IM 70.3 World Championship Race Report

Sometimes it’s just not your day. I’ll be the first to admit that the focus of the season was never Las Vegas. Kona was and still remains the focus. The purpose of racing the IM 70.3 WC was simply as a tune-up race in preparation for Kona. But, who doesn’t want to show up to a World Championship and do well? So I probably came in with higher expectations than I should have. I’m much better at the Ironman distance compared to the 70.3 distance or at least that is my opinion. So enough about my ramblings, here is what happened.

Claudia and I flew into Las Vegas on Thursday night (well it was actually Friday morning thanks to a  ~2hr delay in Vancouver…there was lightning within the vicinity of the airport so the ground crew couldn’t operate).  I did athlete check-in Friday morning and then we spent a couple hours in the afternoon at Lake Mead National Park. We both went for a swim and then I attempted to bike. After about 15 minutes of riding and a second flat on my disc, that was the end of my workout. A generous couple from Argentina graciously drove me back to the swim area. Friday night we attended the athlete welcome dinner. The food was great, the entertainment very good, but the speeches part was long, boring and not very informative.

Saturday morning we headed out to Lake Las Vegas for the practice swim and then I did a bike and short run. We spent the morning back at Grandview and then headed out in the afternoon to do bike and gear check-in.

Race morning started early. I was up at 0330hrs for breakfast (Panera bagel, a couple eggs, coffee, and a glass of orange juice). We headed to Lake Las Vegas for the race start and quickly realized it was going to be a very wet affair. 

The race started at 0630 (Pro Men) and my wave was the 8^th wave at 0704hrs. I haven’t managed to get a lot of swimming in these last couple weeks so I wasn’t quite sure how that would work out. With 188 men in the M30-34 wave, I thought the start might be a little congested, but it actually spread out very nicely though I was in and out of contact for most of the swim. What didn’t help matters is we started to pass athletes from earlier waves. Overall not a bad non-wetsuit swim at 33:44 but it’d be nice to get that down to 30 or less.

On to the bike. Well, first through transition, which was effectively a mud pit thanks to all the rain. The ramp up and out of transition was congested… surely they could have made it wider. I was happy to be on the bike and starting to put out solid power numbers when suddenly I had no power and a clicking noise from my chain. I ignored the power and tried to figure out what was happening. After a couple minutes I stopped and thankfully it was only the magnet for my power meter. It was attached to the chain and the rear derailleur. I pulled it off and voila the noise disappeared. Ok, so no power or cadence for the ride…great. Actually I wasn’t too worried. I figured I would ride at a moderate intensity (or what I thought my HIM intensity is) for the first half and then pick it up for second half. The roads were wet and it continued to rain, but thankfully due to the warm weather the wet ride was not cold. (Clearly, I wasn’t in Canada – when it rains at a triathlon in Canada you freeze.) Nothing too exciting happened on the bike and I was able to pick the pace up after about 20miles though it probably dropped off for the last 5-6miles. I was happy to be off the bike in 2:36:40, but a little disappointed. I was expecting a time split closer to 2:30 as the elevation gain was similar to St George. 

On the Run (photo credit: Martin Lacasse)

 

And then the run. The run course is a 3 loop course and essentially you are either going up or going down – there isn’t anything flat about it. Going in I figured I should be able to run a low 1:2X. Coming off the bike I felt pretty good and the legs felt strong. However, I felt flat. The first couple kilometers are downhill and felt very easy. However, as soon as I started the uphill portion of the first loop I realized it was going to be tough. To race well I think you really need to be mentally engaged and be able to push yourself into the hurt locker – you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I was just mentally not there today. I tried, and despite the best encouragement from my wife I couldn’t run like I normally do. A 1:26:04 on this run course is not bad, but clearly not at my normal standard.

I was a bit disappointed with a 4:43:57, though this is a tough course and in my opinion definitely harder than St George. I was hoping to finish in a similar time to St George (just below 4:30) but that was clearly not in the cards. I was 47/188 in the M30-34 and 241 overall (out of ~2100 athletes including professionals).