Monday, May 27, 2013

Grinding....

First full week at the beach and trying to make the physical adjustments necessary to adapt to the higher training workloads.  I put an emphasis on cycling as I felt like I had the longest way to go from where my early season training was.  My run and swim were light (compared to IM training) due to the emphasis and my aversion to the cold water.  Here were the week's totals:

Swim: 4000 yards
Bike: 262 miles
Run: 25.5 miles
Time: 20:56

I've put in 334 miles on the bike over the previous 8 days (42 miles/day) and I'm beginning to feel some fitness building.  It's been quite difficult cycling here with all the wind we've had over the past week.

I still owe the Escape from DE race report....soon....

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Beach Transition

We have moved to the beach as our major center of operations for the next few months.  Great to be here.  I'm getting ready to hit the OW for the first time here--58 degrees (that part I don't like so much!)

Anyways, I'll have a Escape from Delaware RR up in the next day or so.  My plan is to put together 3 solid weeks of training and then do a couple of sprints in the middle of June in front of Mt. Tremblanc70.3 on the 23rd of June.

I'm a bit sore as I'm ramping volume now so I'll have to be careful to not push over the line.  last week was a good week--especially for one that included a race:

Swim: 6,940 yards
Bike: 210 miles
Run: 25.5 miles
Time: 20:33

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Change of plans...sorry for the radio silence...

Lots of moving parts....I feel remiss in my lack of posts.  Here is what has happened recently:

1. Last week i went up to Boston to pick alex up and bring him home from Boston college...AND race the New England Season Opener (with Anders).  alex was originally suppossed to come home on Monday (after the race) and anders was suppossed to race with me (before his knee problems).  Alex's final moved from Monday to Friday so able to go home earlier and Anders unable to race with knee issues.  Plus, good friend Dave Bechoffer invited us boys to dinner in Boston and I could be a boring pre-racer nudge or just let it rip....Plus Sunday, race day was Mother's Day and my two girls were home with Jude.  Plus it was miserable and the course looked very unpleasant.  so it came down to: do I race Sunday and miss Mother's day and fun with boys/friends on Saturday or have fun and also hit Mother's Day.  ERGO, no race.

2. In retrospect--shear brillance on my part.  Not helpful tri wise but I'm trying to optimize my life not triathlon....so there you go.

3. So this week tried to crush myself with training as I had held back a bit leading into last weekend and then I had all of the driving up to boston/boston tasks/driving back so last week was not what i would have planned for a non-race week at this point in my year.

4. Sigh

5. I did crush it for 3 days and then I was in a lot of stiffness and pain--I had an incredible bike workout on Wednesday that almost immobolized my hip flexors.  WTF?  If this is old-age creeping in I definitely would like to opt out!

6. Backed off TH/F.  spent most of Thursday working on my new TT bike's position--conclusion: the fine folks I bought it from have no idea how to match a former bike fit....I had to reduce my drop by 5 (count em) centimeters and I had to open up my aerobar armrests by another 1.7 centimeters....big ass miss for sure.

7. went to great party Friday night with good friends and had some nice white wine.

8. Awoke today and helped some good friends get ready for their assualt on Rainier and then decided at 12 to do a triathlon at 4pm...LOL!  Not the standard build up...even for a "C" race.  Perhaps, I need a new "D" designation!

9. Went down to Delaware City and did said triathlon.  New bike position was much better---but not perfect.  No pain but not optimized power wise yet.  I also screwed up on new shoes/cleats which came loose causing a very dicey pedaling situation (ROOKIE MISTAKE...VERY ASHAMED)

10.  None the less, managed to deliver the 2nd best bike overall and won my AG and finished 10th OA....

Race report to follow....

Life is messy.  And that, at the end of the day is a core component of its greatness!

