Deuceman Triathlon Recap

Background:

Even though this race has been on my radar since early April when PTO told us they'll be supporting it, I wanted to wait until after St George before committing to more racing. Justin was originally interested in coming along but after the hot weather and altitude at St George, he felt a bit worn down, so decided to pass on more hot weather at even higher altitude ;-) (I don't blame him!) I was a bit hesitant to travel to Show Low by myself (2-hour flight to Phoenix + 3h drive up into the mountains), even though I felt relatively confident about flying with the bike (for the first time without Justin). After thinking it through a bit more, I decided it would be a good experience for me to travel to a race by myself and also to get one more race in before Ironman Coeur D'Alene at the end of June. 

Travel:

Justin was kind enough to rent a zipcar and drive me to the airport at 4:30am on Thursday for my 7am flight. I arrived in Phoenix a bit after 9am and was greeted by 90+ degree temperatures (probably 100+ by the time I started the 3-hour drive to Show Low). Thankfully, Show Low was going to be about 20 degrees cooler since it sits at 6,300ft above sea level but even 80-90 degree high temperatures feel very hot for someone from San Francisco where the temperatures rarely rise above 70. The drive was very scenic - highly recommend! (Funnily, to get out of Phoenix / Tempe, I drove on the Beeline Hwy part of IMAZ course - a nice quick trip down the memory lane :-)) I got to Show Low with about 30min to spare before I could check into my hotel, which was just enough time to stop by a bike shop to get my tires inflated, so I could do a little ride or two before the race. I checked into the hotel, got groceries (conveniently walking distance from the hotel), built the bike and went for a very short ride. Everything went relatively well other than what felt like I pulled something in my knee while I was lugging the bike case up the stairs (the hotel had 2 floors but no elevator). I iced the knee for a bit and hoped for the best. Another not so great thing was that the internet in my room was very flaky and I had no data in the town or anywhere nearby. It was both annoying and worrisome since at the very least I wanted to download offline maps for the area, so that I could pre-drive the bike course the next day. Fortunately, I found a decent wifi closer to the hotel office and was able to download my maps and talk to Justin in the evening. And, miraculously, the next morning and thereafter, I had good wifi even in my room.

Day before the race:

A little unconventionally, I started my day with a ride (as opposed to a run) - mainly because I wanted to do a little run on the race course later (around Fool Hollow Lake). My hotel was only a few miles from the lake / race start, so I could easily ride the first and last few miles of the bike course right from my doorstep. I actually drove the first ~15 miles of the bike course backwards on my drive into the town on Thursday and was already a bit concerned since it was a major road with 55-65mph speed limit (and most cars/trucks going 70+ mph), with only one lane in each direction (except for some brief sections with a second lane for passing) and not much of a shoulder. My little pre-ride confirmed my fears - I couldn't really ride in the shoulder (due to debris and a rumble strip) and many of the cars and semi-trucks passing me did not give me much more than a foot or two of space... Fortunately, I only stayed on this road for a few miles, then looped back on a smaller and much nicer road (also part of the course). 

Next up was checking out the Fool Hollow Lake and do a little run and swim. 

The run ended up being slightly longer than I planned but was very nice - on a trail the whole way. Since the air temperature was well into 80s by the time I finished my run, I decided to do my short pre-race dip without a wetsuit. (Also because I saw no one swimming in that lake in a wetsuit - most of the people were kayaking and a few were hanging out in the water right next to the shore.) It felt a little strange that this whole time I saw pretty much no one who looked like they might be doing a triathlon race on the weekend. No cyclists on the bike course (though I saw one or two near the lake), no one swimming in the lake and no one running near the lake. Maybe everyone did their workouts early in the morning to avoid the heat? Or maybe because this was a pretty small, more casual event than my usual Ironman branded races. 

After my 12min dip in the 64F lake, I felt quite refreshed and felt ready to pre-drive the whole bike course. Once again, I was a bit horrified by the roads we were going to ride on the next day. Don't get me wrong - the roads themselves were great - nice rolling hills and pretty scenery but most of them were major roads with no good shoulder and 65mph speed limit... I was just hoping that there wouldn't be much traffic early on Saturday morning. 

