Ironman Coeur d'Alene Results Analysis

Ironman Coeur d'Alene is in the top 10 of RunTri's Toughest Ironman triathlons ranking. The last two years, the average finish time has been identical; roughly a 1:20 swim, 6:26 bike split and a 5 hour marathon.

The slow average marathon split has much to do with the difficulty of settling on the right strategy to ride the bike course. A large number of athletes rode too hard, and ended up suffering on the marathon, as shown in the upper left quadrant of our IM CDA bike/run correlation analysis. Those that raced well landed in the lower left and upper right quadrants; those who took it too easy on the bike are lower right. 

Ironman France Results Analysis and Kona Qualifying Times

On our ranking of the Top 25 Toughest Ironman races, France has been ranked roughly in the middle, with an average finish time of 12:33. This finish time has been identical in 2010 and 2011.

However, the race ends in 16 hours, not 17, and while the swim and bike cutoffs are consistent with other races, there's one less hour for the marathon. That helped contribute to a 9% DNF on the run.

And of those who finished, there is a very wide distribution of datapoints on our bike/run correlation analysis . . . it's perhaps the most scattered scatter plot we've seen, relative to Ironman races.

Look at the number of athletes -- each blue square represents an athletes bike/run result -- in the upper left quadrant: those are the athletes who rode too fast and didn't leave enough for the run. They finished, but it was ugly. Far more left it on the bike course instead of taking it too easy, shown in the lower right quadrant. Those who balanced bike and run splits well are in the lower left and upper right quadrants. They had great races on a very tough course.

Buffalo Springs Lake Half Ironman 70.3 Results Analysis

Average finish time for the Buffalo Springs Lake half ironman distance triathlon was 6:10, a full 17 minutes slower than in the previous year. Time was lost in all three disciplines: -2 swim, -5 bike, -10 run. See how average times compared year-to-year by age group, below.

Looking at the data from a different perspective, it looks like triathletes largely fell into two groups: 1) many triathletes who turned in a fast bike split ran an equally fast 13.1 miles (lower left quadrant); 2) a group that was much slower overall in both the bike and the run (upper right quadrant). Not many left it on the bike course; not many took it too easy on the bike course, either.