Friday, May 10, 2013

Bassman Race Report


Bassman International Race Report
May 5th, 2013


Background

Location: Bass River State Forest, NJ
Distance: 0.6-mile swim/29.8-mile bike/5.2-mile run
2013 Triathlon Race Number: 3
Career Triathlon Race Number: 129
Conditions: Cold and breezy (10-15 mph), around 42 degrees at the race start and 48 by the end.  Overcast with heavy, laden skies.  Clear lake swim with water temp around 62 degrees.

This was to be my third triathlon of 2013 and the “official” start of my “regular” season, having completed two “pre-season” races in late March and early April.  Early week forecasts proved optimistic as race morning greeted us with raw and uninviting conditions.

I was competing in the International race, which was being held in conjunction with a Sprint and a Half-Iron distance race (plus numerous aquabikes, duathlons and relays).  There were 120 starters in the International race and there were just 7 guys in my 55-59 YO AG.  In fact, there were only two guys older than me entered in the race.

The field in my AG did not look particularly deep but I did have my eye on Tom Senff and Ted Maglione.  I had raced each 7 times before besting Tom 4 times and Ted all 7.  I expected to win this race with it’s bike heavy composition as I have won this AG race all three times I had entered prior (albeit, back in 2005, 2006 and 2008).

The race is run by a nice RD from City Tri.  Unfortunately, his style is a bit loosey-goosey and the race distance and courses were changed just 4 days before the race (swim from 0.5 to 0.6 miles, bike from 29 to an advertised 29.9 miles, and the run from 4.4 to a claimed 5.1 miles).  The start time actually changed 3 times in the final two days as well.  Not surprisingly, there was a bunch of confusion getting things going race morning and we ended up starting 38 minutes late.

None of this bothered me as one comes to expect this from City Tri.  I actually was rather worry-free race morning as I definitely viewed it as a “C” race and I trained right up to the race (I also had a busy travel week going to Washington and Boston).  I felt in reasonable shape despite my later start to training this season, but I felt a bit under the weather over the 2-3 days leading up to the race.  I definitely was not in “A” game status. 

The big news for this race was my first attempt at riding my new BMC TT01.  I only had about 60 miles on it and I was no where near comfortable yet with the fit so I didn’t know how it would work for 29+ hard race miles.  Anyways, after the sprint guys went off, soon enough we waded into the chilly water to begin our contest.

The Swim

The ladies went first and the 40+ guys followed 3 minutes later in Wave Two.  There weren’t that many of us so I decided to line up on the buoy-line as this was a clockwise box swim course.  This would allow me to keep the field in view as I breathed on my preferred left side.

At the start I veered a bit right to avoid any congestion but this soon proved to be an unnecessary precaution.  The field spaced out relatively quickly.  Quite a few folks were ahead of me, which for some reason I didn’t register as an issue.  I knew there were some strong 40+ competitors (such as former pro Scott Duprex) so I guess I wasn’t alarmed to have so many people swim away from me.
The water temp turned out to be fine—pleasant in fact once under way.  I settled into a comfortable rhythm right away.  I enjoy swimming in this lake (I think it’s the best I’ve ever swam in—in New Jersey anyways).  I had a completely uneventful swim—no drama and I felt well within my fitness envelope the whole way.

In retrospect, this was probably a mistake as I think I just took it way to easy on this swim—the reason I felt so good was because I was lolly-gagging!  My total elapsed time for the swim was 17:11.  One way of evaluating the swim is to compare my swim at Bassman to my swim last year at Rumpass, which was on April 15th last year:

                      Rumpass 2012      Bassman 2013

GPS Distance          0.59 miles              0.60 miles
Time                      13:52                    17:11
Pace                       23:27/mile              28:38/mile
Stroke Rate            37/min                   36/min
Strokes                  513                       612
Distance/Stroke      2.024 yds                      1.725 yds
OA %-tile               84.9 %                  71.7 %

Now, I will say that I do think the numbers in 2012 exaggerate my swim performance—I noted in my race report from last year that I didn’t think the course was really the 949 meters my GPS measured but I knew it was definitely longer than the 750 meters advertised.  As for Bassman this year, it looked visually pretty close—I estimated 0.6-0.7 miles before the start of the race and my GPS had it dead on 0.6 miles (as advertised).  In any event, this was a very slack effort on my part—well under my fitness I believe—I’ll need to bring a little bit more game to my future swims this year for sure!

