Ironman 70.3 California - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

Not my fastest swim, as I swam this course a couple minutes faster on my previous attempt 2 years ago. The course was very crowded and I had to pick my way through a lot of traffic jams this time. Probably my biggest limiter was that I made the decision to trade swim training for run training and figured I'd give up a minute or two on the swim as a consequence -- I only swam 7 hours in the three months leading up to the race.

Nothing really.

Had trouble getting out of my wetsuit. Apparently I was just plain slow through T1. Oh well.

Bike was the highlight of my race. I've never broken 20 mph until today, and I pushed to finish at 20.3 mph average. Starting in a late wave, the course was crowded, and I passed a ton of other riders from the waves ahead of me. I was passed a handful of times out there by some of the uber-fast men in the handful of waves behind me.

Nutrition sank me on this race. I had a hard time holding anything down on the bike, which really caught up with me on the run. I did manage to get down whatever was in my aero bottle (half water, half gatorade), and one bottle of accelerade. Couldn't eat anything solid, and didn't try a gel. I was probably 20 miles into the ride before I could swallow liquids without having them come back up. Maybe I swallowed some air or salt water during the swim which tripped up my stomach. I'm not really sure what happened. The exciting moment came when I arrived to rack my bike and had only two other bikes there already at my rack. I've never seen a sight like that before!

Best transition I've ever had. Planned to make a bathroom stop, but there was a line. So I left the bathroom stop for the first porta potties on the run course.

Totally missed my run goal, which was to break the 2 hour mark. Things really fell apart over the second lap. My stomach felt unhappy for nearly the whole run. The positive takeaway is that I ran the entire course without walking except for the final aid station at mile 12. The only bad moment came at that last aid station, as I walked in a straight line with two other people walking directly in front of me, some total jerko approached from behind, yelled "MOVE" and proceeded to shove me in the back along with someone else that was passing (but not fast enough) on my right. This clown was in my age group and was over an hour out of Kona contention. Geez, whatever. I've never encountered somebody doing anything like that on a course before. He could have easily crossed to the other side of the cones since the course was really thinning by this point. The other guy who he shoved looked at me and we were both saying "WTF?" Whatever, there were tons of nice people running and great volunteers and spectators to provide copious amounts of encouragement.

I guess I just need to run train more. Running will always be my weak point. I had the best run training yet, but it's apparently going to take a lot more for me to see the payoff on race day. Probably could train the bike more, too, so that a 20 mph effort doesn't take so much out of me. I didn't do any bricks as part of training, so there's another consideration. And switching entirely to liquid nutrition might be the ticket for me on longer courses.

Hands down the worst I've felt after a race. I sat for 15 minutes and nearly checked myself into medical. But eventually the queasy feeling started to abate, and I got some cola and pizza. The cola especially helped me feel better.


I think my blood sugar was just very, very low given my inability to take in much of anything on the bike and run.


Not sure when, if ever, I will try this course again. I've done it three times now, and I'm due for a change of venue if I consider another longer tri at some future point.