Average Race Pace

For this post I return to look at how my swim, bike and run pace has changed over time.  In the three charts below, the average race pace is plotted over time for each of the three disciplines.  The average in these charts is "race weighted" versus distance or time weighted.  In other words a sprint race and an Ironman race have the same weighting even though the later is so much further.  In the prior post, I calculated pace on a distance/time weighted basis so, for example, a race the took 12 times as long had 12 times the impact vs. equal impact in the race weighted approach here:

You can see the nice improvement in my swim pace (minutes/mile) over time with my best performance occurring at 11 on the x-axis, this is 2012.  The last data point is the average for my last 4 years (post my injury driven off year in 2015).  Seeing this chart is generating a bit of desire on my part to invest more aggressively in the swim this year.

My bike seems to have peaked in 2004 (3 on the x axis) and has steadily declined since.

My run has generally been slowing down over time and in 2014 and then for 2016-2019 (points 13 and 14) that trend appears to be accelerating (unfortunately).

One of the problems with this analysis is while it is race weighted, it still is impacted by the mix of races from year to year.  If you do more longer races in one year versus another, all things else being equal, you would expect to see slower average pace.  The chart below shows that over time my average race has indeed been getting longer:

And this table shows how my pace generally slows down as the race gets longer:

By the way, over the 19 years and 156 races of my career my average pace overall is:

Swim: 29:47/mile or 1:42/100 yards

Bike: 22.5mph

Run: 8:31/mile

Anyways, given the above I just looked at my 108 Sprint distance races only and set the 8 races of 2001/2002 equal to 1.00.  I also inverted the swim and run metrics so that up (above 1) is always better:

In my view, this chart gives the clearest indication of how fast I have been over time.

-My swim improved by nearly 40% from 2001 to 2012 (point 11 above) but has since declined back to where it started in the last (2016-2019) period.  

-My bike improved about  5% by 2004 and generally stayed above the 2001/02 average until 2014 (point 13) and is about 6% slower for the most recent 2016-2019 period.  However, for just 2019 alone I was just 1% slower (0.99) than in 2001/02.

-My run after peaking at about 5% faster in 2007 (point 6 above) has been on a pretty steep decline  and is down about 17% for 2016-2019.  However, 2019 was down "just" 14% so maybe I'm having a slight bounce back as of late

-Overall, I'm about 9% slower for the 2016-2019 period than I was in 2001-2002.  I was above 1.0 up through 2013 with the decline coming from 2014  through today.

Getting old is not good for fans of fast racing!

Racing History: Distance, Time and Pace

I'm continuing to mine my Triathlon Race Database as I wait for my back to fully heal post surgery.  Today's post looks at my 156 triathlon history and examines the miles, minutes, and speed that I covered in these races.

 This first table displays the miles I covered in races by year--in total and in each of the three disciplines, and the chart below it graphically displays the total race miles by year:

Observations:

-I've raced a lot of miles through the years. 6,131 in total, which is enough to travel all the way across the country and back again, swimming, biking and running, while racing.  About 80% of those miles have been on my bike, about 18% running and a tad under 2% were swimming.

-My biggest year mileage-wise was 2010, which was one of the years I raced two Ironman and I raced a total of 14 times--that year I raced nearly 650 miles.

-Comparing 2009 to 2010 shows the big impact the type of races I enter in a year has on miles raced. In both of these years I raced 14 times but I had 2.4X as many race miles in 2010 as 2009 was a year of all short-course races.

-2014 was comparatively my last "big" year as you can see the relatively low mileage in 2016-2019.

This next chart displays the average miles/race:

-You can clearly see the general trend over time--my average race has been getting longer, with 2019 showing the highest average race distance--greater than a 70.3 (I did 2 races, a Sprint and an IM)

-2008 was a big year as well--it was the first of three years where I did 2 IMs (2010, and 2012 were the other two)

-2009 and 2016 are low points as both of those years were entirely short course years.