Not surprisingly, my competitive performance was nothing to get excited about.  I was 35th OA (71.7 %-tile) and a disappointing 3rd in my AG.  Here is where my AG stood after the swim:


1.  Senff                        --------
2.  Cassimatis                + 0:22
3.  Christofferson           + 0:33
4.  Stahl                        + 0:55
5.  Hanrahan                  + 5:00

It would appear after the swim that it was a four-man race, but as we shall see, that was not the case…

Transition One

Blissfully unaware.  That’s the best way to describe my state of mind in T1.  Of course I was hoofing it as best as my aged body could but I assumed that I had the best swim and that I would soon put some hurt on the bike.

Despite my ill-placed confidence, I did in fact manage to execute my transition very efficiently in a total time of 3:50, during which I covered 0.18 miles.  This probably appears quite slow, but the transition area is very extended at Bassman.  Further, I felt it appropriate to don a bike jacket given the temperature and I also took the precaution of bringing spare tubes and repair stuff, which I put in the jacket.  Despite all of this, my relative performance supports a strong T1 on this morning.  I was 25th OA (80.0 %-tile) and first in my AG (my AG did not distinguish itself in T1).  In fact, after passing the timing mat at the exit of the bike rack area and running the lengthy distance across the sand to the mount line, I was surprised to see Senff in front of me and I passed him and left T1 in first place.  However, the official results—back at the racks—had us in the following order after T1:


1.  Senff                        --------
2.  Christofferson           + 0:14
3.  Stahl                        + 1:23
4.  Cassimatis                + 2:44
5.  Maglione                   + 5:51

The Bike

I was very aware of Senff mounting right behind me and I was determined to quickly pull away from him on the bike.  I felt pretty good right from the start and with a strong tailwind I was pleased with my initial sensation of pace.

I was soon out of the park and then at the fork made the left turn out onto the first (sprint) loop.  I felt ok during this initial phase but when I checked my average power early on I didn’t like what I saw.  I set my Edge 800 to give me splits every 2 miles—here is what the first three splits looked like:

2: 241 watts avg/242 watts NP/22.4 mph/80rpm/161bpm
4: 227/228/23.2/82/159
6: 230/232/22.1/85/158

At mile 6 I was settled in and my cadence was up in my target zone.  However, I could tell that all was not right in bikeland.  I was real antsy on my new stead and I began to become aware of discomfort in my neck and upper shoulders.  I could also feel discomfort in my arms and I had trouble trying to keep from sliding too far forward on my seat.  My power numbers were disappointing and I felt like I was getting passed by folks I wouldn’t normally expect to get passed by.  Yuch—and I had 24 more miles to go!

The next 6 miles were similar and if anything, worse:

8: 229/232/21.0/81/155
10: 232/234/21.4/81/156
12: 235/239/20.8/81/156

During the last split, I made the U-turn back at the State Forrest and I was able to see that Senff was about 1:50 behind me.  I ran the math and figured I’d be able to open up 5 minutes on him in the bike—this was good—almost certainly good enough, but frankly less than I expected.  By this point my upper body was hating my new bike and I knew that today would be a very challenging day for sure.  I soldiered on fully aware that my bike was going to be a major disappointment.

