pk wrote:
Lurker4 wrote:
TulkasTri wrote:
dcpinsonn wrote:
All of this is more than reasonable & thought the YouTube was fine too. Like hearing honest thoughts from pros. I said it earlier but the next big US IM race is IM Texas. There's just a 5:00 start gap between the pro men and the pro women. The reality is top pro women are good enough to be mid-pack in the men's race. Jewett would've been 27th/49. You're going to have this problem moving forward if the gaps stay tight. Gotta increase the gap or implement rules about pro men dropping back. Swimming is not going to be everyone's strength in the male pro field. You'll have people like Foley who will come out of T1 with pro women and then hammer the bike. But pros like Stern are still dropping good times & should get to develop in the sport.
It's interesting how Messick argued for a "fair women race" as part of their reasons they are not making IM WC a one day event, and yet we get bullshit like this where they can't give the women more time so they can have a fair race.
Errr, didn't this prove Messicks point? They needed two days. Hence two locations since Hawaii said ʻaʻohe maikaʻi to two days there.
The women's race is necessarily impacted by the men's. Now, could they have spaced it further out? Maybe, but there are real stresses for every extra few minutes, there are always knockdown effects, delays etc. But Messicks point was, to be most fair to women, give them their own day. That was proven here, not disproven. Maybe someday if the sport was big enough, they could do it more often outside of worlds races.
if you really care about the female race you find those 10 min somehow. ie you let the age group70 plus start behind the pros with a 1 min gap, and for the rest you cut the cut if times a few min so you can finish the race at the same time for instance.
That's the same know-better reasoning that gets applied in every fb group etc. I assume they have to budget delays in and all other considerations so that ten minutes potentially becomes more? Maybe I'm just knee jerk defending what I presume is knowledge on their part and it's really group think ignorance.
But here's the thing. There are two presumptions I can make. You know what you are talking about and know better than them. Or they know better than you. It seems like I make an assumption either way, and the safe assumption is the latter. The feel good contrarian assumption is just too attack the people in "power". That seems too easy for me.
As it was, looking at the results the race was supposed to start at 6:40. The time start shows the men going at 6:39 and the women going at 6:42.
I thought it was "supposed " to be 5 minutes between. They felt pressured to move things faster or just jumped the gun. But when you've got people coming and going from a Marine base and you future ability to run a race in a venue depends on making a good impression, maybe it's as simple as them wanting to be absolutely certain they overperform the expectations they set in various stakeholders rather than causing some annoyance that Ironman always goes 20 minutes longer than expected.
Like you said, those few minutes seem both meaningless and inconsequential in the overall race day but can have a big perceived impact on the race. Well, likewise, it might have a big perceived impact to be that many fewer minutes faster on the course closures. Disagree? Then tell me you've never exceeded the speed limit, risked death to yourself and those around you....to save a couple minutes or less on a commute. When you're holding your hat out essentially begging on a road closure "donation" it makes a lot of sense to over deliver on your times.