The 2018 Legacy list is here … http://www.ironman.com/...s.aspx#axzz5UCngBmQM
Indirectly, you could look up an individual athlete on obstri.com; see if they’ve done at least 12 IMs prior to Kona, note their placements, and infer with high probability whether they got their by KQ or LQ.
Ah I see now, thanks for this info.
I’d argue that being from Texas, we train in Kona like conditions pretty much all summer long with most of my training days being 85 degrees at 4 AM and 105 by noon when you are doing a brick off a 5 or 6 hour bike ride, all with about 90-98% humidity on most days. Just b/c I train in this doesn’t mean I can race well in the heat.
For reference, the highest dewpoint recorded in Dallas this past July and August was 76F. A temperature of 85F with 90% RH would equal a dewpoint of 82F.
A temperature of 105F with RH of 90% would equal a dewpoint of 102F, which is substantially greater than the highest dewpoint ever recorded, which was 95F in Saudia Arabia in 2003.
Kona does have almost identical dewpoints to Dallas over the summer, so I feel your pain.
The 2018 Legacy list is here … http://www.ironman.com/...s.aspx#axzz5UCngBmQM
Indirectly, you could look up an individual athlete on obstri.com; see if they’ve done at least 12 IMs prior to Kona, note their placements, and infer with high probability whether they got their by KQ or LQ.
Ah I see now, thanks for this info.
Yep, I did just that. Kind of stalkerish, but there you go.
The 2018 Legacy list is here … http://www.ironman.com/...s.aspx#axzz5UCngBmQM
Indirectly, you could look up an individual athlete on obstri.com; see if they’ve done at least 12 IMs prior to Kona, note their placements, and infer with high probability whether they got their by KQ or LQ.
Ah I see now, thanks for this info.
Yep, I did just that. Kind of stalkerish, but there you go.
Interesting, I just never knew that the “legacy list” was ever published, but then I am not that obsessed with going to Kona. If I were, then I think I’d just donate $5000 and get a charity slot. Hell, $5K is less than the cost of most “super bikes” plus you get a tax deduction. 
Qualified using a wetsuit. No wetsuits at Kona.
LOL…that doesn’t explain a 2 hour difference
It’s economic. KQers paid how much money for the race? Those losers racing fast get a smaller return on their investment. If you’re out there for 13, 14…17 hours, you get much more racing per dollar.
This answer wins!!! LOL
For reference, the highest dewpoint recorded in Dallas this past July and August was 76F. A temperature of 85F with 90% RH would equal a dewpoint of 82F.
A temperature of 105F with RH of 90% would equal a dewpoint of 102F, which is substantially greater than the highest dewpoint ever recorded, which was 95F in Saudia Arabia in 2003.
Kona does have almost identical dewpoints to Dallas over the summer, so I feel your pain.
Thanks for the post. RH exaggerations are one of my pet peeves. Maybe it happens when people turn on their radio in the morning and hear 75 degrees and 98% humidity and they assume that RH stays constant all day. Actually its dewpoint that stays more or less constant. So what the meteorologist could have told them is that with that combination of 75/98%, the dewpoint was over 74 degrees. Later that day, if the dew point remains constant, but the temperature is up to 95 degrees, the RH would only be about 52%.
I wish we could get the TV/radio meteorologist to focus on dewpoint instead of RH. In my example above, even though the RH is only 52%, it would feel very humid – because a dewpoint of over 74 is very humid.
The 2018 Legacy list is here … http://www.ironman.com/...s.aspx#axzz5UCngBmQM
Indirectly, you could look up an individual athlete on obstri.com; see if they’ve done at least 12 IMs prior to Kona, note their placements, and infer with high probability whether they got their by KQ or LQ.
Although obstri looks like a great tool I just decided to search one of the pros I follow and can tell you for a fact that it has them having raced one Ironman when they were nowhere near that part of the world.
The 2018 Legacy list is here … http://www.ironman.com/...s.aspx#axzz5UCngBmQM
Indirectly, you could look up an individual athlete on obstri.com; see if they’ve done at least 12 IMs prior to Kona, note their placements, and infer with high probability whether they got their by KQ or LQ.
Ah I see now, thanks for this info.
Yep, I did just that. Kind of stalkerish, but there you go.
Interesting, I just never knew that the “legacy list” was ever published, but then I am not that obsessed with going to Kona. If I were, then I think I’d just donate $5000 and get a charity slot. Hell, $5K is less than the cost of most “super bikes” plus you get a tax deduction.
You can’t just donate $5000 and get a Kona slot.
Did it provide times for that pro at the race they did not do, and was it possibly another person with the same name? I’ve found the website to be highly accurate but you have to look only for the right person. E.g., if there are 3 David Smiths, obstri will give you the performances of all 3 at all of their races. The only way to distinguish would be by country and AG. E.g., David Smith from the UK would have the UK flag next to their name while David Smith from the US would have the American flag. And two people with the same name and the same country can only be distinguished by their AG if they are different. But yeah, I can’t say it’s perfect, just that I have not come across any errors myself.
Well…there’s only one of these that I know of racing Ironman as a pro. But yeah they had a time. Which is impossible.
There are quite a few charity / lottery / celebrity invite slots…I think those are the majority of the folks finishing with glowsticks.
