How Long Does it Take to Finish Ironman Kona? It Really Depends; Average Finish Times by Age Group 2002 to 2013

How Long Does it Take to Finish Ironman Kona? There's really no easy answer; our analysis from 2002 to 2013 shows finish times can vary by a full hour. We know from personal experience, having finished Kona in 2002, 2003 and 2004.

The extremes? In 2004, the average finish time was 12 hours 6 minutes; in 2013, the average was a full hour faster at 11:06. Same course, same world class athletes, roughly the same number of athletes.

How variable can finish times be from year to year? There's no real standard pattern; we don't see faster finish times each year. So what's the main difference? Kona's a blast furnace experience like no other triathlon in the world. It can crush you, or, in some years, the winds will be somewhat merciful; but it's never easy.

We've run the numbers for All Ironman Kona World Championships since 2002, and further segmented the annual average times by Age Group for each year. Here are the results of our analysis.

For more, see our complete Ironman Kona Coverage, Qualifying for Kona, Kona Qualifying Race Schedule 2013/2014, our analysis of Top 30 Toughest/Easiest Ironman Events, and the site's archive of more than 200 Stats/Results/Analysis posts.

Racing For Charity Search Trends: Team in Training, Dana Farber, Komen Race for the Cure

In recent years, there has been a seemingly growing trend of athletes gaining entry to compete in major endurance events (Chicago Marathon, New York City Marathon, e.g.) via an official race charity. Team in Training (Leukemia), Dana-Farber (cancer, Boston-based) and Susan Komen Race for the cure are three popular racing charities.


However, it's possible interest in running for a charity may be on the decline. The 2013 New York City Marathon, for the first time in its history, failed to fill all possible charity entries; a remarkable 3,000 were unclaimed.  That's a huge number. For perspective, Boston and Chicago Marathons typically offer 5,000 charity entries each.

To get a better sense of the underlying trend, we turned to google search trends analysis, to see how interest in the three popular charities mentioned above has changed over time.

The answer in the first chart, above -- which presents the interest over time based on searches with the charity-related keywords -- appears to indicate a steadily declining trend. Is demand for racing via charity entry slowly fading? The New York Marathon experience is a distinctive example, and the chart seems to support that result.

Here's our Major Race Charity Search Trends: By Time, Geography, Keywords and Forecast analysis.

 Search Trends by State: Team in Training

  Search Trends by State: Dana Farber

  Search Trends by State: Komen Race for the Cure

 Top Searches: Team in Training

 Trending Upward Searches: Team in Training

 Top Searches: Dana Farber

Trending Upward Searches: Dana Farber

  Top Searches: Komen Race for the Cure

 Trending Up Searches: Komen Race for the Cure

 Top Searches by Metro Area: Team in Training

  Top Searches by Metro Area: Dana Farber

  Top Searches by Metro Area: Komen Race for the Cure

Search Trends 2004 to present with Forecast: 
Team in Training, Dana Farber, Komen Race for the Cure

For more, see our comprehensive coverage of Chicago Marathon, New York City Marathon, Boston Marathon, and our vast archive of more than 200 articles/analyses on our Stats/Results/Analysis page.

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Ironman Arizona 2013 Results Analysis

At the 10th running of Ironman Arizona, one of the most popular 140.6 mile events in North America, more than 2500 athletes crossed the finish line in an average time of 12 hours, 52 minutes (vs a 12:35 across all global Ironman events).

Results were fairly consistent compared to stats from recent years, with one outlier: the average bike split was noticeably fast at 6:05. Otherwise the average swim and marathon times slipped by a minute each but transitions were about a minute faster.

Here's our analysis from nearly every angle of Ironman Arizona 2013 results: overall, by age group, by splits, by years, and by bike vs run correlation.

For more, see our complete Ironman Arizona Coverage, compare Arizona 2013's results with our analysis of Top 30 Toughest/Easiest Ironman Events, and to really dive into the data, see our archive of more than 200 Stats/Results/Analysis posts.