The AJ Bell London Triathlon Spreadsheet Results 2014 – Would you have qualified for Team GB (Age Group)?

I’ve produced a potentially interesting spreadsheet for the AJ Bell London Triathlon (2014) – Standard Distance. It’s based on last year’s official results.

  (Here) is the modified spreadsheet results – it’s sorted by Age Group.

If there is demand (write below!!) I will do the same for this year’s results.

You will see a new column showing your time expressed as a percentage of the Age Group (AG) Winner’s time. So 110% is AG winner’s time plus 10%.

Whilst I think this is the biggest triathlon of it’s kind, it was NOT a qualifier race for the GB age Group teams. However many athletes who are in those team did compete. The race is VERY large and as such we might assume it’s a reasonable sample size from which to get a range of abilities

If it were a qualifier race then ‘all’ you have to do is finish within 115% of the AG winner’s time to achieve a qualifying time for the World Age Group Championship and 120% is the figure for the European’s.

If you meet the 120% criteria I’ve shown you as an AMBER/YELLOW colour.

However it’s not quite so straightforward in reality. For starters the ‘proper’ age group qualification races attract a much smaller but, on the whole, high standard. So your percentage ‘score’ might be lessened. Furthermore there are usually only 20 places available per age group, often with well over 50 applicants. The reality is that to qualify you will need a much better score in the more competitive age groups (Ages 35-55 ish).

The spreadsheet shows those in GREEN who I think may have qualified based on their 2014 performance (in a qualifying race). Keep up the training! For those of you in amber…you are there or thereabouts. Keep at it and achieve something else to tell the grandkids about one day.

One reason here might be that people over 35 have no other competition where they can compete at the highest level as the reality is that at over 35 very few people would, for example, EVER get anywhere near the Brownlee-levels of performance. So the Age Group competitions at those ages really are for the crème-de-la-crème (or so they all tell me 🙂 )

So in, say, the 20-25 age group the elite athletes will probably not be competing so you percentage time is calculated from a slower winner. Put against that, however, I was amazed by the demographics of the AJ Bell London Triathlon; LOTS more younger adults than in the Age Group events. Very good to see.

The older Age Groups (over 55s) are all put together in the spreadsheet and in the official results. However qualifying races with the BTF are not. They are still in 5 year age bands. Don’t be fooled though – there are still people there who will, for example, running 10km in well under 40 minutes. These will make YOUR times harder to be within the 120% – HOWEVER because of lower numbers of potential competitors normally all the older age group entrants have to realistically do is to hit the 120% or 115% mark.

Please ask if you have any questions as I am keen to promote the wider sport in**@th*********.com

Happy racing and training.