The big day!
As regular followers will know, I spent most of the summer training for the Ironman 70.3 triathlon in Santa Cruz on September 7th. Shortest possible story—race day came, I raced, and I finished!
My official splits were
- Swim: 0:33:07
- T1: 0:06:44
- Bike: 2:44:20
- T2: 0:02:36
- Run: 1:44:28
for a final time of 5 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds. My goal going into the race was 5:15:00, so I was very happy with my showing. I owe a huge thanks to Varun, who trained with me all summer, raced a fantastic race himself, and shared his car with us throughout the race weekend, and to my lovely Eileen, who was the best support crew (physical and emotional) anyone could hope for!
Exhaustive Race Report
Lead-up
I'm in the midst of a two-week break before I start a new job in mid-September, so I spent the week before the race not working, which was great in some ways, terrible in others. On the one hand, I had a lot of time to get all of my gear in order (holy cow do these events require a bunch of stuff!), but on the other I had a lot of free time for nerves to set in, and set in they did, as I had some trouble sleeping and eating well in the days before the race. It was my first race requiring a really dramatic taper and I struggled to do the taper well: all kinds of little aches and pains nagged at me throughout the week, so it took a lot of willpower to stay the course and keep resting like I knew I needed to. Luckily, I managed to resist the urge to get out for a hard run or two, and I did a lot of stretching and yoga to try to loosen up before race day.
Having done a couple of Olympic distance triathlons before this, I had a pretty good sense of what gear I needed and how to plan my race morning, so I tried not to let myself spend too much time planning and focused on having a good checklist for my gear and a good plan for the race morning. I also practiced my transitions a few times and tried out a couple of adjustments to my bike setup and some new small pieces of kit, like the nasal strips pictured below (spoiler alert—I really liked them for the race):
Here's what my transition setup looked like (though this picture is missing the running belt I attached my bib to on race day).
Race weekend
Saturday
We (Varun, Eileen, and I) left bright and early on Saturday, T-minus 1 day before the race. We made it to Santa Cruz around 10:15am, in time to check in and get our timing chips, swim caps, number stickers, and swag.
Swag bag!
After getting bagels, we set up our bikes, went for a quick spin to get acclimated and make sure our bikes were working ok, and then dropped the bikes off at the transition area. Ironman requires you to leave your bikes in the transition zone overnight to reduce the chaos of ~2,000 people trying to set up their bike stuff at the same time on race morning. I liked that system a lot—it was noticeably smoother in the morning than the other, much smaller triathlons I've done. I also really liked how the race organizers reserved extremely specific space for each bike: that limited the impact of checking in early and made sure that no one could spread their stuff out over a large space and cramp everyone else.
After dropping off the bikes, we headed down to the boardwalk for a quick 10 minutes in the water near the swim course and a 1-mile jog along West Cliff Drive on the run course.
The water felt cool but manageable in my wetsuit (despite some nerves from the open ocean showing themselves a little), and my legs felt ok on the run. It was maybe 2pm by this point, and while it was a gorgeous setting, the sun was hot, so we headed over to check into our hotels and relax for a couple of hours. Then it was time for a big pasta dinner (forgive me Varun for posting this image of you)
Ok, I guess I technically didn't have pasta
and after that, there wasn't much to do other than try to relax and get as much rest as possible for the race. I got all of my gear organized into two main bags (one to set up my transition zone and the other with all of my stuff for the swim in the morning), ate a few Rice Krispies to top up my Glycogen stores (yes, this is how doing a 70.3 makes you start talking), and then got into bed around 8:30pm to prepare for a 4am wakeup.
Race day
Finally, it was race day :) I slept reasonably well, woke up at 4 and had a bagel with peanut butter and jelly, and drank a bunch of water (should I have had more water the night before? Probably). Eileen dropped Varun and me off at the transition zone just after 5, and we got everything set up, then made our way over to the beach for the start. It was awesome to see all 2,000 or so participants headed toward the start line—I'd never been in a race with quite so many people before.
I narrowly skirted disaster during my warmup in the water. I got in and thought to myself "Wow, the water temperature has really dropped over night!" because after being perfectly comfortable in the ocean the day before, I was freezing cold and shivering. I got out of the water, told Varun and Eileen that it was way colder than the day before, and was preparing myself for a terrible, icy swim when Eileen asked me "Do you have your wetsuit unzipped on purpose?". I was so focused on the warmup that I had fastened the velcro at the top of my suit without actually zipping the zipper below! After zipping that up I was instantly much warmer and feeling a lot more excited for the day.
Swim
By this point, the minutes were ticking by faster and faster to the start of the swim. The pros got in the water at 6:50am, with the rest of us peons lining up in a huge funnel behind them for a staggered start: 4 people every 5 seconds until all 2,000 of us were in the water (you can do the math on how long that takes—it's a while!). I lined up with the group expecting to finish in the 30-33 minute range and was in the water by ~7:10am.
