Pro debut!!! So much to unpack from the weekend and race. Might need to set aside a little extra time to get through this one. I plan to include a few tidbits on key differences that I noticed between the amateur / pro experience as well.
Travel
to the race went very well. My dad, buddy Matt and I took off for O’Hare around
3:30AM the Wednesday before the race. No issues or hiccups with the flight and
arrival in Houston. We packed ourselves into a Nissan Rogue and drove straight
to the venue to get check-in out of the way. At athlete village, there was a
massive line for check-in. Unsure if I’d need to wait, I hesitantly walked by
everyone and found a volunteer to ask where pros check in. She let me through,
and I walked up to the pro registration table with no wait time. Everything
else was the same except a different colored wristband, pro-series backpack and
pro-series shirt. I also got to sneak ahead and grab my timing chip. That is
all to say, the check-in process was much quicker!
On the
way out, we saw Kristian and Gustav taking pictures and seized the opportunity
to grab some as well. I told them it was my first pro race, and my big goal was
to earn at least 1 pro series point (basically finish within 83 minutes of the
winner). When I said my predicted time of 8:55, Gustav laughed and said that
wouldn’t be fast enough. I was shocked at him implying they would break 7:30 in
the heat. Fast forward and Blu went 7:24.
Pro
briefing: This was new since there are slightly different rules and requirements
for the professional athletes on race day. This was mandatory to attend (we had
to sign in), and it was held at 2pm Thursday before the Saturday race. The briefing
wasn’t announced until a week out, so I was glad I booked my travel early
enough. It was so cool sitting around my idols, and I met/shook hands with
several of them.
Some key highlights from the meeting were: Race Ranger, GPS pucks to be worn in our kits, a lower wetsuit threshold and a few differences for our transitions.
Without going into too much more detail on pre-race… I did a shakeout swim that felt great, 2 short bike sessions and 3 runs between Wednesday-Friday. Given how hot and humid it was going to be on race day, I spent additional time outside to acclimate the best I could. The Midwest hadn’t done me any favors and sauna prep only got me so far.
Race morning was great. My sherpas did a phenomenal job finding parking and getting me to transition 10 minutes before it opened. Since the pros were required to report to swim start by 6:05am, I wanted to be there as early as possible to set-up my gear and start the mile walk over. I was the first one in thanks to a volunteer letting me go early. The mechanic filled my tires for me, I prepared my nutrition and pre-mounted my cycling shoes. Once I was set, I swung by my gear bags to see where they ended up (Ironman moved the T1 bags overnight). After that, it was a long walk to the swim start. As I was walking, I chatted with Ty on the phone to calm my nerves (while also sipping on a Redbull to amp myself up). Once we got there, I put on an extra layer of sunscreen, suited up, took lots of pictures, then got into the pro corral.
All that and I haven’t even gotten to the race itself!
*I’m taking a guess on my placements relative to the male pros in each discipline since there were a lot of DNFs. I do know that 61 male pros started, so that’s what I’m going off.
Swim (1:01:04
- 56th?): 10 minutes before the start, they let us all into the
water for a quick warmup. I did a few take-outs to rev things up, but it was
nearly impossible to see with how dark it was at 6:15am. The strangest part for
me was treading water during the national anthem. I wasn’t going to fight for
position on the line, so I just got into my prone position in a 2nd
row somewhere in the middle of the buoys. After the cannon went off, my goal
was to push hard and try to stay in the draft of the main pack for as long as I
could. I don’t think I even made it to 200 yards. I did, however, find some
feet, and the effort to stay there felt hard enough not to try going around. Even
though I was far off the back, I felt like I was doing ok…until I heard a boat
and saw the media crew slowly creep up next to me. I took one breath to the
opposite side and saw Rachel Zilinskas and Taylor Knibb FLY by me. I was not
expected to see them until the canal (2/3 of the swim), but they passed me at
halfway… This was that gut wrenching feeling that I was already having a bad
day. Shortly after, Haley Chura came by as well. For the rest of the swim, I
was feeling down and disappointed in myself and just wanted to get through it. I
stayed on that athlete’s feet until he took me off course and a kayak directed us.
I took over and swam the rest of the way down the canal. I got out of the water
and saw 1:01 on my watch for a not-so-great swim. My goal going in was to be in
the 58-59 range, so I didn’t totally fail, but it just wasn’t how I wanted to
start my race. I saw 6 lonely gear bags remaining and grabbed mine from the end
of the row.
T1 (2:58
– 29th): No real issues here and my bag was easy to find amongst
the few. Since I wasn’t in a wetsuit with calf sleeves underneath, I opted to
put on aero socks that always take a little extra time. I got them on efficiently,
threw my swim gear back into my bag and took off with my helmet. I grabbed my
bike and as I was getting to the mount line, both of my rubber bands broke so
my shoes swung down. This made getting going a little more difficult and added
5-10 seconds onto my bike split. Maybe I need some thicker bands next time.
One perk for the pros was leaving our gear bags in the change tent for the volunteers to take care of.
