ReaderInfo

Jim Lubinsky had a nice chat with me about trirating.com and my predictions for Ironman Arizona on his podcast “Jim and The Other Guy”. You can listen to it directly or through iTunes.

Caroline Steffen (nicknamed “Xena”) described her future plans in an interview with NZZ:

The „Neue Zürcher Zeitung“ (or NZZ for short) is a respectable Swiss newspaper (some more info about NZZ on wikipedia). As the tweet and the interview were published in German, it seems that the interesting points have not been picked up by the mainly English speaking triathlon press. Here is a quick translation of the main points.

Kona 2013

Q: [What happened in Kona?] You started as the favourite and finished 5th.

A: Everything went bad. I don’t know why. I have to take some time to analyse the race.

Q: After the swim you were in the lead group on the bike. Then you had stomach problems.

A: I vomited multiple times on the second half of the bike and also on the run. I don’t know why. Some other top athletes were affected as well. Maybe we picked up something from the ocean? I don’t know.

Q: So you don’t believe it was because of nutrition problem? After all you didn’t get your special needs bag with your own drink after 90k on the bike.

A: That’s right, but it’s not important. In an Ironman, there are 2000 athletes who want to get their special needs, and it’s normal if things go wrong. I don’t rely on it and always have a plan B.

Q: What’s your plan B in this situation?

A: To use the drink that is supplied by the race organisers. I’ll try it in training to be safe. Of course my own mix would have been ideal, but what else could I do? Stop? I was in the lead group, so that was impossible. Turning around? I don’t know if that would have been legal.

Q: You felt better towards the end of the marathon, overtook some others and finished fifth. What would have been possible without the stomach problems?

A: Second or third, but certainly not winning. Mirinda Carfrae was unbeatable on race day, just look at her marathon time  2:50, faster than the men’s winner.

Plans for 2014

Q: You are 35. How much more time do you give yourself for the big goal of winning Kona?

A: Two years.

Q: Are you going to change anything for next season?

A: I will no longer start for Team TBB but under my own name. I’ll have better opportunities to acquire sponsors. I’m in the middle of negotiations. 

Q: Will you also leave TBB-coach Brett Sutton?

A: At the moment, I can’t say anything to that.

I’m working on another new Kona feature utilizing my data: kona.trirating.com will show the “TTR Kona Live Predictions”. By live predictions I mean a mixture of actual race splits and my predictions (as released in my “2013 Kona Rating Report“), updating as soon as new splits are available. You can easily see who may be a bit back, but still in a good position to win the race, who fell back a bit because of a slow swim and so on. All this information is easily available however you want to view it, you can sort the results table simply by clicking on the column header.

For now, I’ve put up a page with the current start list and my pre-race predictions and a sample page with some background information. I will update the “TTR Kona Live Predictions” as the race develops and hope that it’ll be a helpful feature for those following the race. Let me know if you have some ideas how I can improve the data even further!

For those that want to have the full on statistics, you can still download my free 2013 Kona Rating Report.

I’ve just finished my 2013 Kona Rating Rating Report focused on upcoming “big dance” on Hawaii. (To download, use this link or click on the image at the right.)

A couple of highlights:

• Result analysis from last year and the current course records.
• The Kona 2013 start list and a look at the country-wise distribution.
• My predicted finishing times for the pro athletes.
• Based on the predicted times for each of the legs, I show how the race may unfold.
• My predictions include odds for the winners and TOP3 and how these developed over the 2013 qualifying season.

A lot of people have asked how they can pay me back in some way for the information I’ve been putting out. In order to enable that, I’m releasing this report through Gumroad. The report is still free (you can just enter “0” as the amount), but if you want to help with my hosting costs, you can donate an amount of your choice. Regardless of whether you donate or not, feel free to share with others and enjoy!

One more thing: If you have you own opinion on who is going to win in Kona, you should check out IM-Betting.com. You can submit your picks for the men and women, and maybe you can win one of the cool prizes such as PlanetX Carbon Race Wheels!