We can also look at this same data set from the clock's perspective:

-I've raced nearly 30,000 minutes.  This is equivalent to about 20.5 full 24 hour days

-The basic pattern, not surprisingly, mimics that of the distance charts

-47% of the time is on the bike, 38% on the run, and about 12% swimming.  My guess is that most people would be more like 52/33/12, but I haven't done that analysis, so I'm just guessing.

-I've only spent 2.6% of the race time in transition, with T1 being on average about 60% longer than T2.

We can merge these two datasets and also examine how my pace has changed over time:

-These numbers are heavily influenced by the mix of races I'm in.  For example, last year I raced one Sprint and one IM, so my pace (total time/total distance) is basically what I averaged for the IM--these calculations are weighted by distance versus averaged by the number of races so my pace in IM races heavily skews those years where I do proportionately more long course races.

-The chart above shows my average swim pace (minutes/mile) and despite mix changes over time shows the significant improvement I was able to achieve in swim pace with the recent slow down post my back issues in 2015.

-2007 was my "best" swim year by this metric as I averaged 28 minutes/mile or about 1:35/100 yards.

-2017 was my slowest as this is just my swim pace at IMAC70.3

-My bike pace slopes down to the right as the swim did but unfortunately, in the case of the bike, this means I'm getting slower.

-My fastest years appear to be 2005, 2007 and 2011.  However, race mix heavily influences these numbers.  In a subsequent analysis I'll post I'll show that 2004 was in fact my speediest bike year.

-2014, 2017 were dragged down by my two slowest IM bikes (Kona 2014 and IMAZ 2017)

-I'm pleased I averaged over 20mph last year despite racing in just one Sprint along with my IM.

-This last chart shows the ugly reality of my run over time.  2009 was my best year--but again, this was a year of all short course racing, so that's to be expected.  2008, 2010 and 2012 were years of two IM races and 2014 was the slowest IM of my career (Kona 2014).

-2017 is driven by the many miles I walked at IMAZ during my first IM post back problems.

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From a individual sport composition standpoint, setting the swim equal to 1, the relative mix of Swim/Bike/Run has been:

By distance: 1/43.3/10.1

By time: 1/4.0/3.3

For comparison purposes, the standard IM distance mix is 2.4/112/26.2 or 1/47/10.9 so my average race has been slightly less bike-centric than the IM is and also slightly less run-centric.

I'll return to the question of pace over time when I normalize for race type mix (compare short course to short course, Half to Half, IM to IM, etc.)

Onward and Upward.  This certainly seems to apply to my running pace as I get older!

Race Place

As you know, I'm in the midst of data mining my recently updated Triathlon Race Database.  My last post attempted to analyze how I've raced relative to other competitors over time through my historical USAT ratings and my relative %tile overall and across each of the three disciplines.

Another way, and perhaps most direct way to do this is to look at what place I finished in the races vs. the overall field as well as against my Age Group.  Here is a summary by year for my Age Group finish as well as how I placed in each of the three individual sports  (in my Age Group).  I track the number and % of times I've finished 1st, 2nd or 3rd:

Observations:

-I have 50 1st, 36 2nd, and 11 3rd place finishes across my 156 triathlons.  I have won my Age Group 32% of the time and finished in the top 3 62% of time.
-My best % of wins was in 2013 (64%) followed by 2009 (57%)
-In 2009 I finished on the podium in all 14 races.

These %s are, of course, heavily influenced by the mix of races I enter.  In 2009 for example, I raced all Local races and that is why (in part) I have such strong relative performance in that year (and in 2013).  This can be seen in the same analysis but by the length of the race:

Here you can see that the longer the race is the lower % I finish 1st or in the top 3.  This is not to say that I'm just not good at longer races (in fact in the prior analyses, we saw that 4 of my best 10 races rating wise were Half IM including my two best races of all time: White Lake and SkipJack).  It's just that the longer races tend to have much larger fields of higher quality competitors.  It's one thing to finish in the top 3 at the Hammonton, NJ Sprint Triathlon with 180 competitors and 12 in my Age Group and an entirely different task against over 100 in my Age Group at the IM World Championships!