The next 6 miles was predominately on the Half-Ironman loop.  During this section my back/shoulder/neck pain intensified and I had to sit up quite a bit.  My bike numbers continued to suffer:

14: 228/229/21.8/81/153
16: 221/223/22.6/79/151
18: 243/245/21.8/81/154

As you might surmise by looking at the last split, I tried to rally a bit between miles 16 and 18.  I was aware that I was now firmly mired in a really poor bike split and I tried to shake myself out of it.  I was a little worried competitively and when I saw Senff I estimated that my lead was only around 2:45.  As I contemplated this I concluded that I would still have a big enough lead coming into T2 to be able to likely prevail but that relatively speaking, my race was unfolding quite poorly.

I tried to keep negative thoughts out of my brain as I headed back on the out and back and then rejoined the sprint course for the final portion of the bike.  The next six miles:

20: 227/230/21.0/82/154
22: 223/226/21.8/82/150
24: 220/221/22.2/81/150

As we headed back towards transition I was fortunate enough to engage in a duel with a 49 YO and this led to more effort on my part and a modest reversal of the downward trend evidenced above.  This was important because the last 6 miles were back mostly into a strong head wind:

26: 236/240/21.5/82/152
28: 236/240/21.5/83/155
29.8: 234/237/19.4/80/153

I finished the bike with an elapsed split of 1:22:23, which works out to a pedestrian 21.7 mph.  Yuch!  I had the 19th fastest bike split overall, which was just 85.0 %-tile.  My average power was an OK 232 watts and my NP came in at 234 watts.  My cadence averaged 81 rpm and my HR 155bpm. 

So how to evaluate this ride?  A number of observations:

My power output was not a total disaster.  At 232 watts I was just 3.33% off the 240 watts I recorded here in 2008—the only other ride here that I have power data from.  However, in 2008 I averaged 23.0 mph.  If everything else was equal, given this years power output, I would have expected to average 1.1% slower or 22.7 mph or I should have been 57 seconds faster today.  Now my RR from 2008 indicates that it was rainy and very windy then—perhaps, even worse than this morning.  So it’s hard to read too much into this comparison.

Interestingly, in 2008 I averaged 150bpm in generating my 240 watts while today I averaged 232 watts with a 155bpm HR.  Clearly I had to work harder this morning.  Another interesting data point is the low 81 rpm cadence.  Normally, I’m right around 85 rpm.  Perhaps these pieces of data reflect my struggle to find a comfortable position during this ride and by sitting up I became less aero, grinded more than spun, and while I was still able to produce reasonable power, I had to work too hard for it and I was slower than I should have been.  What this would mean is that my new bike as it is configured is considerably slower for me than my old bike.  It certainly felt that way!

Another way to assess this ride is to compare to others in the field.  Here are my OA %-tile numbers from the 4 times I’ve done this race:

2005: 85.0
2006: 94.0
2008: 93.6
2013: 85.0

Compared to most Jersey Shore races these are all low numbers for me.  I believe in part this race does attract more than its fair share of younger bike studs, given the heavy bike weight.  However, on the surface, my 2013 numbers are on the poorer end of this spectrum.  The differences between the 2008 and 2013 numbers and the discussion in the prior paragraph taken together suggest that the conditions were tougher in 2008 and I should have been even more than a minute faster this morning.

I also compared my self to Scott Duprex.  Scott is a former pro and many-time Kona veteran.  He is a consistent Bassman entrant and he finished: 1st, 1st, 3rd, and 5th respectively in the ’05, ’06, ’08, ’13 versions of this race.  Unfortunately, the RD did not capture his 2006 bike split but here is how my bike split compares to his for the other three Bassman bike splits:

2005: + 6.67%
2008: + 6.26%
2013: + 9.51%

It’s hard to get a lot of insight from such a small dataset but at face value this implies I should have been some 3% faster this morning.  This means I was about 2:30 slow, which feels right to me.  In any event, I definitely had a very disappointing ride this morning.

