New IronIndex to Rate Difficulty of all IRONMAN Full Iron Races in LAVA’s Road to Kona Issue
Southlake, Texas – TriDot and LAVA Magazine announced an exclusive partnership today to jointly promote TriDot’s new IronIndex Triathlon Course Rating in LAVA’s “Road to Kona” February/March 2016 issue. The issue will rate and rank each IRONMAN (140.6) triathlon course.
TriDot, known for its highly personalized, analytics-based triathlon training software, used its data intelligence assets to create the proprietary 1-100 point difficulty index for any iron-distance triathlon course.
The index is a 1-100 composite index measuring each course’s level of difficulty based on three sub-indexes: Terrain & Climate, Strength of Field, and Body Mass Variance. TriDot’s variable-weighting science factors these three indices into the single composite rating, expressed as a 1-100 difficulty index for the overall event. This value determines each course’s overall classification as one of four difficulty categories: Standard, Difficult, Intense, and Extreme.
Detail about the IronIndex sub-indexes is as follows:
Terrain and Climate analyzes the environmental factors that impact an athlete’s race performance. These factors include a course’s elevation, elevation change, distance, wind speed, wind direction relative to athlete heading, temperature, and humidity, among others. TriDot uses a fictitious baseline course called IronZero as well as fictitious baseline athlete profiles as constants for comparative analysis. This sub-index is of particular interest to athletes seeking a personal best finish time.
Strength of Field analyzes the overall level of competition for each course considering both the size of the field and actual normalized finish times. TriDot calculates this sub-index by simulating race results for a baseline athlete using each course’s actual Terrain & Climate conditions from the most recent race. This sub-index is critical to athletes who are seeking to finish in a certain place or percentile overall or within their division.
Body Mass Variance analyzes how significantly an athlete’s finish time would be impacted by a 10% increase (or decrease) in the athlete’s body mass. The primary factor in this sub-index is each course’s elevation profile for the bike and run legs. TriDot calculates this sub-index by simulating race results for a baseline athlete using each course’s Terrain & Climate factors and comparing those results to a second simulation on the same course after factoring in a 10% increase in the baseline athlete’s body mass. This sub-index is critical to athletes who have a high body mass or whose body mass tends to fluctuate.
The IronIndex is a critical tool for triathletes who plan to add a full iron-distance triathlon to their future schedule. It enables athletes to make an informed decision as to which course is truly the best fit for their overall physical profile and race performance goals.
The actual IronIndex site (www.ironindex.com) offers an athlete the opportunity to personalize the index by using their own physical profile and performance ability to project finish times and individual discipline splits on all iron-distance courses. They can even run individual simulations based on their data. This will show the athlete where they would have placed among last year’s competitors in last year’s actual conditions.
“We’re extremely pleased and excited about our marketing partnership with such a high quality publication in LAVA Magazine. They offer outstanding reach in the IRONMAN triathlon community as it relates to communicating such valuable tools and resources in the sport. The IronIndex is the perfect complement to our completely new website and new season planning tool as it relates to evaluating course difficulty, compare performances on different courses, and find the race that best matches an athlete’s goals, abilities, and season plan,” said Jeff Booher, TriDot CEO, founder, and four-time IRONMAN.
"If you're thinking about completing an Ironman in 2016, you'll want check out the IronIndex as part of your season planning. TriDot has engineered a complex but very understandable and useful course rating and ranking system that allows you to compare the difficulty of Ironman races. They can even project how you'd personally do on each course. We're very impressed with the data and thrilled to be able to share it with our readers," added Brad Culp, Editor in Chief of LAVA Magazine.
LAVA Magazine’s “Road to Kona” February/March 2016 issue hits newsstands in mid-January, 2016.
About TriDot: TriDot inspires and empowers athletes and coaches in its mission to be the undisputed leader in training intelligence and innovation. TriDot takes the guesswork out of triathlon training by using patents-pending technology and a unique combination of an athlete’s physical, biometric and performance profile as well as big data TriDot has collected from actual triathletes for over 10 years. This approach identifies the trends, patterns, and relationships in training data to reveal hidden and underlying insight that lead to a higher level of personalization and optimization in training plans. The end result is better triathlon results in up to 30% less training time.
About LAVA Magazine: LAVA is the official publication of the World Triathlon Corporation and is the premier voice on all things Ironman, particularly featuring Ironman, Ironman 70.3, and the 5150 series races. In print since March 2010, LAVA offers cutting edge training advice, stunning race photography, and inspiring stories of pros and age-groupers.
