The preparation for this race was anything but ideal. I mentioned it before that I tried to get the fun back into sport and one aspect to that was not to log countless hours. Right when I wanted to turn up the training by a notch I had to fly to Switzerland on a very short notice where I hardly had time to train. While I did a decent amount of running, I hardly logged any hours in the saddle or the water.
To top things off, I got horrible seasick two days before the race on a wreck dive with Amy. It was a really rough sea. Both of us were hugging the railing much longer than we wanted. On the upside, after that I was on race weight. But I also was horrible dehydrated.
Morning:
I got up at 4:15 and walked out the door at 4:50. I arrived at transition at 5:10. After a quick bike setup and porta potty break. I was enjoying the sunrise with Amy. Even though I qualified in the 30-34 category I was racing in the 35-39 age group.
Unfortunately, it was a water start, despite having a wonderful beach for a fun run into the water. I noticed when the pro started that 2min is hardly enough to get from the gathering area to swim out to the start line. Wanted to get out there early and made sure that I was in the front of the gathering area. After a quick swim I was at the start line.
Swim:
Happy with my swim time 🙂
I seeded myself at the end and once the gun went off even waited another 10 sec before I started swimming. Since I knew I didn’t have the fitness the last thing I wanted to do is start too fast. So I started slow and stead and quickly started overtaking people. I really just focused on technique and swimming a straight line. After the turn around I started to increase my tempo. I was very surprised that nobody from the wave behind me has overtaken me yet. Which meant I must be swimming faster than I thought.
After the last turn towards the shore we had a great view of the spectators and the beach. I really enjoyed that. Eventually first blue cap overtook me, That meant I was probably swimming sub 35min, which I was excited about. Coming back in I manged to hit a wave and body surf in quite a bit. I stood up and saw another wave coming, I jump in with it and body surfed passed many competitors which were walking. I jumped up and looked at my watch and saw 34min. I was super excited and was smiling like an idiot. I was thinking sub 35min swim despite less than 15 swim workouts in the last 6 month.
Actual time was 33:57.
T1:
Very long transition run. One of my longest T1 with 5min 55 sec.
Bike:
Pretending that I’m comfortable in aero position 🙂
I tried to take it easy to not overcook early on. And so it seemed that everybody was overtaking me. I was thinking that I could ride around 200watts which would be 40 watts lower than what I used to be able to do. But that was even aspiration. My average watts ended up being quite a bit lower with 171 Watts.
The first out and back on the highway was madness. There were groups of 50+ people. There was a lot of drafting but also it was very unsafe to ride like that. I’m amazed that not more accidents happened.
The challenge for me quickly became my neck and being comfortable on the bike. Last season I lowered the aero bars to be more aggressive which was great when I was used to it and rode the bike a lot. Not a great idea without any training. So I rode less than half the time in aero bars since it was too uncomfortable.
Once again I had trouble with my Garmin bike computer. When turning on it would just say “Working…” It took a whole 30min until it finally turned on. I’m so done with Garmin devices!
Around 30k felt like I had to pee which is a good sign that I wasn’t dehydrated. I was thinking of going to a porta-jon for once, since I won’t be able to clean the bike before it gets shipped of. Besides not that I was that much in a rush. I was also meaning to hold it to prove to my co-workers that I can hold it. Since I told them that competitive triathletes pee while swimming/biking/running they have become increasingly concerned about taking me along for a ride. So no need to worry anymore. Around 60k I finally manged to find a porta-jon which I ended up using.
The hill everyone was talking about was steep but not too bad. Definitely much shorter than the “Beast in St. Croix”. I was much more worried about the downhill which was a little sketchy.
Towards the end I was tempted to push it a little to ride sub 3h but decided against it since it was simple not worth. Furthermore I should save the legs for the run. As it turns out I still manged to just come in under 3h.
Time 2:59:33
T2:
Again a long transition. But this might be my favorite T2 ever. Once you ran rough all of the transition and grabbed your bag, they had chairs on a lawn to change. These chairs were overlooking the ocean with beach and the waves plus a cruise ship in the background. I admired to view for a few second until I was off.
I was looking for Sunscreen to put some on my shoulders and arms to not get burned, but too my surprise they didn’t have any.
Time: 4:07
Run:
I was hoping to run a 7min/mile but wanted to start conservatively and build into it. So I started with an 8min/mile. It was slightly uphill but I felt great. Once again everybody was running faster around me. I steadily increased my pace and quickly running 7:30min/miles. It was mostly a boring run on the street along the coast, but had several good view points. I was still wondering how I would hold up since that is the longest I have run since Boston and I haven’t done a T-run in forever. To my surprise I felt great. I just enjoyed being out there. Once on the 2nd loop I started to pick it up and started running 7-7:10min/miles and it felt great for 2 miles. Than reality caught me that I wasn’t that fit and I turned back to my 7:30min/miles 🙂
The sun was burning down so I asked Amy and Darcy if they have sunscreen. They had some so I took of my arm sleeves gave them to Amy and put on Sunscreen which they handed to me. A race official was right there and waved me over. I followed suit and he told me that this was outside help. 
I said I was sorry and told him that I could take the arm sleeves back. I also mentioned that I’m only here for the experience and not for the time. He let me go without a penalty. Through be told, I needed sunscreen and I didn’t care if I got a penalty for that. As long as I wouldn’t get DQed. Funny enough after the race Amy and I ran into Andrew Messick and I told him that I had a great race but was missing the sunscreen.
Since I was on vacation and had plans for the next couple days, I told myself it is not worth it to push at the end and sprint which would result in a lot of soreness. So I just cruised to the finsih and enjoyed the whole experience!
Run time was 1:39:11
After Math:
Which resulted in a total time of 5:22:43. That is still over 10min faster than my very first 70.3 but also almost 50min slower than my fastest one.
Overall it was a great experience and I had lots of fun which was key. I also learned that several years of Ironman training build fitness and experience that even with sub par to hardly any training you can survive a 70.3.
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