This weekend saw Ironman Wales take place in Tenby. Now a long standing part of the UK Ironman calendar, Wales is a popular race that draws over 2,000 competitors. It offers the stand 40 Kona slot for the 2020 Ironman World Championship. The Tenby course is known for its toughness and the impact conditions can have on the day. This year looks to have been marginally slower, but not significantly different to other years of racing.
This year’s race trends slightly slower than the amalgamated results from the previous 8 years. The majority of this shift appears to come from the run split which is most clearly slower. The swim splits all lean towards the slower end for Wales, although the median split remains about the same. Bike splits are largely inline with past results. Overall the difference looks to be around 10 minutes at this year’s race.
This year’s DNF rate is a fairly standard 8.3%. Not a low DNf rate by Ironman standards, but not pushing above 10% as has happened in some years. Bike DNFs appear to have been a little bit higher this year, but this is balanced with low run DNFs.
Comparing age group medians repeats the pattern shown in the distributions – run medians are the ones most likely to be slower. Ironman Wales has been quite a varied race and this means we see variability across age groups when comparing combined results.
Wales is predominantly a UK race, but the Kona slots are spread around a wider range of nationalities.
Tracking age group times and positions over the years who’s how varied the Tenby course has been over its 9 years. This years race sits somewhere in the middle depending on which age group and position you consider. It’s never the fastest year, but equally it’s not the slowest either.
Based on the start list I’ve calculated the slot allocation and from that automatic qualification times. Final numbers may vary and roll down is not factored. Both male age groups over 70 appear to have no finishers meaning their slots will roll into other age groups and increase numbers. You can compare this with other races on my Kona qualification page.
It’s another varied picture when we look at the top twenty in each age group. There are divisions slower than average and those faster along with many that are close to the averages too. The broad implication would be that while this year might be slightly slower it wasn’t significantly different to previous years.
You can access a spreadsheet of the full results from Ironman Wales 2019 on my Google Drive.
