It's long on purpose. I believe to compensate for the down-river swim which can be insanely fast.

Interesting. That makes sense. I guess that's why IM Chattanooga had a long bike course as well since that swim is a down current swim. What's comical is that many participants were all getting 144.6 stickers. I had a friend bragging about how they beat another friends IM course time from a completely different IM event and even injected the "and I even had to bike 4 miles longer". ugh.

With that said, I don't agree with it and many courses like that don't have adjusted distances. I'd prefer to know that I am racing the prescribed distances. Each course has it's own unique characteristics and there shouldn't be a reason to change the actual distances to "adjust" for time.

Sorry for the side convo.....and now back to our regularly scheduled programming :)

Hopefully some of the info about myself and my most recent IM race (Sept 2019 Chattanooga) will be of use to you.

I am currently 58 yrs, and when I raced IM Chattanooga, I was 57....sadly, no results from this year. Weight is a very steady 67kg (about 148lbs).

Bike: FTP is 251W
Run: On a solo marathon (ie not in a tri) I have run just under 3:00 on two occasions in the past five years. Last November, about 6 weeks after IM Chattanooga, I ran the NY Marathon in 3:02. Half marathon PB is 1:23:15
Swim: 1,000m in 17:00 (equates to a 1:42/100m pace...note that this test was done in a 50m pool); if I were just swimming a stand-alone 100m (in a 50m pool), I imagine that my time would be 1:35, plus or minus

IM Chattanooga results and comments
Swim: 57:59...the swim was downriver; no wetsuit (3rd fastest swim in my AG)
Bike: 5:32...the bike course was officially 186km (about 123miles); 183W; 1,126m (about 3,700 feet) of elevation gain: it was VERY hot on the day of the race, with the 3rd highest DNF rate in IM history (5th fastest bike in my AG)
Run: 4:07...I was very disappointed in my run; but again, it was brutally hot; 351m of elevation gain (about 1,150 feet); (2nd fastest run in AG)
Overall: 10:53 (2nd place in AG)

Good luck to you and let me know if I can be of any further help.

Am I reading this wrong our does this not say a 123 mile bike in 2019?

I don't live in Chattanooga and therefore don't know the roads well, but the bike course is kinda like a lollipop with a shortish stick and two loops around the candy part, if that makes sense. And once you get out of town on the bike, it is very rural. Given all of this, I am not sure if it is even possible to shorten the two loops by two miles each (ie I don't know if the roads exist to cut off two miles per loop). So maybe the long bike course is simply a result of there being no other realistic options.

I am turning 50 next year and hoping for a Kona podium.

1) 4.4 W/kg

2) 6:15 minute/miles (or 3.55 minute/k) - that is the pace I do 10k tempo runs at in training.

3) 100m free- 60 (I was once a competitive swimmer.

Hoping to go faster than 9:30 in Kona.

55 years of age now. Did a 9.47 in 2018 and 9.50 in 2019. Roughly 1.05 swim, 5.00 bike and 3.35 run plus transitions.

Don't know what my FTP is because I use HR in my cycle training and RPE in races. I have cycling pb's of 20.56 for 10 miles, 57.00 for 25 and 1.55 for 50 all done in last 3 years.

I hardly race stand alone running events but did 10k in 39.30 in 2018. Been in the sport 30+ years and there is virtually no difference in my standalone pace to that off the bike.

I'm decidedly average at swimming so 1.35-1.40 for 100m repeats on 2.00 minutes.

Thanks gents, I'm in the ballpark. But my swim is not even close to you guys. I've gone 11:21 and 11:31 at IMFL and 11:23 at IMLP. Trying to go sub 11 at IMFL next year.

It's long on purpose. I believe to compensate for the down-river swim which can be insanely fast.

Placid must be 30 min slower than flat and fast Florida. (*at least 24 min...). 😉

Actually one of my very close friends who has KQ'd at both Florida and Placid 3-5x times (raced both that many times and Kona qual'd almost every time) seems to be 20-25 minutes apart between the races. He is a strong biker and runner and generally the Floriday bike was 30 min faster for him, but the Florida run was 5-10 min slower. He attributes it to zero breaks during the Florida bike and Florida run. LP you have coasting breaks downhill on the bike and heart rate breaks downhill on the run. In both cases with the heart rate dropping there is a better chance to digest and recharge too and the muscles get mixed around. In that context my previous times in LP and Kona were 2-5 minutes apart. LP hills made up for Kona heat and wind, and Kona there are coasting breaks too in both sports (assuming your heart rate can settle in the heat and use that at a microbreak to help digestion and recovery). I tthink as we get older those micro breaks are even more important since our organs also get less efficient than young people (its why old guys can't do day over day over day hard training and we can't do the volume of intensity inside a single workout)

‘Mechanical limitation’......that’s a good way of putting it.
Running is the area that is the most challenging to manage as we age. Gone are the intense run sessions, big miles, even consecutive days of running are a thing of the past. It does mean we can hammer the bike though!

Placid must be 30 min slower than flat and fast Florida. (*at least 24 min...). 😉

I'm thinking so too, which makes me think I might be able to go sub 11:00 at Florida if I train correctly. I just had my swim stroke filmed this morning though, and I need a LOT of work on that. I had a ton of side-to-side motion - I looked like a water snake!

There's a good way to solve a lot of that side-side-motion. Do some ankle banded swimming. It'll force you to keep alignment in your pull correct, as you can no longer compensate by doing that fishtail kick. It may feel impossible at first, but hang in there and it'll happen. It's the best drill bar none for removing extra unnecessary motion from your stroke.