I picked up my packet right before the athlete briefing at 4pm. The pro meeting (after the general meeting) took a bit longer than I expected - mostly because everyone was confused about the "staggering rule", LOL (next morning we learned that USAT does not have a staggering rule any more, so we didn't need to worry about pulling into a high-speed traffic to avoid penalties ;-)) As a side note, the official pro start list and prize money distribution was sent out only on Thursday, so up till then I had no idea who I was racing and if I had any chance of taking home a little paycheck (not that the knowledge of either of those is very crucial for me at this point but it's always nice to know). From the Thursday email, it looked like there would be 5 women and 6 men on the start line - with prize money going down to 5th. (In the end, it was 5 women and 4 men.) So all I had to do to get a paycheck was to finish, which was a bit more pressure than in my last race where a paycheck was very unlikely. Looking at the start list, I thought I might have a chance at the podium and maybe at a result good enough for re-qualifying for my pro card (finishing within 8% of the winner). Even with all of this on the line, I didn't feel too nervous - after all, as long as I did my best, that was a win in my book :-)

Race morning:

The start was set to be 5:55am for the men, 5:56am for us and 6:00am rolling start for the AG field. The sunrise was around 5am and it was surprisingly light and warm (low 70s?) as I was setting up my transition around 5:30am. The 9 of us had our own transition (separate from the AG 70.3 race and the olympic distance race) - it was definitely the most spacious transition that I've seen - everyone had at least 10ft on each side of their bike :-D 

Swim (35:36):

Got only a 2-4 minute warmup in - in retrospect, I probably should have gone down to the swim start earlier to get at least 5-8 minutes of swimming in... I tried to do my best to be focused at the start and swim as hard as possible but barely 30 seconds in, it was clear I got dropped yet again... I continued swimming hard, trying to minimize the time lost. The course was even more lonely than St George since the age group field was pretty small and despite my rather slow swim, only a handful of swimmers caught up with me. I had no idea how far behind the other women I was - I guessed 5-6min to the main pack of 3 and up to 10min behind Dede. (It actually ended up being only 4min to the main pack and 6min to Dede - I guess the course was slow for everyone.) Even though I very much expected that my bike would be the last one in transition, it was still a bit depressing sight...

Bike (2:32:22 - 57.3mi / 22.6mph):

The first mile of the bike had big cracks in the road about every 10 meters. I really didn't want my race to end with a flat tire or worse, so I took it pretty slowly on this section. Once on the main road, I got to work. Disappointingly, my power meter was dead, so I had to gauge my effort by feel and heart rate. (Not that I'm a slave to the powermeter during races but I like to glance at it from time to time to make sure I'm within a certain range... And I definitely like to look at it after a race.) I was in a pretty negative headspace for the first 45min of the bike. The other women were nowhere to be seen and getting passed by a handful of age group men made me feel extra slow. Plus, the first 15 miles of the course had more uphill than downhill, so I was pretty slow in absolute terms as well. Once I turned off the main road, the slight downhill started and I was "flying" at over 25mph for at least 15 miles, which put me in a better mood :-D (I also liked the smaller road much better than the main road, even though the pavement was a bit rough.) Around mile 35, I finally moved to 4th place, which was encouraging. A few miles later, just as I was considering that maybe I should try riding in the shoulder since the traffic was definitely increasing and some of the drivers were passing us a bit close, I saw another competitor (Summer) walking her bike in the shoulder (she got a flat - most likely from the debris in the shoulder). I definitely didn't want to get a flat, so I continued riding just outside of the shoulder and hoped that no other car would pass me close enough for it to be dangerous (rather than just annoying and potentially dangerous). Fortunately, it was only a few miles until we once again turned off from the main road onto a much nicer, smaller road and joined the Olympic distance athletes on their out-and-back course. It was quite refreshing to have people to pass on this section :-D Don't get me wrong - I much prefer the empty course experience as a pro to the often overcrowded course experience as an age group athlete at big Ironman-branded races. But this race was pretty small to start with, so having some company for a few miles felt nice. 

Run (1:39:20):

Even though I felt very sorry and a bit disappointed about Summer getting a flat (and eventually DNFing), I also felt pretty excited that I was now in 3rd place. I still had no idea how far back I was from Dede and Marj. Unlike the bike course (which was a single loop with not out-and-backs for us), the run was 2 loops with 3 significant out-and-backs, so I got a pretty good look at my competition several times. At mile 3, the gap looked pretty big (at least 5min to Marj and much more to Dede). The course definitely had more dirt / off-road sections than I expected (40-50% as opposed to 25-30%) and some of the rolling hills were more significant than I thought. Even though I wasn't running very fast (and slowed down slightly in the second lap), I was still doing pretty well. Around mile 8, I could see Marj was only about quarter mile ahead of me. The possibility of catching her gave me a bit of a boost. At mile 10, I made the pass. Marj tried to hang on for about half a mile but after that, the gap gradually widened. I still ran scared and pushed extra hard all the way till the end.

I was very happy to cross the finish line in 2nd (in 4:52:16) - less than 5min behind Dede and with the fastest female run split by almost 8 minutes. Marj was less than 2 minutes behind me, so it was an exciting race all the way to the end :-) On top of that, 2nd place came with prize money high enough to more than cover my travel expenses, which was very nice. But more importantly, my result was good enough to meet the current criteria for pro card re-qualification :-) 

Next up: Ironman Coeur D'Alene!

