Ironman North America 2006 Statistics
With 2006 all wrapped up and the results posted, I figured I’d do another run of IMNA statistics for the current year like I did for 2005. Again, this snapshot is just the raw numbers of how things played out this year. Like last year, I left out the swim splits:
“You will notice that I didn’t do swim splits. I chose not to since the swim times should vary the least of the three in all the venues, but mostly because IMNA’s display of swim data sucks. A sub-hour swim time is represented as 59:59:00 while an hour swim time is represented as 1:00:00, which messes up my auto-tabulations and I’m too lazy to go fix the sub-hour entries. :P”
So without further ado:
| Avg. Total Time | Avg. Bike Split | Avg. Run Split | Finishers | |
| Ironman Arizona | 13:12:19 | 6:19:30 | 5:18:36 | 89.35% |
| Ironman Coeur d’Alene | 13:27:27 | 6:33:11 | 5:23:08 | 87.11% |
| Ironman Lake Placid | 12:53:30 | 6:33:05 | 4:49:58 | 94.68% |
| Ironman Canada | 13:07:35 | 6:18:38 | 5:18:45 | 92.47% |
| Ironman Wisconsin | 13:26:54 | 6:49:18 | 4:52:10 | 89.09% |
| Ironman Florida | 12:44:07 | 6:14:54 | 4:52:03 | 96.21% |
My observations:
- Arizona folks went 6 minutes slower on average than last year. Folks got around 10 minutes faster on the bike, but 15 minutes slower on the run.
- It looks like Ironman Coeur d’Alene had the biggest change in time from 2005, with its competitors going 37 minutes slower this year than last. Bike times were 11 minutes slower and the run was 23 minutes slower on average! The finisher percentage also decreased by 7%. Seemingly, the conditions were harder for athletes this year than last.
- Placid again surprises me with a very high 92.74% finisher rate. I hear that the course is supposed to be one of the harder ones, but folks that do the course seem to have a good chance of finishing. Does LP just attract a more fit crowd of athletes who prepare better during the season? Overall times this year were about 12 minutes faster than last.
- Canada gets the consistency award by having the average finisher time differ from last year by only 18 seconds. :)
- Wisconsin… the only one that I’m personally familiar with. It looks like 95 degrees or 55 degrees, folks seem to bike the same on that course with bike splits differing by less than 1 minute. Run splits were substantially faster though with an average decrease in time of 36 minutes over last year. Times were only 24 minutes faster overall, though which leads me to believe that either people swam WAY slower this year. Or more likely, people were spending a lot more time in the transition area changing clothes and trying to get warm between events.
- Florida gets the speed crown again this year. While it did once again post the fastest bike splits of any other IMNA event, it wasn’t by much - only 4 minutes faster than Canada. And the average run splits in Florida were actually 3 minutes slower in Placid. Again making me wonder what’s up with these Placid athletes and why are they all on the juice? :)