A 70.3 PR and highest Overall placement yet! I felt fully recovered for this one having 5 weeks between races. Body felt good and I was ready to hit it. Beware the run section is length, but I got to enjoy my first real battle.
Pre-Race: My dad and I made this a quick weekend by driving out the morning of. I added a little stress to my race prep by borrowing Mitch’s wheel set and only giving them a short 4 mile test drive after checking in. Got a quick run in, dropped off the bike and swam in Lake Michigan. I also had one of my best pre-race sleeps, so that was excellent.
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| Drobs keeping me calm before the storm (also provided the haircut) |
Swim (31:10 - 32nd OA): This was the first race where I actually started at the front. I had trouble convincing myself that I belonged there, but I’ve been landing top 10 overall consistently. So, I lined up in the 12th wave and started about 1 minute after the cannon went off. My buddy Matt started up with me and got me to the line calm and ready to rock.
The first 25 yards were
shallow, so I watched how far the athletes in front of me went out before
diving in. Some started too early, so I used that to determine where I’d go.
The water was rough for 6:30AM and the swells made it hard to sight. A huge
perk to starting up front was I only passed about 10 swimmers and had little
traffic throughout. Form went out the window as my focus was on swimming
straight and navigating the waves. After that first turn buoy, the waves came
from the side and I felt good about where I was at. Swimming with my watch
covered again prevented me from checking splits and getting distracted. Nothing
exciting after that point, and I enjoyed riding the waves back to shore after
the final turn.
Time wasn’t as relevant as my overall position out of the water, so I am very happy with 32nd and 12th AG going into T1. (Although I didn’t have the feedback during the race)
Not going to document a photo of my T1
T1 (2:15): One of my best transitions… until the flying mount. I struggled to find my breath running up the sand but made it through quick. I had no issues getting the wetsuit down and pulled it off my feet at the bike rack. Putting on my helmet and grabbing the bike went smooth, and I had a very fast run down a mostly empty row. My T1 time was quick relative to the field, and I moved up 12 positions to 20th starting the bike. Everything was great until I went to mount and didn’t have enough pedal stroke to get moving. Ended up sitting on my top tube scooting myself along like a toddler. Shoes were flopping around, a race photographer took about 20 pictures of it, just a mess. It probably cost me 20-30s. Someday I will learn.
Bike (2:15:38 - 11th OA): By far my best bike performance. I had a watt target of 240 and held that well, after the flying mount debacle… There were a few athletes ahead of me that I could see down the road, and it felt good to slowly reel them in while only focusing on power. The effort felt too hard, and I wanted to back it off (something I’ve done almost every race on the bike). As I came up to some turns, I was able to watch how fast others took them to see what I could do. I felt like I cornered well overall but had at least 2 turns where I slammed the brakes and lost some speed. About halfway through, I couldn’t see any riders between myself and the next turn. This worked in my favor and allowed me to focus on the watts. A cramp-like muscle pain formed at the bottom of my left quad but was more of an annoyance than anything. I kept an eye on it, but it never progressed beyond that. Around mile 35 I started to catch 2 more athletes as we were going into a headwind. Once I got just outside of 6 bike lengths, I backed the power down for a minute before making a surge. Despite the effort, I didn’t break away and they held on. At mile 40, I was expecting a nice cross-tailwind back to transition. It was more of a cross headwind, and that mentally drained me. Normally, I’d relax a bit and focus on having a good run. This time, I tried holding my power until that last mile. In doing so, I dropped the guys behind me. As I approached transition, I had my 2nd mishap of the day on the flying dismount. I got my feet set plenty early and brought my leg over the top tube only to find out there was another S-turn. I lost a ton of speed and had to bring my leg back to pedal again. I lost another 10-20s here. So between my flying mount and dismount, I missed that 2:15 bike split to average 25mph. Nonetheless, I was happy with a NP of 237W and the 11th best bike split on the day.