P.S. I'm sorry if my description of the bike course sounds pretty negative. I think the roads were mostly very nice - just the speed limits and some of the drivers were a bit scary. On the other hand, if you are ever in the area and want to ride, there seems to be a lot of very nice mountain biking trails (I got a little taste of them post race and loved it). You can get more info about these at one of the local bike shops and also rent a bike if needed (which is what I did).

St George 70.3 Recap

This was my second time doing this race. I loved the location the first time around, even though my race was a bit subpar in 2019 - mainly because my front brake was rubbing for more than half of the bike... I also made the trip alone that year and flew back right after the race (Saturday evening), so I didn't get to explore any of the many cool state and national parks nearby. 

I'm very happy that Justin was able to make the trip with me this time and that we took an extra day after the race to do some hiking. The race went a bit better too. Plus I got to practice packing and unpacking the bike by myself twice, which was very important if I ever want to fly to a race by myself (without using Tribike Transport). Lastly, we stayed in a rather cozy trailer (in our Airbnb host's yard in a very safe neighborhood), which was a fun experience by itself (and made me more aware of our water consumption when showering, washing dishes etc :-D)

Pre-race: 

Since we stayed only about 3 miles from transition, I decided to not go to T2 on race morning (which would involve a 25min drive there and then a 25min shuttle ride back to T1). Instead, Justin dropped me off near the entrance to the Sand Hollow Park, which meant that we only had to wake up at 4am instead of 3am :-D The only downside of not going to T2 in the morning was that my run sports drink was not mixed in my handheld bottle and I had to mix it in during the race. But that probably only took 10-15 seconds, so it was still worth it for this race since realistically, I was not exactly contending for the prize money.  

Justin drove straight to St George after he dropped me off, which worked out well since he had enough time to spectate at nice locations both on the bike and run + to get some extra trail running in as well. (Our original plan was for him to spectate the swim and possibly the bike turnaround on Sand Hollow Road while being parked at the swim spectator parking lot about a mile from the transition (and maybe 2 miles from the turnaround). But we were worried that driving to St George after the bike was well under way might take forever (due to road closures). I think we made the right decision. Spectating the swim might have been nice but spectating the bike near Snow Canyon and the run at Red Hills Pkwy near the fork for the 2 out-and-backs was much better :-))

Once in transition, all the pre-race tasks went pretty smoothly. We (the pros) were fortunate to be able to warm up in the water for about 10 minutes before our start. The AG athletes were not allowed to warm up - I think this was due to covid protocols (having to re-mask everyone after they were done with warmup + possibly not being able to maintain physical distancing if all ~3000 athletes wanted to do a swim warmup at about the same time?) Still, I think everyone should have gotten a time / place to warmup, especially with the relatively cold water temperature (low 60s). Even if it might not have been feasible near the swim start/finish, it could have been done at the beach where people swam the day before (about 100m to the right of the swim exit) and maybe have separate warmup time windows for people of different speeds / order in the rolling start.

Swim (34:14):

I might have not started as hard / aggressive as I should have and as a result I found myself swimming all by myself. I did my best to still put in a good effort and not get too discouraged. One of my "goals" for the race was to not get caught in the water by the fastest AG swimmers (since I had an 8min head start) but I started getting passed with a few 100m to go... Oh well - at least my bike was not the last one in T1. (I think I was 31st out of 34, including one swim DNF)

T1 (4:14):

The run from the water is pretty long - not because the transition is far away from the water but because everyone needs to run the length of the transition twice and with a 3500 bike capacity, it was pretty long :-D I also fumbled a bit with the top of my trisuit, which I didn't have all the way up for the swim since it feels a bit too restrictive in the shoulders. I probably only lost a few seconds trying to zip the top up while running (unsuccessfully - in the future I should deal with the zipper only once I'm at my bike) but mostly, I think I was just slow doing the usual T1 stuff: taking off the wetsuit and putting on helmet and shoes. Hopefully that will improve with more racing. For comparison, my T1 in 2019 was about a minute faster than this year.

Bike (2:34:46):

The bike course was slightly modified from 2 years ago. It was still about the same distance and elevation or maybe slightly higher in both (by 0.8mi and 170ft respectively according to my watch). Based on my first few 5-mile splits, I thought I was riding relatively well. However, I did not really catch anyone who didn't have a mechanical or obviously had a bad day until I started climbing up Snow Canyon. I suspected this was because of my bigger deficit to the 29-30min swim pack (My swim was 2min slower than in 2019 - probably also because 2 years ago I was on someone else's feet for the whole swim, which makes a significant difference...). Anyway, I was happy to move up 3 places in the last 10 miles of the bike. It was also nice to see Justin at mile 40 :-) Overall, it was a good ride - 9min faster than 2 years ago. The only negative was that my power meter was dropping out a lot, so the average power was a complete bogus.