Competitively, in my AG, I did still manage to secure the fastest bike split.  Maglione had a surprisingly strong split, although he was also rung up for drafting and a 2-minute penalty.  Here is where we stood after the bike, with Marlione’s numbers showing both with and without penalty:

1.  Christofferson                  --------
2.  Senff                               + 5:02
3.  Maglione                          + 6:49 (8:49)
4.  Cassamatis                      +13:57
5.  Stahl                               +17:46

Transition Two

As I labored into transition I could sense right away that my legs were shot—much more than they should have been.  This was a big disappointment because the steeper seat-tube angle on my new bike should in theory lead to less stress on my legs.  Maybe the new position was stressing weaker, relatively undertrained muscles than my older, more dialed in position.  In any event I felt like crap as I trudged into T2.

However, I did execute a very efficient T2 posting a time of 1:53 over the 0.13-mile transition.  I averaged 154 bpm from a HR perspective.  I had the 13th fastest T2 OA (90.0 %-tile) and the best in my AG.  One positive I take away through the first three races this year is that my transitions are quite a bit better than in years past.  Here is where we stood after T2:

1.  Christofferson                  --------
2.  Senff                               + 5:53
3.  Maglione                          + 6:51 (8:51)
4.  Cassamatis                      +14:34
5.  Stahl                               +20:04


The Run

As I headed out for the run I was under the clear impression that I was both comfortably in the lead and that I was having a very poor race.  The early part of the run indicated to me that if anything I was going to have an even worse day and that perhaps I shouldn’t be so comfortable about my lead.

Around about 2 miles there was an out and back section and I could see that Maglione was now in second and that he was a bit more than 4 minutes behind me and Senff was not far behind him.  As bad as I felt (really bad), this calmed me a bit.  Normally I would expect to run about the same as Maglione (I was 29 seconds faster at Bassman in 2008) and and a bit faster than Senff.

Later, around 4 miles, there was another part of the course where I could get a glimpse back to my competitors and I was shocked to see that Maglione had closed to within 2 minutes and it seemed like Senff was still a good 5 minutes back. Ughhh!  This confirmed my poor run but I also determined that I could still win this one pretty comfortably.

Here are the splits from my run:

Mile 1:  8:36/161 bpm
Mile 2:  8:42/162 bpm
Mile 3:  8:46/160 bpm
Mile 4:  8:37/160 bpm
Mile 5:  8:44/161 bpm
Mile 5.2: 7:55/162 bpm

It may have been slow but it sure was consistently so!  Anyways, I finished with a disappointing 44:43 run split.  This is an 8:37/mile pace.  There was 92 feet of elevation gain in this mostly flat course.  My heart rate averaged 161 bpm so it certainly wasn’t the case that I was dogging it!

Comparatively, this was a horrible run.  I had the 58th fastest run (52.5 %-tile) and was a miserable 5th in my AG.  It’s been a long time since I’ve had one as bad as this!

None-the-less, I finished the race in 2:30:01, which was 32nd OA (74.2 %-tile).  My AG victory is the 40th of my career in 129 races (31.0 %).  Here were the final standings:

1.  Christofferson                  --------
2.  Maglione                          + 2:35
3.  Senff                               + 4:42
4.  Cassamatis                      +13:09
5.  Stahl                               +21:19

Take-Aways

1.     No two ways about it.  A bad day in the office!  I’m not surprised by this.  As I’ve progressed from old to ancient I’ve noted greater variability in my race day performance.  I used to be able to train through “C” races and still preform reasonably well almost every time.  Increasingly this approach leads to clunkers like I had today.
2.     That said, I persevered and finished yet another triathlon and I was fortunate enough to not be at my best and still claim my AG victory—and number 40 at that.  I certainly don’t take this for granted and am grateful for this outcome.
3.     I didn’t feel particularly good before the race and my guess is that this did negatively affect things.
4.     My new bike and my position is slower than my old bike/position.  I suspect that I’ll be able to correct that over the next couple of weeks and I will work to do so.  I’m also aware, that even when I get it “right” there will probably be an adjustment period before my body is able to go as fast as it should be able to on this beautiful new machine.  That said, I’ll race the old TT01 up in Boston next weekend.  The TM01 is going back to the “minors” until I’m confident I have it right.
5.     There is also a strong probability that the optimistic take from my first two triathlons this year was in-fact too optimistic.  Today’s race may just indicate that my reduced training load in 2013 has left me in not so good shape for early May.