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| Jen capturing a little float in transition |
T2 (1:53): Since the dismount only affected my bike split, my transition time was fast. Somehow my shoes settled perfectly and never caught the ground. It was very smooth running to my bike rack, and I sat down to roll on my socks and slip on the shoes. I got everything set quickly, grabbed my hat/nutrition/bib and took off. Run legs felt better than expected considering how hard I road, especially with that left quad pain.
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| Finish Line Feels |
Run (1:20:12 - 4th OA):
I wanted to go out hard on the run to make sure I didn’t leave any time in the
first few miles (goal of under 1:20). I had a good sense of the HR I could hold
from Chattanooga 70.3, and knew I had a little more to give early on. Despite
trying to push, I couldn’t elevate must past 165bpm. Before I hit the first hill,
I was at a 6:05 but quickly slowed to a 6:25 at the top. I knew I’d get that
time back but wanted a little more from myself. My left calf injury from St.
George flared up starting a mile 2, and overall the first 4-5 miles were tough.
Instead of needing to hold myself back, I found myself just trying to hold a decent
pace. I kept thinking this just won’t be my day. Without an athlete in sight, I
felt like I was going nowhere.
A spectator told me I
was in 9th (gun time at least), and this was the first time I had a
sense of where I was. Mile 4 is when I finally saw some guys and was able to
check the gap (over 2 minutes back at first). This is where things started to improve,
my cadence picked up and I started to Pac-Man my way up like I’m used to. I slowly
reeled in 2 guys and was coming up on the 3rd. *Once of the nicest
interactions I’ve ever had in a race, the guy told me I was now in 6th
place as I passed him. I’ve never had someone try to help me and usually get cussed
out or ignored if I dare ask someone their age… I thanked him and got his bib
number, so thank you Aaron Mahoney for that needed boost.
At this point I was about to start lap 2 and saw 1 more guy on the same lap as me. After I passed him, I assumed I was in 5th but couldn’t tell who was on their first or second lap anymore. I held steady until mile 8, which was a turnaround at the top of the course. I saw I guy behind me that I hadn’t passed, so I knew he was catching me. He had to have closed 1-2 minutes since no one was behind me out of transition. He got on my heels, and I pressed a little bit more to prevent an easy pass. From 8-10, he stayed off my shoulder and tucked behind into the headwinds. I was getting annoyed and just wanted him to pass or drop off. In that moment I made a mental switch and thought of Lionel Sanders. This was my first “battle” where I risked increasing my effort in order to compete. Instead of complaining, I wanted to make him to suffer. Prior to the race, my wife also told me to go at mile 10, so the timing was right. I pushed up the last major hill and heard his breathing labor worse than mine. I pressed more as we rounded the top and stayed on the gas. It was hard to tell where he was as we continued to lap people on loop 1, but we finally made that turn to the finish. With 1.5 miles to go and a big downhill, I opened it up and couldn’t hear him anymore. Not wanting to show weakness, I never turned to see where he was. At the bottom of the hill was another athlete, and I switched my focus to chasing him and forgot my pursuer. He was at least 100 yards up with 1 miles to go, and I slowly started to pull him in. Athletes just starting the run were yelling, “he’s yours”, “he’s fading”, “go get him!” With ½ mile to go I eased up a touch as I got to his shoulder, then put in a surge for a decisive pass. It didn’t look like he was going with me, but I started my “sprint” with 400 yards to go regardless. I came across the line putting 20s into him and 30s into my chaser. I closed those last 2 in 5:49 and 5:46 and almost broke that 1:20 mark.
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Post-Race: In the end, I landed 4th overall and 2nd age
group with a 4 second PR of 4:11:21. My goals were to crack top 5
overall and take the age group win. My AG winner also won overall, so it’s a
tough one to swallow. I am stoked with my performance, but as always…I’m
not completely satisfied.
From here on my focus is
on building for Kona. I have 2 more 70.3s in July/August, but those won’t be
anything more than hard training days to me. I’ll be working with Brent Pease
as my coach until then, and I can’t wait to see where we land in Kona.