T2 (3:06):

I think this went a bit better than T1, even though I was still a bit (30 seconds) slower than in 2019.

Run (1:38:05):

I felt like I was running pretty slow for the first mile, but looking back at the data, maybe it was just my watch misreporting the first split... After 2 miles or so, I got into my groove and ran pretty strong. I passed 2 women in the first 6 miles but then got passed by 2 other women between mile 8 and 9. I thought I would try to pick up my pace a bit in the last 2-3 miles (which were all downhill) but then I started having some mild hip and shin pain (which was probably nothing but you never know...), so I decided to ease off a bit, which was the smart thing to do.  My run time ended up being about 90 seconds slower than 2 years ago but in hotter conditions this time around.

Total time: 4:54:23 - 24th out of 34 pro women, about 3min faster than in 2019 and definitely a bit more competitive compared to everyone else.

It was great to see Justin on the course and at the finish and to have his company before and after the race. It was also fun to explore Snow Canyon on Sunday - I had no idea that we could climb up many of those orange rocks and also descend down into a few lava tubes. Definitely worth a visit, especially if you have only half a day or so. If we have more than a day in the future, we would love to check out Zion National Park and/or hike one of those 10,000ft+ mountains that seem to be pretty close by!

2019 Season Recap

2019 was my longest and most intense triathlon season up to date. The racing season itself spanned 8 months (from Oceanside 70.3 in early April to Indian Wells 70.3 in early December) but the training began in early January and was more intense than ever before (both in terms of volume and intensity). I was consistently clocking in 20-25h training weeks during winter and early spring (including about 7h of bike commuting a week, so I guess real training was 15-20 hours per week at that point). For comparison, in 2018, my winter and early spring training was closer to 15-20h/week (including bike commuting).

By the end of February, I felt pretty strong and fit and I couldn't wait to race. I briefly considered doing a half Ironman in Mexico in March but then decided that the travel would be too complicated/scary, especially without Justin, so I waited "all the way" until early April to toe the line of my first pro triathlon race. You can read more about that experience in my previous post. In summary, it was quite eye-opening. Even without the slightly disastrous swim, it showed me that both my bike and run were nothing special in the pro category (actually, below average).

I signed up for St George 70.3 only a few days after Oceanside, mostly because I wanted to have another go at a swim in the pro field (in a bit easier open water conditions). Before Oceanside I did not seriously consider this race because Justin would not be able to come along. However, I figured that I'd have to get used to going to a fair number of races by myself eventually, so I might as well do it at a race that was relatively low-key (for me) and wasn't too hard to travel to. To make the trip as easy as possible for myself, I send my bike over with Tribike Transport and flew to Las Vegas, from which it was only a 2-hour (very scenic!) drive to St George.

The race didn't go as well as I hoped for. I did have a decent swim (32:11 and I came out of the water with two other women), but it was only good for 26th place out of 30 starters. Unfortunately, I had some mechanical issues with my bike on race morning and despite trying to fix them before the start, my fix didn't really work and my front brake ended up rubbing on my wheel for the first 30 miles of the bike. (I did stop after the 30 miles and once again re-centered the brake - the main reason I stopped at that point was that I was being passed by way more people that I would have expected.) My bike ended up being the 4th slowest among the pro women (2:43:31) and I dropped back by one place by the end of it - definitely not ideal or representative of my abilities. The run went a bit better, especially considering I had been dealing with a bit of a knee/hamstring pain for a few weeks at that point. The run was also pretty hilly (over 1000ft of climbing), so my time of 1:36:42 was not too bad (for me). I even moved up two places, which has not been that common on the run this year. In the end I finished 25th and about 50min behind the female winner.

