Ironman 70.3 Boulder - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

Swim:
Lined up in front and to the right. When the air horn sounded, I went out hard. Didn't have any trouble getting out in front. After about the second marker before the turn, I settled into a tempo pace and just enjoyed the swim. Made the first turn and noticed I had about four other blue caps getting a nice draft off of me, I tried to shake them but only managed to shake two off. The other two stayed with me the entire swim. The swim went by pretty fast and uneventfully.

Not much. Went out hard as planned and settled in. Almost no interference the entire swim. had to swim around a few people towards the end but all in all it was a good swim.

T1:
ran up the beach and almost slipped where the pools for washing your feet were setup. was able to strip the wetsuit down to my waist while running and found my bike. had some trouble with getting the wetsuit off past the ankles but this maybe cost me an additional 15 secs. Went with no socks for the ride and ran out of transition.

practice

Bike:
1st lap:
Got on the bike okay and headed out to the course. I promised myself that I would just take it easy heading out of the reservoir, but I felt so good and pushed it just a little. Once I made the first turn onto Jay rd, my plan was to slowly build until Foothills. This went as planned and I felt good. Once on Foothills, I rode the first descent fast and had enough momentum to clear the 2nd small hill at about 25 mph. I basically followed this strategy all the way out on Foothills and didn't hit any significant slowdown until maybe just past Neva where I briefly slowed to 17 mph. but I just steadily climbed that section and got back up to speed. Averaged about 20.5mph at the St Vrain turn and just enjoyed the fast descent. I took the opportunity to fuel up with a gel and some salt tabs and about 10 oz of infinite. I didn't drop below 20mph until the first hill just past Pike road as I was heading back South towards the diagonal hgwy. Turned onto Monarch and pushed hard knowing I would recover for a bit on the way back out. Made the turn around with not much difficulty and even with the recovery effort on the way back out I seemed to be riding faster then on the way in. Looks like east on Monarch had a slight incline. Once on the Diagonal hgwy, I push hard on all the hills and recovered a bit on the descents. I passed Shawn here and I think I motivated him to keep up with me. Made the first loop with a 22.62 mph avg.

2nd loop.
My hamstring and left knee started to bother me a bit, however I didn't let up. My lungs and heart felt fine and I never felt out of breath. I don't know what my HR was because unfortunately, my garmin didn't pick it up. And I didn't have time to try and fix it so I just went on feel. I took the same approach as in the first lap except this time I would stand on all the hill climbs to try and relieve some of the hamstring issues, that worked pretty well. I saw Shawn heading west on Monarch while I was eastbound, so I knew he was chasing well. Finished the bike strong avg 22.44mph on the second lap but had some difficulty on the dismount that cost me about 30 seconds. I tried to remove my feet from my shoes and could only get one out so I ended up having to stop and try to un-clip the other leg. I ran through transition with one shoe on and one off, pretty comical.

Nothing

Lubed up, cuz I knew it was going to be a wet run, I paid dearly last year. Also grabbed a hydration belt and extra bottle of ice water.

Lap 1: (59:00)
Started out the run feeling good, hit the first descent and I could feel my quads starting to cramp, quickly chewed 2 salt tabs at 500mg a piece (yuck!), this quieted the quads down and I settled into a pace I thought I could hold. I was primarily worried about my hamstrings but they seemed to be cooperating for the moment. I used up the extra bottle of ice water just dowsing myself with it in an attempt to stay cool. I Took the hills easy as not to cramp and walked through all the aid stations first downing a cup of gatorade, then grabbing all the water I could and dowsing myself and finally grabbing a sponge and tucking that behind the back of my neck. I also would chew about 500mg of salt at every aid station. My hamstring hurt a bit but was manageable.
Lap 2: (57:54)
Got passed by Shawn who was doing well but I still had 10 minutes on him since he went two waves prior to me, I tried to stay with him but every time I would pick up the pace, my hamstring would say NO! so I kept my pace manageable at least until the 10 mile marker. It was getting hotter now, because after dowsing myself at every aid station I would end up bone dry by the next one. I also started on the cola at about mile 8?
I kept waiting for my fried Don to pass me, I fully expected him to come by and never saw him until the out and back on the other side of the res. as I was heading back in, he was heading out. He saw me and said "Long, I'm going to catch you, you better run"
You see, Don and I are good friends we are both M40-44 and we train together on the same team and he has been running and riding much faster than me since my foot injury back in April so I knew it was only a matter of time before my swim time cushion would expire. And here it was with a little over 3.5 miles to go and I only had about a 3 min cushion left. If I quit and let him catch me, I don't think I could live with that. At that exact moment I remembered a quote from Lance: “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”. So I ran as hard as I could, never looking back, and it hurt like hell. Don never did catch me.



Don't get injured in April and have to sit out from running for 7 weeks!

hamstring injury


What a race, it felt so good to just lay it all out there, and even if he were to catch me, I still think I would have felt the same. Knowing that you gave it your all and had nothing left to give. What a feeling!

Today:
Paying for that "laying it all out" thing I did race day. My hamstring hurt so bad last night that I didn't sleep a wink. Still worth it though!

This was my 5th time doing this race. And every year has been hot, but I think this year was the hottest! I hope I can break the 5 hour barrier someday.

Year 1 5:54
Year 2 5:38
Year 3 5:34
Year 4 5:08
Year 5 5:01