Ironman Arizona took place over the weekend. It’s a large US race with a long race history that typically draw around 2,300 competitors for a standard 40 age group Kona slots. Despite major changes to the Ironman website I’ve been able to extract the full set of results from the new platform for analysis. This years race is slower at the median, but remains quite consistent at the front of the age group field.
Comparing the race distributions over the last decade shows this year’s race to be a little slower in swim, bike and run. Cumulatively this makes the overall median finish time slower too. As we move forward in the field though the differences become smaller and at the fifth percentile time there’s little difference between this year and the past. It is perhaps slightly slower on the run, but only slightly. So, we see another race where the bulk of competitors trend a little slower, but the most competitive element remains the same.
DNF rates for this year’s race compare with the last few years. At over 10% they are pushing towards the higher end of DNF rates across Ironman as a whole, but aren’t exceptional. Both b ike and run DNF rates are quite high for the course.
Median trend generally follow the pattern shown in the distributions. It’s not entirely consistent here and there are variations across age groups though. Some of the younger and older male age groups actually come in a bit faster on the bike for example. There does appear to have been a bit more variation in performance than the distributions show.
Ironman Arizona is a typical US race with the majority of the field from North America and around 10% from further afield. Slots largely remain in the US.
Tracking age group times for specific positions over the last 10 years of racing shows more age group variation. M35-39 trends slower all round this year, while M30-34 was comparable or faster than the last few years. there is also divergence between age group winners and those further back in the field for many of the divisions presented above. That fits with a pattern of consistent front of pack times while the median fell back.
Based on the start list I’ve calculated the Kona slot allocation and from that the automatics qualification times at Ironman Arizona. These times do not reflect any roll down that took place. The F70-74 slot would have rolled due to no finishers for example. You can compare this with other races on my Kona qualification page.
Again we see variations between age groups when we examine the times of the top twenty in each division. Among the women most age groups trend close to the averages with F40-44 breaking that pattern and trending much faster. Younger and older male age groups deviate more from the average times and come in faster. While the big 35-50 age groups stick closer to the middle ground. At the very front, as places qualify for Kona times do start to dip down a little further and are generally average or better.
You can access a spreadsheet of the full results from Ironman Arizona 2019 on my Google Drive.
