CONTRIBUTED CONTENT — It’s safe to say the average person is acutely aware of triathlons and their extreme difficulty. In many ways, triathletes appear to have “superhuman powers.” After all, they display unwavering discipline, endurance and the will to finish a race despite the urge to collapse from utter exhaustion.
With dogged determination and their minds set on the finish line, and on a world stage, triathletes swim, bike and run a long distance without stopping. Meanwhile, the rest of us watch in complete awe.
Triathlons can be described as some of the most brutally intense athletic competitions that push people to the edge of their limits – only a very small percentage of the world’s population has trained their minds and bodies to withstand the physically demanding, awe-inspiring, ultimate test of human endurance. And today, some of the most well-known triathlons in the world include the Ironman and the Ironman 70.3 events, which have found a home here in Greater Zion.
What makes a triathlon
Are all triathlons the same? Sometimes, triathlon distances are tailored to fit the unique terrain of a course, but typically popular events like Ironman and the Olympics have standardized course lengths and endurance tests to which athletes are accustomed.
Sure, total distance is one way to gauge a race’s difficulty, but it isn’t everything. With cycling, for example, a number of factors affect an athlete’s cycling performance, such as heat, wind and gradient (slope) of the road – and let’s not forget those challenging uphill stretches.
The Ironman and Ironman 70.3 triathlon series has been called the “behemoth of triathlon” for good reason. The full-distance Ironman course involves a 2.4-mile swim; a 112-mile bike ride (visualize St. George to Las Vegas being 119.4 miles); and a marathon distance 26.2-mile run (Toquerville to St. George is 23.2 miles), totaling 140.6 miles.
The Ironman 70.3 is a half-distance Ironman and is a faster, more intense race. But it’s not “easy” by any measure. The Ironman 70.3 course consists of a 1.2-mile swim, biking 56 miles (think of Cedar City being 52.2 miles from St. George) and a 13.1-mile run (compare it to a three to four-hour walk at a regular pace), totaling 70.3 miles.
What it takes to finish an Ironman
The first person to complete a full-distance Ironman in 1978 was a taxicab driver named Gordon Haller, who finished first with a time of 11:46:40. Now, top athletes are doing it in under eight hours.
Race participants are given 17 hours to complete the Ironman racecourse; the average time is 12 hours and 35 minutes. The swim portion typically accounts for 10% of the time, the bike is 50%, the run is 38% and transitions take 2%. However, all times are highly dependent upon the athlete too, as well as other factors. On average, 95% of people who finish an Ironman do it in under 16 hours.
During the 2019 Ironman World Championship, Jan Frodeno came in first for men at 7:51:13 and Anne Haug took the top spot for women at 8:40:10. As for the 2021 Ironman 70.3 World Championship in St. George, Gustav Iden took first place for men at 3:37:13; for women, Lucy Charles-Barclay came in first at 4:00:20.
The last finisher in St. George this May is expected to cross the finish line at 1:13 a.m. Sunday morning. Granted, they start later than the pros, but as mentioned earlier, for some, Ironman can take 12-16 hours to complete.
A triathlete’s perspective of the St. George course
Mark Allen has taken home six Ironman World Championship titles over his athletic career. Recently, he was watching a broadcast of the Ironman 70.3 World Championship and it reminded him of how difficult it is to prepare for the St. George course.
“It’s not like Kona (the original home of the Ironman World Championship), where things are a little more gradual in a sense, you don’t have any true climbs,” Allen said. “In St. George, you do have true climbs. The marathon in Hawaii is not quite as hilly as the one in St George. So that course is going to require some specific preparation if you’re going to do well there.”
One of the keys, he said, is that triathletes really push their effort on the bike on the climbs late in the race as they’re likely fatiguing. That endurance occurs simply by going out and doing long bike rides on rolling terrain with climbs. Even more important is how someone gets ready for the marathon, he said. If he were going to be doing that marathon, he would do a lot of runs where he’s pushing on long, long upgrades, to get that sense of load on his body.
Aaron Metler is one of St. George’s own elite marathon athletes, and he’s also the manager of races and events for the city of St. George. Metler fell in love with the sport of running and ran throughout high school and college. When he moved to St. George to take an internship with the city of St. George, he was on the team that put on the renowned St. George Marathon.
Seeing the winner cross the finish line during his first St. George Marathon as a staff member was a mesmerizing sight to him. He said the whole town came behind the event like the Super Bowl, and he knew he needed to run the event. His goal then became to not only run it but to win it.
