Last of all, Ironman France. The feedback I’ve had on this race suggests that conditions deteriorated for athletes further back in the field and may have contributed to slower times. That’s far more difficult to pick out from the usual array of graphs. What can be seen clearly is that run times and not quite so consistently bike time were generally faster.
At the top level we can see that the swim appears to have been a little slower this year, but the run is definitely faster. Bike times are a little more variable across the age groups and generally not significantly different. One of the biggest differences is in the averages for the female pro field which is significantly faster all round.
The distributions mirror the medians – swim slower, bike much the same, run faster. The net result is a slightly faster distribution of finish times than the past 9 years of results. It would seem that while rain may have made for a tougher bike for some conditions were more favourable for the runners.
This is clearly seen in the top twenty results where times for each age group are almost uniformly faster than average. In a few cases to the extent that they’re the fastest times we’ve seen for a given place in this race. A fast year for qualifying, although the competition looks to have been about the same as normal with little difference in times between the top 5-10 athletes.
So we finish with a slightly quicker than usual Ironman France. Wet conditions may have favoured those at the front of the race providing a cooler than usual run. You can view a spreadsheet of the full results and splits from Ironman France 2014 on my Google Drive.
