Ironman Wisconsin Race Report

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 5^th. Huge thank you to Scott for these amazing pictures to help illustrate my day.

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 – 13^th 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 50-60^th 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 2^nd 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 – 4^th AG / 17^th 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.

A miserable run, but still got my feet off the ground

Run (3:15:08 – 2^nd AG / 12^th 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 2^nd place AG (who passed me early on) and made that my goal. I ended catching back and ran with the guy in 2^nd. It was cool to see mutual respect and support out there even though we both wanted 2^nd. 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 7^th Overall and 3^rd to 2^nd 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