Ironman 70.3 World Championshps (St. George) - Part 1 of 6

 

It's hard to fully describe and capture what this weekend race experience is really like.  Having qualified at the last race of the year for the 2021 Ironman 70.3 World Championships to join six of my teammates here is an amazing honor.  It's also the most I have felt apart of team functioning with a same-minded focus since potentially college, if ever.  All throughout the weeks and months of specific training leading up to this event we pushed each workout and each day.  With the weekend finally arriving (after another long drive down to St. George), all the work was done and it was time to toe the line and see what we had.  Adding to the team experience is that we had a huge house in St. George where the whole team stayed.

People mostly trickled in the first evening (Wednesday night) and we had most of the crew there for an early Thursday morning spin on the bikes the next morning as seen above.  One thing that struck me, besides the beauty of this sunrise, was how crazy it was to see all of the World caliber triathletes descend on this town.  Every street you turn down, every store you go into, every place you go there is just a mass of shaved-legged, ultra-lean athletes.  It is really inspiring and motivating!

The main goal in this ride was just to shake out the legs a bit for an hour and start getting prepared for registration and the expo activities.  We ended up heading North from our place just to the start of the Snow Canyon climb (which is the signature climb for this race) and then headed back.  We had an impressive blue train rolling through the city and it was an absolute blast.  Here is Ed, Jay, and Brian in the picture above waiting to cross traffic.

Later this day, we headed to the downtown expo to formally register.  While we had been here earlier this year for a Ironman 70.3 St. George, this was so much bigger and impressive.  Here is the main banner/display for the World Championships.

One of the really cool features of this race is that all of the participants names are displayed in this massive poster.

 

Above is my own name listing on the poster, #626.  I made the list!  After checking this out, we went over to the registration tents and got our wrist bands, bib numbers, transition bags and also our celebratory qualification token.