Looking at results over the past 20 years, is it me or does it seem that despite the perceived huge advances in technology and knowledge the times don’t seem to have improved that dramatically?
Thoughts?
Looking at results over the past 20 years, is it me or does it seem that despite the perceived huge advances in technology and knowledge the times don’t seem to have improved that dramatically?
Thoughts?
The advances are mostly on the bike, I wonder if the media vans are not as close now 
I think the biggest change is that the win is less predictable now (i had Rana for the win a few weeks out) swim and bike times are still about the same.
Who knows, the race and strategy are very much dictated by conditions on the day.
Maurice
Looking at results over the past 20 years, is it me or does it seem that despite the perceived huge advances in technology and knowledge the times don’t seem to have improved that dramatically?
Thoughts?
The advances are mostly on the bike, I wonder if the media vans are not as close now
I think the biggest change is that the win is less predictable now (i had Rana for the win a few weeks out) swim and bike times are still about the same.
Who knows, the race and strategy are very much dictated by conditions on the day.
Maurice
Items affecting times over the last 20 years:
some bike technologydepth of field/style of racingpress vehicle drafting/reduction of vehicles on coursedraft zone rules and enforcementchange of swim course from exit on King Kam side to pier side (seems like times are now consistently 3 min slower)change of run course from old T2 and pit to Alii drive out and backLess of a pure drag race (Dave vs. Mark style) vs. tactical racingweatherlack of testing and more possibility of EPO usage in some eras more than in other periods (low octane vs high octane racing)On the women’s side, solo racing vs. racing with age group men.
jackmott has a really interesting analysis of the bike time evolution at Kona. Def worth a read.
Kona Ironman Bike Splits - Stats, Charts, and History
Yup isn’t it funny with all the supposed technological benefits of bikes, speed suits, runner, nutrition, and training. The times are as slow or slower even in great weather. Also With more drafting and a larger draft pack of pros and media vehicles.
I guess marketing works better then common sense?
Side note I would like to think they weren’t doping back then, just like I would like to think they aren’t doping right now, but I don’t know?
…
Side note I would like to think they weren’t doping back then, just like I would like to think they aren’t doping right now, but I don’t know?
That’s so cute.
You should really go back 25 years to include the "89 race.
Having raced back then, I think the old course was harder (slower), but also different. I also think the course, particularly the run, was measured a bit differently back then (and even in the last few years). In many ways comparing IM race times particularly with changed courses is a bit apples and oranges.
Of course, Dave Scott may have a point in saying current run times are soft.
Looking at results over the past 20 years, is it me or does it seem that despite the perceived huge advances in technology and knowledge the times don’t seem to have improved that dramatically?
Thoughts?
The advances are mostly on the bike, I wonder if the media vans are not as close now
I think the biggest change is that the win is less predictable now (i had Rana for the win a few weeks out) swim and bike times are still about the same.
Who knows, the race and strategy are very much dictated by conditions on the day.
Maurice
Items affecting times over the last 20 years:
some bike technologydepth of field/style of racingpress vehicle drafting/reduction of vehicles on coursedraft zone rules and enforcementchange of swim course from exit on King Kam side to pier side (seems like times are now consistently 3 min slower)change of run course from old T2 and pit to Alii drive out and backLess of a pure drag race (Dave vs. Mark style) vs. tactical racingweatherlack of testing and more possibility of EPO usage in some eras more than in other periods (low octane vs high octane racing)On the women’s side, solo racing vs. racing with age group men.
What about more racing? It seems like the pros now are doing 2-3 ironman and several more 70.3s a year. Top pros could not do that 20 years ago because there were just not that many IM races.
I also wonder what this does say about those “advances.” Maybe (just maybe) all those “advances” in nutrition, compression gear, “coaching” and training are just bullshit after all.
There is a third possibility, though an unlikely one…the times reflect the near limit of human performance at that distance. Maybe we just cannot really go any faster. Sure the “world record” was lowered to 7:41, but Kona provides the only real comparison of time since IM does not strictly certify courses. I think that we may be at the limits of capabilities at some distances. Notice the WR in the mile was last broken 14 years ago, which is the longest gap between records in history. On the other hand the Marathon record seem to get oblieterated every year. So, perhaps there is more room at the top end opf the endurance spectrum for records to fall.
