I recently spoke with Dave Depinet, the CTO of U.S. Dataworks, who is a brilliant technologist and a world-class Ironman competitor. In 2019, Dave represented his age bracket at the Ironman World Championship in France. He trains frequently and is in seriously great shape. But recent Ironman events have been negatively impacted by the world COVID-19 pandemic. He told me an amazing story about the attempt to hold the first “virtual” Ironman race, and I want to share it with you.
The World Triathlon Corporation (WTC), owner of the Ironman brand (http://ironman.com), makes its revenue by organizing, promoting and getting sponsors for Ironman-branded races. Since mid-March, all of those races have been cancelled or postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. To help their loyal athletes who continue to train during this time, and to have some hope of revenue during the crisis, Ironman has launched the Ironman Virtual Club (https://www.ironmanvirtualclub.com), which hosts virtual races.
There are many technical challenges in hosting a virtual race. Some of these challenges include registration and communication, which the WTC has dealt with many times before. However, some of the challenges are entirely new. In order to support virtual racing, one of the biggest challenges is obtaining race data from a wide variety of exercise measurement devices like heart rate monitors, GPS watches, bike trainers, power meters, speed sensors, treadmills, and many others. There are many existing platforms that athletes use to upload this data, so the WTC integrated with those platforms. (Though not clearly stated, the WTC also appears to have partnered with Running Heroes, which already has a platform for integrating with these exercise tracking apps.)
The first virtual race hosted by the WTC was Ironman VR1 over the weekend of April 4, 2020. The first race had free registration and attracted over 10,000 athletes from around the world. While there were many technical challenges—including the infamous incident of one of the professional competitors getting knocked out of the race when her husband tripped on her smart trainer’s power cord (Whoops! https://www.cbssports.com/general/news/triathlete-unable-to-finish-virtual-race-after-husband-accidentally-unplugs-bike/)—thousands of athletes successfully completed the three segments of this race and uploaded their measurement data to Ironman VR. The three segments included a 5K run, a 90K bike and a 20K run, which could be completed outdoors with a GPS watch or indoors on a treadmill and bike trainer.
Dave reported that his personal experience shows there are lots of challenges left to resolve, but this is certainly an important first step. And for such a quick turnaround from idea to execution, it’s an impressive step. However, the technical reliability of the measurement devices still poses a challenge, as does the relative ease of cheating. Still, the feat of organizing and supporting a virtual race with thousands of participants—each using their own measurement equipment and tracking platform—is a great start. I salute the Ironman organization for saying, “We need to do a virtual event,” and then figuring out the best way to account for the variables and going for it. In effect, they told competitors, “We don’t have everything figured out, but let’s do this event and then gather feedback.” Too many organizations never make the effort to innovate for fear of making a mistake. I trust that Ironman will learn from the first event and consistently improve. Perhaps once the worldwide pandemic is over, there will continue to be virtual Ironman events in addition to the traditional events, and this might bring in competitors who would never have attended an in-person race.
Come up with an idea. Plan as much as you can. Provide lots of caveats to your user community. But move forward. Make mistakes. Perfect your innovation.
And tape down your power cords …