We’ll find out more this coming weekend when I race up in Boston at the New England Season Opener.

Thanks for reading!

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

side trip

Will have Bassman RR up tomorrow.  In the interim, here are a couple of pics of a mini-adventure down to the Chesapeake courtesy of my good friend, Sparty:




This last striper was 45 inches!



Sunday, May 5, 2013

Bassman pre-result impressions

Results aren't up yet and I left before the award ceremony but here are my observations:

- Usual CitiTri confusion pre-race.  Lot's of long lines and questionable organizational strategies.  I do think if you have 350+ athletes participating (note to self--see how many really did do these three races) then you should have more than one person doing body marking/transition entry.  BTW, that one dude was awesome!

- I call a violation on the RD for changing the International race start time 2 times in the last three days before the start of the race AND not sending an e-mail.  The first is a felony and the second a misdermeanor!  I mean I'm no great shakes, but I did travel 140 miles to do this race--how about letting us know when the race is going to start (AND NOT CHANGING IT) a week or two in advance--I mean we have lives as well!

- Of course, all the races started late....by a lot.  Note to RD--if you want to be aggressive on race timne starts then get your act together and make it happen.  At the true start time on the first race, there were at least 50+ people still trying to get their bibs....not good for an experienced RD.

- It was very challenging weather wise.  My guess was 62-63 degrees swim temp (which was just about perfect in my mind).  44-45 at the start of the bike.  Grey, humid, thick air and very windy on the bike--yuch!  Had to wear a bike jacket here for the first time in a Jersey Tri.

-My new TM01 and I have yet to find a harmonious relationship--more in the race report but my old babe still looks stunning to me on this eve!  The new girl needs to fit me better as she is not faster at this point.

-Great to see Kristen and Midge and much thanks to Kristen for getting my race packet et al the day before.

- I was all over the place on the prep for this race but I did at least manage to secure my 4th straight AG victory at this race.  Thank goodness for old competitiors and for my 40th AG win!

More in the race report later!


Saturday, May 4, 2013

Night before Bassman

So I'm safely secunded in our beach house in Stone Harbor, NJ.  Drove down early this evening.  All set for the race tomorrow.

This will be the 4th time that I've done the "International" distance version of this race.  The last time I did this race was back in 2008 when there were 280 starters.  This year, alas, there looks to be about 110 for the International.  The director is also running a concurrent sprint and half all from the same site.  I expect it to be a real zoo.  The RD is a nice enough guy and I've done 8 of his races in total through the years.   However, he is certainly not at the same level as Steve DelMonte, Midge Kerr, Chuck Sellers, and Neil Semmel--who, in my view, define the state of the art for RDs in New Jersey.

One of the reasons I chose to do this race was that it would give me a good opportunity to compare to how I was racing back in 2005-2008.  Alas, with all of these races going on at the same time, the RD has, just this week, announced that the course was changed and in-fact the race distance was changed from a 0.5/29/4.1 to a 0.6/29.9/5.1 mile distance course.  The added swim and bike are of-course minor, but I'm not that excited about the added run length.  Oh well.

It will be interesting to see as the bike course used to be just one, pretty straight-forward loop and it has now been changed for a loop of the sprint course and then a loop of the half-IM course.  This has cluster-f written all over it!   The run course is also changed somewhat.  It used to be a very confusing run in the woods and now it will be more complicated than that.   So who knows?  The City Tri races remain the only triathlons that I have ever gone off course on....

