Last race of the year for me! Other than pacing the QC marathon and jumping into a local 5K, I am done for the season. With Kona moved to February, I can take my time off a little sooner than planned. This should give me enough time to get my mileage back up for February 5th. Huge thank you to Scott for these amazing pictures to help illustrate my day.
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| Taking dad to start his first Ironman / Hardest part saying goodbye to my wife |
Pre-Race: Everything felt good going in, and the body
was recovered and ready to go. I woke up earlier than normal, but it was worth
it for close parking and extra time. Everything was smooth and I got down to
the swim start with plenty of time to properly seed myself. The weather was
Perfect for a fast day with light wind, cloud cover all day and a high of 73.
Swim (1:02:27 – 13th AG / 63 OA): A PR lake
swim for me! There was a little chop on the water, but nothing like the swells
in 2019. I was around 50-60th into the water and went out hard.
After the first turn, I settled in best I could, and pushed hard with the wind
assist. I never felt completely in control and only had a few spurts where I was
locked in. Into the wind, I did my best to stay in someone’s draft on the back
stretch. Lap 2 was a cluster when lapping the swimmers that started later. Not
being that fast, I spent more time zigzagging since I wasn’t overtaking quick
enough. I never found a rhythm on that 2nd lap and was very much
ready to be done. This was a 5s PR over Tulsa, so I’m happy with the result
given the 2 loops and “chop”.
T1/T2: (4:01 / 3:55): Glancing through everyone’s T1, mine
looked to be in the top 5 or 10. I was fortunate to receive a lower bib for AWA
(164) and had one of the better bike racks this time around. This helped me in
both T1 and T2 since we racked our own bikes.
Bike (5:19:04 – 4th AG / 17th OA):
There seems to be a theme of losing my Tailwind bottle. Going through the bike
tunnel at mile 1, I hit a massive bump and down it went. 300 calories and most
of my electrolytes were lost, so I grabbed 2 extra bottles of Gatorade
Endurance to replace the calories. I wasn’t quite hitting the watt numbers I
wanted, but the pace seemed good. Almost all of loop 1 was solo until the 70.3
merged towards the end. Loop 2 was filled with more 70.3 and full athletes. This
made the descents and turns much more difficult to navigate. I caught a second
wind around mile 80 and was pushing good numbers until about mile 95 where I
dropped off again. I think I was lacking a little hydration and struggled into
the wind heading to T2. The course ended up being 1.5 miles long, so I think I
would have been closer to a 5:15 split. Proud of my bike, but wish I had a
little more to give with a 21.3mph average.
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| A miserable run, but still got my feet off the ground |
Run (3:15:08 – 2nd AG / 12th OA):
The worst part of my day and I definitely didn’t feel like Pac Man. Abdominal
pain from the very start, and I was passed twice right in the first 4 miles. I
suffered more than I’m used to and could only hold 7:20-7:30 min/mi. My stomach
started to loosen up and I was able to hit some miles closer to 7:00 as targeted.
The whole run was grueling, and I only had a few short moments feeling good. I was
getting splits to 2nd place AG (who passed me early on) and made
that my goal. I ended catching back and ran with the guy in 2nd. It
was cool to see mutual respect and support out there even though we both wanted
2nd. After pulling away, I kept an eye on our gap at each turnaround.
As I was also getting the time gap from my support, it turned out we started
the swim within seconds of each other. This meant I didn’t need to worry about
the rolling start. I slowed up a few times after mile 15, but he wasn’t taking
time back. I held on until the last 2 miles and kicked it in a hard as I knew
how.
I’m not too thrilled with this run (only seconds faster than 2019) and having run a 3:02 at Ironman Tulsa.
Congrats on a strong fight and keeping me honest
Overall, I’d day I had a good day, but it certainly was not my
best. I don’t think I had any more time to grab in my swim or either transition.
I am not sure I had much more to push on the bike given my HR was 5bpm higher than
Tulsa. Watts were identical between the 2. As stated above, I was not happy
with my run. I felt like I should have been about 10 minutes faster with how
perfect the weather was. I only Pac-Man’ed my way from 11 to 7th
Overall and 3rd to 2nd AG.
I wanted to land myself a top 5 overall finish and age group
win by the end of the 2021 season but came up short. I don’t think there will
be any more race reports coming out this year unless you want to hear about my
marathon pacing next week. For now, I’ve got my eyes set on some serious recovery
and plenty of beer.
I’ll plan on releasing my 2022 race schedule and plans once a
few more things are ironed out. As always, thanks for the support and listening
to my ramblings!
Matt
