monday night, Melbourne time. I was I listened to another podcast, another triathlon podcast during the day, and they kind of ended really abruptly. And the next thing I'm checking social media and this is the news. Mardi: so good. I love how it's like where were you when it happened? ⁓ were you when it got announced? ⁓ Jaclyn: Where were you when they walked on the moon? Where were you when they, as Lucy Charles Barclay, was racing Roth in twenty twenty six? Basically the same. Mardi: so yeah, guess why we're so excited about this is like Lucy is a previous winner of Roth. She's also one of the most competitive iron distance triathletes in the world. She came super close in Kona last year and this year had tendon on her one of her legs ⁓ foot. There you go. ⁓ then had Iron Man Lanzaroti. Jaclyn: Food. Mardi: ⁓ which we had mentioned a couple of weeks ago as a pretty convincing win, as her first iron distance race back post-surgery, and she did like a 301 marathon. So like I if you watch our YouTube, you'll know that girl works hard ⁓ her cross training and strength training. And like, yeah, she's back running her ⁓ of expected marathon times and is competitive right now. Jaclyn: Yeah. the other reason we're super excited about this, 'cause I guess it now gives a little bit of competition. Like I think we said at the end of our last that like ⁓ Kat's pretty is showing like barring something going wrong ⁓ in this Like we were expecting Kat to really take home the win. ⁓ So I when put these two head to head, you've got a really interesting race. Cat being like an incredible bike rider, but also like an incredible runner, having run like mid to forties recently, in an Iron Man as well. Mardi: Mm, totally. And Lucy is known as like one of the best or most prominent swimmers in Trothon. She came into Trothon from ⁓ swimming. So like I think even the dynamic of like she'll lead out of the of the swim by ⁓ a couple of minutes off Kat, like they're both quite strong on the on the bike, but Kat's gonna have the dynamic of really chasing Lucy on the bike and Lucy knowing that she's got that confident ⁓ ⁓ of the swim. And so I think it's really gonna come down to the run and what Lucy's capable of like holding on to, all things going well for both of them on the ride, versus how like patient Kat is just chasing it down. Jaclyn: Yeah. Yeah, my my fear for Kat is hope she doesn't overbike. ⁓ then leave herself. I think the risk is relatively low. I'm excited to watch this play out because she's probably likely to be four, ⁓ or so minutes down behind Lucy, coming out of the swim. So it'll be interesting to see how she makes that up. And then ⁓ yeah, it'll be something like what we saw in Denmark recently, where she just like bought her time on the bike a little bit and then was able Mardi: Mm. Jaclyn: to really put in some efforts on the run. Mardi: Mm. And even Kona last year, like obviously Lucy and Taylor both hard on the bike, struggled on the run with ⁓ ⁓ stroke or or sort of that exhaustion, whatever, whatever hit them, and both DNF'd and Kat just like patiently ⁓ her kept her pacing ⁓ ⁓ ran through to come in second place ⁓ that race. So I think that it's something that she's capable of, but as you say, like just pacing it right is gonna be huge and maybe like almost not taking in so much of the atmosphere and like not pushing too hard and and ⁓ saving run legs. Jaclyn: It's hard it's easy to get caught up, I guess, in that in that atmosphere and in such a big race. And I think we mentioned this last week as well. Like a lot of Kat's year has been focused around getting to this race. probably planning on coming up against Laura Phillip. but who is like an incredible run runner herself. but now it'll be interesting to see how she approaches this race ⁓ coming up Lucy. Mardi: Yeah, it's gonna be super cool. Super cool. Jaclyn: So just when we thought like that was the only triat big triathlon announcement this week or that there wouldn't be any other announcements for Roth, we also found out that or this afternoon actually, that Magnus Ditlev is on the start list for the men's race. Mardi: Yeah. Yeah, and I feel like this is a surprise, but also maybe not a surprise because Felix from Challenge Family put out ⁓ Instagram last week when Hamburg got shortened. So the men's race got shortened because of the heat in also in Germany. And I'm pretty sure that he put out to sort of say, like, look, if there are any men who wanna participate in Challenge Roth next weekend, like call me essentially. So The door definitely was open for that, but I don't know that we necessarily expected like the Roth record holder to like, why not? And do do an Iron Man. Jaclyn: Yeah, sure. I'll rock up. So now on the men's start list, we've got Christian Blumenfeld, we've got Sam Label, we've got Magnus Dietlev, we've got Yon yeah, Patrick Lang, Jonas Schomberg. Mardi: