2024 – Ironman 70.3 – World Championships in Taupo, NZ
Category: Racing
2024 – 70.3 Ironman – North Carolina
3 years of doing 70.3 IM NC. Such a fun race in one of my favorite coastal towns of Wilmington/Wrightsville beach. Overall, a great race. 6th this year compared to 5th from last year, but due to the fast swim current, I improved my swim 8 minutes. On the bike I had a major rookie mistake and forgot to load my nutrition bottle on the bike, which meant stopping at the first aid station and loading up as much as I could carry, giving up some time, but also really important. There my bike was 2 minutes slower than 2023. On the run, I was right around the same as previous years with a 1:28. The 5th place finisher was over 2 minutes ahead of me, so I needed quite a considerable improvement to catch up to them.
List: Helmets
A list of my past motocross helmets which I kept for nostalgic reasons 🙂
| Year | Helmet | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Bieffe | Didnt keep it 🙁 |
| 1996 | Axo RX-5 | |
| 2003 | Fox – RC Replica | Kate bought this one for me 🙂 |
| 2004 | Troy Lee Designs – Ryno Blue | |
| 2007 | Troy Lee Designs – SE-2 – Limited Edition – Doug Henry |
Race: ORAMM 2024
Another great experience racing ORAMM (Off-Road Assault on Mount Mitchell). Some of the coolest temps but also pretty slick from all the rain we have had lately. This was my slowest time over the 4 years racing this event, but due to that it was probably the most enjoyable 🙂
2024 – Ironman – Texas
Race Report
Trip wise everything went super smoothly. Arrived Wednesday, no delays or issues with baggage or car rental etc. Thursday, fun little cruise around the Airbnb in Spring and did packet pickup, and had a nice evening with the Fillnow folks. Prepped some of my bags and had a good amount of sleep. Friday got up and went to the practice swim, did a really easy few hundred yards (15 mins) and felt OK. I picked out some landmarks to sight off. I used my wetsuit and felt very normal. Had some breakfast, got to meet Natasha from NVDM as mentioned, and took it easy. Had some pasta for lunch and in the afternoon did bike drop off, and took it easy for the rest of the day. Ensured I was getting in plenty of hydration (LMNT + water) and carbs. Friday evening got to bed really early (9pm) since I knew I was going to be up at 4am, ended up waking up at 2:30 and felt ok. Found parking pretty easy, got into T1, loaded nutrition/hydration. I had a minor issues getting air into my rear disc, but got it sorted out pretty easily. Walked over to Swim start, got into my wetsuit, and started just behind the main pack. Also no real delays, issues or surprises 🙂
2024 Ironman Texas Training Review
It has been a great 16 weeks training for Ironman Texas coming up next week. One small injury (foot) from either running or pushing too hard off the wall while swimming. Some interesting stats through these training blocks:
Longest week: 18 hours
Max CTL: 116
Max TSS: 144
Cumulative Miles: 2161
3 week blocks, with 1 week rest. 2 week taper into the race.
Compared with past Ironman races, used the sauna during the last 3 weeks to get more heat adapted, and did a little more strength based workouts. (Not tracked in Intervals). I also focused more on Z2 efforts while running. The Oak Island Half Marathon got me running a lot more early season. Overall, I had some good PR’s during the last 4 months:
2024 – Oak Island Half Marathon
A fun start to the 2024 season in Oak Island. I decided to do a Half Marathon to try and accomplish a one of my goals of breaking 1:20 over the 13.1 miles. This didn’t happen today, but it was fun trying 🙂
3rd Place Overall, 2nd Place Overall Male.
Race Breakdown
I think I started out at the right pace around 2 – 3 secs faster per mile than planned, I knew going out would be down wind, and coming back was into the wind, so I tried to bank a little bit of time for that. I think I didn’t anticipate the wind being that strong. At the time 2nd place was slowly pulling a gap which also wasn’t motivating, but then seeing that I was making up some time on 3rd place kept me pushing. So mentally it was a little tough on my way back in as once I passed 3rd place I didn’t think I could catch 2nd. With about a mile or mile and a half to go, I took a look back and had dropped 3rd, I also realized I was not going to make 1:20, so backed off a little.
