current assisted swim. not valid.

Good point. I guess just fastest individual bike and run splits

Why do you care?
Many AGs work less / train more than other who start as PROs...

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https://besse.info/
https://www.strava.com/athletes/2012033

What does the amount of time amateurs/pros work or train have anything to do with OP looking for fastest posted times?

I'm just saying, the pro/amateur distinction is just not very well defined. It's a matter of which box you click when asking for a licence (once you're fast enough to be allowed for one).
Fastest amateur is fastest person who didn't ask for a pro licence, but not really meaningful.

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https://besse.info/
https://www.strava.com/athletes/2012033

Unless the question was for splits irrespective of pro vs ag in which case
1. I apologize for misreading
2. as usual it's complicated to compare course, but this may be a good start: https://mytriworld.com/ironman-records/

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https://besse.info/
https://www.strava.com/athletes/2012033

Only people who care and document this type of thing are those on elite AG teams who should be pros like Every Man Jack(ing each other off).

Think it makes more sense to compare course times rather than fastest times across the board. Obs Tri (RIP) showed fastest AG times at individual races. But I agree that a lot of the best AG times are probably held by pros in disguise. It is what it is. I'll just appreciate good performances as they come. Plews crushed CA. The swim wasn't legit & he could be a mid-pack pro (or better). His time was fantastic.

This is like asking who can whisper the loudest.

In the current landscape it makes more sense to capitalize on social media with high AG placings marketed to the masses of AG'ers as opposed to 45th place in the pro field.

I don't think there's much need for the distinction anyway. Would be trivial to make qualifying for pro events results based, instead of category selection based. Only issue is a lot of 20-40 AGers would lose their AG podiums, but I don't have much sympathy for the 7th fastest 25-29yo wanting a winners trophy because the 6 others ahead of him took a pro license.

This is the perfect analogy

Obviously triathlon is a sport where the concept of a record is meaningless. There is just too much variability. Sports that keep records (such as athletics) have precise definitions of what the conditions need to be for an acceptable results. Too much wind assistance and records in long jump, 100/200m sprint and more aren't valid.

In triathlon to have anything even remotely similar we would need to keep track of currents, water temperature, air temperature, winds, do that at multiple times a day and it quickly becomes a meaningless thing.

In my opinion, the only things that makes sense to have are course "best times" per Age group where the Age group is based on the age of an athlete, regardless of pro/amateur status.

A separation of pro and amateur status could only make sense if there was a specific, objective definition, maybe an automatic qualifying system. Or possibly some sort of honor/honesty self definition where if you check any of a few number of boxes you don't qualify for awards (din't make any money from the sport of triathlon, training isn't the main occupation, etc). Or an organisation that reviews awarding of the records. But I can see many issues with any of these options so maybe a separation between amateurs and pros isn't possible after all.

In addition to that, it would totally makes sense for Ironman to provide a platform to easily compare results within a specific race (something like obstri). I would even be fine with them charging for it if it was relatively inexpensive and part of a broader suite of useful services. I would also much prefer that it wasn't run by Ironman but a third party provider (like obstri).

As the winner of the M25-29 70.3 WC last year, couldn't agree more.
Realistically I was not the fastest 25-29 year old on that day (Did keep the Trophy though 🤦‍♂️🤣).
Had not qualify for a pro card then, have since.

AG sandbagging is a bit of an odd mindset to me.
Yes I would have better results on paper this year if I had stayed AG racing.
But feel more fulfilled testing your limits against the best.
Even just about broken even on my travel costs this year which is a nice bonus .

Also I feel 5 year bracket before 40 is a bit weird.
20-40 should probably just be one big senior class.

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Full-time Engineer / Part-time Pro Triathlete
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/benwgoodfellow/
Strava - https://www.strava.com/athletes/3085032
Website - https://benwgoodfellow.wixsite.com/bengoodfellow

Yeah but I feel like it's overblown to say they'd finish 45th. That's the mindset that prevents a lot of good AGers from going pro. Most pro fields don't have 45 people racing in them. & the people finishing at the top of AG races usually get a good number of pros. So you're really trading 1st-3rd AG for maybe 15th-20th pro out of 30-40. These are people who would solidly be midpack pros. I'm getting close to the pro criteria. Would rather test myself & finish in the last 1/3 of a pro field than get an AG trophy.

I honestly don't hear too many people finishing off of the AG podium complaining about fake pros being on the podium. But, even if they were, they're right. The people taking those spots are training/racing at the pro level without the distinction.

Cleary this guy, along with many others at his level, is in the category of professional age grouper?

That's fair, tbh I said 45th since it sound more dramatic than 20th.

I was thinking about the combined fields and how (seemingly) easy it would be to have an honor system elite start. Normally pro races have a mass start a few minutes before AG's who then have a rolling start for safety and convenience. It seems like you could just have a checkbox or an announcement saying if you're competing for the overall men/women win there will be a mass start at the front of the line. You'd probably still have a few optimistic pros from the mass start losing to less confident rolling starters.

The other option that would be cool but would never happen for a lot of really good reasons is instead of seeding by swim pace the start could be seeded into specific age groups separated by a couple minutes.

since no one else has applauded this I will. It gave me a good laugh

I applauded it over here.

To see the upper end of what is possible by a non-pros and set realistic expectations?

With what IM charges for a race, you would think that the top 3 finishers for all AG's would be tested. After looking at AG's times there are some out there are a few that raise eyebrows.

As an example:

59 year old finishing at 9:11
69 year old finishing at 10:02

current assisted swim.. perfectly valid!

