Ironman Qualification

Which Ironman event gives me the best chance of qualifying for Hawaii?

HAMMOND QUALIFICATION COEFFICIENT [HQC] 2

YOUR RACE SELECTION METHODOLOGY.. Error! Bookmark not defined.
AGE GROUP HQC TABLES
FORTHCOMING ENHANCEMENTS TO THIS ANALYSIS

INTRODUCTION

Is this a question that you have asked yourself? More than likely you have if you have aspirations for Hawaii. If you are an improving triathlete who is knocking on the door of a Hawaii spot then your race selection can be critical to your chances of getting there sooner rather than later. How much of a difference can race selection make? Well I calculate that for my age group there could be a difference of 6% in the overall performance required to qualify between the easiest event and the hardest. At this point I stress that this is a 6% true performance difference. Take a minute out here and calculate what 6% might mean for you if you make race selection a lottery. Put it another way, if you are confident of qualifying, how critical would 6% added on to your time be to your qualification chances? Feel confident now?

So is it that easy to sift through the available data and evaluate your choices? My own situation obviously prompted me to go through all this. I am a 40-44 Age Grouper who been in Triathlon for less than 2 years. But I’m dedicated and want to get to Kona as soon as I can. A rudimentary look through what kind of time it is going to take to get there throws up more questions than answers. For example, in my category, an 11h15 minute time at Wisconsin (2005) would have got me to Kona in 2006. But in Switzerland it would have taking an incredible 9h49 to secure the last qualification spot. Germany seems like a great bet because they had 25 slots in my age group for Kona 2006, much better than say Western Australia that just had 2 slots. Would it therefore make sense to go to Frankfurt instead of Busselton? In fact, the answer was no in 2006! How can I determine if I stand more chance of grabbing the last of the 8 slots at Lanzarotte (a comfortable 10h44 in 2006) versus having to push myself to do 10h06 in Brazil to get one of only 5 slots available? Incredibly my analysis shows that Brazil is the better option.

Before we go any further let’s have a look at the entire scope of Ironman Races in the 2007 schedule. Apologies to Race Directors of 70.3 events with qualifying slots, I’ll get that info included at some point. I began by creating an event profile for all the races including the inauguration year, the time zone, race date, average weather conditions, participation numbers, slot allocations, basic course info for the Swim, Bike and Run, cut-off times along with the course records. I also included an element I will explain later called the Elite Reference Time. This table is available on my Ironman Event Profile Table. I would be grateful to anyone who has any complementary information to add as I have not been able to garner 100% of the data elements. I am also particularly interested in the Bike and Run elevation numbers if anyone has done the courses with an altimeter. The majority of this information is not really required for my analysis; however at some point you will want to review this data so see if the course that offers you the best chance from a pure performance basis also meets your particular preferences in a host of other areas. If you can’t do hills, then don’t go to Lanzarote, if you don’t like swimming in salt water, then don’t go to Busselton, if you don’t like running in the heat then perhaps Malaysia is not your best option despite what the analysis kicks out.

So where do we start with all the analysis. There are two key variables between the races, the time and the number of slots. But if what I have claimed in the opening is true, then both of these factors can lead me in the wrong direction. It is patently obvious that courses like Lanzarotte, Nice and the Sherbourne (all with bike elevations over 2000 metres) are not going to produce comparable race times with courses like Austria, Germany and Arizona which are essentially flat. Salt water swims are likely faster than fresh water swims, doubly so when the organisers leave 400+ metres off the course (France 2006). What about the marathon elevation, Sherbourne has an incredible 800 meters of total climb versus nothing for Nice, it’s just that in Nice you are running in temperatures about 10c hotter. So you can do all the data analysis you like on the times recorded, but trying to keep track of the course changes the organisers make each year and then factoring in the weather conditions will soon have you ripping out your hair in large tufts. Even if the race directors change nothing from one year to the next, differences in the temperature, humidity and wind will still render the race times incomparable.

Now consider the second factor, the number of slots available. The 25 spots that will go to my age group in Germany is going to grab a lot of attention from Kona hopefuls, whereas the 3 spots offered in Malaysia may pass unnoticed leading to a significant disparity in both the quantity and quality of the field. Even that doesn’t tell the whole story. The 8^th and final slot offered in Lanzarotte was taken by the 10^th place finisher. But the 6^th and last spot in Austria rolled all the way down to 14^th place.

Have I sufficiently confused you now? Have I made something which you thought might be a 15 minute decision armed with a web browser and notepad into a confusing nightmare with your $500 entry fee and Kona dreams lying shredded along with your training plan? Good. Were I more mercenary than I am, I could now convince you that purchasing my analysis for 10% of your next IM entry fee would be a prudent insurance policy to make the most of your investment. However, good natured chap that I am, I’ll just go ahead and explain it to you.

Now I’ll preface all this by saying that even all the analysis I have done is not absolutely bullet proof even though it is pretty good. I will endeavour to point out the holes in the amour as we go. Finally as your financial broker will always tell you, “past performance is no guarantee of future results”.

