Ironman Canada 2018: Age Group Results and Kona Qualification
Ironman Canada is my second race analysis of the week. Canada drew a field of around 1500 athletes for the standard allocation of 40 age group Kona slots. The course has never been particularly fast, but this year’s change to the bike route appear to have slowed things even further.
The impact of the new bike course is quite clear in the distribution of splits. A much slower bike and a much slower run following it, which naturally means the overall results trend a lot slower. As well as course changes, conditions were hot which likely helps account for the large shift in run times.
With a tough course and conditions we see increases in bike and more significantly run DNF rates at the 2018 race. Bearing in mind the mix of DNS and DNF numbers in races before 2016 this year’s race has the highest levels of DNF for this event.
The age group medians naturally follow the distributions’s trends with slower bike and run splits.
The majority of athletes are North American, but roughly a fifth come from further afield.
Tracking the changes in times for specific age group positions shows a little more variation across the age groups. The largest male age groups most clearly show a slowing at this year’s race, but for men under 30 and for a number of female age groups the pattern is less consistent. Some faired better on the new course and in the heat than others.
Based on the start list, I’ve estimated the allocation of Kona slots and from that the automatic qualifying times. Actual numbers may vary and roll down will affect the final qualifying times. You can compare this with other races on my Kona qualification page.
The top twenty in most age groups are the slowest seen for this race. There are a few exceptions, the divisions mentioned previous, where they trend closer to the averages. Even so, the race is consistently a slower event.
You can access a spreadsheet of the full results from Ironman Canada 2018 on my Google Drive.