#41: If a record falls, does it make a sound

What if all the records fall?

issue #41: June 28, 2023

This week’s issue is presented by:

I feel like I have not much to say these days: lots of watching races happening, lots of life happening, just doing stuff, let me know if you ever want to get super in the weeds on California transportation policy. Otherwise, this past weekend’s newsletter out to subscribers was a Q&A from our Book Club on the science of female athletes. And that’s about all for now.

- Kelly

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The 1 in 10 days

I have this theory that out of every Ironman race you do (and probably this includes ultra-endurance events of all kinds):

• 35-40% are a total disaster, mechanicals or mistakes or just the kind of small errors that compound until the whole thing implodes. Obviously, this is all relative to what you can expect on the day—Daniela’s disaster would be my ‘hit it out of the park’—and, of course, the pros screw up less than the rest of us. But still. Look at this weekend: Sam Long got three flats at IM Coeur d’Alene; Keely Henninger fell at Western States, while in the lead pack, and dislocated her shoulder; Chelsea Sodaro dropped at 30K on the run at Roth with GI and stomach issues. It happens. When so many things can go wrong, they often do go wrong.

• ~50% are in the realm of fine: ranging from decent to could have been a lot better, these are the days that make up most of the days.

• But 10-15%, oh, those are the races you live for.

And when those 1 in 10 days happen to the 1 in 100 best of the best athletes, we get what we got this weekend, what’s so rare: Magic, records, records, everywhere.

Photo: Christoph Raithel/Challenge Roth

Which performance of the weekend was best?

Let’s preface this with: Of course, comparisons are ridiculous. Obviously, each record-breaking performance is its own thing, in its own right, and all are in the upper echelons of history. We, here, are just the drunk guys sitting around at a bar debating Kobe v. Michael.

But, that’s still a fun drunken debate to have.

Let’s start with Roth: This weekend gave us a course record time for men (Magnus Ditlev’s 7:24:40) and a world’s best ever time for women (Daniela Ryf’s 8:08:21—which amusingly earned her 98.88 points from the PTO). For women, it was really truly a world record, the best Iron-distance time ever ever. While men have to contend with the fact that Kristian Blummenfelt went slightly faster (7:21:12) at IM Cozumel in a downhill swim back in 2021. Roth was also home this weekend to the fastest Iron-distance bike split for both, fastest men’s run time (Tim would want me to point out Patrick Lange ran his 2:30 on shoes that are technically banned everywhere but Challenge races), and the fastest time by an American ever (Ben Kanute’s 7:37:01).

It also, for what it’s worth, looked like even more crowds than last year, like the people had returned in even bigger numbers from the pandemic years.

Triathlete updated the piece I originally wrote on what is the world record anyway, which is only getting more confusing and complicated as time goes by.

No, I don’t particularly think Roth is short or that motos play that much of a role in drafting. I think the race is set up to be fast—so, for example, I’d argue the bigger role of the motos play is in setting a line and clearing the course, giving the pros every confidence to rail every single turn and roundabout. Roth has good roads, a good course, good competition, bonuses for world records, etc, etc, etc.

The other big performance of the weekend—just for the comparison’s debate sake—was Western States. Another historic course, another historic performance. Temperatures cooperated for a change here (though athletes had to contend with snow for the first 15 miles), and as a result we saw two women under the previous course record, nine women under 18 hours I believe, and Courtney Dauwalter ran the 100 miles in 15 hours & 29 minutes, 77 minutes under the existing course record—which, itself, was already a quite good record time.

So which is best?

• Magnus’ 7:24 is definitely in another stratosphere of what we can expect in triathlons now. He was always going to break through, so here we are.

• Daniela’s 8:08 broke Chrissie Wellington’s previous world record by ten minutes, though—which is a lot of minutes at this point in the sport’s progression. Every time you think Daniela is done, just showing up for the appearance fee, she reminds you she has won ten world long-course titles and now this.

• Courtney’s Western States win was the most impressive ultra-running performance ever, in the scheme of ultra races. (IMO.) And she did it without pacers, just because that’s how she does things. (Relatedly, she’s also going to run Hardrock 100 this weekend, because that seems like great recovery.)

Technically, the best of these bests was probably Courtney—in sheer terms of how much she upped the game in one day; that race is one of the older events as far as these things go, the times there have already been shaken out, already the cream has risen to the top, it’s already so hard just to do the thing. And then she did it over an hour faster than any woman has ever done it. That’s difficult to even describe how difficult that is to do.

But, can we also all admit now that Daniela is hands down the greatest long-course triathlete ever. Not the greatest female. Just the greatest, end of sentence.

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A list of people who impressed me this weekend

Besides those mentioned above.

• Ben Kanute: He had a couple of off seasons in there and there’s a tendency to forget what he can do when he’s on, but when he’s on he’s really on. It was just his second full-distance race, and he takes third, with the fastest American man’s 140.6 miles ever. Maybe this is actually his distance?

• Sebi Kienle: Game recognizes game. There’s a reason the German legend was greeted by two other German legends.

• Fenella Langridge: When is she ever not vibing?

• Chris Leiferman’s win at Coeur d’Alene: There’s no one in the sport who doesn’t like Chris. (And, of course, Jodie Robertson running into the win for the women.)

• Though Matt Marquardt might be the most interesting athlete in the sport right now. Second pro race, in medical school, and he really only lost to Chris in the transitions. Dude’s gonna win one of these sooner or later and he’ll have to decide if being a doctor can wait.

