Ironman Kansas 70.3 - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I thought the swim went pretty well. I started at middle/back of my wave and was able to get a rhythm pretty quickly. The water was very muddy and you couldnt see more than 2 feet in front of you in the water so i ran into the back of a few people. I thought i did a good job out the "out" section of the course. I swam in a straight line, pretty much and made the it around the first turn without any problems. The "across" section was pretty uneventful as well. I tried to pick up the pace here as i didnt have much traffic. Went i got the "back" or "return" section things got pretty interesting. By this time, the fast people from the last wave had caught up to me and I had caught to people in the previous wave. It got very congested here. I also had a little trouble navigating a couple of times because it seemed the bouys were not in a straight line. They were more like a diagonal to the shoreline. This threw me off guard because i went straight after the first bouy and ended up way to the left of the next bouy, so i had to swim almost sideways to correct it. Overall it wasnt a bad swim, though the time doesnt really reflect that. I talked to several people who said that they think that it was a little long, so that helps me explain my somewhat slow time. Also, there was long run up to transition and i am not sure that it was included but that would explain the slower time too.

navigate a bit better.. i guess

I did this as relay there wasnt much to the transition.. just give the chip to Dave and catch my breath

After I was finished i changed clothes, packed up my stuff and went back down to the transition area to cheer on my teammates and other people I knew from Columbia. I am ok with my time on the swim. I was hoping it would have been faster by I am ok with it. I am very pleased of our time overall. We were 2/4 in the Mens relay and we were 5/22 for all the relays. Overall it was a good experience.


This was the first year for the event so I guess i should cut them some slack, but to me, it seemed like the event was not as organized as some i have been to in the past. Being a Iroman branded event, i guess i was expecting it to better that others. In actuality, it was the same, or in some cases worse than other events i have been to. The directions to the expo were horrible (it wasnt even on the same street as the directions indicated) The swim course may have been long, the run course changed 3 or 4 times, and it ended up being very confusing. (I saw a guy do his 2 loops and no volunteer was there to direct him into the finish chute so he kept running.. we had to direct him back to the finish line) From what i have heard, there werent enough aid stations, but i have no first hand knowledge of it. They cant do anything about the weather, but it is unfortunate that the race was cancelled early. I feel really bad for those people out on the course

I have faith that they will learn from the problems of this year and will fix them for next year. I will probably do the full race next year because its close proximity.