He immediately started studying the top athletes who won the marathon and how they trained, dedicating himself to taking on the grueling routine of 100 miles or more a week, 16-25 miles a day, six days a week. In his debut in the St. George Marathon, he ended up winning with a time of 2:22:08. On top of 10 St. George Marathons, he has also run four half marathons in Japan, the Boston and Chicago Marathons, and various other half marathons and shorter events across the country.
Boston Marathon versus Ironman
In comparison to an Ironman, the legendary Boston Marathon only involves running. The 26.2-mile race starts in the town of Hopkinton, Massachusetts, taking runners on a series of hills, particularly the dreaded “Heartbreak Hill” between miles 20 and 21 in Newton, Massachusetts. In 2019, more than 26,600 runners crossed the finish line at the Boston Marathon with the overall average time of 3 hours and 53 minutes.
Like the Boston Marathon, Ironman’s run course is 26.2 miles; however, these incredible athletes run the course after swimming 2.4 miles and biking 112 miles. To date, the top run times are 2:34 for the full-distance Ironman and 1:06 for the Ironman 70.3 race.
“The Ironman course (in St. George) is super unique to other Ironman courses as it is one of the most difficult in the world,” Metler said. “It has plenty of elevation gain and usually hot temperatures. The course is grueling in an Ironman competition after swimming and biking, and for that reason, it continues to be a fantastic challenge for the phenomenal athletes that are already up for a difficult challenge of doing an Ironman.”
Competition is heating up
Kristian Blummenfelt is a Norwegian triathlete and Olympic gold medalist who held the Ironman 70.3 record when he claimed the Ironman world record for the full-distance race, shattering it on his first try in November 2021, winning the Ironman triathlon in Cozumel, Mexico. After swimming, running and cycling a combined distance of 140.6 miles, the clock read 7:21:12, breaking the previous world record by more than six minutes.
Now, Blummenfelt and three other pro athletes are raising the bar with the much-hyped “Sub7Sub8 Project,” which involves two male athletes and two female athletes. In the male category, Blummenfelt and Alistair Brownlee, a two-time Olympic champion from Britain, are striving to finish an Ironman in under seven hours, hence “Sub7.”
In the female category, Nicola Spirig (2012 Olympic champion) and Lucy Charles-Barclay (2021 Ironman 70.3 World Champion) are aiming at completing an Ironman in under eight hours (Sub8). If any of them succeed, Ironman history could be made in St. George in May.
“First of all, it’s really cool to be able to take part in it. It’s just two guys who got the offer — myself and Alistair Brownlee,” Blummenfelt said. “It’s going to be something that’s giving myself and the whole team a lot of motivation … because it’s a really tough task, and we will have to turn every stone we can to see where we can gain minutes to be able to get under that seven-hour barrier. It’s like another very fun goal to chase.”
In May, Blummenfelt will be joined by another Norwegian sensation, Gustav Iden (he won the 2021 Ironman 70.3 World Championship title in St. George), who’s become a growing threat in the triathlon space. The world will be watching as the extraordinary Norwegians challenge the 6-foot, 4-inch Jan Frodeno, born in Cologne, Germany, and known as the modern-day GOAT (Greatest of All Time) at the two Ironman World Championships last year in St. George and Kona.
Many athletes believe the Olympics to be the pinnacle of their athletic careers; however, others consider the Ironman World Championship in Kona as the apex of the sport, and Olympic success appears to be Frodeno’s launchpad for dominating long-distance triathlons. He was the 2014 Ironman 70.3 Champion in St. George and debuted in Kona in 2014, coming in third, but in 2015, 2016 and 2019, he came out on top in the men’s races. Considering the fierce competition, all eyes will be on Blummenfelt, Brownlee, Iden, Frodeno, Spirig and Charles-Barclay in 2022-2023.
With COVID-19 cancellations and delays, it’s been more than 2 1/2 years since the last full-distance Ironman World Championship. Everything is new, in many respects, and all eyes will be on St. George, anticipating the outcomes. The event is already living up to the race theme of “kumukahi” – a new beginning.
“Come May 2022, a new page will be written, and for the first time in a generation, it really is all up for grabs. Combine that with the performances we have seen through 2021 – and more athletes than ever will arrive in Utah believing, truly, that they can be the Ironman World Champion,” wrote John Levison for Tri247.
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