Ironman St. George 70.3 Part 1

With COVID-19 shutting down most of the racing for 2020, we were anxiously awaiting a return to racing for 2021 if the local authorities kept the races permitted.  Thankfully, Utah is lightly populated and case loads were low enough for Ironman St. George 70.3 to kick off.  This race is only held every other year and is the North American 70.3 Distance Championship.  It also has a reputation for being one of the hardest races on the whole Ironman 70.3 circuit.  Boulder Racing had six of us coming down to take on the challenge.

I had planned originally to drive down to St. George by myself as we all mostly had individual places to stay in a cluster of condos, but we realized that two of us were basically going to follow each other for the whole 10 hour drive.  Brian and I decided to carpool together for the ride, which was a bit unexpected but worked out in the end.  Once benefit was finding this gem of a stop in Grand Junction called Main Street Bagels.  Quite a good breakfast bagel and cinnamon roll if you can get there for one!

After a long day in the car, we finally arrived at our places in the late afternoon.  I had a sweet 1 BR condo at the St. George Rentals (www.stgeorgerentals.com) with this awesome view from my deck overlooking the large pool complex.  After checking out the hotel, we headed over to athlete check-in in downtown St. George and got wrist bands, schwag bags, and formally registered for the race.  After hitting the grocery store to get stocked up for the weekend, we hit the bed early in preparation for the next few days of chaos.

The next day we headed out to Sand Hallow (about 20 minutes out of town) where the swim portion takes place to take an easy opener ride and drop off our bikes at T1 for the swim to bike transition.  It was also my first opportunity to test this projected cold water with a brief swim.

Here is a picture overlooking the swim area for the race.  Historically, the swim has circle the island over my left shoulder, but for this year they had it just make a big horseshoe shape over my right shoulder.

This picture is from the dock looking out towards the swim.  It was certainly a beautiful venue and the water was crystal clear.  Daytime water temperatures were reading about 61 - 62 degrees F which is quite chilly, but with the warmer air it felt cool but surprisingly manageable.  I would later come to realize after stripping out of my wetsuit, I left my racing kit on the beach.  Three hours later I returned and amazingly found it still laying there on some rocks right where I left it!  I thank God that there are still good people in this world and nobody took it.

 This was the crew we had at the race all queued up on my tracker app.  That night we had a full race briefing given by our coach and teammate Eric Kenney.  He set us up to know all the ins and outs of the course and where the risks were.  This information turned out to be terrific the next day during the race.  A quick meal and an early bed were at hand with a 3:30 am alarm clock starting the next day off. 

Dual Speed Boats

Gage had been eyeing Gavin's speedboat for quite some time and I would also say that Gavin tends to struggle a bit more with sharing his possessions with his brother, so we decided to order a speedboat for Gage as well and gave it to him as a late birthday present.  This way they could both drive them around together.

 Here is a better picture of the boats in action.  It is fun to let them both play together and they have a lot of fun when they can both be involved and do the same things at the same time.  At least it breaks up some of the disagreements for a bit!

Running Again

 After a few shorter experiments with my post-surgery ankle, it was time to give it a real test before Ironman St. George 70.3.  Though still running with a brace, this was ultimately a successful 10 mile effort with some faster intervals mixed in.  It started with a few miles of easy warmup at 8:30/mile pace and then we did 4 X (1' Z4 (7:30/mile), 2' Z3 (7:45/mile), and 3' Z2 (8:30/mile)) followed by a nice cooldown.  One of my coach Eric Kenney's other athletes (Rachel) was my partner for this as we were running about the same pace.  The run also featured some fairly crazy weather leading to this fairly impressive picture of the storm clouds looming over us.  Eric also provided car/coaching support during the long run and made sure we were following the plan.

New Car

This came up fairly quickly as my 2007 Subaru Outback has had some recent engine power struggles.  With a trip looming to Utah for my upcoming race, I had been poking around and decided to arrange some test drives.  We started looking into some newish Subaru Crosstreks and Outbacks but they have started to creep up so much in price and still struggle with some power issues (even given the newer stronger 2021 engines that were just released).  Being disappointed, we asked our neighbor about their Mazda and how they liked it and they gave it glowing reviews.  I started doing a bit more research and found that the Mazda CX-30 and CX-5 really were some of the best cars in class for their areas.  

I called up the dealer and took a CX-30 AWL 2.5L Turbo for a spin and I was blown away.  It was amazing to drive, however the back seats were a bit small and we have growing boys.  After some discussions with Tara, I looked more seriously at the CX-5 AWL 2.5L Carbon Turbo edition (shown above) and it was virtually the same car with a slightly bigger back seat area.  We also test drove some Subaru's this weekend and were still unimpressed and came back to the Mazda dealer where they informed us that they were WAY behind in car sales with COVID-19 and were able to take another $4k off the price.  With the offer on the table it was an easy decision...we were sold.

 

The Carbon edition is a special edition that only comes in a special metallic gray, red leather seats, black 19" wheels, and a 10 speaker Bose entertainment system.  The one catch was that there were very few in the US and it was a few weeks still until they could finally deliver mine.  Part of that is from the general global supply chain issues from COVID-19 and the other is due to a computer chip shortage as the manufacturing plant in Japan burned to the ground.  Luckily, I got one of the first and the last that will likely be delivered in 2021.  It feels crazy to buy a new car, as this is the first new car I have ever owned, but also pretty special.  I am loving it so far and hope it can take me on many great adventures.

Easter

 With Covid still massively impacting every part of our lives, we had an Easter celebration with just our own family.  We still were able to get my favorite main course planned with a large Honey Baked Ham from the store and joined by green bean casserole, corn, and a massive pile of mashed potatoes.  The kids are clearly ready to eat and did a great job setting up the table for us to enjoy a meal together and celebrate Jesus and his resurrection.