i guess so. All casual and relaxed pre race, gun goes off, all i see is redmist
Add me to the list
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Congrats Matthew
I think that you can add @TTowel to that list, he qualified in Elsinore
Given that we have at least 7 going, could we all enter as a TriTalk team?
Bike for Nice
According to BBS, on my TT bike my time will be 2h42 and on my road bike my time will be 2h43
On that basis will do it on my road bike
Friend who did Nice a couple of years ago, who also qualified for WC, will be taking his road bike with Aerobars, he did it on TT bike last time, but recons it is better on road bike
Bollocks. I hadn’t run the sim yet, but your time surprised me with how (relatively) slow it was. It has me riding 3:19 
(that’s on the TT, with average road conditions selected). So much for my loose goal of breaking 5hrs.
I have no choice but to ride the TT. It’s lighter, and just a generally way better bike than my roadie. In packing up the latter for the Etape last night, I’m 1kg off my bike box weight limit with just the frame and wheels! With my TT bike, I can get track pump, some clothes, and a solid disc wheel in the box!
What’s the course profile? If it’s basically up and back down again, sounds like roadie is best. Fast long descents in traffic are much nicer on a road bike.
Yes.
As mentioned, I don’t really see a choice for me, based on the bikes available to me. I was on the train to Elsinore with Chantal Cummings (FPRO). She did the Nice test event last year, and said the challenge is the opening and closing 10k stretches, as they massively favour a TT bike.
If it were me; I’d put a std bar/stem on my Canyon Endurace, and use it with extensions. As long as you have a good aero position on the roadie, you will probably more than make up for any ‘losses’ on the climb & descent, which makes up 70km of the route. But if your roadie is pants…maybe you can buy a new one; aren’t you a city slicker? 
I asked exactly that on TT1.0 in the context of Etape and Nice, and my recollection is everyone said don’t bother unless I just wanted a new bike!
To be honest, I don’t really care about performance at Nice as silly as it sounds. Just getting there was the challenge. There’s never going to be a chance I could compete. So I’ll just ride the TT and have a nice day out. I rode the TT at Mallorca, and that has a somewhat similar profile, just a bit shorter, but the descent is alpine style switchbacks.
I’m not going there but was in the area in the spring. As previously stated the begining (& end) is properly flat until you turn left off the M95D and then you’re steadily gaining altitude until just near Vence, into Vence you pass where Matisse lived, swing right over the river then back left and then you take a sharp righ, effectively u-turn onto the Col du Vence. I ran up it and it is quite steep on the first bit, but nothing too bad, while you have houses (lovely houses) and tree cover you then do a left turn and it all opens up a bit and the ramp settles down to a steady away climb all the way to to the top. On the way to Vence there’ll be some bits of proper climbing and some faster shallow incline sections on decent sized roads.
I didn’t go down the otherside so haven’t a clue but looking at the route once you get past the ‘hairpin’ out of Gattieres you would barely touch brakes apart from what’s obvious on the route map.
My road bike is 6.9kg, as it is really worth having a good climbing bike in Switzerland. Even then, it looks marginal, the course favoring neither one bike or the other significantly. Also, I am not sure about running off the bike, Think I need some Brick sessions on road bike just to make sure… if you believe IMJ, you can run like a Gazelle off TT bike, but will me more like Walrus off road bike
I’m mostly surprised by the BBS approach to the ride. I was expecting it to suggest hitting the climb fairly hard, and treating it like a 45k effort, then pretty much recover all the way down, before a final 10k TT.
Yet it actually has the entirety of the climb at a pretty conservative power percentage.
Looking at the profile that makes the most sense to me as I would have thought you’d be spending a lot of the second half freewheeling and staying low and aero. I guess it depends on how many watts, and the IF of that to get you up to the top of the climbing
TT Bike all the way
Thoughts on wheels?
My TT setup (which I’ve already said is my only real choice given relative bike weights) is 11sp and I normally use a ffwd carbon/alu disc. Advertised weight is 1.39kg.
I also have an old zipp 404 carbon/alu rear wheel, built on an (unused) powertap hub. It’s also 11sp, although it took some time to stop the freehub sticking slightly when it was replaced. That would only cause concern when freewheeling though which shouldnt be often, if it’s a real issue at all now. Advertised weight of that wheel was 888g, so with the beefier PT hub, say maybe 950g to 1kg?
Is 400-450g in rotational weight going to make a big difference?
Using the BBS time analysis feature, a 1% reduction in weight (c700g) from my normal TT setup equates to a time saving of only 42s, but I’m unclear if that’s a valid comparison when it’s not just losing static weight on the bike (e.g. removing a 750ml water bottle) but that’s weight in the wheel itself?
What rear wheel would people think to use? For reference, I rode a disc at Mallorca 70.3, which has the c10k climb of substance as shown above.
You can borrow my Zipp 900. But a) it’s tubular and b) you’ll have to collect it. Weighs <950g
Oh hang on, it’s only 10sp 
Looks like a lot of hanging around for some of us, transition closes at 7AM, M45 enters the swim at 9:01 
Also means we’ll be out for the warmest part of the day.
Jeff
advantage of being longer in the tooth 8:18 am start for me 