Ironman Taupo 70.3 - Triathlon

My first experience with a rolling start. Not a fan. Honestly, I didn't notice any less contact during the swim, and for the rest of the day I had no idea if I was 10 minutes ahead of, or behind the next guy up the road. (Not that I was 'racing' but it's still annoying)

We started 4 at a time, on the beep. Waded till thigh deep and dove in.

HOLY SH!T that was cold. Like being punched in the chest with cold shock. For the first 100m or so I could barely breathe. It took a few minutes but I did acclimatize, it was still cold, but manageable.

Otherwise, conditions were perfect. They say Taupo is the best swim in triathlon and again it didn't disappoint. No wind to speak of, flat water, unbelievably clear, the entire 1,900m you can see the bottom.

I tried to settle into my rhythm as fast as possible, as always looking for long, controlled strokes. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Sighting was ok, had a bit of a zig zag between turns 1 and 2 but nothing significant lost. All 4 turns were a bit of a scrum as athletes came together. As I said above, no real difference to the mass start here for IMNZ in terms of body contact.

The 2nd half of the swim my pace faded. At the time I felt I was doing the same the whole way through but went from 1:55/100 for the first 500m to 2:20/100 for the last. The solution is no more complicated than more swimming.

Out of the water in 41:26 which was in the range I expected, but not happy with the pace dropping off so dramatically. Need to work on that.

Swim more. Swim more often. Swim longer when I do swim.

Walked up the hill from the swim exit to transition, Walked to my bike rack. One good thing about the rolling start, there was lots of space in transition. Helmet and sunnies on, knelt down to put on socks and bike shoes. Walked the bike to the mount line then off and away.

Well jogging, rather than walking would be faster no doubt. But in a 7+ hour day I wasn't going to stress about 2 or 3 minutes saved.

My plan going in was to make sure I get off the bike with run legs still attached. And I think I did that to a degree.

Honestly, the bike was pretty uneventful.

The climbs were slow, as expected but didn't feel as bad as feared. So probably means I didn't push enough. The descents were fast, and fun. A top speed of about 57km/hr heading down broadlands road. On the flats, and 'false flat' sections I made an effort to be in the aerobars as much as I could.

I took in nutrition, and drank pretty much to plan. My plan was a sip of my tailwind concentrate mix every 20 minutes. I didn't stick religiously to that schedule, but the course lined up pretty well. 2 sips while going up the climb, and one at the bottom just after the turn around. I was 3 drinks every hour, and 15-25 minutes between. I drank water from the BTA bottle as needed, and only needed to grab 1 aid station bottle to refill. That might mean I didn't drink enough, but the day was quite cool for most of the ride, so my sweat levels were low.

I only have 1 previous Ironman in my strava history, but compared to then every segment I want through was a PR. So that's got to mean something was right.

When I got off the bike the body was quite sore, but I think most of that was being in the saddle for so long. My longest ride in training was 3 hours, so I was about 25% longer than that.

But really a pretty uneventful bike. Happy that I did what I expected, but want to be fitter and lighter and have higher expectations.


Take in more calories. Despite drinking as often as planned there was 150ml left in the bottle post ride so I definitely had less than I've been having during training (55g/hr vs 70-80g/hr).
Monitor my effort more. I think there were times I stayed spinning easy too long on as climbs flattened. A power meter would really help me control my effort levels.

Just like T1, walked the bike to her rack, helmet off, knelt to swap shoes, and socks. Grabbed my hat, race belt and nutrition flasks and sorted them while walking out of transition. Had a piece of banana and a cup of electrolytes exiting T2

Again jogging would be faster. But again, not stressed about 1-2 minutes saved in such a long day. Better to take my time and get it right.

With my expected slow ride, I knew my overall time was going to be slow. So one of my big goals for this event was to 'run well'. My 70.3 run PB (from 2013!) is 2 hr 37 min, with the remaining 4 times 3hr 2min - 3hr 35min. So 'run well' is not run a fast half marathon, it's run, rather than walk the bulk of the half marathon, finish in under 3 hours, and if I was having a perfect day maybe get close to a new run PB.

The run started well, Km1 done in 7:22 which included walking an aid station, a little bit faster than the 7:30-45 I wanted to try and hold. Km 2 was 7:37 better pace. Km 3, 7:40 with another aid station walk. 4th kilometer went past our hotel, so got to see my family, well most of it Miss 3 was having such an exciting day she was having a rest. Km 5 and 6 were around 7:50'km. Still in range, feeling ok. At 6.5km it started getting very hard.

Passing the 2nd turn around of the lap brought the wind behind us, and man it suddenly got very very hot. It was also around midday at this point, so approaching the hottest part of the day.

The next 3 1/2 km back to the turn around were a struggle paces ranging from 8:09-8:30 depending on when the aid stations lined up. 2nd half of lap 2 things became a real struggle. My pace started drifting up into the low 9+/km. I was hot, tired and ready for it to be over. At this stage I was also doing the mental arithmetic to figure out if I was going to be under 3 hours or not, and it was starting to look marginal.

Lap 3, I decided to give myself a break, I was going to increase my walking from just the aid stations to include the up hill sections. The first half of the lap started slow, 9:05-9:21/km. I was also taking in as much water as I could, and dumping at least 1 cup over me each aid station. The heat was a real killer. But, the water/ice/walking did help, I was slow but my heart rate came down a bit, and I was running better in the post walk periods.

At the turn, I decided that my current pace was not going to get me under 2 hours, decision was made to make sure I emptied the tank trying, so no more walking. It wasn't fast, or pretty, but I Iron shuffled home at 8:15-8:30/km finishing in 2 hours 56 minutes. My 2nd fastest 70.3 run, and my fastest half marathon of any sort since 2019.

More water/ice earlier would have helped with cooling. And my run, walk strategy was wrong. Either I should have been walking more from step 1. Or, I needed to push more during the middle stages. But the pacing wasn't great. I'm not sure which way is right but something wasn't.

Nothing. Sat in the recover tent and knocked back a couple cups of water and electrolytes.


Being to fat, and not fit enough.
Not maintaining an even effort on the bike, there was some time lost there.
Not enough swimming, the pace drop off in the 2nd half was pretty significant.