The Bike
(4:37:28 – 48th?): Not sure on the actual position, but I know a few did not
finish the bike so my place appears better than my swim. Either way, this was
my fastest IM bike split, and I was completely solo. Getting through the first
few miles Alice Alberts blew by me along with a male pro working together. I
knew I couldn’t keep up, so I just settled into my own pace. Once I got through
the first 20 miles, I was excited to time trial down Hardy Toll Road. With only
overpasses for elevation, this was the fastest and simplest bike course I’d
ever ridden. With the wind from the south, it was 20 miles of headwind and 20
miles of tailwind repeated twice. I decided to push a little above my power
target into the wind and a little under with to allow myself to stretch and
eat. It was a little lonely the first loop, but that made it easier to simply
focus on my power and HR. I did come up to a female pro around mile 30 and
opted to sit behind for just a minute or 2. This was my only real exposure to
race ranger, and I really liked it. Sitting in the blue was MUCH closer than I
expected. I pressed on and anxiously waited to see the lead group heading back
north so I could get a time gap. As I got to the turnaround, I was already 30+
minutes back after averaging around 22.5mph at 240W. Once I started heading
north, I dropped to 230W and was going closer to 28mph. This part flew by, and
I took the time to sit up more often and stretch out when I could. Before
starting loop 2, I slowed way down to grab water from an aid station before the
course got crowded. My preference was to only grab aid into the headwind since
I was already going closer to a good “bottle grabbing speed”. I was glad I got
it early because the next aid station was jammed, and I would have needed to
stop to get anything. Loop 2 was completely different from loop 1 with the age
groupers scattered throughout. It took a lot more focus to navigate and stay safe,
going quite a bit faster than them. Even though the headwind was increasing, I
felt like I got a slight draft benefit and went about the same speed as loop 1.
After loop 2 there was a very tight right handed U-Turn that I struggled with,
otherwise it was mostly tailwind there rest of the way back to transition.
Average
Power: 230W (236 NP) / Average Speed 24.2mph
At first I was quite pleased with my bike split until I saw Cam Wurf set the all-time Ironman Bike record in 3:53. I feel like I still had a good ride with my best power output, but it was also a very fast day and all bike splits were fast. Still a lot more work to do losing over 40 minutes to the lead group.
T2 (2:13 – 7th): One highlight was looking back at all the T2 times. I had the 8th overall fastest time amongst every athlete. It helped that I already had my socks on, but I am proud of that one. The only thing to note is that Blu had already lapped me before I made it out of T2.
Run (3:05:21
– 24th): I had a goal of running 3:10 or better going into this
race. Reminding myself that I had only started running again for 4 months, I relaxed
on my usual target of breaking 3. I also wanted to break 9 hours, and I was in
the perfect position to achieve both. I started the run at what I felt was very
conservative, and my first 8 miles were all around 6:50 pace. I was happy with
where my HR was sitting and honestly did not expect to be running sub 7s. I was
amongst 3rd-5th place, which included Rudy Von Berg
and Nick Thompson. I felt that I did a great job of sticking to my plan and
pace as they worked their way passed me. My HR was also in the 150-155bpm
range, which is exactly where I wanted it to be. Around mile 9, I felt like I
was already hitting a wall. I don’t typically say much when I race, but I told
Matt and my dad that I was already struggling after getting through Hippy
Hallow. My pace slowed up to around 7:20, and I felt the bonk happening. About
a mile later I came up to my friend Ernie (who is a Dynamo OG with his wife
Betty). He could see my pain and struggle and instead of yelling and pushing
me, he simply nodded his head in acknowledgement. Something about that
recognition struck me in that moment, and it was exactly what I needed at the
time. From there I brought my pace back down to low 7’s and even snuck a 6:57 back
in at mile 14.
From here on, I felt like the best I could do was just barely sneak under 9 hours. To do that, I needed to average 8min pace for the final 10 miles. To me it became a game, and every mile I ran under 8:00 was seconds banked in case the wheels really came off. 16-22 where I had a lull and relaxed my effort to reach that goal. I still kept it in that 7:20-7:30 range and “banked” about 3 minutes going into the final 4 miles. At this point I could almost close in 9 minute pace, but my motivation started coming back. Now if I stayed on that 8min pace, I’d finish in 8:55 (which sounded much better than 8:59). I got my pace back down to 7:15 and kept pressing into the effort. I would say that this was the most impressive final 10K I’ve ever run in an IM marathon. My final 3 miles I got back down to 7min pace and closed in a 6:53. As I was approaching the split to the finish after 3 loops, I came up on another male pro with ¼ mile to go. After we split off, I surged hard up a short hill and glanced back to see that he didn’t go with me. This allowed me to soak in that red carpet and give some high fives as I came across the line in 8:49. I ran down 15 pros (if you include the DNFs that came off the bike ahead of me), and it felt good to finally play pac man again.
Kudos if
you made it through all of that. For my first pro race, I wanted to capture
everything I could possible and reread this blog months or years from now. A
few highlights at the finish were grabbing another picture with Blu (after
telling him I missed that 1 point by 43s), chatting with Taylor Knibb and just
being done by 3:30pm! It took me a little longer to get this post written, so I’ve
had time to assess how my body is recovering. This was the easiest IM course I’ve
raced, and I would say that my recovery has been the quickest. Chattanooga is
just over 2 weeks away now, and I’m excited to put in a hard week of training after
some down time.
