Performance and pacing of professional IRONMAN® triathletes – The fastest IRONMAN® World Championship ever – IRONMAN® Hawaii 2022 (Preprint)

Abstract

Pacing during cycling and running in an IRONMAN® triathlon has been investigated in only one study with elite IRONMAN® triathletes. We have, however, no knowledge of how professional triathletes pace during an IRONMAN® World Championship.

To investigate the split-by-split speed, pacing strategies and pacing variability in professional female and male IRONMAN® World Championship participants in the fastest IRONMAN® World Championship ever in IRONMAN® Hawaii 2022.

For both cycling and running, 25 specific split times were recorded in each discipline. The best 30 men and women from the database were chosen for further analysis, and were consequently divided into three performance groups: Top 10, 11th-20th place, and 21st-30th place. Mean speed, individual linear regressions with the corresponding correlation coefficients, and coefficient of variation were calculated to assess split-by-split speed, pacing strategies, and pacing variability, respectively.

In both men’s and women’s cycling and running, the top ten group was faster than the two slower performance groups, while no differences were observed between the 11th-20th and 21st-30th place in men’s cycling and women’s running splits. In contrast, in the men’s running and women’s cycling splits, the 11th-20th group was faster than the 21st-30th group. Men had more negative pacing, while women paced relatively evenly in the cycling split across all performance groups. In the running split, the top 10 male and all women’s groups have a similar slightly positive pacing profile, while men from the 11th-20th group and the 21st-30th group have pronounced positive pacing strategies. In cycling, the pacing variability is almost the same across the three performance groups. At the same time, in the running split, the men’s top ten triathletes and 11th-20th placed triathletes have a lower pacing variability than the 21st-30 placed triathletes and all women’s groups.

In summary, any female or male athlete intending to finish in IRONMAN® Hawaii in the top ten and below 8 hours needs to consider that slower men need to improve mainly their running and slower women need to improve mainly their cycling. Slower men might try to adopt a more even pacing to improve overall performance. Slower men and all women might try reducing their pacing variability to achieve better results.

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