Ironman Florida 2018 - Triathlon

My swim training was really lacking this year. Enough volume, I guess, but it was all slow back and forth. In a fit of insanity, my friend and I seeded ourselves close to the front and entered the water with sub-1:00 to sub-1:10 swimmers. Ha! Elbowed, grabbed, swum over and generally a hazard to navigation for everyone who properly seeded themself. A duly chastened alltom1 learned his lesson about seeding etiquette.

This was far and away my worst performance in an IM swim - slowest to this point had been nine IM's ago at 1:13 or so. You're supposed to get faster at this stuff! Back to the drawing board...

Stay the F out of everyone's way.

Long-ish transition. I was pretty efficient but there were some healthy distances to cover between water/bag/T1/bike/bike mount so no blazing fast time here, folks.

I have a bike strategy that hasn't changed much over the years; I go way under race effort for about half the distance and hammer the rest. It takes some resolve to let people go past that first half of the ride(pride is at stake, after all) but I followed through and results were about typical: I passed around 30 people in AG and left myself with legs ready to run, more or less. Training rides were about the same pace as I went on race day but on further review I feel like I went a little too easy that first loop. Again, slowest IM ride in quite a while, mainly attributable to the hills on this course vs. flat courses I've done the last few years. It's seldom you feel like you undercooked the bike but that's kind of where my head's at a month after the fact.

Anyhoo, I can say I passed one and all on the hills and next year's schedule is going to focus on races with some climbing...

Allez! Allez!

Tolerably efficient..

Sun was shining at the end of the bike, unfortunately. What could have been a solid effort was interrupted by some oppressive hot/humid miles early on. This is a known problem; I can't do it in the heat, baby...I walked as little as I could on the first loop but it was still a good bit and my overall time was pretty corrupted by the first loop. Mercifully, a front came through at the end of the loop and cooled everything down - what had been a run on the edge of an IM death march/shuffle changed to a run the course/walk the aid stations process. Still slower than we're hoping for but for long stretches of that course I was definitely in high gear. I passed seven more people on the run and finished my day with a good bit of momentum.

My goal at official M-Dot events is 10% in AG - based on number of starters, that's exactly what I got at this year's IMFL. I felt like I left pretty much everything I had on the course and no regrets even if this was slowest time in a decade. Aging up to 55's means smaller fields but at the pointy end, the fasties are still showing up. Interestingly, not one person in 55-59 cracked 4hrs on the run.

Focus on races with lots of hills and cold weather.

WTC had two weeks to pull together an IM in a different city after PCB was hit by a hurricane. BIG TIME tip of the cap to the organizers/the host city/the volunteers for getting this race off the ground. There probably won't ever be a full IM in Haines City, Fl again but that's only because PCB has the job. I thought all aspects of the one-off 2018 version of IMFL were expertly handled and the fact the race was set up on such short notice is just incredible.

This was IM #10 over 12 years. I'm going to focus on 70.3's next year with an eye to doing an IM i haven't done before in 2020 but things are dependent on the health of the bod and keeping myself motivated to show up at the pool, etc. I'm optmistic...