Reynolds Disc Wheel Cover
I could not justify spending $1500+ on a aero disc wheel, so I went with a more budget friendly alternative from the company EZGains. It is essentially a disc cover which can be attached to your existing wheel set with nearly identical benefits as a traditional disc wheel.
Below are some interesting statistics regarding disc wheels and these types of aero gains: (From EZGains website)
Tests 31st January 2023 using rim tape and a rider holding the exact position within the green lines set out from base ride.
The idea was to validate that putting one of these covers on your wheel actually makes you faster. Spoiler – it does! We had an array of quality carbon wheels of different depths with EZDisc covers for each, one aluminium box rimmed training wheel, one relatively cheap disc wheel and one relatively expensive disc wheel to play with. The test itself was with the wheels on my TT bike, with the wheels spinning, without a rider. Why? The rider adds far more drag than a wheel so unintentional movements can mask the differences the wheels make. We tested with wind speeds of 30, 40 and 50kmph, with wind angles of -15 degrees through to 15 degrees. The results were unequivocal! This graph shows lines, one per wheel, for the aerodynamic drag (the “CDA“), including the bike, against the wind angle (the “yaw”). It’s averaged across the wind speeds. The lower the CDA, the better. As you’d expect the training wheel performed worst (the top line in dark grey).Then there is a group of all the carbon wheels. Surprisingly the depths from 38 to 88 all performed similarly, with the deeper rims just outperforming the shallower ones at higher yaws. Then there is a grouping containing the real disc wheels and the disc wheels with covers. There’s very little difference between these. These distinct groupings show the disc covers improving the aerodynamics of the wheels up to the same performance as normal disc wheels! Bearing in mind these are a fraction of the cost, this is a pretty big finding! What do those figures mean in terms of racing? Plugging the differences between the wheels with and without the disc into a calculator or directly using the formula you can work it out the saving.
2023 Ironman All World Athlete
Basically a loyalty program from Ironman … but proud that I received the Gold (Top 2%) AWA Status for 2023.
2023 – Ironman 70.3 – North Carolina
A small improvement from 2022 and a (13.1 – Half Marathon) Run PR which I am pretty happy about.
Race Notes
| Plan | Actual | Learnings |
| Race Morning | 4:45AM StartBreakfast was Oats and Half BagelSmall coffee+- 500ml of Water with NuunsDrop off at T1 around 5:30amShould have arrived 20 mins earlier, got on the bus around 6:15am which felt a little rushedStood around at Swim start, ate gel. | |
| Swim | ~ 0:27:00 | 0:33:35 (7:12AM) – 59th in 40 – 44 🙁 |
| Planning to swim around 1:25 “pool” pace – 80%Probably going to be wetsuit legal (not guaranteed)Hydration/Nutrition15 min before Swim Start:Gel | Hopped in the water, pushed a couple hundred yards to get going and felt good, but after 300 – 400 yards already started having tired/sore traps. Not sure why, I felt my technique was good, sighting was no problem. Just not sure why my arms/upper body were tired. Didnt feel this the day before at the warm up swim (I didnt push the warm up swim at all). No leaking goggles for the first race ever! Yes! | Took a while to get in the water from the timing mat? +- 2 mins, does that count?Maybe I need to warm up my arms/traps before the swim – maybe use a band? Need to try this in some work outs. Maybe I didn’t put my wetsuit on properly? Usually I pull up my sleeves a lot, maybe I got distracted and didn’t do this? |
| T1 | ~ 0:05:00 | 4:44 |
| Went OK, got a thorn in my foot on the grass, was hoping it would dislodge, but had to stop and take it out. Decided to wear arm sleeves to keep me warm. Took a couple seconds to put them on, but think it was worth it being chilly. Elastics on shoes worked fine, but took a second or two to get my feet in and locked down. | ||
