This is going to be a long post so feel free to skip ahead, but I’m officially an Ironman! Just finished my first 70.3 on Sunday at Musselman. The weather was awesome and for a first attempt at long course triathlons (did 1 olympic distance 4 weeks ago as prep) I’m happy with my results.
First off, the disappointment. I guess a volunteer raking the sand at the swim start messed up the timing mat. From the email from Ironman: “an error occurred with the event’s timing system this morning during the swim portion… The error impacted both the main timing system and backup system for the swim time for a portion of the age-group field.” So I don’t have an official full 70.3 time from Ironman, but I still have my Garmin times!
Morning nutrition:
Drank half a zero sugar monster and ate two packets of oatmeal starting 2 hours before swim start. Drank a 16oz bottle with 1.5 tabs 1500 of precision hydration finishing during transition prep.
Swim - 38:06 Garmin/unofficial
Wetsuit legal as the swim ranged from 64F to 68F. The self seeded timing corrals were way too small for times under 40 minutes and there was a whole bunch of sub 40 minute swimmers stuck outside of the fence funnel after the 45min+ corral. I spent a good bit of the swim dodging and swimming around people as I worked forward which slowed me down. The swim felt easy overall and I think I could push harder in future races, but I’m happy since this was only my second OWS longer than 750 meters.
Nutrition: Maurten Caf Gel and PH salt capsule 1 hour pre swim start, Maurten Caf Gel 20 min pre swim.
T1 - 9:05
I hit the lap button as soon as I got out of the water so this included the 1/3 mile run from swim out to the bike mount line. This went a bit slower than my usual transitions as I was trying newer bike gloves and threw on a second set of bike shorts over my tri shorts.
Nutrition: Maurten Caf Gel
Bike - 3:22:19
Since this was my longest ride I’ve done and first IM I wanted to try and stick to a 0.7 to 0.75 IF. I definitely went out a bit harder than I meant to, but ended the day with 0.73 IF so this was satisfying. I only got into cycling a few years ago and do 99% of my riding indoors, so if I improved my handling and being able to use my clip on aero bars, I could definitely drop my time a ton by improving my CdA.
Nutrition: As I was writing this post I realized I calculated my sugar wrong and while I thought I had missed 20 grams of sugar on the bike because my stomach was maxed, I actually took in an extra 40 grams from what I had planned. I took in: 200 grams of carb and 1655mg salt from a 40oz speedfill bottle over the full bike portion, 15g carb and 750mg salt from a front cage bottle before aid station 1, and I finished 2.3x24oz gatorade bottles (44g carb, 620mg salt) 1 between aid 1 and 2, the second between aid 2 and 3, and then the last bit between aid 3 and T2. All in I took ~340g carb averaging 102g/hour. Looking at my spreadsheet now, I understand why my stomach was fighting me at the end of the second gatorade bottle as I was approaching 120g per hour for that hour (well past my training).
T2 - 5:55
A bit slower than I wanted to be but I decided to change socks and hit up the porta potty. Once I saw that my bike time was ~15min longer than I had as my aggressive goal I was more concerned with comfort than overall finish time.
Run - 2:12:12
This is my new half marathon PR and is probably one of the things I am most proud of from this race. When I wanted to walk on the second loop I found someone pushing an aggressive pace that I tagged onto and wouldn’t let myself walk until we hit the big hill that was 2 miles further in. I had to walk a bit after the hill for the last 2 miles, but I am very happy with my pace.
Nutrition: I took in 1 Maurten Caf Gel at run aid 1, and then 2 Maurten Gels throughout the rest of the run. I also sipped some gatorade throughout and took sips or full cups of water at every aid station.
Total time 6:27:46
) but definitely competing against our own goals/aspirations.
