Alistair Brownlee to race iron distance ...

Seems like a long way out to make much over it. 

Didn't it say he was doing Abu Dhabi this year? That could be a good preview. I know its not iron distance by any stretch of the imagination but the 100k TT bike leg is a big departure from the ITU racing.  I will be curious to see how he fares at that. 

I suspect he would do quite well.  He is one tough cookie and as Brittany said these guys seem to transition to the longer distances well.

He is doing Abu Dhabi, but he's doing the International Distance, not the Long Course distance one.

It is a 100k bike leg ... even with the 1.5k swim and 10k run which he is very very good at - this is still a long distance on the bike in a non-draft setting.

Again, he'll probably rock it but it is a different style race for him.  If we wanted anything to analyze before 2016. 

Right, and you're probably getting at that the competition won't be as tough as it will be for the long ... got it.  True enough, the big event is not the international. 

We talking about the same Macca?

Exactly right. Alistair is one of the more aggressive riders in ITU, and he definitely doesn't attempt to simply be dragged along by the pack. Watch the bike leg from last summer's Olympics for example: he's attacking all the time.

The big question mark, from my perspective, would be avoiding bonking and heat exhaustion. Alistair is as tough as nails, but he struggles in the heat (e.g., HyVee last year), and he has had examples of simply running out of gas late in an ITU event (e.g., London world series race in 2011, where he fell apart in the last 1k, barely made it to the finish line).

I was at that race....and yeah, he was whipped.  BUT.....I don't think you can take much from a post-olympics event....across most sports Olympic champions have a bit of a letdown afterwards.

That being said, Kemper had a great race at HyVee so maybe you are on to something as far as heat acclimation.  Kemper spent a big part of the day before that race doing Ironkid appearance work and he still made a showing.

I can tell you this, Brownlee was just fine with his race and was all smiles afterwards......it was a nice paycheck for those guys.

It's about time (even tho we have to wait) that a Brit steps in to dominate male IM distance racing 

perhaps this needs a new thread, 10,000m at Commonwealth games? That's just crazy talk

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-2286454/Alistair-Brownlee-Mo-Farah-battle-10-000-metres-Commonwealth-Games.html

If he does IM, I think it will be at least 5 years.