Depends what do you class as being professional?
Is it just racing with a pro license (In my eye should be called Elite) or is it having triathlon as a main source of income 🤷‍♂️

Many mid/back of pack "Pro's" make little to literally nothing from Tri. So still need to work a full time job, Limiting training & recovery time.
While some of the top age group athletes basically train full time.

Pro means different things to different people.

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Full-time Engineer / Part-time Pro Triathlete
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/benwgoodfellow/
Strava - https://www.strava.com/athletes/3085032
Website - https://benwgoodfellow.wixsite.com/bengoodfellow

I get this mindset but maybe more people should be able to make their livings as full-time pros? We'd have very few pros if we only counted those who can live off of training full-time. I think that just because there isn't a ton of money in the sport it doesn't mean that people aren't professional athletes. We should be talking about how to spread prize money further instead of saying X isn't a real pro because they finished 11th at IM Florida & prize $$$ goes 10 deep & isn't very much past the first few places. Top-100 PTO types finished out of the money in Florida. They're professional athletes.

Totally agree that there are top AG athletes training like full-time pros. But those same athletes have earned pro qualification & aren't turning pro because of sentiments like this. They don't want to be seen as pros who can't make a living in the sport so they rack up AG podiums instead.

This another topic for a completely separate post, won't you think?

Feel like it fits into this thread. Can we get excited about fast AG times if fast AGers mostly don't get tested? We all know about the study from a decade ago where a good chunk of people admitted to doping -- & those are just the people who admitted to it. But my predisposition is to be excited about bad times/be excited for people & condemn people who are caught cheating. It would be pretty bleak to be a fan of the sport if you don't think anybody is competing clean.

See, Ben gets it.


-bobo

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"What's good for me ain't necessarily good for the weak-minded."

Also I feel 5 year bracket before 40 is a bit weird.
20-40 should probably just be one big senior class.
See, Ben gets it.
-bobo///

Hey Bobo, good to see you are still at it, and guessing since you asked about the 60+ record in another thread, things are going well for you physically? I gave up any hope of ever doing an ironman around early 50's, of course my little heart thing didnt help there either..But all good now and even did my first sprint in 11 years, and had a blast!!


Speaking of age groups and how many there are these days, do you remember the qualifying for Boston back in the late 70's early 80's I believe. I really wanted to go do that race, but was just doing too many prize money races that had just started up around 81 or so. As I recall, there were two age groups for men, under 40 and you had to have run a sub 2;50. and over 40 and I believe it was 3;10. That was it, 2 AG's and 2;50 was the cutoff. Events were hard back then, and so were the runners..


Did the sports world just get wussified over the past 40 years?? (-;


Every once in awhile I look at the Boston time for my AG and think it would be fun to go, but then I realize that I would actually have to train and race a dam marathon to get there first, and then the dream starts to fade....Good luck old timer in your future adventures...

Are you referring to the study which includes caffeine as "psychological doping" and creatine as "physical doping"? Because I'd have to answer yes to both of those questions, too...

The 9.11 at 59 definitely isn't me but I have a time not a million miles off at 57 and I can assure you I have never doped (I appreciate everyone says that). It was on one of the worlds quicker courses and on a good day. My own views on superfast age group times are that the younger age groupers are basically pros (coaches/fitness instructors etc) and the older athletes (like me) only have to work part time. In addition we have seen huge advances in technology in the 4 or 5 years, bikes/shoes. I don't personally think it's all down to doping.

Yeah my original point & answer to the question is that it's ok to talk about doping in the context about this thread. That study is far from perfect because they lump legal & illegal doping together -- maybe to try to get a higher # of people responding with what they're taking? I would think that there are a good # of self reported dopers in that study, & that does concern me.

If a substance isn't banned then taking it is not illegal, not cheating, not unfair. Doping in sport has a very clear definition of taking banned substances for performance enhancement. Getting mad at someone who beats you because they took legal stuff like creatine and caffeine is like getting mad because they went to altitude camp, or ate more nutritiously, or even just trained harder.

There's (very very good) articles and posts here from Dr. Alex that lay out ratios and consumption rates of fructose and maltodextrin that are shown to boost performance by rather a lot. Is that cheating? Maltodextrin doesn't even occur in nature so surely one could stretch and call that chemical enhancement.

Providing a performance benefit is not enough to classify a substance as 'doping'.

I’ll try to get this post back on topic. I just interviewed Barbora Besperat (2nd overall AG Kona) for a podcast about age group racing in Kona.

Her run split of 3:04 in Kona was the 10th fastest on the day and of course first in the age group field. Made me wonder if there was someplace to look to see what the fastest splits are in Kona for “age groupers”…

Now in her case she will be pro next year so the narrative of the top age groupers are just middle/back of the pack pros is true here… she did just start Ironman in 2022 and hadn’t earned her pro card prior to the 2023 season.

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Mission Kona Podcast
https://www.strava.com/athletes/2568182
Kona 2024 Qualifier

This post was so awesome. You are spot on Monty. To qualify for Boston back in the day was really really hard. And the time standards you mentioned were spot on. Yep- tough as nails to get in. That’s what made it an elite marathon, not just another race.

For sure, wish I could find some old Boston results from back then, but my google skills are just not that good. But just from what you had to do to even get there, I would have to think that a shit ton of runners ran pretty fast. Now dont bother with the womens times, like comparing women from the first few Ironmans...It was a true sausage fest for sure back in those days..

And so funny that the general consensus was that women were just not strong enough to run marathons,, haaaa!