After a couple of weeks off following the World Championship, it’s back to racing with Ironman Florida taking place this weekend. Florida is a flat course that produces times towards the faster end of the Ironman series, certainly as far as North American races go. There are 50 slots available for the 2015 Ironman World Championship in Kona and as the race is only three weeks after the 2014 event you won’t be up against many of this year’s qualifiers.
You can find more detailed, age group specific versions of the following race statistics at the end of this post.
First up comparing median splits across the age groups – 10 years of Ironman Florida results against 1 year from all the North American events. As I mentioned at the start, with the exception of the oldest age groups and the pros, Ironman Florida is faster on average across all disciplines. It’s a fast course – we can see the impact of a flat bike on the pro times and this translates through to age groupers as well.
Of course we see the same pattern when we look at split distributions for the two groups of races. Florida splits are skewed towards faster times, most significantly on the bike with differences in the region of 20 minutes. While the differences in swim and run are much smaller that shift in bike times is enough to have some impact on overall results.
| Number of Athletes | Number of Slots | |
|---|---|---|
| F18-24 | 12 | 1 |
| F25-29 | 28 | 1 |
| F30-34 | 102 | 2 |
| F35-39 | 124 | 2 |
| F40-44 | 164 | 3 |
| F45-49 | 118 | 2 |
| F50-54 | 88 | 2 |
| F55-59 | 40 | 1 |
| F60-64 | 17 | 1 |
| F65-69 | 6 | 1 |
| F70-74 | 1 | 1 |
| F75-79 | 1 | 1 |
| M18-24 | 22 | 1 |
| M25-29 | 88 | 2 |
| M30-34 | 239 | 3 |
| M35-39 | 344 | 4 |
| M40-44 | 503 | 6 |
| M45-49 | 383 | 5 |
| M50-54 | 260 | 3 |
| M55-59 | 163 | 2 |
| M60-64 | 69 | 2 |
| M65-69 | 27 | 1 |
| M70-74 | 7 | 1 |
| M75-79 | 3 | 1 |
| M80+ | 2 | 1 |
| Total | 2811 | 50 |
The table above contains my estimates of this year’s Kona slot allocation at Florida. As usual it’s the M40-44 age group that takes the biggest share of the 50 Kona slots available. Actual allocation will depend on the start numbers on race day.
There has been a fair spread of results for the top twenty age group places over the last 10 years, but the averages are fast. Men between 25 and 40 are likely to need a 9:15 to be in with a good shot of qualification; for women in that age range you can add an hour, a 10:15 seems a reasonable target for a slot. The level of competition is quite consistent among the top twenty with a very even spread of times from first through to twentieth, qualifying can be quite a close run thing.
A more detailed breakdown of qualification times and splits for each age group is available in the PDFs below.
Detailed Age Group Statistics
Age group specific Ironman Florida results analysis – more charts and more detailed timings and splits for the top age groupers.
Select an age group to view or download PDF
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An analysis of this year’s race will follow at the start of next week.
