There are some folks who think the bike segment of an ITU race means nothing and we thoroughly disagree. Of course it doesn't help you to be just a strong biker, but the effort on the bike is tremendous. Thanks to folks at TrainingPeaks we are able to share the power file of Matt Chrabot from the ITU race in San Diego.

After a good swim, Chrabot was out of the water with the lead group and together with eventual winner Jonathan Brownlee and Kris Gemmell drove a break of 8. Well, initially there were 9 in that lead group but one of them could not hold that pace or effort and about 15k into the bike segment the remaining 8 were reeled in.

The interactive file of Chrabot: TrainingPeaks.com Matt Chrabot San Diego

Chrabot put out his Peak 20 seconds through 30 minute efforts in the first half of the ride, including Peak 20 second power of 501w (8.0 w/kg) right at the start of the bike segment.

You can see 10-20 second efforts above threshold right out of T1 as he tried to pull ahead of Brownlee in the early part of the bike leg. He took 4 pulls of 20-30 seconds during the 1st 3 laps. His Normalized Power output of 310w for the first half versus 290w for the second half.

There was a final acceleration during the last lap to have a safe position going into T2. This is where his Peak 10sec Power effort occurred at 706w (11.2 w/kg). But from around 25mph as seen here in the last 9 seconds he (an 57 other) had to find a safe position, slow down and jump off the bike before the dismount line, with shoes dangling on the pedals and while running barefoot.

But it looks so easy to some when watching these guys on TV or in still images.

Chrabot weighed 138 pounds or 62.6kg on race day, and ran a 31:42 10k to finish his day, and while that time sounds reasonably solid, in a field like this that unfortunately does not cut it. Chrabot ended up in 34th place. Paula Kim from the ITU put this all in perspective. "If you ran a flat 31:00 in the men's race at #ITUSanDiego, you would have tied for 14th fastest run split. 32:00 would be 40th fastest run," tweeted Kim last night. San Diego WTS champion Jonathan Brownlee in fact ran 30 minutes flat.