Another Ironman 70.3 race under my belt and my best overall finish to date! It was slightly disappointing that the swim was cancelled due to strong currents, but if its the same for everyone, that works for me 🙂
The race venue, people and weather were perfect. Aside from my very first 70.3 in Augusta, I think this has been my favorite. This was probably influenced by some personal bests on all fronts, however, with not having a swim, I think that could have been expected to a small extent.
The weekend started by taking a beautiful drive up to Chattanooga through the mountains on Thursday, I left early so I could get work in once I arrived and avoid some traffic. The drive alone is worth the trip, along the beautiful Nantahala river through towns like Asheville and Bryson City.
It was an easy day workout wise, and on the drive up received the email notifying everyone the swim was cancelled due to the excessive current. I stuck with my original plan to swim in the Chickamauga dam – as we don’t get too many opportunities to swim in open water around Charlotte, got to use them 🙂 I also checked out the swim start area to familiarize myself with the area in the event I come back next year 😉
The Saturday plan was to get up early, get in a good ride (~ 1 hour) and run some of the course for 20 odd minutes, then pickup Wes from the Airport. Riding around downtown Chattanooga was a nice change to Belmont, some great little sights to check out and unfortunately picked up a flat tire by a nail on the side of the road … 🙁 Luckily the nail stayed in the tire (tubeless) and I was able to finish my ride. our bikes into transition and getting some dinner from a pizza place (Lupos)
Sunday was race morning and with no swim, we were able to have a nice late start – getting up for breakfast around 5:30am. The hotel location was once of the best I have ever had and we were less than 200 yards from the race venue and start. After breakfast we headed out around 6:45am and prepped our bikes for the 7:40 time trial start. Getting out on the bike was quite easy, while there were lots of people in transition, it was quite orderly and I left with my planned group. I pushed the bike pretty hard for the first hour passing lots of people, but my common sense caught up with me and I backed it off just a little knowing it was going to not be good if I kept going around 90% for the entire ride. In the end I rode around 2:12 which is my PR for 56 miles. Thats right around 25mph.
Getting out on the run was a reasonable 2 minutes, but my Alphaflys are very slow to put on 🙁 My plan to start the run was not to push the first climb (+- 0.5 miles of 4 – 5 % grade) and keep my HR and effort in check and pending I pull that off, really push the last 6 miles to the finish. I ran down several people including some of the pros which left before us, this made the run motivating and probably the most well managed and enjoyable half marathon for me. Especially considering the elevation gain of around 600ft makes this a “hilly” ish run.
In the end I finished 3rd in my 45-49 Age Group, which met my goal of being on the podium, my best finish to date, and I dont think not having a swim hurt or helped me. Overall, I think I would have had a similar result.
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