• Justin Metzler & Haley Chura: Both of them rallied like I’ve never seen before. Justin was within eight seconds or so of getting caught in third place and losing his World Champs spot; he dug so deep to get across the line ahead and then collapsed. And, Haley, oh man, if someone could make me a .gif of the moment around mile 22/23 at Coeur d’Alene, where she had been passed for the lead, and was falling back, in danger of getting caught again from behind, and started to walk through this aid station, it did not look good—Mel McQuaid closed then to within less than a minute. And then Haley looked around, and yelled something at herself on camera (which I swear looked like, “Aghhh, FUCK!”) and whatever she did worked, because she dug deep deep deep and hung onto second place by over three minutes. Both were amazingly tough performances.

• Mel McQuaid: Speaking of, the 50-year-old nabbed the final Kona spot in the pro field at CDA.

• Cam Wurf: Just because he’s Cam Wurf, he followed up third at Ironman Austria last week with a 4th at Nice. I assume it was a training day.

• Katie Zaferes & Summer Rappaport: Put the Olympic selection question back in play. The British team is tougher, but it’s also clearer. (Almost definitely Beth Potter, Sophie Coldwell, and Georgia Taylor-Brown are the Olympic team.) The U.S. selection, on the other hand, is going to be…rough. I thought the team was pretty much shaking itself out, and then Summer took third at the WTCS Montreal race and Katie took fifth. And if you thought you knew what was going to happen at the qualifying races later this year, you definitely don’t.

• Gustav Iden: I just want to give him a hug.

Photo: Patrick McDermott / Getty Images for IRONMAN

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Thanks to UltraSwim 33.3!

A big thank you to UltraSwim 33.3 for sponsoring this month’s newsletters. If you’ve also been curious about multi-day swim adventure races, then it’s time to check out their four-day event in Montenegro. Yes, it’s a race, but there’s also coaching, traveling, and experiencing.

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Mark your calendar

• Ironman Frankfurt: Because we’re running out of space, I’m just going to give one shoutout for the women’s European Championship race. Skye Moench, Sarah True, Maja Stage-Nielsen, Lauren Brandon.

  • WATCH: On Ironman.com/live, starting on Sunday, July 2 @ 12:10 a.m. ET/Saturday @ 9:10 p.m. PT—so just watch the finish, if you’re in the U.S.

(Someone on Twitter suggested that we have a section that lists all the dates of upcoming races. Well.)

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The -ish

Things from around our sports this week that you should know about.

• The big news of this week: Mont-Tremblant 70.3 was canceled because of the nutty wildfire smoke (and, yes, this problem is going to keep being a problem) and the mixed relay at WTCS Montreal was also called off. Ironman has now announced the 70.3 will be rescheduled to Aug. 20, which is the same day as the full. (Victory Press)

• The big news of last week: The Ironman World Championship course in Nice was “unveiled.” I didn’t see anything we didn’t expect (other than they added a slight out and back onto the bike course so it’s a full 180K). My big takeaway: Yes, hills on the bike, but y’all know that the promenade in Nice is all concrete, right? And there will be four laps of it on the run. Start practicing for the pounding now. (Youtube/Ironman)

• Other note from Western States: Tom Evans won the men’s race—and I believe he is dating British short-course star Sophie Coldwell. (TrailRunner)

• Paula Findlay took her second Canadian time trial national title and Taylor Knibb took fourth in the U.S. national race (before heading to Montreal for the WTCS event). (CyclingNews/Cycling Weekly)

• Since some people like looking at pretty bikes, while we’re at it: Roth bike galleries from Laura Philipp, Ben Kanute, Joe Skipper, Chelsea Sodaro, Lisa Norden, and Brad Weiss. And, yes, Roth banned all weird faring. (Slowtwitch)

• Coeur d’Alene 70.3 is on for three more years—which still raises the question: Where is our spring/early summer N. American full going to be next year? (Endurance.biz)

• Oh, hey, look the women’s Giro (officially Giro Donne) is happening after all! (Escape Collective)

• Should I just give you a sum-up each week of the Youtubes? Taylor Knibb reviewed her performance at Boulder as only Taylor can, there’s another episode in the Norwegian Method saga, and I actually quite liked Sydney McLaughlin’s 72 hours in Paris for her 400m race (if we’re going to do days in the life, then you might as well make them moody as hell). (Youtube)

• To save you the trouble, Triathlete has the Youtube power rankings. (Triathlete)

• Hayden Wilde appears to be just five episodes in to his podcast (and they’re all mixed up together on the same RSS feed), but for short-course fans it’s entertaining. (Spotify)

• This shotputter went viral when she stepped in to run the 100m hurdles after two teammates had to pull out injured. And if, like me, you were incredibly confused by this because that’s not how European Champs works or how track works at a pro level or how professional sports works, well, it turns out there’s a kind of Euro Athletics “league” with teams in different divisions and awarded points. (The Guardian/European Athletics)

• Sigh, everyone’s been talking about these Enhanced Games, which are going to be some kind of Olympics—except with doping. Which is either the saddest, most cynical thing I’ve ever heard, or it’s brilliant. We’ll have a Q&A coming. (Twitter/PR Newswire)

• I’ll admit I was very meh about the investigation into the University of Colorado running program and coach—not because I didn’t believe they might have done and said shitty things, but because I wasn’t sure in 30 years of coaching how much any one athlete’s experience speaks to an overall environment. (Basically, everyone will say and do shitty things over the course of 30 years.) But

  Fast Women
  broke down all the parts that are most troubling—systemic lying and creating a starvation culture, for example—and I’m convinced now. (Fast Women)

• The Army has developed a tactical bra. (New Yorker)

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One last thing

Honestly, I think this is fine?

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