Triathlon standards/targets

couerdelion

Not sure if this has been done before....

One of the questions I get asked by non triathletes after they ask how quick I did a race is "Is that fast?" Even between triathletes you get varied responses to finishing times. For example after the Athy sprint I heard someone say that anything sub 80 mins is pretty good.

So it made me think if there is a set of standards that could ever be agreed amongst triathletes within each distance as a kind of A, B and C standard. Where by you would consider an A level athlete to be pretty good, B above average and C competent. This may be with caveats so a 'C' standard for a sprint could be 90 mins, but only if it's your first season of multisport.

I think we should also add in the unlikely assumption that all courses are accurate, the water is pan flat,the sun is shining and wind none existent.

Here's my thoughts to kick it off

Sprint

A - >1:05
B - >1:15
C - >1:25

Olympic

A - > 2:10
B - > 2:30
c - > 2:50

HIM

A - > 5:00
B - > 5:30
C - > 6:00

Anyone else anything to add? It would be good to get a kind of 'boards' standards that people can aim to hit and can compare their times to.

Rawhead

I think that it is nearly impossible to explain times to none triathletes. I did the Olympic in Athy and was out having a few pints Saturday night. A few people asked me about the race but telling them a time was pointless. If you didn't come first then they don't get it anymore and most just couldn't get past the distances.
I think Peter Kern said it on a thread earlier, about 5 people you know will have an understanding of your times and the rest will just be amazed at the whole concept, especially HIM distance and above.

couerdelion

Rawhead wrote: »

I think that it is nearly impossible to explain times to none triathletes. I did the Olympic in Athy and was out having a few pints Saturday night. A few people asked me about the race but telling them a time was pointless. If you didn't come first then they don't get it anymore and most just couldn't get past the distances.
I think Peter Kern said it on a thread earlier, about 5 people you know will have an understanding of your times and the rest will just be amazed at the whole concept, especially HIM distance and above.

Non-triathletes in general just think we're a mad bunch.

But within this forum we must be able to agree as to what kind of average time a triathlete should be able to hit to class them at a certain level?

Like in the Sprint/Oly distances then Fazz, El D and BTH would be considered to be pretty damn good. They would all be under the 'A' standard I put out there. I'm not too good but am above average just about so am a 'C' as I'm just over the 1:15 mark this year. My wife ,who thankfully doesn't come anywhere near this forum, would not consider herself to be very good at all so would be below the 'C' mark.

I'm not looking for a way to tell people they are $hit. Just a set of marker that peole can aim for or can look at someone's results over the last season and say... "yep, he's good". Maybe I'm just being selfish and wanting a set of markers to judge myself against

elvis jones

Going by that i'll put myself in class Z:D

BennyMul

I like the idea of a "boards standard" to give me something to aim for, I will never be looking in a position to win a race but I can aim for one of the times,

would you need to have a weighting factor for some races, as some will be harder than others based on Sea vs River, Pool swim, or a hilly bike compared to a flat road etc?

elvis jones

Rawhead wrote: »

I think that it is nearly impossible to explain times to none triathletes. I did the Olympic in Athy and was out having a few pints Saturday night. A few people asked me about the race but telling them a time was pointless. If you didn't come first then they don't get it anymore and most just couldn't get past the distances.
I think Peter Kern said it on a thread earlier, about 5 people you know will have an understanding of your times and the rest will just be amazed at the whole concept, especially HIM distance and above.

Thats true.......the question i get asked most is, Why ?

Answer.........why not ?

mloc123

Athy is a good example as the bike is 20km and the run is 5km, the swim is 750 probably but would be considered an easy or fast swim IMO.

I think 75mins is a soft 'B' Standard, maybe 70 would be better?

couerdelion

BennyMul wrote: »

I like the idea of a "boards standard" to give me something to aim for, I will never be looking in a position to win a race but I can aim for one of the times,

would you need to have a weighting factor for some races, as some will be harder than others based on Sea vs River, Pool swim, or a hilly bike compared to a flat road etc?

I guess we would need to have some kind of weighting worked out once we've an idea of what constitutes a standard. Probably need to take into account Age group and sex too. I'd say something along the lines of 5th place AG finisher compared to 30th percentile finisher would give a base to work from. Might take a while to get enough data to make comparisions but it's a start.

couerdelion

mloc123 wrote: »

Athy is a good example as the bike is 20km and the run is 5km, the swim is 750 probably but would be considered an easy or fast swim IMO.

