I thought I'd write this one within a week of the race but other (mostly fun) things got in the way. Plus I wasn't as excited about writing this race report as I was for Texas 70.3 since I was a bit disappointed in how I did in this race. I don't want to make this report sound negative because the race was fun and well-organized and it was also a good reason for a nice long weekend getaway with Justin :-)
So here we go:
I signed up for Ironman Santa Rosa once Justin and I were sure we were going to move to San Francisco (late last year). The race is conveniently located only about 50mi north of SF. We even made a day trip up there a few weeks before the race to pre-ride most of the bike course, which was fun and definitely helpful.
The race was on Saturday (instead of Sunday like most triathlons), so we headed over to Santa Rosa on Thursday morning. The packet pickup was offered even on Friday but I didn't want to be rushed doing all the pre-race preparations and driving the day before the race.
The race morning ended up being a bit more stressful than I would have liked. I got onto a shuttle bus from Santa Rosa to Lake Sonoma a little before 5am, which I thought was plenty early (shuttles were supposed to run from 4am to 5:30am). However, when I was getting on the bus, they were announcing that the last shuttle was leaving at 5am - weird, though the original 5:30am deadline seemed pretty tight even for me... Arriving at the lake around 5:45am, I had just enough time to get everything ready in T1 before the rolling start began at 6:40am. I also had a "minor" freakout because my front aero bottle seemed to have gone missing from my bike. It took me a good 5min (including a pretty distressed call to Justin) to realize that I left the bottle in my T1 bag the day before because I didn't want to leave it on the bike overnight. Phew. I also needed to pump up my tires. There seemed to be very few people with personal pumps in transition and most of them were in a hurry because the announcer was (incorrectly) saying that the transition would close at 6:20am (as opposed to 6:45am - he eventually corrected himself). Fortunately, there were quite a few public bike pumps and the line for them was not too crazy. Unfortunately, half of those pumps were broken - ugh. In the end, I was able to pump up my tires, get everything set up, use a portapotty and make it to the swim start with about 5min to spare. It was probably my most stressful Ironman morning up to date. (Yes, I probably should have given myself even more time...)
Swim (1:13:48)
I had high hopes for the swim. I've swam quite a bit in the past 6 months and finally learned to use my arms more than my legs (by doing lots of pulling and pulling with paddles - at first I hated it but after many weeks of pulling 4km+ workouts several times a week, I got a bit better hang of it :-p). However, I had not done much open water swimming and the few swims I had done up to that point were less than stellar. Still, I positioned myself around the 1hr predicted swim time mark at the start since that seemed like what I could theoretically do in the best case scenario. The water was quite calm, the buoys were pretty easy to see and the course was not very crowded, so pretty much ideal conditions for a fast swim. Since the course was 2 loops with a short run out of the water after the first lap, I had the option of checking my time halfway. I was considering not checking it because I suspected that seeing a bad time might put me in a bad mood. But curiosity got the best of me and I looked at my watch while running out of the water and was not very happy about the 35min I saw... Oh well, maybe I can negative split and still have an OK time. Of course, that didn't happen - my second lap was 38min... I was not exactly happy about that but it was still a long way to go and there was also a long uphill run to T1, which I might have made up some time on.
Bike (5:19:35)
The bike started with a pretty long downhill, which was a good way to prevent me from pushing ridiculous watts from the start, lol. I was familiar with most of the course, which was helpful. It was mostly flat with quite a few turns and 3 real climbs - about 8min each. I kept it steady on the flats, pushed it a bit on the climbs and took it relatively easy on the downhills. I probably pushed it a bit too hard in the first half of the race because my normalized power for the first 56mi was about 10W higher than my normalized power in the second half. I think I did especially poorly in the last 10-15 miles since I was getting a bit tired and I also ran out of my nutrition (I only took 5h worth of my sports drink and I suspect some of it got spilled out of my concentrated bottle or left on the bottom/sides of the bottle, so it might have been closer to 4.5h of nutrition). I took some Gatorade at the last aid station because I felt kind of tired and didn't want to drink only water for the last 15-20min. I was not too happy with my bike time - once again, my second half was a bit slower than my first half (2:44 vs 2:35). I was hoping for a 5:15 or better and ended up just under 5:20. Despite the fading in the second half, my normalized power was still decent (170W) - the best I've done in an Ironman up to date and my time was only a few minutes slower than what I did at Ironman Arizona 3 years ago, which was a completely flat course.
