Breaking 3 hours in a standalone marathon is seen as a benchmark of achievement in distance running. What are the equivalent benchmarks in triathlon? I’d venture 2:15 for Olympic, 4:45 for 1/2 IM. Haven’t done an IM so I can’t even venture a guess.
nah, much faster
i do both those times…but no friggin way i’m getting anywhere close to a 3hr marathon.
Ya, more like 2:00 OLY tri, 4:30 1/2, sub 10 hour IM
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10:30 IM 4:30 IM
for me these two correlate better than 10 flat and 4:30
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I agree with the 10h30 thing! However it is not a nice/round number like 10 or 3.
Fred.
yeha…I had trouble typing it in b/c it wasn’t nice and uniform.
Actually, I agree that sub 2:00 Olympic, sub 4:30 Half, and sub 10 IM makes a better corelation if you look at finishing percentage. If anything the sub 2 hour Olympic is the hardest. It’s often been said that if you take your best half time, double it and add a half hour is an estimate for your IM time. Worked that way for me with a 4:26 Half and 9:43 IM.
i call ridiculous on that one.
a sub-3 marathon is doable by many not particularly fast runners. a sub 2:00 olympic will push you into “damn fast” territory. case in point: me. i would say that a sub 2:00 olympic would correlate to a 2:30 marathon - doable by hundreds or even thousands of people, but out of reach of most amateur athletes.
I agree with dawhead… a 3hr marathon is much more achievable than a 2hr Oly.
I would say…
2:00 Oly
4:30 half IM
10:30 IM
But what do I know- I am only a lousy 3:07 marathoner :(. Still my times are very close to these so that’s what I think.
Ironman is the “Marathon” of triathlon, so its easy to compare an IM standard to a Marathon standard. I also think a Half IM is close in difficulty to a Marathon, so they are worth comparing. But an Olympic distance triathlon is tough to compare to a Marathon.
I think the question was in terms of degrees of speed.
I disagree about the 1/2 IM and the marathon. A marathon properly raced (all out that is) is far harder than a 1/2 IM raced all out. Hands down. My opinion of course…
“a 3hr marathon is much more achievable than a 2hr Oly.”
A 3 hr marathon is maybe achievable by more people, but not much more achievable. Many many people (me included) are just a few min. off both marks, so in my mind those times are pretty similar.
Comparing triathlon and running is a bit silly as the bike is sort of an “equilizer” that gets our times closer to elite times.
Go 15 % faster (1:42) and you are world class. 15 % faster in the marathon (2:39) and you are just a very good marathoner.
a 3hr marathon is much more achievable than a 2hr Oly."…
Not for me. That damn swim keeps me from breaking 2:00 every time. Maybe one day though. I’ll have to keep working on it:).
Maybe I am reading this wrong but Honolulu Marathon had 107 sub-3:00 people out of 24,593 finishers. Honolulu Triathlon had about 45 sub-2:00 people out of probably around 1000 finishers (annoyingly they don’t provide overall results so I don’t know how many there actually were). Only 3 of those sub-2:00 are non-pros. Keep in mind both races attract a fair number of pros, the marathon because of the purse and prestige and the triathlon because it is an ITU race.
Sub 3:00: 0.004% of finishers
Sub 2:00: ~4.5% of finishers
you’re suggesting to me that the 25,000 entrants in the Honolulu Marathon represents a similar set of athletes as the 1000 at the Tri? i don’t think so. in that 25,000 marathon field, you perhaps had less than 5-10,000 whose fitness mapped to the top 750 in the triathlon. possibly even less than that. marathon is a mass-participation event; triathlon is growing in popularity and olympic distance events do attract many who just just want to finish, but in general, most entrants are fitter than the majority of people in a big popular marathon.
Interesting question. I went 2:54 for the marathon, 2:11 for Olympic distance and 4:52 for Half Iron. Based on that I’d say…3 hour marathon = 2:15 Olympic Dist = 5:00 Half Iron. That keeps the times at round numbers. Running was my best event but I wouldn’t call myself a good runner.
Not to sound too “letsrun-ish” but I’m not sure you can really say a 3 hour marathon is seen as the “benchmark of achievement in distance running”. I coach a small Division II college and even the guys in my program tend to look at sub 2:45 as a more credible mark of a decent runner. Out of about 20 grads over the past 6 years I’ve got 3 sub 2:40 (2:32, 2:37, 2:39) and another 2 in the low 2:50’s. Over half my grads are sub 3. I’m not going to say sub 3 is easy because a good swimmer could turn it around and tell me a sub 22:00 1500m is easy and that’s something I’ll never come close to, but sub 3 is very achieveable for most younger runners with slightly above average talent who commit to a smart training program.
Are you assuming a completely flat course?
Oly courses topography is much more varied than most marathons (for good reason, cycling up hills and running up hills when you’re still fresh is much easier than running up a hill at mile 19).
A completely flat local race is a completely different race then say, Wildflower.
On a completely flat course I could see it being between 2:00-2:10. It doesn’t need to be a completely clean number you know.
A 2:00 effort is HARD (were talking ~20 minute swim, ~hour ride, ~35 minute 10k)
A 2:05 is impressive, but not impossible (an extra 5 minutes is huge, 40 minute 10k is much MUCH easier than 35 minutes, 1:05-1:10 ride is WAY easier, etc.). It lets you have a weakness in one sport.
A 2:10 is “relatively” easy, at it lets you have two weaknesses or one huge weakness.
Just to add my own data points, I did a 2:12 Olympic and 2:50 marathon within about a month of each other, with the training focus on the marathon. I personally think a 2:00 olympic is much more impressive than a 3 hr marathon, because if you can go 2:00 then you are running ~35 unless you have blazing speed somewhere else or the bike course is totally flat. If you can run 35, (5:40 pace) then you can probably do a minute per mile slower for 4x the distance if you put the long runs in. For me, 2:10 was the equivalent barrier, but this is going to vary from person to person depending on what your strength is.
I really don’t know what the HIM or IM equivalent would be but as far as round numbers go, 10hr is definitely a benchmark and a goal of mine, much as the 3hr marathon was, but definitely a little harder for most of the population.
For me:
Sub 2 hr Oly - No bloody way…I have to run way way to fast to get even close! a sub 2:10 is hard for me.
Sub 4:30 HIM - Yes, done it and still do it
Sub 10:30 IM - Yes, done it with heaps of change and still do it.
Do I think I can run a sub 3 hr marathon…maybe if I spent more time on my run and actually entered a marathon that didn’t start after a long swim and ride.
I think marathon is endurance and a OD tri is for spd. They can not be compared.