Ironman Santa Rosa 2018: Age Group Results and Kona Qualification
Ironman Santa Rosa took place over the weekend. It’s a mid-sized age group race (no professional field) with the standard 40 Kona slots on offer for the 2018 Ironman World Championship. This is only it’s second year on the Ironman calendar so this analysis is limited to a comparison with last year’s results. This year’s race was much faster at the front, but saw similar trends further back in the field.
The original version of this post used incorrect run data, this has now been corrected.
This years race trended faster at the front (top 10% of the field), but the overall median finishing time is very close to the year before. The bike distribution trends slower from the middle of the pack back, the median bike split is much slower this year, but the front is unaffected by the course change. The run distribution sees the largest change – faster across the field, but most significantly towards the front of the race. The field at this race is very widely spread with a fast front-of-pack, but also large numbers in the back-of-pack too.
The DNF rate increased slightly for this year’s race. Mostly from bike and swim. Run conditions appear to have been particularly favourable – both giving faster times and a lower DNF rate at that stage.
Individual age group medians vary for swim and bike aren’t too dissimilar to the previous year, with the bike tending to be a touch slower. Run medians are faster as we’d expect from the distribution chart.
Santa Rosa pulls in a number of nationalities. Slots tended to be taken in line with athlete numbers.
Fitting with the pattern from the distribution we see that times for given places in age groups have generally improved this year, but that this change is most significant towards the front. In some age groups, as we’re further back in the field the times drop back. This could come from the reduction in athlete numbers this year, with fewer athletes 100th place may be further back in the field.
Based on the athlete list I’ve estimated the distribution of slots at this race and from that automatic qualifying times before roll outs take place. Final numbers and times might vary a little. You can check and compare with other races on my Kona qualification page.
The top twenty in each age group give the clearest indication of the much faster front of pack race this year. For the women’s age divisions times don’t shift too far from the previous year’s results, but for the major male age groups the top twenty is consistently faster.
You can access a spreadsheet of the full results from Ironman Santa Rosa 2018 on my Google Drive.