After St George, my knee/hamstring kept bothering me and as a result I didn't get to do as much run training as I would have liked to leading into Ironman Boulder. In fact, my longest run during the 6 weeks prior to the race was 90min (7 days out of the race). I did a fair amount of aqua-jogging, which must have helped to maintain some running fitness. Plus, my swim and bike training had gone pretty well. Even though I was apprehensive about the running portion of the race, I did my best to go in with open mind, do my best at the swim and bike and deal with the run as it comes. The race started with a pretty good swim (1:07:23, which was my second best Ironman swim at that point). I swam with two other women and came out of the water in 10th place (out of 11 but right behind 8th and 9th). The bike started OK and actually got better in the second half (I felt better, though my power stayed about the same throughout, which was pretty good since it usually drops as the race goes on). Even though the course ended up being 2 miles short, I was very happy to finish the bike in under 5 hours (4:56:38), which was an 11 minute Ironman bike PR for me. I knew I passed quite a few women but I was still shocked when I arrived in T2 in 4th place - much better than I expected. I suspected I would get passed back on the run and that the last 10-15 miles might be very hard. By mile 16, I dropped to 7th place but did my best to keep moving as fast as possible (about 9min/mile for the last 6 miles, LOL). It definitely helped that I didn't get any stomach issues (first time ever in an Ironman - I suspect it was mostly because of the cooler weather). For a while, it also looked like I might have been able to finish in under 10 hours (which would have been a big deal for me since my best Ironman finish up to that point was 10:04). In the end, the run course was almost half a mile too long, so I narrowly missed the 10-hour mark (with a 10:00:14). But because one of my competitors dropped out in the last 5 miles, I actually came in 6th and earned my first prize money, so that was very exciting :-)

Encouraged by my result in Boulder, I thought I had a decent chance of doing well at Ironman Canada 7 weeks later, especially if I put in more run training. The training went quite well, so I felt pretty confident going into Whistler, despite having to switch to using my old time trial bike only a week before the race. (The new bike that I had been riding since the beginning of the year had a major mechanical issue that couldn't be fixed before the race) Ironman Canada was also the first Ironman (out of 11 up till that point) that I traveled to alone. I once again shipped my bike with TriBike Transport, so the travel itself (2h flight plus 2h drive) was not too bad. Also, Whistler was pretty easy to get around but still, I definitely missed having Justin around. The race had a pretty competitive field (it was a female pro only race and it paid 10 deep). I had a very good swim (1:03:50 - 2.5min PR) and got out of the water in 12th (out of 16), together with 10th and 11th. I rode quite strong, at least based on my power, which was the highest up to date. My bike split was not too shabby either (8th fastest among the women) but it only moved me up 2 places. On top of everything, my hamstring/glute started hurting the last hour of the bike - probably because I was not used to riding my old bike any more. Fortunately, whatever caused the pain on the bike was not an issue during the run, though it still took a few weeks post-race for the pain to go away during cycling. I was not too happy with coming to T2 in 10th since I suspected that a few of the women behind me were going to outrun me. I ran very strong for the first 10 miles (maybe a bit too hard), after which I got passed. This definitely discouraged me and combined with some stomach issues and side stitches, things unraveled pretty quickly. By the end of the race, I dropped 3 more places and finished 14th (with the slowest run out of the pro women). Needless to say, I was quite disappointed.

I didn't have any more race plans immediately after Canada. I went back and forth contemplating Ironman Wisconsin and Ironman Chattanooga but in the end I didn't feel mentally ready to do another Ironman  (Wisconsin) only 6 weeks after Canada and because of some more mechanical issues with my bike, I scrapped Chattanooga too. I reluctantly signed up for Santa Cruz 70.3. "Reluctantly" because I was a bit worried about the ocean swim and also because based on my experience at Oceanside and St George, I felt like I was way too slow to be any good at a 70.3 distance. Fortunately, Santa Cruz is only 90min drive from San Francisco, so I was able to do two practice swims on the race course (as well as pre-run the run course) during the month preceding the race. The race went pretty well. Even though I once again didn't make the 29-minute swim pack (probably mainly because I didn't handle some minor surf at the start in the best possible way), I had a pretty strong swim by myself (31:04, which was also a small PR, I think). Strangely, both my power meter and my heart rate monitor decided not to connect to my watch during the race, so I had to do the bike and run by feel only. The bike was OK (very windy), though nothing special. I only moved up 2 places (from 13th to 11th out of 14 starters). The run went very well (1:32:29, which was 5th fastest in the pro field) and I surprised myself by finishing 7th, which was only one place (and a bit over 2 minutes) away from prize money. Also, my overall time of 4:42:02 was my second fastest 70.3 time up till then.

