The week leading into this race was totally crazy with Lindsay not sure if she was going to race because her sister hadn’t had her baby yet. Well all the stars aligned and the timing was perfect. Meghan had the baby which is now no longer called “Spawn” but Bridget and Lindsay was able to see Bridget and still do the race. We flew out together on Friday and crashed with some GMM tri friends from Vermont while down there which made it a lot more fun.
Race morning
I had my QT2 systems breakfast at around 4:20 for the 7:20 start. Applesauce, banana, bottle sport drink, and scoop of whey protein and some Starbucks. I was ready to rock. This race was huge with a transition area that seemed to be about a half mile long …crazy. My wave was second to last ---I wasn’t too happy about that as I hate going late like that mostly because you don’t really know where your competitors are. This was a non wetsuit swim as well. The gun goes off and I quickly found a nice set of feet to sit on. I was moving pretty good and tried to pass but I couldn’t get past him so I just stayed on his feet. I actually felt very comfortable probably too comfortable but I kept trying to see if I could get past him and I couldn’t so I knew I was moving at a good pace. I got out of the water in around 33 minutes which is way slower than my PR but I had anticipated this and knew the swim times would be slower on the day with out the wetsuit. I later realized that it really was a solid swim relative to my competitors. I used the new Xterra velocity speed suit----thanks Xterra!!!
I went as fast as I could through transition and saw lots of bikes still on my rack (all people who started in my wave or ahead of me) which is a good sign.
Bike
I was absolutely hammering the bike and feeling great, I’d look down and be going 26 mph and feeling super comfortable. I was flying. It was a constant stream of bikers out on the road and I was passing people for the whole 56. There was only one guy that I yo yo’d with for a lot of the bike who started in my wave and went on to be second in my age group and one of the top amateurs. I hit the 25 mile mark in 59:xx. Booyah!!!! I was cranking. I held a little over 25 mph avg speed until around 50 miles or so when I started getting a cramp in my left quad. The only mistake I made on the day was not drinking the 4.5 bottles recommended and only drank 3. Even though felt like I was drinking constantly –I just need to drink more (majority of my electrolytes come through my sport drink). The last 5-6 miles I had to back off because of my quad so I lost a bit of time the last few miles. I got off the bike in around 2:19 and my bike was the only one on the rack---that’s really cool.
Run
It was already crazy hot and humid. My quad was locking up/cramping pretty bad, I kneeled down to try and get it to release. I took 2 salt tabs (thermotabs) and kept saying “release” while I was running through the locked up quad---definitely some pain going on here. HTFU was repeated several times. In fact the whole run needed a pretty constant stream of HTFU’s because it was just brutal. No shade, 90 degrees, humid, lots of people were walking. After the first mile my quad released and I tried to get the tempo up. I hit the first few miles in 6:30-6:40 then struggled to hold 7s. The heat and the grass just made it hard to really stay light and fast. Half the course was on grass in kind of open field area that we did an out and back part of 3 loops. It was brutal. I got into bike racer mentality and decided that most people were suffering the most on the grass section so this was the section I would work the hardest. I really really suffered through those sections and then cruised the pavement section and went back to pushing the grass section each lap. Apparently I caught more people overall and in my age group on the run---that’s very cool as I usually lose a few spots on the run. Run times were slow with the heat and grass. I was around 1:34.
Finish was super satisfying, there really is nothing like finishing a long race after putting in your best effort. It was the kind of effort that I felt like if someone went faster than me on the day then my hat goes off to them because I was hammering and racing strong. I came in at 4:31. It wasn’t the time I was hoping for or near my PR but relative to my competitors it was solid.
I ended up 4th in my age group out of 254 and 30th overall out of around 2000. I was also 16th amateur. I am definitely happy with this result. I’ve never finished this far up at a big M-dot race. I want to thank my coach Jesse at QT2 systems for helping get this strong.
Lindsay also had a solid day in her second half ironman ever. She was 12th in her age group out of 86.
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