I think 75mins is a soft 'B' Standard, maybe 70 would be better?

I'd be ok with that. Would you move the 'C' standard up to match?

MrCreosote

I think there's just too many variable to compare times from different courses.

You'd be better taking a % time of the winner's (assuming a fairly big field).

Rawhead

I'd be happy enough to go along with this. I think that a percentage would probably be the fairest system. Saying that I'm fairly new to all this so I'll leave it to the pro's.

mickmc7

Good idea but expand it a bit more to let us crap newbies (or more specifically me) into the mix.

Unregistered.

I like this idea! Wouldn't want to run the risk of over-complicating it in it's infancy.

I'd say the following metric would work:

[Time] * [Course Weighting].

I wouldn't over-complicate the course weighting either - a simple Easy, Normal, Hard might do. I'd assign the weightings so that different times on different courses would show the same(ish) score.

For example (purely out-of-the-air figures):

Easy - 90
Medium - 1
Hard - 110

Assume Athy was an easy course (overall, somebody else can decide what constitutes easy, medium and hard).

An A-level score would be

90/65 = 1.38

A B-level:

90/70 = 1.28


Assume another race is a hard course (takes longer to complete).

A time of 1hr20m would yield a high score:

110/80 = 1.375.

A C-level for this race might be 1hr40m:

110/100 = 1.1.


The idea is that each each level would have a numeric assigned to it such as:

A is anything over 1.375.
B is between 1.375 and 1.25 ( again, just a rough idea)
C is between 1.25 and 1.


Just a thought! I stress that these are simple examples and obviously the metrics can be different and ratings for courses can vary with season and weather even.

911sc

I like the idea. Not as straight forward as it seems as there are many parameters.
Should age not be taken into account as well, by adding say 5min as you move up age group?
I am twice as old as the younger competitor:rolleyes:

couerdelion

911sc wrote: »

I like the idea. Not as straight forward as it seems as there are many parameters.
Should age not be taken into account as well, by adding say 5min as you move up age group?
I am twice as old as the younger competitor:rolleyes:

We can look at that stuff later for now all we need to do is agree on the base standards assuming a normal accurate course

Unregistered.

911sc wrote: »

Should age not be taken into account as well, by adding say 5min as you move up age group?

Of course! I had left it out, but I think the formulas for calculating the scores whould be the same and the limits for A, B and C should change for different age groups - less confusion when calculating the score for now (I would think).

miller82

good idea lads. percentage seems to make most sense

Bally8

And dont to forget to factor in times for us women

MrCreosote

One I've seen before is :

A std- Winner +10%
B std- Winner +20%
C std- winner +30%

Which would be 1:06, 1:12 and 1:18 for a sprint if the winner came in on an hour.

Works just as well for men and women and within age-groups if there are enough numbers.

Oryx

Can we please have a class D so I can play too?

miller82

i reckon a D class is definitely required

tunney

MrCreosote wrote: »

One I've seen before is :

A std- Winner +10%
B std- Winner +20%
C std- winner +30%

Which would be 1:06, 1:12 and 1:18 for a sprint if the winner came in on an hour.

Works just as well for men and women and within age-groups if there are enough numbers.

Better doing it as a percentage of the 30th percentile.

Imagine Gav Noble turns up to a race in BallyGoBackwards........

couerdelion

tunney wrote: »

Better doing it as a percentage of the 30th percentile.

Imagine Gav Noble turns up to a race in BallyGoBackwards........

Yep I agree. I said earlier something along the lines of "5th place AG finisher compared to 30th percentile finisher would give a base to work from."

It would need a bit more thought from me as to how it works. Maybe I'll knock something up to import previous race results and then have a moving average as new race results occur...display each race result with gold/silver/bronze/standards...and to think I thought my programming days were well gone... anyways that's something for the future.

So any more thoughts on them or shall I just crack on with the initial thoughts in post #1 taking into account mloc123's comments?

peter kern

with the 30 percentile rule you still get differences of up to 6%
between the Ns race with lowest points and highest points,
I think the female nat series winner had a highest score of 114 and a lowest score of 107 and their was races that score lower than the selected

you need a bit of work to normalize that ( and so should TI in my mind, to make the nat series a bit valuable, and rather having it a select the right race series.
Most nat series races have some good consistent people and you could take a champion chip races to create a handicap based on participants.

so if 5( or whatever sample size is feasible -the bigger the better) people score really high in one race you use their average and compare it with their average of a nat champ race and then normalize the points.
it would not be 100% perfect but better than the current system I think