I wanted to do at least one more triathlon race between Santa Cruz (on 9/8) and Ironman Arizona (11/24), ideally a half Ironman. I briefly considered Waco 70.3 in Texas but then decided against it since it would have required a bit too much time without my bike if I used TriBike Transport and I would have to travel by myself once again. Instead, Justin and I decided to do a local almost-70.3 distance race near Las Vegas called Las Vegas Long Course Triathlon (not exactly "local" for us but drivable). Since we were planning to drive to Ironman Arizona in the fall (and possibly also to Indian Wells 70.3), we thought driving to Vegas would be a good rehearsal for that too :-D We split the 10h drive across 2 days in each direction, which worked out pretty well. The race was a refreshing change from my other races this year. It was a very small field (11 women and 23 men) but since we did 2 loops on both the bike and run and shared the course with sprint and olympic distance races going on at about the same time, the course was reasonably busy, though definitely NOT over-crowded. Sadly, Justin and I started in different waves, so I was not able to swim on Justin's feet, which was our original plan. I wasn't able to find a good set of feet in my wave, so I swam by myself in a pretty average time of 33:12. Surprisingly, this was enough to be second female out of the water (though the first female was almost 6 minutes ahead) The bike was hilly (over 3000ft across 48.5mi) and windy (at several points, I wished I had a shallower front wheel since the cross-winds were making me pretty uncomfortable). My power ended up being pretty low (about 20-30W lower than what I've been doing at 70.3s lately) but I still somehow ended up with fastest female bike split and second fastest bike overall (behind Justin), so I guess it wasn't /that/ bad. Still, it took me almost the entire bike leg to make up for my deficit after the swim. The run was two out and backs (uphill out, downhill back) with about 5 miles total on a loose gravel road, so a pretty challenging course as well. When I ran into Justin on the first loop, it looked like he was at least 2 miles ahead of me but was already struggling a little. He greeted me with "you are going to catch me". I thought "no way". But since he already gave me the idea and I was putting more and more time into the rest of the female field at every turnaround, catching Justin ended up being my next goal ;-) In the end I crossed the finish line 30 seconds behind Justin but since his wave started 4 minutes before my wave, I beat him by 3.5 minutes and won the race. (Justin still finished first man overall, so it was a good day for both of us :-))

After Las Vegas, I did 3 more weeks of pretty intense training before I started feeling a bit worn down. I'm still not sure if it was more mental or at least partially physical but in the end I had to take a few days very easy to recompose myself to hopefully finish the season. Besides Ironman Arizona, I also planned to do Mt Tam Trail Half Marathon and possibly the Berkeley Half Marathon (as a training run). (I signed up for both Berkeley and Mt Tam last year but they got canceled in 2018 because of bad air quality caused by wild fires, so I deferred my entries to this year instead.) I'm happy to report that I did both races and ended up winning the Mt Tam Trail Half Marathon (for women) by a significant margin. It was the first trail race I did in California and first mountainous trail race ever (around 3000ft of climbing). It was quite tough in the second half (I did walk a bit on some of the uphills) but overall quite fun, so I might do more trail races next year!

The race week of Ironman Arizona was rougher than I thought it would be. I didn't feel too great during many of the race week workouts and I didn't feel like racing. I usually do get moderately bad pre-race jitters but this felt significantly worse than normal. The 12-hour drive to the race did not help. Fortunately, once we got to Tempe and I saw and talked to some familiar faces, my mood improved and I was more or less ready to give it my best and see what comes out of it. I didn't have the best swim start, mostly because I was tinkering with my watch right up to the start. I obviously missed the ~60min swim pack but a few minutes into the race I noticed that there were 2 women about 25m ahead of me. As far as I could tell, I was all by myself, which was not ideal. I started swimming as hard as I could to hopefully catch them. It felt like it took a good 10-15min to bridge the gap but it was definitely worth it since it meant I got at least some draft for most of the rest of the swim. Despite starting almost half an hour before sunrise, we only got a 5min headstart to the age group field (usually we get 8-10min), so I got passed much more (and much earlier) than usual, which made it hard to gauge how well I was swimming. In the end a 1:06:07 swim was not too bad (my second fastest Ironman swim), especially since most people seemed to have swum slightly slower than usual. I was out of the water in 12th (out of 18) and out of T1 in 11th. The bike went ok, even though the second loop was a bit too crowded for my taste. The third loop was pretty reasonable in terms of crowds, but my brain felt quite fried from dealing with the crowds on 2nd loop, so I was looking forward to getting off the bike. 5:02:11 was not too bad of a bike time (8th fastest pro female) but it was not enough to catch even a single other pro woman, which was a bit disappointing. I was still in 11th coming out of T2 but moved to 9th by mile 4 because two of my competitors dropped out. I ran very strong for the first 6 miles (possibly a bit too fast for me - around 7:30/mile) and subsequently got a pretty bad side stitch, which took about a minute of walking to improve. After that, I ran much more cautiously (around 8:00-8:30/mile) since I was worried the side stitch might come back otherwise (and who am I kidding - eventually my legs started feeling quite heavy anyway). Around mile 12 I got passed by very speedy Ashley Paulson, who ended up running the fastest marathon of the day. And at mile 14 I got passed yet again and moved back into the dreaded 11th place (first outside of prize money). Even though I felt like I had nothing to fight back the pass, I did not become completely discouraged and just kept chugging along at a reasonably challenging pace. I guess it helped knowing that as long as my average pace for the final 12 miles didn't creep above 9min/mile, I should at least have been able to finish under 10 hours, which seemed like a good achievement by itself. I kept about the same pace for the rest of the race (8:30/mile with no mile slower than 9min, which was a first for me in an Ironman). Even though the gap to 10th place stretched up to 2.5min at one point, it was supposedly back to 1.5min with 3 miles to go (big thanks to my homestay family for cheering me on and providing me with a few splits!). Knowing that I was so close to 10th place gave me an extra boost for the last few miles. It was the first time ever that I finished an Ironman strong, even though my "strong" was not particularly fast at that point. In the end, I still finished 11th (80 seconds behind 10th) but I finally got the sub-10h finish (9:55:21) and also a very decent run (3:37:34, which was my 3rd fastest Ironman marathon and first sub-3:40 one in 4 years).

