Ironman Courses and Performance
On Saturday Australia’s Craig Alexander won Ironman Hawaii for the second straight year. The win came just as it did last year with a strong run to make up a big gap off of the bike. In 2008 he came off the bike 11:13 down. Last Saturday he was 12:13 behind Chris Lieto starting the run. Alexander turned a few 6-minute miles early in the marathon and caught a fading Lieto by mile 21 going on to win by more than two minutes..
This M.O. is not unusual in the Hawaii Ironman. With few exceptions this race is typically won on the run. The bike course terrain (note that I’m not talking about wind or heat which is a different topic altogether) simply isn’t hard enough to make it the determining factor.
A few years ago I compared all of the North American Ironman courses to see if I could determine what the best predictor of the race outcome would be – the swim, the bike or the run. I narrowed the focus to the top 10 male finishers in each race that year and compared their swim, bike and run placements with their finish placements. What I found was that the bike course had the most to do with predicting the outcome. When the course was hilly, such as Lake Placid, the bike performance was highly predictive of the outcome. The flatter the bike course became the more likely the run was to be predictive of the outcome. Florida turned out to be a runner’s course. Swimming, by the way, was never a good predictor of race outcome.
I did not look at the overall predictability of the women pro’s or age grouper’s swim, bike and run splits. It could be different from the male pros, but I doubt there would be a significant shift. It makes sense that hilly bike courses would favor strong cyclists and that flat courses would favor the better runners.
Does this have any implications for you? It might. When choosing a race at which to qualify consider your strengths as a cyclist, especially in terms of climbing, and also how good of a runner you are compared with your competition. This seems like a given, but I frequently talk with people who have obviously made the wrong choice. Qualifying for Hawaii is hard enough without making it even more difficult.
posted by Joe Friel @ 10:50 PM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
Thanks for this post. It generally confirms, to me, that it's critical to focus on improving pedaling efficiency, raising my threshold and increasing strength at threshold.
I'd be interested in hearing about specific training regimes to cover these aspects.
totally agree I keep forgetting to pedal in an efficient way, I need to become a better cyclist!
ifyoutri
Http://ifyoutri.blogspot.com
Great post. Would love to see a ranking of Ironman distance races easiest to hardest over all and by discipline. Have that goal in the cross hairs in two years.
Hi Joe,
This is a very interesting post on your blog. It was very interesting to read that you compared all north american IM courses and that bike performance was the greatest factor in determining the outcome. It makes sense that as the course gets flatter and "easier" the run becomes more and more important. This has been very obvious in Hawaii with the men with very few exceptions, however it hasn't held true with the women.
I read an article recently on Slowtwitch wirtten by Dan Empfield that set out to compare the decrease in bike and run times of the men and women since 1992. http://www.slowtwitch.com/Opinion/The_Women_of_Kona_1075.html Perhaps you may have seen this. One line that I found very interesting was "only twice, after 1997, has the women's winner of the Hawaiian Ironman not won while leading at T2." This leads me to believe that the bike plays a larger role for the women that it does for the men.
I was interested to hear what your thoughts are on the article.
I have really enjoyed reading your blog and I have ready many of your books multiple times. I have learned an extraordinary amount about training for multi sport from you and I think my friends and training partners may be sick of me saying "we'll Joe Friel says". Thanks for making yourself so accessible to the triathlon community though your work.
Kyle Visin
kvisin@gmail.com
Hi Joe,
This is a very interesting post on your blog. It was very interesting to read that you compared all north american IM courses and that bike performance was the greatest factor in determining the outcome. It makes sense that as the course gets flatter and "easier" the run becomes more and more important. This has been very obvious in Hawaii with the men with very few exceptions, however it hasn't held true with the women.
I read an article recently on Slowtwitch wirtten by Dan Empfield that set out to compare the decrease in bike and run times of the men and women since 1992. http://www.slowtwitch.com/Opinion/The_Women_of_Kona_1075.html Perhaps you may have seen this. One line that I found very interesting was "only twice, after 1997, has the women's winner of the Hawaiian Ironman not won while leading at T2." This leads me to believe that the bike plays a larger role for the women that it does for the men.
I was interested to hear what your thoughts are on the article.
I have really enjoyed reading your blog and I have ready many of your books multiple times. I have learned an extraordinary amount about training for multi sport from you and I think my friends and training partners may be sick of me saying "we'll Joe Friel says". Thanks for making yourself so accessible to the triathlon community though your work.
Kyle Visin
kvisin@gmail.com
Kyle--Thanks for your insights and the Slowtwitch piece. I don't recall when it was that the race went to a 15 minute head start for the pros. It has been in the last 5 years, I believe. Before that when it was a mass-start race the pro women's bike portion was aided by the amateur men who were mixed in with the pro women for the entire race. That would tend to make the bike less of a factor, I believe. And of course, we have to look at who has been winning the pro women's races the last few years. Badmann and Wellington, for example, are both strong cyclists and runners. Interesting stuff.
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