Run (3:48:29)
Going into the run, I knew I'd have to be pretty speedy (sub 3:20) if I wanted to have a shot at breaking 10h (which was one of my goals, together with getting that ever elusive Kona slot). On the other hand, I knew starting too fast was not the best strategy. I didn't push it particularly hard on the first mile but still went relatively fast (7:22), after which I settled into a pretty comfortable 7:45-7:55/mile for the next 6 miles. Mile 8 was the first mile above 8min, which I did not like but then remembered that Mary Beth told me to not overdo it in the first half of the run. So I kept it nice and moderate at around 8:15min/mile for the next 4 miles. Around mile 10-12 the all too familiar digestive issues reared their ugly head... I tried to hold off going to the porta potty for as long as it made sense but eventually decided that yes, I should go and hopefully I'll run better after. I ran OK for the next 3 miles or so but my legs were getting pretty heavy and eventually the stomach issues got too uncomfortable again, so I had to make a quick pit stop around mile 18. (Fortunately, the portapotties were exceptionally clean - maybe Ironman took my feedback to heart after Ironman Austria last year ;-)) I was trying to keep calm and keep shuffling on but honestly, I was feeling pretty dejected. I knew Kona slot was most likely out of question because I was 3rd in my age group at that moment and the two girls ahead of me had a big gap on me (Justin was kindly keeping me up to date on my standing every time I passed his volunteer station - thanks, Justin :-)). But it's never over until it's over and I definitely didn't want to repeat the disaster that was Ironman Austria last year. I still had almost 8 miles left and that would be a long way to walk! Plus, even without a Kona slot, I could at least try to stay in the podium contention. So as uncomfortable as it was to shuffle as fast as I could (without pushing it too much and risking more GI distress), I did my best to keep moving and not give into the temptation of walking and feeling sorry for myself. I tried to focus on the good weather, nice run course with a decent amount of shade, the enthusiastic volunteers and also a few celebrities cheering on along the course (like Desiree Linden and Meredith Kessler :-o) Anyway, I ran out of my own nutrition around mile 20 (3 hours worth was all that I thought I could carry), so I did the last 6 miles only on water. Not ideal but I didn't want to risk more stomach issues from Gatorade or Coke (or anything that is not even liquid), plus I was running slow and my heart rate was quite low, so I was probably running mostly on fat at that point. I eventually made it to the finish - about 30min slower than I hoped for but I still kept my 3rd place in age group. Oh, and I also ran into an old friend from my collegiate triathlon racing days - he was spectating near the finish line. Such a small world!
I finished in 10:31:09 - definitely feeling like I gave it my all but still came up short of my goals. However, as Justin rightly pointed out, despite my troubles on the run (and a pretty disappointing swim), it was still my best Ironman performance in the last 2.5 years, at least. Actually, according to the USA Triathlon score for my race, it was my best ever US race (better than IMAZ where I did 10:04?!?). Not sure I buy that but I'll take the score ;-) In any case, it was by far the best I've ever ran with stomach issues. (I did run better at Mont Tremblant 2014 and Arizona 2015 but I had hardly any GI distress in those two races).
Lessons learned:
1) I still need to figure out how to NOT have any major GI issues on the run... I don't think I ate anything weird during the race - just my sports drink Infinit (around 1000 calories worth on the bike and 500 calories on the run) and maybe 1/3 bottle of Gatorade in the last 20min of the bike. So it might have been something in the days leading up to the race or maybe it was just my body reacting to the stresses of the race. Maybe I really should have taken it a bit easier at the beginning of the run and on some parts of the bike... And I probably should be even more careful with what I eat the day before a race - obviously, I stay away from anything hard on the stomach but maybe I should go even lighter on fat and fiber. (Justin thinks pizza was not the best pre-race dinner, especially since he had his own stomach issues the next morning but I was fine until 10 miles into the run, so who knows) Something to experiment with, I guess.
2) I need a better way to carry my nutrition - both on the bike and run. I actually addressed this by now with the help of Mary Beth and I just need to keep practicing with the new setup. In summary, I got some behind the saddle water bottles for the bike and some less awkward (than ziplock bags) containers for carrying my sports drink powder for the run. Also, I'm going to try using the run special needs and possibly bike special needs in my next Ironman, so that I have enough run nutrition and at the very least a backup nutrition for the bike.
3) Peeing myself on the bike is not as hard as it seemed (sorry if I disgust anyone - it was my first time doing this, so it's kind of a big deal ;-)). It definitely saved me a few minutes compared to stopping for a portapotty at an aid station. The only downside was that most of the pee went into my left bike shoe, which I had to soak in detergent for hours afterwards.
4) Don't give up / get too frustrated / stressed if things don't go as planned. I think I actually did a pretty good job on this one but I could always be mentally tougher.
5) My swim still needs work, especially in the open water.
What's next?
Ironman Mont Tremblant (take two) on 8/19! :-) And before that a few smaller races (two local olympic distance races in June/July and Santa Rosa 70.3 at the end of July).
Last but not least, thank you to everyone who supported me during the race:
Justin and all the volunteers and spectators, including a big group from GGTC!
In preparation for the race:
thank you you to Mary Beth for the great coaching and thank you to Justin for dealing with me (and the birdies who seem to be extra misbehaved when I'm not around...) on a daily basis, plus thank you to my friends and family for all the encouragement along the way.
And post race:
Thank you again to Justin and Mary Beth for helping me make sense of the race and figure out what to do next; and of course thank you again to all my friends and family for all the support!