The 2 weeks between Ironman Arizona and Indian Wells 70.3 went by pretty fast, especially with the long Thanksgiving weekend between the two race weekends. We also had fellow pro triathlete friend Melanie Baumann visiting us in SF between the two races, which was fun and I enjoyed having a training buddy for most of my workouts :-) Together with Justin, we all did a local 5K running race the week after Arizona. Melanie kicked my butt and won the race for the women (despite my time being 45 seconds faster than when I won the same race last year). Even though this was just a small, not very important race, I was pretty happy with how (relatively) fast I was able to run (19:31) - it's been a few years since I ran a 5K under 20 minutes.

I was much more relaxed and in a better mood during the week leading into Indian Wells (than I was for Ironman Arizona) - probably also because Indian Wells was more of a bonus race than the main focus of my fall training. The race started with a bit of a mediocre swim (33:28). Even though I did my best to stay focused at the start (for one, by starting my watch almost a minute before the gun went off), I once again didn't have the speed (and maybe also the best position on the start line) to get into the 29-30min swim pack. Instead, I swam pretty much by myself (I might have pulled another woman along, which I only noticed as we exited the water). After a rather clumsy transition, I was ready to make up at least a few places on the bike. The bike was very fast - dead flat and mostly straight other than a few 90-degree turns (which I took very carefully since the pavement was not the smoothest or cleanest - all but the last 10-15 miles of the bike plus a few miles on a car racing track were on pretty rural farm roads). It took me a good 25 miles to start passing people but in the end I made up six places on the bike (mostly on the few miles on the car racing track between mile 35 and 40, which was more of a coincidence - I don't think I rode particularly well on the track itself). My 2:23:13 bike split was a 6min 70.3 bike PR for me and also the 5th fastest pro female bike split of the day (only about one minute behind the second fastest bike split - Paula Findlay crushed everyone else on the bike by 6+ minutes). I didn't really know my position coming into T2 but I knew there were quite a few women not too far behind me who could run a bit faster than me. I started the run at a pretty ambitious pace since I had nothing to lose, even if I faded badly later. I was surprised I ended up holding a more or less consistent pace throughout and was even able to break 1:30 (with a 1:29:17 - a 3min PR) on a course that had quite a few rollers and twists and turns since about half of it was on a golf course. And I did hold off all but one of the runners chasing me :-) I was very happy with finishing in 4:32:09 (8min 70.3 PR!) and in 7th place (out of 18). Sadly, I was once again one spot away from the prize money (for the third time this season) but honestly, I wasn't that sad about it this time.

Overall, I'm happy with how my first pro triathlon season went, especially given some of the challenges I had with my running injury early on, various mechanical issues with my bike and with feeling a bit tired towards the end of the season. I'm very glad I was able to meet and make friends with a few other pro triathletes. I'm also very grateful I was able to switch to working part-time (mid May) to make more time for training, recovery and travel. I still have ways to go with getting more comfortable with traveling to races that are not exactly local and also not letting pre-race jitters get into my head as much. And of course I have lots of work to do to become faster across all three disciplines.

Big thanks to everyone who supported me in 2019, especially my husband Justin, my coach Mary Beth, my bike fitter and sponsor Pedro, all my homestay hosts (Melissa, Jacque, Josh, Tom and Nancy) and TriBike Transport.

Oceanside 70.3 - First Pro Race!

