Is Ironman compition a joke? Wesfly qualified for the world championship in his first try

I'm not saying Wesfly is some physical marvel (he isn't), but there's definitely people who qualified for Worlds/OGs in their first attempt, even in terms of track and field.

He also admitted stopping and laying down for a period of time during the ride and sat and rested another 20+ between the bike and run.

Not saying it is easy to qualify but maybe the just take a large number of people to help pay bills

I think you should enter your local speeling compition

Ironman, except at pro level, is just people with too much money to spend on gear. The reason it’s not competitive is because only a select amount of people can buy $10,000 bikes, $300 shoes, etc. not that you can go in untrained and do well but from what I have seen pretty average runners/swimmers can do well if they have the right gear.

What were the splits for each discipline?

Qualifying for Kona can vary a bit as well depending on the race and the competition at the race. Find a late season race without much competition and you can sneak into the WC with a pedestrian performance. Slip up at a highly contested race and you go home devastated.

The idea behind ironman is that the mass will pay for the elites. So they make it easy enough to qualify for the world championship, but if you are an age grouper and not a pro it is not super hard. It requires serious training though.

Time is more of a limitation in Ironman than equipment. Most people don’t have the ability to train 12-15 hours a week while working a full time job.

The difference in performance between a $10k bike and $2k bike is very, very small. Give a highly trained athlete the $2k bike and an average athlete the $10k bike and guess who wins…it’s not the one on the fancier bike.

What type of Marathon time would get an age grouper in?

The money goes to Ironman, bad money for all but the top pros. After the 15k trip to Kona, only the top 5-10 turn a profit on going to the world champs.

He picked a race with few in his very young age group. That loophole got him in

Why does it surprise you that someone who is good at one endurance activity can also be decent at another endurance activity?

How else would you be able to watch 4 hours of netflix a night if you are training 2 hours a day? Make it make sense

Anyone working 40 hours a week has time to train for an ironman if they care enough

He qualified for his age group, not the pro field. And his age group is one of the least competitive. He also did it in a smaller race with horrible conditions. His finishing time (12hrs 30ish min) is nothing too impressive for someone with his running acumen.

Who exactly is this a world championship for? His time is like a 3:20 marathon equipment. Is this like running the people's race at the Paris Olympics?

More like qualifying for Boston I guess. Probably a bit harder though just due to the nature of the race and the limited opportunities.

I agree on the time part 100%, Ironman training is hugely volume based

especially hearing his time was 12:30 and he’s an age grouper this is really not impressive. Just a bad field and like others have indicated that’s not really a competitive age group

It is probably a bit harder but yeah that is probably a good analogy. Boston is hard for a lot of people. But any college XC team has a half dozen guys who could do it with like a weeks notice... It is a nice accomplishment but we aren't talking about some crazy accomplishment.