A couple of other things:
- pick a course that suits your strengths. I'm super skinny any tend to have relatively better (not faster) bike splits on rolling bike courses, flat bike courses tend to work against me.
- pick a course where the weather suits you. Being super skinny and living in a hot climate, I cope much better with the heat than most athletes.
- pick an IM event where the number of slots to starters is likely to be favourable. The IM owners constantly move the slots around based on where they want to drive up numbers. I wouldn't be surprised if this has moved in the last year or two with the sale of IM to a chinese company.
- money comes into it, if you want to maximise your chances above, as well as race a few races during the year, then entering more events in more locations might increase your odds if you're close to qualifying. From Australia it is very expensive to race Kona which stops alot of people from going even if they qualify.
- luck also plays a part. When I qualified for Kona in 2003 I missed the first round of slots by 15 seconds even finishing in 9.35. There was one roll down in my group and I got a slot, did 9.53 at Kona. Plenty of guys who finsished in front of me in qualifying finished behind me at Kona - see points above. Weather, course, conditions, money and luck all come into it.
- pick a course that suits your strengths. I'm super skinny any tend to have relatively better (not faster) bike splits on rolling bike courses, flat bike courses tend to work against me.
- pick a course where the weather suits you. Being super skinny and living in a hot climate, I cope much better with the heat than most athletes.
- pick an IM event where the number of slots to starters is likely to be favourable. The IM owners constantly move the slots around based on where they want to drive up numbers. I wouldn't be surprised if this has moved in the last year or two with the sale of IM to a chinese company.
- money comes into it, if you want to maximise your chances above, as well as race a few races during the year, then entering more events in more locations might increase your odds if you're close to qualifying. From Australia it is very expensive to race Kona which stops alot of people from going even if they qualify.
- luck also plays a part. When I qualified for Kona in 2003 I missed the first round of slots by 15 seconds even finishing in 9.35. There was one roll down in my group and I got a slot, did 9.53 at Kona. Plenty of guys who finsished in front of me in qualifying finished behind me at Kona - see points above. Weather, course, conditions, money and luck all come into it.