- Patrick Lange and Lionel Sanders,
I think, are going to be the next two contenders
that we've really got to look out for.
Lionel Sanders doesn't seem to be able
to do things halfway.
The man's built with pipe cleaners.
Guys, guys we're just lumps sitting here working.
You guys are sleeping away.
Dogs, bunch of free loaders.
12:30, so that makes it good early afternoon, trainiacs.
Little bit of a swim this morning.
That was a little bit of a bash fest
after yesterday's deep water running exercise.
Surprisingly, all the new muscles that I worked
in the deep water running
are completely in use while swimming.
I was sore, I was really sore.
My goodness, I was not expecting that.
Anyway, today what I want to talk about is Patrick Lange,
and I know you're all going to hate me in the comments
for how I pronounce his last name,
versus Lionel Sanders,
whose last name I can nail every time.
Now the reason for this is that Patrick Lange
and Lionel Sanders, I think, are going to be
the next two contenders
that we've really got to look out for
in Kona every single year.
We've seen from Patrick Lange that he's going
to design his years almost entirely around Kona.
We've seen from Lionel Sanders
that he is going to turn his mind upside down
to prepare for Kona every single year.
However, they both go about the races completely different.
They're both different athletes
with different strengths, different weaknesses.
They've got an entirely different race plan.
They've got an entirely different schedule
throughout the course of the year.
One's from Germany, one's from Canada.
Well I guess similar sort of cold,
so that's kind of cool.
Cold weather makes us tough.
You know what, the biggest thing about this match up
is that it's so strong right now
because the pass that Patrick Lange did
of Lionel Sanders in the last few miles of Kona,
it was so strong that I think it blew people's minds,
saying oh my god, can Patrick Lange
be beat with that run?
Well we have to remember that Lionel Sanders,
he lead that race for 130 miles,
and lead it by a lot.
In addition to that, he's going into half IRONMANs
and other IRONMANs smashing the field,
so besides that three miles where Lionel Sanders
wasn't winning the race,
people would be saying how awesome an athlete he is
and how he's the next greatest thing,
but I think what they're saying is
it's the race that got away from Lionel Sanders,
and I think that's unfair because he's equally
as talented an athlete and this match up
is going to be really fun to watch
over the next few years, especially considering
how different they race.
So let's give you some stats here.
You know how I like my stats.
Patrick Lange is 31.
Lionel Sanders is 29.
That's actually fairly important
because most full distance IRONMAN athletes
don't really come into their prime
until say like 33 to 36.
That's the meaty time.
Height wise, they are both just taller than five foot eight.
I hear ya, fellows.
I myself am a just taller than five foot eight
and I like it.
Here's a big difference, though,
and we're going to talk about why this makes
a huge difference in Kona.
Weight of Patrick Lange is 138 pounds,
wispy little thing.
The man's built with pipe cleaners.
Lionel Sanders, however, is 165 pounds.
And why this is important in Kona specifically
is that heavier athletes tend not to do better in Kona
because the heat is so much harder to dissipate
because there's a bigger engine moving,
there's a lot more body mass to cool down.
So that's why we see folks like Patrick Lange
still looking seemingly very fresh
towards the end of the run,
while a very heavy, very heavy sweating Lionel Sanders
had electrolyte issues.
Chris McCormick was the heaviest of all IRONMAN athletes,
I believe all time, at 177 pounds,
so that's not to say that Sanders is out of the running,
just to say that he's got another challenge to overcome
that Lange doesn't.
Occupationally on both, Patrick Lange,
trained physiotherapist.
As far as I can tell, Lionel Sanders did online things
just to make ends meet so that he had enough time to party.
That's him saying it, not me.
Lange's coach, former IRONMAN champion, Faris Al-Sultan.
Sanders' coach, nobody coaches Lionel Sanders, nobody.
Sanders is known for coaching himself.
Granted, he does have a couple of consultants.
Jerry Rodrig, or Rodriguez, who we're actually having
on the podcast this week.
Make sure you subscribe to the Triathlon Taren podcast
if you haven't already, by the way.
It's really awesome.
Tower 26 has helped him with his swimming,
and then he has a consultant named David Tillbury Davis,
solid name.
Now their backgrounds.
