- I like my data, you know I like my data.
Times went up, but then they came down
as things got really competitive.
I got a lot of opinions about a lot of things,
but this one I'm kinda confused by.
Morning, Trainiacs.
Not entirely sure what today's gonna be about.
I've got a list of 15 good ideas.
I haven't spent the time yet
to decide what I'm talking about.
It's gonna be good, I promise.
No lack of good thoughts up here.
A few more years of that
and I might be up a height category,
and ride all the big person rides at amusement parks.
Somebody showed me their website.
I think it's obstri, O-B-S tri like Obsessed Triathlete.
It's got some good stats
about the average finish time trends
for swimming, biking, running in full Ironman, Half Ironman.
I like my data, you know I like my data.
Let's dig into some data.
Oh, yeah, there's another 1/16 of an inch.
Alright, Trainiacs.
So number one, let's thank,
hang on, hang on, hang on, we'll get there.
(microphone rustles)
Christophe Balestra, thank you for your wisdom,
and insights, and sharing your website with me.
Alright, so Christophe here,
he analyzed races going back to 2005.
We can see basically a good trend of the growth
of what's happening in Ironman,
and specifically, Half Ironman races,
which I think is kind of like the vacuum
that's sucking a lot of triathletes into the sport.
What we see, and apparently what was announced
at Ironman KONA this year, is that the grassroots,
the USA Triathlons, the Sprints, the Olympics,
the local stuff has actually seen a fair bit less entries.
However, when we go to KONA this year, 2017,
as opposed to last time we went in 2013,
it's so much bigger.
And what we can see from the data
that Christophe put together
is that there's a huge amount of growth in Ironman racing.
And what I see in the comments is that
when people get into the sport, it's like,
hey, I wanna do my first Sprint, or Olympic,
but really the goal is Ironman.
And that is the case, I mean, specifically with me,
I wanna do an Ironman race.
Eventually, I wanna qualify for KONA.
But it's not like I'm just doing those first couple races
to be able to do an Ironman.
I'm looking at a two, three, four, five year build
going up a couple of age categories,
being competitive in an older age category
as opposed to getting kicked around
in my ultra competitive 35 to 39 category.
So right off the hop here, we see that over 2005 to 2009,
Ironman basically didn't grow a lot.
Half Ironman was just kind of coming around,
so it was growing.
But in 2009, I think this is around
when a private equity firm purchased the rights
to be basically Ironman.
Big money hustlers came in,
and their entire mandate was to grow it,
and eventually sell it.
They sold it over the past year to Wanda holdings company,
a Chinese organization.
But over that 2009 to 2016 period,
they grew the hell out of the brand.
What we can see is that there was moderate growth
in the full Ironman distance races,
even tapering off over the last couple of years.
Growing from around 18 races in 2010 to upwards of 40.
I think this coming year there's 42.
So we see a little bit of a bump up.
Half Ironman racing, however, in 2010 had 30 races,
and now there's almost 100.
So an increase of more than three times.
We see that the overall entries
follow a fairly similar trend,
actually going up a fair bit more in Ironman distance races
than the number of races that there were,
but kind of following a similar trend.
However, Half Ironman races, again, outpaced it,
and there are more overall racers in Half Ironman.
I think the nature of that is because
when the World Triathlon Corporation
that holds Ironman events decides to hold
a full Ironman distance race, they're going all in.
It's a big event, it's a big deal.
Half Ironmans, however, can be a little bit smaller.
Regional entries were not
seeing big growth in Africa, Asia.
There is going to be a fair bit of growth in Asia now
with Chinese Wanda holding company
actually owning it and promoting it.
In Oceania, it's not really catching on.
However, in Europe, boom, huge growth.
In the Americas, huge growth,
but it's kinda starting to taper off
over the last few years.
You talk to a lot of people in the sport,
they're gonna say that we're going through a bit
of a contraction right now in North America.
However, that apparently happened in the early 2000s.
It also happened in the early '90s.