Normally the heavy bike weighting does two things competitively.  First, it attracts a fairly large contingent of young strong bikers, so my OA bike %-tile tends to be low (85.0, 94.0, 93.6 vs. my long-term average of around 97).  As it turns out, there are only 2 guys who are older than I entered in this race.  Second, it gives me a distinct competitive advantage in my AG--indeed I have won all three times I've raced this race.  I have 8 guys entered in my AG--two I have raced before--each 7 times.  Senff, I am 4 and 3 against and Magilone, I am 7 and 0 against.  My guess is that these two gentlemen will be my main competition.

It's supposed to be quite cold again tomorrow morning with a race start temp projected at 38 degrees.  The water temp was 61 degrees a couple of a days ago but I would not be surprised to see it be a bit cooler.  Its very cold and windy in Stone Harbor right now but I suspect the wind will be a bit more mellow in the morning.  I am surprised by how much cooler it is here than in Wilmington.  I might be a bit underdressed tomorrow.

The big area of interest for me tomorrow is that I am racing my new BMC TM01 for the first time.  I raised the front-end so that my drop in now around 5 1/4 inches.  It still seems quite aggressive in comparison to my old BMC TT01, and with only 60 miles or so on it, I'm a long way from comfortable driving it.  The course tomorrow is pretty straight-forward so I should be fine, but I do wonder how comfortable it will feel during 30 miles of racing.  We'll find out!  I'm treating this race as a "C" race and really did not taper for it (although my volume was less this week with trips to Washington and Boston).  Should be a day of discovery!

Thursday, May 2, 2013

More fun with Ironman Rankings

As it turns out, the new Ironman Ranking formula is pretty primitive.  It's based on your finish time (YT) and the finsh time of the fastest person (FT) in your AG:

Ironman Ranking Points = 5,000 - 12 X (YT - FT)
       (times expressed in minutes)

Basically you lose 12 ranking points for every minute you finish behind the fastest person in your AG.  So armed with this knowledge I decided I would figure out which of my IM races would have been ranked highest by the WTC:

1.  IMAZ...2011...11:52.....3,754 points
2.  IMWI...2006...12:05.....3,487
3.  IMFL...2004...11:31.....3,289
4.  IMFL...2007...11:19.....3,206
5.  IMC.....2008...12:56.....3,152
6.  IMAU..2008...12:28.....2,711
7.  IMAZ..2012...13:23.....2,564
8.  IMGE..2010...13:33.....2,504
9.  Kona...2012...13:42.....2,393
10. Kona..2010...13:49.....2,114
11. IMWA.2005..13:40....2,050

Not suprisingly my points go down as I turn in slower times.  However, since the score is also based on how fast the first place guy went as well, it can lead to some surprises.  For example, my fastest IM (IMFL 2007) only yields my 4th best ranking and is even worse than my slower IMFL 2004 performance.  On top of that, in 2004 I was in the 45-49 AG and in 2007 I was in the 50-54 YO AG.  The reason for this is Joe Bonness, who was the first place guy in 2007.  This illustrates the primitive nature of the WTC ranking approach.  One guy can show up and radically change rankings.  This suffers from the same flaws that the old USAT ranking system had before they went to the NASTAR (skiing) style system a few years back.

I think my IMAZ 2011 and IMWI 2006 scores are elevated because in addition to being pretty decent times (for me) they are close to Kona so their fields tend to be not as strong as some other IMs.  The same logic holds for IMFL--with the exception noted above.

At the end of day what this really says is I came closest to winning my AG in an IM at IMAZ in 2011....but I already knew that!

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Ironman Ranking

Just checked out the new Ironman Ranking system.  For whatever it's worth, my rankings were as follows (Male 55-59 YO AG)

United States: 48th out of 612 (92.2%)
World: 126th out of 1404 (91.0%)

According to the WTC, top 10% gets you All-American....I wonder if I'm All-World as well....lol

The great thing about being in the 55-59 YO AG is that all the guys you race against are really old and many of them are quite slow.  Beyond that, not much is great about this AG!