Patrick Lang. And also Rico Bogan. Yeah. This is nuts. So as we talked about the other day, like you got Sam and Christian who are I think really well matched for this. They've got such a great rivalry, a bit of banter between the two of them. ⁓ I actually think it's gonna be a similar dynamic with men as the women in terms of like Sam's quite a strong swimmer. He's probably only like, I don't know, less than a minute faster than Christian. It's not as much as Jaclyn: Rico Bogen. This is insane. Mardi: much of a lead as Lucy would have, but went he's known for going pretty hard on the bike when he wants to, and ⁓ could for it on the run, but also may not. So I Christian will be chasing on the bike at least for the start. And then similarly may come down to the run with Christian and probably where the challenge is is like Christian has like on the record done like 230 marathon off the bike. And like I don't think Sam's ever run that fast in an event. Jaclyn: No, not that I've seen. Mardi: Hm. So I think it's gonna be really interesting. But then Magnus throws it again because like if he wants to have an impact on the race, like he will want to go hard on the bike and he is capable of that. And he has he has done the course before, K B has not done the course before. Like there's a lot there's a lot at stake. Jaclyn: Yeah, Magnus has won Raw three times. Mardi: I didn't realize it was three times. Okay. Jaclyn: Mm. Twenty two, twenty three, twenty four. Mardi: Mm. And also he may just want to like also go in there and shake up the race. He might know that he's not in the form to like beat KB, but he also could just be like, you know what? I didn't plan on doing this race. I signed up this week. I'm just gonna go in there. Yeah. I'm just going go in there and shake up the race dynamic. Like yeah, take the lead on the bike, push the guys, see what they can squeeze out, make them tired on the bike and string ⁓ out into the run. Jaclyn: He's got nothing to lose. This is where I think this is so interesting with these athletes coming in or coming in late, is that what does that do to the mindset of the athletes that have maybe been preparing for this that now they've got this other kind dynamic coming and potentially changing their race plan? Mardi: Yeah, I I love it. If anything to make eight hours worth of triathlon racing more exciting, like I'm here for it. Jaclyn: I actually think it's gonna be some of the mo most exciting eight hours of television we've watched in a long time. So K K V or Christian Blumenfeld has been quoted saying, I think Challenge Roth is going to require probably the fastest split we've ever seen over the full distance. Mardi: I know. He's putting it out there. Jaclyn: Yeah. I think some records could fall. I wouldn't be surprised if the w like ⁓ women's record goes weekend. Like Kat's fit. Lucy's fit. Hasn't raced much, but she's fit. Mardi: Mm. Yeah. Mm, I agree. And I think the dynamic of them like racing each other is gonna get the best out of them as well. Jaclyn: Yep. The thing with them, they're both races, so they're the it wouldn't have probably mattered, but it's just gonna add that whole extra like dynamic to the race. Mardi: Mm, a hundred percent, hundred percent. I think as well on the men's side, like KB there has been a lot of talk about the men's records this year. and I think being the to go up against Magnus who holds that record, I think also just like such a motivator for K B as well. Like it's one thing to win the race and ⁓ be the of Roth for that year, but I think it is another to come away with a really clean ⁓ record as the fastest over that distance. Jaclyn: ⁓ for sure, for sure. Mardi: Anyway, so that is our little challenge broth update. Jaclyn: two thirty PM on Sunday, Melbourne time. ⁓ Yeah. Mardi: That's a good time. And so that means I would finish at like what? Ten? Ten thirty? Yeah. That's actually fine. Hmm. Totally. We can do like we can do a lot in that time. Like was gonna be like meal prep, meal prep, fold some washing. ⁓ some coaching ⁓ sessions for the week, life admin, start my tax return. Get lot done. Jaclyn: Like manageable, right? We can we can handle that once. Life admin. Exactly. Perfect. Sunday sorted. Mardi: Great viewing. sorted. Nah, it. but we are so excited for this race. Highly recommend you watch it. Hopefully we're not overhyping it for you, but it it I'm putting it out there that it's probably gonna be the Iron Distance race ⁓ of the to watch. Or the Iron Race of the Year so far. Jaclyn: We have been we have been known to overhype things, that didn't age well, but ⁓ watch with an asterisk. ⁓ Mardi: Yeah. Disclaimer. Totally. And I think not just for the the competition between each of the profiles, but I think also just for the whole spectacle of the race. Like, yeah, I dare you not to put it on your bucket list after watching watching on Sunday. Jaclyn: Perfect.