The next 4 charts show the above data graphically:

-I've been able to finish in the top 3 50+% of my races each year since 2003

-After better placing from year to year  throughout my earlier career, that trend seems to be on the decline  in recent years

-I became increasingly competitive on the swim, especially between 2007 and 2012, but my relative competitiveness on the swim seems to have declined since 2012.

-Not surprisingly, the bike is my strong suit in this metric, where I've been above 60% top 3 for most of my career.

-This metric also seems to indicate I'm becoming a bit less competitive over time

-I became increasingly competitive up through 2009 and was strongest on the run in the 2007-09 timeframe.

-While my competitiveness on the run has generally been on the decline the last 10 years, I did enjoy a bit of a blip up in 2013--at least as measured by top 3 Age Group finishes on the run.

A slightly different metric I track is called "Old Man?".  This is simply whether or not no one older than me was faster than me.  If no one was, then I'm the Old Man.  It's similar in a sense to the somewhat arbitrary 5-year Age Group designations.  Here is how that has trended through the years:

-I've been the Old Man in 56 of my races, which is slightly more than my 50 Age Group victories.

-This metric is clearly trending up over time.  Perhaps because there are fewer people who are older than I in races as I get older!  In fact, in a few races recently I've been the oldest competitor.

Lastly, I examined whether or not the year in any given Age Group was correlated with my Age Group place.  In other words, have I done better the first year in an Age Group (for example when I'm 50 in the 50-54 YO Age Group) vs. later years (for example the 5th year of the 50-54 YO Age Group when I'm 54):

Surprisingly, these lines don't slope downward to the right as one would expect.  I seem to be most competitive when I'm in the 2nd or 3rd year of an Age Group.

This is not to say, that one's relative performance is not related to age--trust me, it is!  But in my case, there are other factors that outweigh this factor in determining how often I win or are in the top 3.  For example, in 2007, when I turned 50 and was in my first year of the 50-54 Age Group, I raced a lot of high quality races while in 2009 (52 and in my 3rd year of the 50-54 YO Age Group) I raced much smaller local races.

In any event, at 63 I'm now in my 4th year of the 60-64 YO Age Group and the above chart seems to indicate my prospects for winning are less than my historical average of 32%!

LOL!  Onward and upward, baby!

Ratings: How do I compare?

OK, as promised here is a little analytic loop that I mined out of my Triathlon Race Database.  I wanted to see how competitive I was over time and one of the basic ways of doing so is to look at the USAT ratings I've achieved in my races over time.  The USAT has employed two main rating systems over the 19-year span of my triathlon racing.  The old system assigned a maximum rating points for a race based on the length of the race and the number of participants.  As I recall, a local sprint race awarded the winner 90 points, whereas a local half-IM distance awared a max of 92 points.  Larger races had higher possible points as well (I don't remember the details).  In the case of the 90 point local sprint, if one finished 5% slower than the winner you'd get a 85.7 rating for the race (1/1.05 X 90).

The new USAT system adopted in 2006 uses what's called a "pace-setter"approach.  Basically for any given race, they take all participants who had a prior rating (who raced at least 3 times the prior year) and assigns an expected or par score for the race.  Then, every person racing in this season's event gets a relative score to the par.  For example if there was just one pace setter who had an 80 rating and you raced the same time as that pace-setter, you'd score an 80.  It's a bit like the NASTAR system where a know skier (one who has a rating) skies a course and establishes the par and everyone else is compared to that par.  The difference here is there isn't one pace-setter in a race but as many as who had a prior year's rating.