The real answer may just be that pros today do not care about time…just the win.
This is something I always found interesting having raced since the early 80’s and did Kona in 1987. I wondered what the comparison is when you look at the change in times from the 80’s to now in swimming, biking and marathon. Have those times dropped at the same percentage rate that the Ironman times have? Also, I believe timing back then including the transition time as well meaning Dave Scott’s bike time included his T1 time and his run included his T2 which makes his times even more impressive. Just an old guy waxing on here.
Do you think there is a change too in how they raced all year.
I’m not by any means an expert, but for example, I think part of Rinny’s sucess that last few years is looking at her race schedule. She does few Ironmen and doesn’t have too many stand out performances and then Bam… she’s Ms October out there killing everyone.
Didn’t Allen and Scott tend to do mostly 70.3 and shorter distance races most of the season?
I also wonder if more youth and teens tend to be involved in football, basketball, soccer than in he past. Is the elite talent pool doing triathlons dropping. The sport has grown as a whole, but are we actually getting more elite athletes into the sport?
Remember you can’t get a college scholarship doing triathlon or cycling. Runing yes, swimming yes, but how many natural athletes might choose a team sport and never go after triathlon.
Also, in the late 70’s, wasn’t running… real running, not run/walkjogging around fun run crap… wildly popular?
Do you think there is a change too in how they raced all year.
I’m not by any means an expert, but for example, I think part of Rinny’s sucess that last few years is looking at her race schedule. She does few Ironmen and doesn’t have too many stand out performances and then Bam… she’s Ms October out there killing everyone.
Didn’t Allen and Scott tend to do mostly 70.3 and shorter distance races most of the season?
I also wonder if more youth and teens tend to be involved in football, basketball, soccer than in he past. Is the elite talent pool doing triathlons dropping. The sport has grown as a whole, but are we actually getting more elite athletes into the sport?
Remember you can’t get a college scholarship doing triathlon or cycling. Runing yes, swimming yes, but how many natural athletes might choose a team sport and never go after triathlon.
Also, in the late 70’s, wasn’t running… real running, not run/walkjogging around fun run crap… wildly popular?
There are way more quality elites racing Ironman’s these days compared to the 90’s.The age groupers are the same.
There is no more value in setting a course record than on winning Kona. As far as I know there is no curse record bonus (unlike the marathon majors). More guys (and gals) would take the risk of going for the record, and you would see it drop if teh risk of gong for the record was worth it. At the end of the day, there is a reason the world record is seldom set in distance events at the Olympics and WC events. But if the risk of blowing up was worth it, more would go for it.
So, if every one of the 65,000 regitered slowtwitch user pitched in 20 bucks for the first person under 7:45, we just might see it happen.
Do you think there is a change too in how they raced all year.
I’m not by any means an expert, but for example, I think part of Rinny’s sucess that last few years is looking at her race schedule. She does few Ironmen and doesn’t have too many stand out performances and then Bam… she’s Ms October out there killing everyone.
Didn’t Allen and Scott tend to do mostly 70.3 and shorter distance races most of the season?
I also wonder if more youth and teens tend to be involved in football, basketball, soccer than in he past. Is the elite talent pool doing triathlons dropping. The sport has grown as a whole, but are we actually getting more elite athletes into the sport?
Remember you can’t get a college scholarship doing triathlon or cycling. Runing yes, swimming yes, but how many natural athletes might choose a team sport and never go after triathlon.
Also, in the late 70’s, wasn’t running… real running, not run/walkjogging around fun run crap…** wildly popular**?
Can’t speak too much about the other stuff - but, the running part - was indeed a boom. I remember in the early 80’s doing 8k’s in MN where guys going 25 minutes were a dime a dozen (I wasn’t one of them), With the winner going around 22:30. No money, just a (big) local event. Or the countless times I’d be passed by local women in 10k’s when I’d be going under 34 minutes. For that era we can thank in part: Billy Mills, Frank Shorter, Pre, etc. In MN Garry Bjorkland, Dick Beardsley to name just a few. Times (pun intended) have indeed changed. Sure there are still fast guys and gals. But the depth isn’t there. Demographics??? No desire to suffer??? Lack of genetic talent (I say BS on that one)???
