Ironman St. George 70.3 Part 2

The 3:30 alarm came mighty early, but thankfully I was able to get everything together and head downtown where shuttle buses awaited us.

 

Here was the view of T2 (bike to run transition) that greeted us downtown when we arrived.  I double checked all my gear at my station on jumped on the shuttle bus.  I felt fairly calm and just enjoyed the ride listening to others talk through race details and family stories all around me.  Arriving at the lake, I found my bike and did a final setup of my gear and prepared to take on this race in a few hours.

 

I have never been in a race this big as there were over 2500 racers and the buzz around the swim start was starting to get crazy.  Last minute gear checks, pre-race drinks, multiple bathroom trips filled up the two hours we had there until finally the sun started to come up.  Without much of a warning they announced only 10 minutes until we would start lining up in our swim corrals by projected time.  It was about to get real serious!  I threw on my wetsuit and headed over to the 30-33 minute wave.  There was one wave in front of me which was 27-30 but it felt too much of a stretch to be there.  In the end, I probably should have been up there as people definitely did not always seed themselves correctly.  In any case we started launching people at 7:00 am about six at a time into the water.  It was chilly for the first 100 yards but overall proved to be manageable.  I find it difficult to pace myself in the water, but I think I am getting better at it.  

 

I passed through half way in 16:19 (1:41/100m) and finished the swim in 34:11 (1:51/100m).  I was hoping for something closer to 32:XX, but seems with the cold most people swam a bit slower.  I also lost a fair bit of time toward the end of the swim dodging people as they fell apart in the final few hundred meters.  The swim was good enough for 50th in my age group, which was very respectable.

 

 

The transition from swim to bike involved a several hundred yard run which felt very long.  I also seemed to have lost my swim goggles and my neoprene swim cap while I was staggering down the carpet towards the bike.  No time to go back though!  So, after settling myself down and changing into bike gear with a 5:29 T1 time, I quickly moved onto my favorite leg of the race: the bike.  Here is a picture of me just heading out of the lake.  It was a bit crowded at first with that many people coming out of the water but after about 10-15 miles we started to get some separation as I continually passed people.  One unfortunate thing that happened was that during a bumpy section of road, a small bottle of nutrition that I was carrying to use on my run bounced out of my pocket and launched somewhere off the side of the road.

 

The rest of the ride was actually quite fun and enjoyable.  There were quite a lot of people cheering alongside the course.  I had two bottles of pre-mixed Infinite nutrition and grabbed three water bottles along the way to better hydrate and keep my race kit wet and cool.  The main challenge of this course (on the bike) is Snow Canyon which you can see me in above.  It's this amazingly beautiful climb that lasts a few miles and then you descend back into town.  My bike split was 2:31:16 (22.52 mph) and was good enough for 17th in my age group.  This route had upwards of 3000 ft. of climbing in it as well, but the legs felt really good.  I had to be a bit careful as my power meter had failed the week prior to the race and I was simply going off of perceived excursion (PE) and heart rate (HR).  This wasn't a huge problem but in a course with this much climbing there was a significant risk of going too hard on the hills and not realizing it until the damage was already done.