In any event, I've recorded ratings with the Old system up through mid-2014 and have the new system for 2006 on.  I should also note that the USAT only rates USAT sanctioned races with the New system (so no ratings for foreign races or for local non-sanctioned races).  As it turns out I have 142 races rated with the Old system and 102 with the New (current) system.  Many of my races between 2006-2014 have two ratings (Old and New).  My averages across all races, over time are:

Old Rating System:    76.5
New Rating System:  76.6

For just the 88 races where I have both Old and New ratings the averages are:

Old Rating System:    76.4
New Rating System:   77.4

So it seems that Ratings for the average race are slightly higher with the New system.  However, in looking through the Database, it appears that there is more variability in the Old system (probably because it was all driven off the performance of only one pace-setter--the winner).  Since the annual rankings are driven not by an average of all races, but just the top 3, in practice the Old system yielded the highest (and lowest) individual race ratings and a higher annual rating to determine year-long rankings.

OK, enough of that.  How have my ratings changed over time?

This first chart below shows the average (Old and New, or as listed "Current") for ALL of my races each year.  The first data point is the combined 2001/2002 season and the last is for my "come-back" years of 2016-2019 (no 2015 rating as I was recovering from my back issues).  A couple of observations:

-I peaked in 2007/2008.  This seems pretty clear as you will see in many subsequent charts.  That was the year (2007) I worked with Peter Reid and was the only year I was an All-American (back then it meant I was in the top 5% of my Age Group in the country).  I raced my first race at the age off 44 and improved for the first 6-7 years, reaching my peak at the age of 50.
-Since my peak I seem to have fallen about 9% on average over the last 11/12 years with a sharper decline after 2013, when I was 56.

The second chart below shows the more familiar Official USAT annual Rating--this number is calculated using just the three best races each year.  Observations:

-You can see that the Old system yields a higher Official Rating due to the higher variability in rating scores as compared to the current system.

-The peak in 2007 is very evident

-The decline is my official rating is less...about 7% over the last 12 years

Below are my top 10 races under both Rating systems:

-The 2007 White Lake Half-IM was clearly my best race.  In the race I (and Anders) qualified for the USAT National Long Course team.  I set my Half/70.3 PR of 4:43 as I rode at 23.2mph (2:24 for 56 miles) and ran 7:29 miles (1:38 half marathon)

-I finished first in my Age Group beating Louis Almekindres, who at the time was ranked 4th in my Age Group in the United States

-Note the preponderance of 2007 races (half in the New system)

-Another key performance for me was SkipJack 2011 (this race was 1.2/66/10, so not an "official" Half-IM).  In that race I finished 2nd overall, getting passed with just 3 miles to go.  Shortly after that race I qualified for Kona at IM Arizona in 2011.  SkipJack will almost certainly be the latest race that I ever crack my personal top 10 in.

This next chart shows the distribution of my ratings over time (here I use the New system when I have both and either the Old or New, when I have just one.  My most common rating has been 77.0-77.9:

Another useful way to look at relative performance is to track my percentile ranking against everyone in the race and more narrowly relative to just my Age Group.  I can also do this for each discipline (Swim, Bike, Run) as well as for the Overall result.  Because the mix of races I race affects these average annual %tiles (I have a lower %tile ranking at Kona than I would at a local Sprint for instance), I measure %tiles for all races as well as just for "local races" (local races exclude IM, IM70.3, World  and National Championships, as well as races with more than 1,000 finishers):

Observations:

-The 2nd chart of Local races only I feel gives a better comparison over time.  For example, in the top chart for all races, 2009 and 2013 seem to be better years for me but these averages are relatively inflated since I did primarily local races in those years.  You can see they were relatively less highly rated when we compare more like-to-like Local races in the 2nd chart.

-My bike is my clear strength.  It was from the very beginning and I've averaged in the top 10% of finishers in local races each year throughout my career.

-My swim showed strong improvement up through about 2010/2011 and has declined a bit since.  I've definitely deemphasized swim training, especially over the last few years and this data would seem to indicate that I might consider more swimming investment this year.

-My run improved as well up through 2007 and has been in decline since with a very rapid fall off over the last 5 years--I now am lucky to finish in the 50 %tile in a run these days.

-Overall, I've averaged in the top 20% Overall and top 10% in Local races for most of my career, with a steady, run-driven decline over the last 5-8 years.