And then we just see waves of it going up and down.
Now let's click through some of the division entries.
Male, all we see a huge increase.
Female, you can click that,
and we're also seeing a huge increase,
particularly recently.
A little bit of a tape.
It's following that overall trend that more people
are going into Half Iron distance than full.
Now the times.
This is where I'm very interested
in digging into some of the data here.
Let's start with the shorter, more popular distance.
Half Ironman, swim times for all age groups,
and we're looking at the median.
We're looking at the middle time of all races.
And we can see that when the sport was younger,
and there were less people going into it,
it was only the ultra, ultra passionate people
that were seriously into the sport that did it.
There were less one-day, wanna check that
off the bucket list and then get out kinda racers.
So because there was more full-time commitment to the sport,
the times were a fair bit better.
When it got ultra competitive,
and we were seeing massive growth,
that fueled, I think, a lot of competitive juices,
and all of a sudden, times went up, but then they came down
as things got really competitive.
Now, again, as the sport is kind of tapering off,
we're seeing those times climb back up.
Let's look and see how it's different in the full distance.
It's basically the same thing, that as the sport grew
and went through it's big growth spurt going into 2012,
the times slowly got slower.
At which point it became very competitive.
The times still kind of basically just maintained,
and over the last year they got a little bit slower.
The bike actually has kind of maintained.
Basically, moving sideways.
If anything, the males, it's gone down.
I would say there's a slight trend of it going down.
And last year, in the Half Ironman distance races,
we saw an average male swim time of 39 minutes, 17 seconds.
Female average finish time
of 41 minutes, 34 seconds for the swim.
I think that the reason that the bike times
are either maintaining or getting just a little bit faster
is because the technology over the last 10 years
has really increased.
And you can say, well, the times at the top
with the elite athletes really hasn't changed much,
but those are super-human athletes.
Those are phenomenal athletes that you can put them
on an old 1991 aluminum round tube bike,
and they will still smash it.
However, it makes a bigger difference
to have better, more sophisticated technology,
because it's the only discipline of the three that we use
where technology is a very huge factor.
We'll see those bike times come down.
In the Half Ironman distance events in 2017,
the average male finish time
was two hours, 53 minutes, and 50 seconds.
Female average finish time
was three hours, 11 minutes, and seven seconds.
In full Ironman distance racing,
we're talking male average finish time
of six hours, three minutes, and two seconds.
Female, six hours, 42 minutes, and 22 seconds.
And finally, let's look at the run.
We see kind of a similar trend here,
that it was fastest in 2007, 2008.
As the sport grew a little bit,
times got a little bit slower,
and then as it became ultra competitive,
times slowly came down because that competitive juice
fueled people who had been in the sport longer
to develop their abilities as a runner.
But over the last little while
as it's become less competitive,
as the ultra hyper-growth has sucked out of it,
the times have got a little bit slower.
Average finish times in Half Ironman distance races,
two hours, three minutes, and 17 seconds for men,
two hours, 13 minutes, and 32 seconds for women.
And in full Ironman distance racing,
oh, we're actually just getting overall faster
in Ironman distance racing.
Why would that be?
I got a lot of opinions about a lot of things,
but this one I'm kinda confused by.
Hm, learn something new every day.
Average finish times for males
in full Ironman distance running,
four hours, 38 minutes, and 54 seconds.
For females, four hours, 58 minutes, and 27 seconds.
So there you go, Trainiacs.
As you know, if you've been around for the last few weeks
with data coming out for KONA, I am a data junkie,
because I think those pictures, just to see trends,
and you can hear anecdotes, and read things,
but until you actually see big, huge, large number data,
and you see where the trends are,
and you start trying to think about how that data
is actually reflecting what's going on in the real world,
you kinda don't know what's going on.
But it was pretty cool.
Thanks again, Christophe,
for putting me in touch with your website.
Check it out.
I'll link it up below, everyone.
And (clicks tongue)
let's call that a vlog today, alright?