So I raced Muskoka70.3. My year has not been going smoothly in general (thankfully I have a very supportive family as well as a superstar management team at my company to keep me sane). Training has been the “outlet” to keep the pressure valve from exploding. Two of my closest friends died in the last 2 years (cancer and heart attack), so I don’t take the ability to do this sport lightly in my first year in 60-64.
Ironman announced its new performance based qual system a few days ago and literally, I was in the first guinea pig group at 70.3 Muskoka.
This was planned as my A race for the year had I not qualified for Marbella worlds at Puerto Rico…if not Tremblant70.3 was planned as A race for a final chance at Marbella. But I got a 1 slot rolldown in Puerto Rico on the “OLD SYSTEM”, so then Muskoka became the season’s A event.
I trained through Tremblant70.3 (race week was 17 hrs, next week was 19 hrs) and then Muskoka week I found out that one of my friends @Dancon7 was racing so there is no way on this earth I am beating him, so probably the single slot for 60-64 is gone. My wife and I had a few days at Tremblant for our 31st anniversary a few days ago and I decided to screw tapering and just enjoy myself riding because even before the race started, the top slot was likely GONE! So what’s the point NOT RIDING and trying to taper LOL.
Then I get a message earlier in the week about the performance pool. My times this year in 60-64 roughtly translate into the 4:30 t0 4:35 range age adjusted for the M60-64 0.82 factor?
The day the factors were released, I started guestimating with my fitness (or lack of thereof hauling around excessive bioprene™ ) I would be slow in the hills and melt in the heat but even then I can get into an age graded 4:30-4:40 range and that could be in the range of 40th to 60th in the performance pool with 30 slots for men and 30 slots for women
Would that be enough to get near a rolldown?
I started having more HOPE than the OLD PROCESS. I don’t run well anymore. In my three races this year, I came off the bike 2nd in my age group and just sucked on the run. In a decades past literally in the last century, I’d leave T2 and reel people in. That was another athlete. My reality today is my top position is coming out of the water, than people pass me as I shuffle thru T1, they pass me on the bike (but not that may), then T2 come and the “racing ends” and its a tour of survival which means if one or two studs shows up my rolldown hopes are slim to zero.
Just two weeks at Tremblant 70.3 I had the 2nd swim, 2nd bike and 15th run and hung on for 4th. Slots went to 1 and 3, but fortunately I had a slot to Marbella.
So if you got this far, let’s get into the performance rolldown process.
I called @sportstats CEO Marc Roy after I crossed the finsih line and asked if they would have the age graded results in the app,
He said as soon as the final finisher is done, a pdf would be uploaded with men’s and women’s finishers in age graded order
Sure enought at 3:55 pm, I opened the Ironman app and in the “info section” the age graded sheets were up.
My swim and bike were good (2nd off bike) and then my layer of bioprene ™ made it tough going up endless hills and the humidity was a disaster. I ran 15 minutes lower than 4 years ago. Sure we all get older, but still.
Final splits 34 + 2:43 + 2:12 = 5:37 or age graded 4:36. The latter put me at 51st overall.
Now the fun.
Awards came and went. I think they should have done “top 3” slot allocation right there to save time, but we went through all the awards, and then they called top three names of each age group in each gender and allocated to the auto slots but all stated to cull the “performance list”. If top three did not take slots they get crossed out of the performance list. If top two don’t take and third does, three get crossed off performance list and slot total for performance list decreases by one.
And so it went. This took some time.
Then they announced of the 30 women’s slot, 9 went to age group top three, 21 to the pool.
They started reading out the women’s peformance list. It went on and on and on. Not that many women takes.
Eventually I went up to the announcer and said, “why don’t you just call up all the women left here in case there are more slots than people left”.
Eventually that’s what they did but not before reading out at least 75 names,
Now over to the men’s side. Ten were taken 20 to performance pool.
I was sitting at 51 in the pool and had roughly calculated how many none takers there were in the top three.
Keep in mind there are 12 male age groups, and in theory if 12 go to the third, we’re sitting at 36 out of the performance pool.
I guestimated there were maybe 25 out of the pool already at this point, leaving me in 26th for 20 slots.
The names got called and quickly I got my name called:
I actually liked this process a lot more. When I was first in 51st, I figured that I am on the outside looking at the winners. Then I say the passes in the auto allocation and started developing hope and a little hope goes a long way. I think I can say that of everyone hanging around for rolldown. Everyone seemed to be doing some level of mental lottery gymnastics.
I don’t recall how far the pool it went.
With worlds in early Sep, it really is a disaster timing for more people with young famlies and schools and activities starting. If you’re in 35-49, there can’t possibly a worst time for worlds.
Meanwhile in my age group 60-64 most the guys are retired and can go. I’m working but I have my own company so dammit things are getting organized around me in France in early Sep 2026.
Overall even if I did not get a slot, I liked the experience. When I got passed from 2nd to 3rd with 1.5 km remaining, I could have gotten completely deflated, but the hope of performance slots kept me from breaking into a complete “walk” and I kept the pressure on, My heart rate was 170-175 bpm but I kept going (that’s high for me at this age…I used to race marathons at 180 when I was 28 though).
Some suggestions
- Get the outright top 3 allocated after they get their trophies and get that process rolling asap
- start immediately after awards with performance pool
- right now ironman app publishes a one time pdf after all finishers are in. Better would be to have our raw time, age group position and provisional age graded results as soon as we cross the line and updated all afternoon until final finisher is in
Overall I really liked the process. I think it is way more fair because rather than one age group having their 60th place getting a rolldown and in another age group top 1 or top 2 get slots we get everyone graded by performance and rewarded with relative merit.
Now this is for 70.3. I would say on the balance males needed to be more competitive than women because in the latter the slots rolled to whoever stayed to get them. But at full Ironman with the slots mixed, that won’t be the case.
One of the guys asked if the women don’t use all their slots can they roll over to men, to which I replied “I don’t think so, because its two different races with two days of racing”
For others at Muskoka or the 70.3 in Sweden today, let me know your thought and for those who are yet to experience the new system, if you place your questions in this thread, we can ask @sportstats to convey them to Ironman
