It varies by the race. Check the rules for your specific race or contact the race director.

M-Dot brand ironman races are usually (always?) 17 hours.

Must be training...

I was at work late and then I went to ride. Sorry. It won't happen again . . .

Ironman: 17 hour cut-off. This one's easy because it is a mass start. Everyone has the same ominous clock.

Swim (2.4 miles): 2 hours, 20 minutes, which translates to 3:37 per 100/m which is near-drowning slow, so don't even worry about that pace. You'd have to swim backwards to accomplish this pace. I heard rumors while at IM Moo '04 that the race volunteers waded out into the water to pull someone to shore who was pushing the 2:20 mark.

T1: I have to include a transition time, so :10 is pretty casual.

Bike (112 miles): 10 hours and :30 AFTER the start of the race, (IM Florida ONLY is 10 hours and 15 minutes), so that gives you 8 hours to do the 112 (10:30 - :10 T1 - 2:20 swim = 8:00) which is 14mph. Pretty casual. I'd offer though that you could tool around at 15mph and take rest-stop breaks along the way instead.

T2: I have to include a transition time, so :15, and you can take every second.

Run (26.2): You have 6 hours, 15 seconds, a 14:18 pace. Really, you can slow-jog the first 10k and walk the rest and finish in this time. Many people do just that. Casually swim the 2.4, soft-pedal the 112, and walk the 26.2. Tada! You are an Ironman.

Ironman 70.3: 8hr cut-off

Swim (1.2 miles): 75 minutes, which comes out to a 3:53 per 100/m pace.

T1 *and* T2: 10 minutes or so.

Bike (56 miles): I can't find anything that says what the bike cut off is, but for the whole race, the cut-off is 8 hours. So if you started the bike 1hr:20min into the day, you'd have 6:40 or so to bike 56 and run 13.1, or a 15mph avg on the bike and 13 min per mile on the run. It's a more generous swim cut-off, don't know why, but it also a bit faster on the bike and run.

Olympic is a lot harder to answer. From what I found, it looks like Oly courses are open for 5hr:30min. I worked backwards on this one. I figured out which races are Regional Qualifiers for USAT Age Group Nationals and found this:

Swim (1500 meters): 65 minutes, or a staggering 4:20 per 100/m. It's silly to think you could swim that slow. The wind in a lake will move you faster.

T1: 5 minutes or so.

Bike (40K): Now it gets tricky. The cut-off isn't a time limit but rather a time of day. In this case, noon. But since they race waves, later waves will have slightly less time than earlier waves. So let's assume you are the last wave* in this race and you start at 9:14am and take :65 minutues to swim and 5:00 for T1, it is now 10:24 am and OMG you have 1:36 to cycle 40k. Geesh, the last wave is getting screwed. That comes out to 15.53mph avg. My point is that if you take an hour to swim 1 mile, you aren't in shape to grind out a 15.53mph avg over 40k. They must not like TNT women or whomever they put in the last wave. It would be more realistic to assume you swim a very average 2:00 per 100m, so you get out in :30, and you started mid-wave, and it's 7:30 after a 7:00 start, so that leaves you like 2:30 hours to cycle 40k which is 10mph. Yikes. So you have somewhere between 1:30 and 2:30 to finish 40k on the bike depending on your wave.

The run course closes at 1:30. Now this is getting sad. The last waves are really getting pinched. Let's say they barely get in under the swim cut-off, they would barely make it under the bike cut-off, and now they have 1:30 to run 13.1. Riiight.

Anyway, the IM cut-off is straight-forward because it is a mass start. The 70.3 is bit more complex because of waves. And Oly races are a crap shoot. I suggest if you are doing an Oly you find the course cut-offs and determine your wave start time and use a pace calculator to figure it out better than I did..

*This is entirely possible. At this race, the last wave is novice men and TNT women. (If you don't know what "TNT women" are, there's a reason they are in the last wave. I'll duck now.)

Learn somethin' new every day. :)

I had a friend take 34:47 to finish the half mile swim (true half mile of 880 yards) in her first tri, so it is possible to swim this slow. She would have been pulled from an Oly for sure.

Team in Training. The Lukemia and Lymphoma Society fund raising folks that wear a lot of purple...

triSooner wrote: "....now they have 1:30 to run 13.1. Riiiight"

correction- now they have 1:30 to run 6.2...an OLY run is 10k- and that's fairly doable- even for the last wave TNTers

(I would feel really clever in finding TriSooner's mistake, but I can't figure out how to include a quote of only a PART of someone else's post)

thanks PJT, I will have to try that next time ;)