Virtual Ironman 140.6 on 10/10/20

These Virtual Ironman races have been going on since April of this year. 

When the first Virtual Ironman was done at the beginning of April a guy on my triathlon team went all out and placed 5th in the 65-69 AG.  He said that it was out of 14,800 people, but I think that number was more likely how many people there were in the whole event and not just his age group. 

About a month later the president of the local triathlon club started to post the distance of each week's virtual race and challenged club members to do the races.  I didn't do any of them but about a dozen people in the local club were doing them every week.  Ironman started with the VR1 race, which was a Half Iron distance race if I remember correctly.  Then the following week was the VR2, then the VR3 the week after that. 

I know that the local Triathlon club would get the week's distance at the beginning of the week and everyone would make their own plans to complete all the segments.  On the longer race weeks, there would usually be a post on the club page telling others when they were going to do the long bike ride and inviting others to join to do the ride together.  On the shorter race weeks, they would often do the bike/run bricks together. 

These virtual races didn't have to be done continuously.  They could be done one segment at a time.  People could do one segment on Tuesday, one on Thursday, one on Saturday, etc.  The people that were doing the VR races week after week were not racing for a one event PR but were seeing how many weeks they could complete the assigned VR race distance.  When they would have back to back long races and then a short race there was a lot of rejoicing for the "rest week" with the short race. Below is the list of VR races from the past two months to get an idea of how these are assigned.

Back in April, everyone was just completing the distance on their GPS enabled device.  Later on, Ironman started to let people earn qualifying slots to Ironman events with the VR races.  When they did that they required that the bike rides be done on the Rovey App and set up Rovey Races to use for the event.  That leveled the playing field on the bike.  I see they now have three different categories, Championship, Challenger, classic.  I think Classic was their original series.  I am guessing that Championship or Challenger was set up for the races with IM race qualifying slots, but this has evolved faster than I have kept up with.  

The original races were basically just a weekly distance challenge and people were doing them as training workouts.  Some of the other series have been used for race qualifying slots. I am not familiar with the Legacy program or if the VR races qualify for that.

Note:  I don't see any full iron races in July or August, but know that there have been full Iron VR races and thing that VR1 was a 70.3 and VR2 a 140.6.  It sounds like they are planning on doing more 140.6 VR races in the fall and are letting people know so they can be prepared for them.

Most will treat the Kona Spirit week 140.6 as a distance challenge to be completed in their weekly training.  There will be a few that push for time, like the guy on my race team that placed 5th in his AG in the 140.6 that they did early April.  I wouldn't plan on this being a race to qualify for the legacy program or anything else.  Virtual Races are less about racing and more about challenging yourself to keep working towards goals.