She was open about this not being her A race. I’m sure she gathered a lot of data from today. Kat is on fire and will be tough to beat although the field will be bigger too.
One hell of a marker has been thrown down by Kat, when is Philipp first race?
Philipp has said she’ll race Hamburg, in five weeks time.
So that’ll be a Matthews v Philipp v Hering head-to-head.
Haug on radio silence: has to validate.
Sodaro likewise - assume she’ll aim to validate at IMLP (though obviously there are several other IMs to choose from, if she’s prepared to travel abroad eg Brazil in a month).
LCB chooses a non-IM Pro Series race (Lanza) to validate.
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One out of two ain’t bad. A 16 minute lead would have made that chase prolonged and even more interesting.
Three out of three
Nailed it.
Wurf broke the old bike record with his 3:53:32; Kallin a couple of minutes back.
Well actually Matthews and Perterer rode together from ?10km through to 140km. I guess that company balanced out the quality feet Zilinskas afforded Knibb for 50+ minutes.
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The temps are correct but there is zero wind, especially on the tollway, which is why all the bike times are so fast.
So the females are going faster than men were doing 10-12 years ago. Kat Matthews is faster than Crowie was? Lol. Must be all that sugar. 
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Yup, Kat’s time today would have beaten the men’s champion at Ironman Texas is 2011, 2012 and 2013. She would have lost in 2014 by 1:03 and in 2015 by 3:31. In defense of those champions egos maybe the course changed dramatically or maybe the weather was more brutal 
Blu’s time was between 44-60 minutes better than the champions in 2011-2013.
The time difference between men and women winners was
2011 - 49 min
2012 - 44 min
2013 - 24 min
and today it was 46 minutes. So very similar differential to the past.
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Need to check your math… (-;
Thanks fixed
2012 was a May race and was a single loop bike course that was rolling, i don’t remember what year the county refused to renew the permit and it changed to toll roads.
Hard to compare to today’s race.
Typically 45 to 50 minutes is the delta between a top man vs woman final time. There are a couple outliers, but as we witnessed today, two of the fastest ever Ironman times from both sexes, and thus this traditional delta between them…
So now that the race is over, can we get some garmins on the bike and run courses?? Swim seemed pretty spot on(within 50meters I would say), so can we get some context to some of the fastest splits ever in those bike and runs?
Weather looked pretty good as wind goes, a little hot later on.
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I actually like her commentary. Lovato is the guy who makes it embarrassing to watch. It seems like every sentence, he starts without knowing where hes going to finish, and it just turns into random superlatives, a few growls and then he tries to ask a question at the end to cover for the meandering. Rinny is cool though. Greg Welch is alright, too.
Too many people rag on them, but it is an 8-9 hour, slow event, with very few changes. How exciting could anyone really make it? And even if they did, I wouldnt have the stamina to watch an exciting 9 hour event. Its Saturday, and I have 1% brain power after the long ride & brick run.
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Interesting that fast or friction liked this post. Makes me doubt their science if they like these 2 guys who know nothing about public health and any basic science.
I thought they were fine today. I criticize IM and the broadcast all the time, but today was mostly acceptable. As you say, it’s an insanely long broadcast for 2 people to carry so it is no easy task, but I do wish there would be just a touch more expertise in the booth.
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Anybody know what happened to Trevor Foley? I feel like there was a lot of hype about him beforehand
Bad day. @Nick_wovebike has a fairly detailed post somewhere above, but basically it was a bad swim followed by cramping almost immediately on the bike.
So Blu is just gonna run away with wverything this year right? Seems to just be a level above the rest. Oceanside gad also been an easy win without puncture.
Random thoughts
Are guys running slow ( not all ) due to hammering the bike way too hard .
like a lot of them just blowing up .
Other thoughts
Did the crash hurt Knibb or did she pace to just qualify for kona like she yelled at a ptn podcaster.
I think Kat got her , Kat races how Lionel should race ( like a said for kona) scare the athletes up front to over load to stay away and let them f up. She has a killer instinct few athletes have , running the marathon like it isn’t a marathon but just a race to catch the leader etc. don’t think of 42 km , scare them and make them want to give up the fight .
Some other thoughts re: Knibb vs Kat. Kat came ready to dig way deeper than I think Taylor imagined. Last year the win was 8:40s, the year before the win was 8:30s. This year Taylor goes out and finishes in 8:20. It’s reasonable to assume that would be enough. Kat goes and breaks the record.
So a couple thoughts, Taylor basically put her effort into being strong on the bike and swim and she’s obviously going to build up that run volume over the season. That’s good. To hit the run out of the park would require a pretty aggressive ramp up that’s best done gradually to avoid injury.
She essentially repeated her Kona run. Would have been nice to see her go 3:00, but in her case it’s better for her to build the season than have amazing run fitness she needs to hold all year from the start.
I’ll go out on a small limb and suggest it might be hard for Kat to keep that run sharp all the way through to Kona. She’s starting the season with a world record performance. Will she back off and absorb some of the gains and focus on recovery for awhile or keep pushing that bike in training and risk another injury?
But Taylor…she looked pretty trash crossing that line. She was obviously going pretty deep in the well. I assume she’s going to need to increase her run volume and I hope they doesn’t lead to injury.