Adjusting PRs to Standard Race Distances

Not everyone bothers with PRs. Course differences are a big part of why we get outside for the events.

I judge my races by execution and proximity to the times of other racers I race against often.  or you can use athlinks to get a sense of the guys around you.

No.

PRs can be an interesting tool to judge progress, but IMO are really meaningless as (1) one course may differ wildly from another course (Wildflower 70.3 vs. Miami 70.3) and (2) even the same race may have changed routes, inaccurate measurements year to year, weather etc.  A more meaningful metric (again IMO) is placement within AG.   We have a 2 mile swim every year.  Different current, surf, etc make the time in a vacuum pretty meaningless, it's more where you place among your peers year after year.

As for adjusting to reflect proper distance, again no.  IMO you take the course they give you.  If someone wants to call a downstream swim their PR, no skin off my nose.IMO, YMMV, etc etc

No because there is no standard unless its a USAT certified course year after year.     IMO

To follow on, if a course is 58 on the bike, and you go 5:00, do you personally log a 4:57 PR?  Do you adjust based on elevation/grade to a flat course?   Do you adjust currents in a swim?   Way too many variables to accurately account for meaningful differences.   IMO

Again, you take the course they give you

Just my way of saying I don't do that.  I do have "PRs" but don't put much credence in them, they're just numbers to facebrag about    that no one else cares about. 

I lost near 4 minutes on an Oly bike from one year to the next simply due to the wind. Same course, same setup, same power.

One of the IM courses used to be just over 58 and was point to point with a net decent and I think just over 3,000 ft of climbing. All of this would need to be accounted for.

Extend that 300m swim in the recent tri up to 750m and you might change how much it takes out of someone. So it's not just extrapolating and normalizing things out. It's an interesting idea to think about, just really complex to implement.

No, I only compare PRs on races where the course is exactly the same...and even then there is weather.  My fastest 40k is 57:22 on 268 watts.  That was 2 years ago in perfect wind conditions.  Last year I did 57:47 on 281 watts, and this year I did 57:49 on 285 In much windier conditions.  My placings relative to my peers has improved each year though.

One (imperfect) way of guesstimating a rough performance, is to get your USAT score from your most recent race, and then correlate what  finish time that score would have came it in last year's race.

This of course doesn't account for year to year differences (like if one year is 95F and the next is 65F) but for most races you can get a pretty good guesstimate on what to expect, especially when doing hilly courses (Wildflower) vs flat ones which can have huge differences in finish time for the same USAT score.