Ironman Texas 2016 – Analyzing Results

Race Conditions

The shortened bike course makes a comparison with other Texas races very hard and I won’t consider this year’s results for my ratings or for course records. Linearly scaling the bike times from 94 to 112 miles doesn’t yield valid “full-distance times” – race times that are shorter by roughly 40 minutes create a different race dynamic. Nonetheless, I have analyzed the scaled race splits in the same way as for a “valid” IM. The splits are colored accordingly and a “diff to expected” is shown to indicate on how good some times have been. Of course all this analysis has to be taken with a grain of salt, but here are a few additional observations:

• The male winning time by Patrick Lange would correspond to a sub-8 time, the female winning time by Julia Gajer to a sub-9 finish.
• The last minute changes to the swim course didn’t have a major influence on the swim times – a swim adjustment of -1:39 is almost exactly the Texas average of -1:27.
• Lauren Brandon had the fastest swim overall. (This is the first time that a female had the fastest swim since Sweden 2013, when Jodie Swallow lead the field.)
• Most reports indicate that the new bike course wasn’t quite as hard to follow as anticipated, but there were a few tricky sections and also some car traffic on the course. Andy Starykowicz’s fastest bike time would roughly correspond to a 4:04 – very fast, but “almost normal” for Andy. Looking at the whole field, the bike times were quite comparable to the times we have seen in earlier years, maybe they would have been quicker by four to five minutes than in the past.
• With the shortened bike course I also expected quicker run times. Some athletes had great runs – Patrick Lange’s winning marathon of 2:40:01 would have broken Matt Hanson’s course record, and there were two sub-3 runs in the women’s field by Lisa Roberts (3rd, fastest run split of 2:59:03) and Jodie Robertson (2nd). But we’ve also seen some “explosions” on the run: In addition to Andy Starykowicz who DNF’d, Lauren Brandon just broke four hours and Matt Hanson had to walk after running himself into 3rd place – eventually finishing 23rd. The adjustment would have been similar to what we’ve seen in Texas in the last few years.

Male Race Results

As the winner of the North American Regional championship Patrick Lange receives an Automatic Qualifier spot. Matt Russell and Terenzo Bozzone now have enough points to be safe for a July slot. Eneko Llanos hasn’t added too many points with his 13th place finish, but he validated his slot and is also safe now. Callum Millward is on the bubble, at 3.580 points he’s right at my projected cutoff of 3.500 points. He already has five results (his worst is 435 points), so it won’t be easy to improve his total. Jeremy Juekiewicz has 2.530 points (but only one IM and one 70.3 race), so he should be able to add some more points if he wants to qualify.

Female Race Results

After Kaisa Lehtonen as winner of IM South Africa, Julia Gajer is the second European Automatic Qualifier this year. Julia has raced an amazingly stable race, almost exactly hitting her predicted times, so even if her individual legs were in line with what could be expected, her overall time was a good deal quicker. Lisa Roberts also had a great race. She is well ahead of the projected cutoff of 4.500 points and safe for a July slot. Alicia Kaye has scored well, but needs to add to her 4.340 points if she wants to qualify – another good 70.3 result should be enough for her. Jodie Robertson (3.960) and Emma-Kate Lidbury (3.695, but already 5 results) have to plan how to best get the remaining points needed.