The same charts can be generated for my annual %tile averages against just my Age Group competitors:

-The same basic general conclusions can be drawn from these two Age Group charts as was observed with the Overall %tile charts

-My Age Group bike performance is even more striking--basically I've been in the top 5% for just about all of my career.  From 2007 through mid-2009, I was first in my Age Group on the bike is 17 consecutive races

-The decline in my run is, if anything, more striking and is the biggest change in my relative competitiveness over the most recent timeframe.

-It looks like I'm having a bit of a nice comeback after 2014/2015 and my back problems.

OK, that's enough for now.  More later!

January Snapshot//Triathlon Database Updated

So January is in the books.  The biggest contextual factor I had to deal with this month is a minor surgical procedure I had that unfortunately led to an incision cite infection that I've had to manage for the last couple of weeks.  It's getting better with the antibiotics I'm taking but it definitely has put a crimp in my training a bit.  Obviously, no swimming but I had planned to take January off anyways but I also had to curtail quite a bit the running I planned to do.  None-the-less, Jan 2020 is pretty similar to Jan 2019 training wise:


                    2020               2019

Swim             0              4,000 yards
Bike             1,245         1,160 miles
Run              48.5            59.5 miles
PT                6:02           5:35
Time            89:33         86:59

I've put a lot of my bike effort in on Zwift where I have just about completed the first 4 (of 10 weeks) of a FTP build.  This is much higher intensity that I did last year.  In fact, I didn't hit this intensity until April last year, and even then, not as much as I'm doing now.  My FTP appears to be around 250 watts, which is certainly fine for this time of the year.

I hope to get a green light soon from my surgeon to ramp up my swim and with that my run as well.

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On a different front, I used some of my down time to update and begin to upgrade my Triathlon Race Database.  This is a pretty comprehensive record of key personal and competitive stats for the 157 triathlons I have entered (and 156 I have finished) since 2001.  To give you a sense of what I mean by comprehensive, here is a screenshot of a part of the main database:

This is obviously way over the top as far as the ratio of data/quality of the triathlete goes, but I've always been partial to data and analysis.  Anyways, I've begun a bit of analysis to characterize my 19 year triathlon journey and will be posting a bit on this during the month of February.  To kick things off, I'd thought I'd post a basic summary census of these 156 completed triathlons:

The top of this spreadsheet breaks down the 156 races by distance and year.  I grouped my 1 race in 2001 with the 7 in 2002 and have grouped all of my post 2015 "comeback" races in the 2016-2019 column.  A few observations:

-70% of my triathlons have been "Sprints"

-A bit more than 25% have been long course with 25 Half-IMs and 15 Full IMs

-The Olympic distance appears to be my least favorite as I've done just 7 of them--less than 5%

-The most races in a year has been 14, which happened in four separate years

-After my initial race in 2001, I've managed to race at least 7 times a year up to my back problems in 2015, which led to my taking that whole year off.

-Since 2015, I've raced just 10 times--only twice in 2019.  However, I look to do 5+ this year with Kona obviously being my prime focus.

The bottom of the spreadsheet shows the locations of my races.  Observations:

-Just about half of my races have been in New Jersey

-Delaware and Virginia account for another 20% combined

-I've raced in 18 different states through the years

-About 95% of my races have been in the US

-I've raced 7 times internationally but not since 2013 when I did the Mont Tremblant 70.3

One last observation is the timing of my races.  I've raced in 9 of the 12 months with (not surprisingly) the bulk of the races between May and September:

January          0

February        0

March            5

April             15

May              28

June              29

July               26

August          20

September    20

October         5

November     8

December      0

My 15 Ironman races are decidedly skewed towards the back half of the year:

July                2

August           1

September      2

October          3

November      7

This year I'm looking at possibly racing as early as April,  but certainly by June (Eagleman70.3) and of-course, I'm planning on adding to my October IM count this year as well.

More (lots more) in the days ahead....