Now back to your regular programming 
I thought maybe the age grouper competition really picked up since it’s harder to get a slot now. I know a guy locally that qualified in the early days in the mid 80’s when he was in his 40’s by doing an odd distance half ironman race. He did quit a few IM’s back in the day, but I don’t think he ever broke 6 hours on the bike or 4 hours on the marathon. He’d be cannon fodder now. He was pretty shocked at the times I needed now just to be on the bubble. I assume most of that is the number of Kona slots are fixed, but there are more and more IM’s worldwide.
Do you think the age group field is a bit polarized? Do you think the numbers of those just trying to finish vs. those “racing” have changed any? I have no idea what the fields looked like in the 90’s. I was just getting into the sport in the last 90’s and knew one Kona qualifier and a couple other guys getting ready to do their first. He was in his 40’s and was rolling some solid sub 10 hour times in Kona on a Trek Y-foil. That bike was cool as hell.
What about more racing? It seems like the pros now are doing 2-3 ironman and several more 70.3s a year. Top pros could not do that 20 years ago because there were just not that many IM races…
…There is a third possibility, though an unlikely one…the times reflect the near limit of human performance at that distance. Maybe we just cannot really go any faster. Sure the “world record” was lowered to 7:41, but Kona provides the only real comparison of time since IM does not strictly certify courses. I think that we may be at the limits of capabilities at some distances. Notice the WR in the mile was last broken 14 years ago, which is the longest gap between records in history. On the other hand the Marathon record seem to get obliterated every year. So, perhaps there is more room at the top end of the endurance spectrum for records to fall.
I would disagree with both of these ideas. On the first point, how many half IM and IM distances races the pro’s were doing in a year back then, back in the 1980’s into the early 1990’s you had guys like Allen, Tinley, Glah, Europeans like Kiuru, Barel, women like Newby-Fraser, Erin Baker who did multiple 70.3 and longer races each year. And they were usually up front every race. When did you ever hear about Mark Allen having a bad result and finishing outside the Top 5? Even though WTC didn’t have anywhere near as many races as they do now you still had IM’s in Hawaii, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Europe, plus you had races of similar length like Nice, World’s Toughest, Zofinger. For athletes who were so inclined, there was no problem finding enough long races to compete in.
On the second point, performance limits, every time we as humans speculate that we are reaching a limit it seems like somebody else figures out a way to go faster, higher, stronger, whatever. The mile record is a great point. 59+ years ago common wisdom was that humans couldn’t run faster than 4:00/mile. Then Bannister broke through, and 4 years later the world record was under 3:55. The main reason (IMO) the world record hasn’t been broken in the mile in 14 years is that the mile is almost never raced internationally any more. Less races = less chances for the best runners in the world to take a crack at the WR.
My take on why times at Kona aren’t much faster than 20+ years ago is twofold…1) Tactics are different now, 2) Less “press truck drafting”.
…Didn’t Allen and Scott tend to do mostly 70.3 and shorter distance races most of the season?
…Remember you can’t get a college scholarship doing triathlon or cycling. Runing yes, swimming yes, but how many natural athletes might choose a team sport and never go after triathlon…
Allen and Scott, pretty much everybody, raced at all distances back then. You’d see those guys at the USTS races doing Olympic Distance, you’d see them at Kona, Nice. A guy like Ray Browning I think was more doing longer races predominantly. Pigg didn’t do a lot of IM length but he did some and he did stuff longer than Olympic Distance. So for most of those guys it wasn’t that they specifically did 70.3 and shorter most of the season, they’d go to France or Asia or Canada or NZ to race IM distance or other long races but they also kept up with the shorter stuff a lot more than many of today’s triathletes tend to.