I tried for a KQ for a few years, and my attitude was always that if I did make it, I would treat it as a vacation with a race in the middle… wifey wouldn’t have it much other way!. My closest approach was about 20 minutes out ( and over 20 places… not very close) and I had no illusions about actually competing the with cream of my particular AG. That said, I do have some pride and wouldn’t have shown up to race in a hawiian shirt. I would guess 1-2 hours depending an Madam Pele’s mood.
The 2018 Legacy list is here … http://www.ironman.com/...s.aspx#axzz5UCngBmQM
Indirectly, you could look up an individual athlete on obstri.com; see if they’ve done at least 12 IMs prior to Kona, note their placements, and infer with high probability whether they got their by KQ or LQ.
Ah I see now, thanks for this info.
Yep, I did just that. Kind of stalkerish, but there you go.
Interesting, I just never knew that the “legacy list” was ever published, but then I am not that obsessed with going to Kona. If I were, then I think I’d just donate $5000 and get a charity slot. Hell, $5K is less than the cost of most “super bikes” plus you get a tax deduction.
You can’t just donate $5000 and get a Kona slot.
OK, I stand corrected. Looked it up on Ironman.com and it appears that you have to bid on 5 slots auctioned off 1/week with min bid of $25,000, which is a bit steeper than $5000.
I was in Kona with my wife in 2017 and 2019 and she also wondered why so many people are slow, as she thought the best of the best are there and the general level must be insane.
There have been a lot of reasons mentioned in this thread already to which I can agree.
I would like to point out one thing: shape of the day.
I did following Ims:
2007 IM Switserland good shape
2010 IM Austria good shape
2012 IM Sweden havy cold in the week before
2014 IM Austria good shape
2014 IM Sweden migraine the day before
2016 IM Austria recovering from a break of collarbone in spring
2016 IM Weymouth good shape KQ
2017 IM Hawaii jetlag
2019 IM Lanzarote good shape KQ
2019 IM Austria good shape virtual KQ
2019 IM Hawaii avoided the jetlag in arriving 3 weeks before but: bad day: probably a virus
You can see about half of the IMs I had a bad day. If that is averagely generally the case for everyone, you have already an important reason here why so many people are slow in Hawaii. And then of course all the other reasons mentioned.
A bad day can not always be avoided, also the pros have problems. Look at Frodeno in 2017 and look at Lange and Ryf in 2019.
There are quite a few charity / lottery / celebrity invite slots…I think those are the majority of the folks finishing with glowsticks.
I hate to say, but I’ve randonly met 2 people in my time in triathlon who went to Kona by “being in the business” of triathlon" meaning, they work at a company that supports or sponsors Kona and got a “sponsorship entry.” One of them I met on a hike…guy had on a Kona finisher shirt…so I ask him how his race went, he said TERRIBLE (he hadn’t done enough prep for the swim and barely made the cutoff), but he finished. So then I ask what race he qualified at, and I get a blank stare. Then he says he didn’t qualify…since his company gets a couple free entries to the race just for doing business with WTC. He goes on to say he never had done ANY ironman before that. So there are THOSE people…I doubt that guy had any idea what he was getting into.
It’s economic. KQers paid how much money for the race? Those losers racing fast get a smaller return on their investment. If you’re out there for 13, 14…17 hours, you get much more racing per dollar.
hahaha
It would be great if we had charity spots and lottery spots at the Olympics. Running side by side to Usain bolt and getting smoked must be awesome.
Approximately 15% of the competitors in M40-44 and 25% of the people in the entire race finished in over 12 hours.
So, the answer is that there aren’t that many slow people in Kona.
Good post in a good thread. There are a lot of good answers to the OP, and I think that if you asked everyone in that age group who finished in 12h+, they would find the explanation for their performance somewhere in this thread.
Based on this response (15% in M40-44 over 12 hours), I’d say that I’m surprised it is that low!
If you (after removing all the legacy and charity participants) take a fairly large population of guys who can go 10 hours and faster on a course of their choosing on what almost certainly was a very good race, and then have them compete again in a remote location on a hard course in historically difficult weather, add in random injuries, pacing issues, choices to “just finish and get the medal,” and “have a family trip” and “went too hard and blew up” and everything else, I’m a little surprised that the distribution doesn’t skew even harder to the slow slide.
Killing time…
I looked at the last five years of Kona, M40-44, results including the starters and those who did not finish. The groups are, from the starters, what percent broke 10 hours, finished between 10 and 12 hours, and over 12 hours, presented in percent.
Year/starters/under10 hours/10-12 hours/12+ hours
2019 292 28.8/51.7/19.5
2018 285 44.6/38.9/16.5
2017 264 22.7/58.5/19.3
2016 254 24.8/59.8/15.4
2015 291 18.9/56.0/25.1
Total 1386 28.06/53.0/10.04
I did not remove legacy or charity athletes. Given that, I am quite surprised how few athletes take more than 12 hours and (with 2018 being an outlier) I think it seems reasonable that about a quarter of qualifiers break 10 hours.
Based on this, I would say that given all the reasons to explain poor performances suggested in this thread to explain the slow end of the distribution, most athletes do fairly well or quite well, really.
I want to win the Kona beer mile. my aspirations.