ELITE REFERENCE TIME [ERT]

TABLE 1
Elite Reference Time	Season
Event	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	Grand Total
Austria		08:18:00	08:20:25	08:23:46	08:16:52		08:19:46
Germany				08:32:00	08:22:28		08:27:14
Western Australia				08:32:50	08:32:25	08:25:52	08:30:22
Arizona				08:43:11	08:26:39	08:33:54	08:34:35
Switzerland	08:42:43	08:38:38	08:31:22	08:34:27	08:27:21		08:34:40
Australia				08:35:32	08:35:15		08:35:23
Florida	08:31:35	08:37:09	08:37:08	08:39:22	08:38:26	08:34:31	08:36:29
Brazil		08:28:56	08:32:41	09:00:08	08:25:41		08:36:52
New Zealand	08:39:07	08:36:50	08:41:21	08:37:08		08:40:05	08:38:54
South Africa				08:37:21	08:39:05	08:45:11	08:40:32
Canada		08:43:55	08:38:22	08:40:33	08:48:45		08:42:54
Coeur D'alene		09:03:31	08:54:39	08:35:03	08:51:04		08:51:04
Malaysia					08:52:57	08:51:41	08:52:19
Lake Placid	09:00:13	08:57:15	08:45:55	08:51:35	08:47:52		08:52:36
France				08:59:04	08:46:42		08:52:53
United Kingdom				09:05:42	08:45:06		08:55:24
Japan		08:56:22	09:02:31	08:55:49	08:53:05		08:56:57
Lanzarote	09:00:00		09:04:22	09:07:49	09:00:35		09:03:11
Korea	08:55:34	09:19:09		09:07:14			09:07:19
Wisconsin		09:02:38	09:06:10	09:01:08	09:09:44	09:23:14	09:08:35
Grand Total	08:48:45	08:47:29	08:45:00	08:46:16	08:41:02	08:44:55	08:45:01

The first objective, and really the key to the whole exercise, is to neutralise the differences between the races. There have been studies done to achieve this by comparing the performance of the Kona participants at Kona versus their qualifying races in order to quantify the relative difficulties of the qualifying events. I think this approach certainly has its merits, but also has some pitfalls.

1. The condition of the athletes in the two races. Did they peak better for Kona than they did for their qualifying race?

2. The time difference between the qualifying event and Kona. Wisconsin is over a year away and the qualifiers have time to have an off season, improve and re-peak for Kona the next year. No such luck for the Korea qualifiers.

3. The differences in the courses. Qualifiers from courses with large bike elevations are typically less suited to Kona. Will a comparison of their respective performances lead to a conclusion that they qualified from a weaker event?

I intend to perform that analysis at a later date as a secondary validation; however my initial approach at determining the relative strengths of the race is via another route. I have taken the times of the top 5 finishers in each race (including age groupers that came in the top 5) and calculated the average of that time. This time I am calling the Elite Reference Time [ERT]. Why the top 5 finishers? Well just looking at the winning time would subject the ERT to large fluctuations based on the quality of the winner. Taking an average over more athletes statistically yields a more stable result. So why not the first 10 or 20 finishers? Well at some point if we go too deep then the strength in depth of the Male Pro field will end up being judged rather than the race itself. Somewhere between these numbers there lies a compromise and I have chosen five as the number. A future opportunity for study would be to see how the analysis changes based on that choice.

Another important point to make about the ERT is that it is specific to each race and not each event. What I mean here is that Ironman UK is the event and Ironman UK 2006 is the race. Because of a bike course change the ERT varied significantly between IMUK 2005 and IMUK 2006.

I have analysed all the course data available to me going back as far as 2002. I have had to make one or two judgement calls along the way and I’ll explain them here so that you understand what has been included and omitted.

1. Shortened races (NZ 2006, Malaysia 2005, Korea 2006 etc) have not been included

2. For events with a complete change of venue and management like Ironman France, only data from Nice 2005 and 2006 is included. Similarly Germany only includes the Frankfurt event and not Roth

3. The reference times of Coeur D’Alene and Lake Placid have only been included when the men’s professionals have competed. For the gap years the ERTs from the surrounding years were used.

What we then have is the reference table Table 1. (right) which shows the ERTs for each race for each year. I have calculated an average ERT for the event but for the reasons stated earlier, please treat this average with extreme caution. Also note that I have assigned the races by the qualification season. So the Florida, Wisconsin and Western Australia 2007 races were actually raced in the 2006 calendar year, but qualified for the 2007 Hawaii event. Just in case any of you thought I had some clairvoyant skills.

Now there is a huge assumption here that most of you will have noticed already. We are assuming that the strength of the men’s field is the same in each race. Obviously the strength of the men’s field will vary with the following factors.

1. Prize Money

2. Pro Slots Available

3. Travel And Expense to get to the location. Note now the value of my Grand Prix table to determine in which geographical areas the strength of the field lies.

4. Proximity in the calendar to Hawaii. Unlikely that Normann and Faris are ever going to be competing in Wisconsin and Florida is it?

5. Course type. There are “grimpeurs” and “rouleurs” and most of the really top pros are not climbers since only 3-4 courses really provide a significant elevation to be considered. So these could be argued as specialist courses. I’m not for a moment saying that Herve Faure, Marcel Zamora, Gilles Reboul are not top quality triathletes. They absolutely are, as Tim Deboom found out in 2005, however I would suggest that their prize was the “maillot a pois” rather than the “maillot jaune”.

6. Course history, conditions and organisation. Will the weather conditions in the courses that were shortened and nearly postponed in recent years weaken the field?

However that being said, the data show a good level of consistency year over year for the same events and the results do bear out the levels of difficulties of each course as anecdotal reports have indicated over the years. I would therefore advance that this table serves us well in determining a valid reference time for each race for each year.

HAMMOND QUALIFICATION COEFFICIENT [HQC]

M40 AG
HQC	Season
Event	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	Grand Total
Lanzarote	25.4%		20.6%	21.4%	19.2%		21.7%
France