| Bike | ~ 02:16:00 | 02:24:06 |
| Ride @ ~ 245WHydration/NutritionHour 0 – 1:15 of bike:1 x 950ml bottle120g of carbs1000mg SodiumHour 1:15 – 2:30 of bike:1 x 950ml bottle110g of carbs1000mg SodiumBackup:Water from courseSodium from salt chews on bike (20 chews = 1000mg!)Take in Sodium Gel 20 mins before end of bike | Avg Power – 214WNormalized – 224WCDA – 0.2817FYI: 2022 – 0:02:26 – Avg – 202, Norm – 211W, CDA – 0.246Drank around 850ml Liquid + 750mg SodiumDidnt even touch my 2nd bottle, temps were cool and was not sweating much, I didnt get a single drop of sweat in my helmet visor. So this might have been enough. Also didnt feel thirsty.Did not like the Precision Hydration Sodium packs on this day.Consumed +- 220g of Carbs from Aero bottle which had around 100mg SodiumSince I was not pushing the targeted power, I think this was OKDecided not to take a gel toward the end, felt I had enough from my carb bottleUsed bottle with water in chestChallenge 1: In terms of power, was using the 240 – 245W as a target on the bike, but after around 30 minutes started getting some muscle stiffness/pain/cramping in only my left VMO? (Oblique?) in my prepping a couple days before, I noticed I had a loose cleat, adjusted it slightly and tightned them down and almost instantly knew this was the cause. I just managed the effort, and again didnt really ride to my full target power as much as a wanted to.Challenge 2: Sorry if this is TMI!!! Around Mile 30 was getting uncomfortable needing to take a bio break, and spent at least 20 mins trying to go at any downhill opportunity but its such a flat course, that didnt really happen, eventually got it down and felt great again! I think next time if it is a flat course I might just actually use a port a jon, I think I lost a lot of time free wheeling and it may have been quicker to actually just stop. It took a long time to catch back up to the folks I was riding around (Mike Roberts was one of them). Coasting was 6 minutes. Probably more than half was for this process. So maybe stopping would have been quicker. | Need new sodium source, nuun maybe? Might be easier to burp🙂Why is my cadence high? Is there a discrepancy between my trainer and bike?I feel like I can hit the needed Watts at a higher cadence. It does come with a higher HR, but I perceive it as slightly easier.Maybe I need to focus on strength this off-season. |
| T2 | ~ 0:02:00 | 0:02:40 |
| Was a little slow on the uphill dismountWas a little slow putting on my hat, glasses and run beltWindy so some of my stuff blew around and needed to put it into the bags. | ||
| Run | ~ 01:29:00 | 01:28:24 |
| 6:30 -> 6:50 PaceHydration/NutritionWater every stationGel from run bottle – 1 big sip every 3 or so miles = 25g CHO + 125mg Sodium – Need to drink at least 125ml waterBackup: Salt Tabs in Suit = 50mg Sodium – Take 2 every 3 miles + 1 Gel + at least 100ml water | Had water from most aid stationsdrank gel from flask every 2 or so milesProbably had around 60g of carbs, 250mg sodium+ 3 sodium chews = 150mg Probably the best part of this race for me. Finally hit a target/goal which I was aiming for.Just tried to stick around 6:50 avg min/mile paceMy oblique was a little tight from the ride as mentioned | |
| Total Time | ~ 04:23:00 | 04:33:28 |
| Overall, was happy with the outcome. Didnt hit my goal time again, and it seems like the biggest contributor to that was my swim ( + 4 or 5 mins) and my bike ( + 6 – 8 mins). 5th place in my AG and my goal was to try to get 3rd, that would have required another 8 mins and much closer to my goal time.A good thing: I decided to ride to power, and run to pace and effort vs worrying about my HR. First race I have done this after some feedback from you after Texas. I think this took me to a new level of trust in my fitness which is a small but important win going forward.I did get a roll down slot to NZ which was my one of my goals for this race, although I was 4 seconds in front of 6th! so got lucky 🙂 |
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