There are some colleges that offer athletic scholarships in triathlon and/or cycling, 20+/- for cycling, not sure how many for triathlon. It’s not through the NCAA system of course, but it’s not unique to these sports, bowling and rugby, to name just two, are sports that aren’t a part of the NCAA system but that some colleges offer scholarships for (NCAA has both of those sports for women but not for men). It’s like anything else be it music, drama, etc, colleges can offer scholarships for whatever they wish.
What about more racing? It seems like the pros now are doing 2-3 ironman and several more 70.3s a year. Top pros could not do that 20 years ago because there were just not that many IM races…
…There is a third possibility, though an unlikely one…the times reflect the near limit of human performance at that distance. Maybe we just cannot really go any faster. Sure the “world record” was lowered to 7:41, but Kona provides the only real comparison of time since IM does not strictly certify courses. I think that we may be at the limits of capabilities at some distances. Notice the WR in the mile was last broken 14 years ago, which is the longest gap between records in history. On the other hand the Marathon record seem to get obliterated every year. So, perhaps there is more room at the top end of the endurance spectrum for records to fall.
I would disagree with both of these ideas. On the first point, how many half IM and IM distances races the pro’s were doing in a year back then, back in the 1980’s into the early 1990’s you had guys like Allen, Tinley, Glah, Europeans like Kiuru, Barel, women like Newby-Fraser, Erin Baker who did multiple 70.3 and longer races each year. And they were usually up front every race. When did you ever hear about Mark Allen having a bad result and finishing outside the Top 5? Even though WTC didn’t have anywhere near as many races as they do now you still had IM’s in Hawaii, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Europe, plus you had races of similar length like Nice, World’s Toughest, Zofinger. For athletes who were so inclined, there was no problem finding enough long races to compete in.
On the second point, performance limits, every time we as humans speculate that we are reaching a limit it seems like somebody else figures out a way to go faster, higher, stronger, whatever. The mile record is a great point. 59+ years ago common wisdom was that humans couldn’t run faster than 4:00/mile. Then Bannister broke through, and 4 years later the world record was under 3:55. The main reason (IMO) the world record hasn’t been broken in the mile in 14 years is that the mile is almost never raced internationally any more. Less races = less chances for the best runners in the world to take a crack at the WR.
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The 1500 meter record is even older…set in 1998. I think that is raced pretty frequently. The 800 meter record has gone down only .2 in that time. On the other hand, the marathon has gone done down by 7 seconds per mile in that same time.
Clearly, we are reaching the end of our ability to improve in the shorter races. I suspect this is due to man not being an endurance animal by nature, so there is more opportunity to improve the natural state by modify the existing biology thorugh training. After all, to a certain oversimplified extent, spinters are born. There is no much training can do to impove pure foot speed. However, only one guy I can think of ever ran a marathon with no training. And he died after reaching Athens.
If allen had the nutrition, recovery, training knowledge of today and the bike tech - He probably would be able to hit 7:30
Conidering tri is the place where fallen cyclist, swimmers and runners can come the talent pool should be large… SO why are the kona numbers soft?
Im still shocked how the top males shrugged of carfrae’s perfomance this year - she pushed harder than they did. WTC needs to start offering course record prizes… with athletes not pushing it will be come mundane for viewers and thus interest is lost, which means money lost.
Have you all forgotten already. Pete Jacobs said he was going 7:30 this year at Kona. Booyah!
What is really fascinating is that people are continuing to argue about why times are slower when they are not slower. Bike times as a % change should be expected to improve at a lower rate than run times if technology were held constant, because improving fitness saves you less time at higher speeds.
But, in fact, bike times have improved faster than run times. More discussion and charts in the link.
http://austintriathlonstore.blogspot.com/2014/01/kona-ironman-bike-stats.html
So perhaps the technology is working after all?
Yup isn’t it funny with all the supposed technological benefits of bikes, speed suits, runner, nutrition, and training. The times are as slow or slower even in great weather. Also With more drafting and a larger draft pack of pros and media vehicles.
I guess marketing works better then common sense?
Side note I would like to think they weren’t doping back then, just like I would like to think they aren’t doping right now, but I don’t know?
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