Patrick Lange seems like he's kind of come out of nowhere,
but he's been in endurance sports for a long time.
He was the German Under 15 Mountain Bike champion
and he competed in duathalons very successfully
for a lot of years.
The thing is, he finally just committed
to full time, professional, full distance IRONMAN racing
in early 2016, recent newcomer.
Sanders, on the other hand, was a high school
and college, up here we call it university, track athlete,
very, very talented, placing, I want to say ninth
over all in the province, and he lives
in a really big province,
and he's been racing professionally since 2013,
and as far as I can tell,
basically once he got into triathlon,
he was so dedicated to triathlon.
Lionel Sanders doesn't seem to be able to do things halfway.
And then before we get into their times,
we can see that Patrick Lange doesn't tend to race a ton.
In 2016, he raced eight times,
while in 2016, Lionel Sanders raced 11 times.
He seems to race a lot more.
Lange seems to be willing to step back
from almost all really long distance, intense A racing,
basically just to focus on Kona.
Really risky proposition because if you go into Kona
and don't do well,
that is a spicy meatball there, Patrick Lange,
or some spicy bratwursts, or schnitzel,
whatever you have in Germany.
I'm actually a good chunk German, so I should know that.
Now let's get into how they race together.
It's very well known that Lionel Sanders
is not an excellent swimmer, self proclaimed,
it's the thing that he has to work on the most.
Now comparing the two of them together,
we're talking about a four to five minute difference
between the two at the full IRONMAN distance races.
In the half IRONMAN distance races,
we're talking about two minutes,
so Lionel Sanders, even though he's making
big improvements on the swim,
he's always going to be catching up on the bike.
That said, Lionel Sanders is probably one of the best
riders in the sport.
We're talking about being faster than Patrick Lange
over the course of a full IRONMAN
by 10 minutes or more on average.
In a half IRONMAN, yeah, that could be
four to six minutes faster.
But here's where it gets dicey.
Based off what a lot of people saw in Kona,
they're looking at Lionel Sanders with his hitchy stride.
He's like oh my god, Lionel Sanders, is not a runner.
He's going to be competing against Patrick Lange,
who's just a pure runner, beautiful stride,
runs like a gazelle.
My last name is Gazelle, I run more like Lionel Sanders.
But Lionel Sanders, in the half IRONMAN distance races,
is putting out some of the fastest
half IRONMAN runs out there.
In St. George, for instance,
he had the fastest run split
and he did that by two minutes over Alistair Brownlee.
Alistair Brownlee was trying to get to
the Commonwealth Games in 10,000 meter running
and he was damn close, so Lionel Sanders is a runner.
He's a fantastic runner,
over the course of a long, full distance run,
he might be two to five minutes slower than Patrick Lange
because Lange is a phenomenally fast runner.
He's setting run course records all over the world.
However, what we heard from Lionel Sanders after Kona
was that in the few hours after he crossed the finish line,
he thought that he was going to be sore for days
because he felt his body so tense and tight
out on the run course,
and then a couple hours later after pounding a Gatorade
and some chips and getting some salt into him,
his body completely loosened up,
and the next day he wasn't sore at all.
And he said this is telling that it wasn't a physical issue
that Lionel had out on the course,
it was probably something like an electrolyte
or nutrition issue, and if he can dial that in
and get close to those run splits
that he's putting out in half distance races,
that's going to be a lot of speed
for Lange to be chasing down
when he's coming from upwards
of nine, 10, 12 minutes back off of the bike.
Now here's the final thing about that
is that Kona is a different race
because it's so hot, so humid.
The conditions are so difficult
that extra tonnage, that 27 pounds
that Lionel Sanders has, an advantage
on Patrick Lange in Kona
isn't necessarily an advantage,
so while they are going to be battling
their own physical limitations,
Lionel Sanders is also going to be battling
his body limitations,
so if Lionel Sanders wins,
he's going to have a brutal hard day fighting his body.
If Patrick Lange wins,
he's going to have a brutal hard day
chasing Lionel Sanders down.
And there you go, trainiacs.
That felt good, that felt good,
well researched, kind of stuff,
and I didn't even wake up the dogs.
That bunch.
Go Lionel Sanders, proud Canada.