My swim was fine—I ended up finishing in just past 33 minutes, a bit slower than the 32 minutes I was hoping for. I felt pretty strong, but I had trouble keeping a good rhythm. The sun was bright and beautiful which made sighting difficult, and I found myself drifting to the outside edge of the pack. Eventually I settled into a better tempo and found a few landmarks to get my bearings for the second half coming back in to shore.
T1
The first transition in Santa Cruz is long, almost 4/10 of a mile from the beach to Depot Park. Luckily this gives you a lot of time to get your wetsuit sleeves off, get mentally organized for the bike, and see how your lungs and heart are feeling after switching from the horizontal body position of the swim to a vertical one. The transition was smooth. Other than briefly attempting to put my first cycling shoe on without taking my wetsuit off, everything went to plan, and I got out on the bike after 6'44", which was about what I was hoping for. I think the only real ways to speed up my transition would have been to run faster (easier said than done) or not waste time putting on socks for the bike (not really a comfortable option for my sweaty feet), so it's amazing to think that some of the pros did this transition in less than 3 minutes.
Bike
I felt smooth getting started on the bike. My heart rate was nice and low (around 140 when in previous races it's been more like 170 after T1), and my legs felt happy to get working after the upper-body focused swim.
For the bike nerds in the room, I set up my Canyon Endurace road bike with a pair of clip-on aerobars and a Redshift dual-position seatpost that lets me pop the seat up and forward into a time trial position. This is a kind of middle ground between just riding my standard bike and buying a separate time trial bike.
The setup
I definitely got a lot out of this. My average speed for the 56-mile course was 20.5mph on an average of only 180 watts of power. With my normal road bike setup, I'd be lucky to hit that speed at 200 watts.
The bike was mostly pretty smooth throughout, with one ~1-minute bathroom stop. I drank almost 60oz of sugar/salt water, with about 100g of sugar and 1/2tsp Kosher salt per 20oz. I also ate several Bobos (the thinking person's Uncrustable) which kept my stomach happier than a liquid-only diet would have. My stomach was getting a little sloshy near the end of the bike so I chilled out on the fueling a little for the last half hour.
The course along Route 1 (with the first couple of hours entirely closed to cars!) was gorgeous. I wish I had had a little more time or energy to enjoy the views as I went, but sadly I mostly had my head down trying to be aerodynamic. There was great support along the course with three big aid stations with water, gels, electrolytes, etc. plus lots of cheering.
In the week or so leading up to the race, I had gotten a lot of advice to take the bike nice and easy and save my legs for the run, so that's what I did. I think it paid off, but I do wonder a little bit if I had some more in the tank. Final time: 2:44:20. I had it on my watch as closer to 2:42, but I think it was probably just because of the locations of the timing mats versus where I hit my watch buttons.
T2
T2 was very smooth, no major issues except some teetering on one leg while removing my socks—2:36.
Run
As I started the run, I was watching out for my heart jumping up to 200+ beats per minute, which happened in the two previous races I did. What I didn't expect was that without realizing it, I was off at a really quick pace, doing my first mile at around 7:20, which was not part of the plan. I pulled off the gas significantly as we snaked down beautiful West Cliff Drive and was feeling really great for the first 5 or 6 miles of the run. There were aid stations about every 1 1/2 miles, so I was able to dump cold water and ice on myself regularly which helped a lot with the hot sun. The high for the day was 80, but the UV index was monstrous. I was really glad to be wearing my white arm sleeves and not to have to worry about sunburn on my arms.
Things started to bog down during miles 6-9, which were on a dirt/gravel/sand loop that really sucked some strength from my legs, though it was a gorgeous loop along coastal bluffs. I gave a go at chasing a faster guy who passed me around mile 10 (he also had hoop earrings so I felt like I had to give him a run for his money), but then I totally ran out of gas and stumbled along for miles 11 and 12 at closer and closer to 9-minute pace. Thankfully, an emergency gel and salt tablet kicked in for the last mile and I pulled things together enough to make it to the finish line in 1:44:28, my second fastest half marathon ever and just below my goal time of 1:45!
Finish
I finished in front of a great group of friends down from the city to watch us—thank you Brian, Aditya, Kavya, Ari, Cassie, Jon, and Allison! Eileen came running to meet me on the beach as I left the athletes only area (thank you for everything 😘) and received one of the wettest hugs of all time (sweat + pouring water on myself). Varun came in about 15 minutes later with a time of 5:13:59 (he started later than me in the swim funnel so he was chasing from the beginning). I was sad that we didn't see each other once on the course :'( He came by on the bike while I was in the bathroom, then we missed each other on the run because of the lollipop loop shape of the course. I felt pretty ok at the finish line, though I needed a lot of water.
With Eileen and her fun sign at the finish (note that she doesn't really have an iron deficiency)
With Varun at the finish
Will I do another?
Not sure. I had a great time racing, but this kind of event is so time-intensive in training and on race day that I don't feel excited to sign up for another in the near future. For now, I'll just enjoy being the de facto family record holder in the Ironman 70.3 (no one in my immediate family that I know of has done one, so I'm the champion by default). I would love to do a 70.3 relay though, so get in touch if you want to join me! I'm also excited to do another Olympic-distance tri or two soon. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!
Until next time