As much as I thought I knew what I signed up for when I decided to get my pro license late last year, I was still a bit nervous as my first race of the season approached. There were no big expectations placed on me other than my own and even those were not that big :-D Mostly I just wanted to test my current fitness and see what racing as a pro feels like. I chose Oceanside for my first race since I wanted to do an early-season race (March or April) and wanted the travel to be relatively easy (direct flight that is not too long or even driving distance). Also, Oceanside is a pretty popular race and I had never done it before, so why not give it a try when I can sign up for "free"? :-p

Originally, Justin and I thought we would drive to Oceanside (it would have been around 10 hours each way) but then we saw that the flights to San Diego were not that much more expensive than renting a car in SF and driving almost 1000 miles for the round trip (car rentals in San Diego were also cheaper). What's more, Alaska Airlines treats bikes as regular luggage, so the bike fee was only $30 each way. A slightly more expensive but more convenient alternative was Tribike Transport but in the end we decided against it this time, mostly to see how much work packing and unpacking my new bike would be (it was quite a bit more work than my old bike, sigh, but hopefully it's mostly a matter of practice).

We arrived in San Diego mid-morning on Thursday. Before heading up to Oceanside we had lunch with Kristin, one of my friends from MIT Triathlon. It was nice catching up with her and made me a bit more relaxed after an early morning of travel. Next we headed to our homestay in Oceanside to meet our awesome host Melissa and her two cute and very friendly dogs, Jaeger and Scarlet :-) We built my bike, took it for a short spin and headed downtown to pick up my race packet. I considered doing a short swim near the pier/finish but it was not exactly sunny or warm at that point (late afternoon) and no one else was swimming (just surfing), so I skipped it.  

Next morning started with my usual short and easy pre-race run, after which we discovered that my bike stopped shifting because the Di2 battery somehow drained completely overnight. This got me quite worried - I've always been extra suspicious of electronic shifting! Fortunately, it didn't take Justin too long to figure out what caused this. The rear derailleur was supposedly not adjusted properly and that combined with leaving the bike in the lightest gear caused the derailleur to constantly self-adjust, which drained the battery very quickly. Justin adjusted the shifting and recharged the battery. Honestly, the shifting didn't seem off to me the day before, so the main lesson is to not leave the bike in the lightest gear in the future. After a short bike ride on a local bike path (thank you, Melissa, for the recommendation!), Melissa took us for a bike course preview. This was very helpful since none of us have seen the course before and we wouldn't have been able to pre-drive it ourselves without a sponsor pre-approved by the military (almost the entire bike course is on a local military base). Next we headed over to transition, mostly to check out the swim start since I didn't have to check in my bike the day before the race this time. I was hoping that the ocean would be a bit less rough than what it looked like at the pier the day before but it looked about the same. Justin suggested that I practice running into the water and dolphin-diving into the waves. It didn't really work (for one, I don't know how to dolphin dive, even without a two to five foot surf coming at me). So I tried to just jog into the water up to a bit above knee height and swimming through the surf. I knew that I was supposed to swim under the waves but I still somehow collided with one and breathed in a bunch of water. I felt like I was drowning for a bit as more waves kept crashing into me. It was quite scary and ended my little pre-race-day swim pretty quickly. Justin has swam through the surf many times as a child, so he easily got through it (the first 150-200m from the shore?), even without wetsuit - after all, the water was much warmer than the water in SF Bay! After our little swim we headed over to the pro meeting. It was much briefer than the AG meetings, which Justin appreciated ;-). They covered only the most important stuff, plus some differences between AG and pro rules specific to this race, which I wouldn't have known otherwise (in particular that one of the downhill sections with 25mph speed limit for AG had a 35mph speed limit for us - no chance of me going over 35mph there, haha!) It was very cool (for both Justin and I) to be in one room with so many world-class pros! We ended up getting a bit more groceries, ate dinner back at our homestay, hung out a bit with our host and a fellow pro, Lenny Ramsey, who we were sharing homestay with, and went to bed extra early.

Race morning:
We left the house plenty early (though not as early as our host, who was also one of the volunteer coordinators!). The pro athlete parking was about a mile from transition but it wasn't too bad since we could still ride our bikes over in the morning. After setting up my transition, using the bathroom (they had a few just for the pros - a nice perk for sure!), putting on sunscreen and wetsuit, I tried to warm up. Sadly, the ocean was not much calmer than the day before and I was still too scared to swim into it. So I jogged a few minutes along the beach instead. 

Swim (36:56):
The gun went off and I cautiously ran to the water. I guess the plan was to follow everyone else and hope for the best. Hoping for the best was quickly replaced by panic as I collided with one of the waves, which threw my goggles off my face. For a painfully long moment I thought I lost the goggles and I'd have to swim without them (or the race was over). Fortunately, they were still hanging around my neck. At this point, one of the lifeguards was asking me if I was OK and if I wanted to continue. I was pretty freaked out but not ready to give up, so I put my goggles back on and started swimming again. The wave that threw off my goggles also threw me quite far to the side and this whole incident probably took close to 2 minutes, so any hope of swimming with the other pro women was gone. I carefully made my way through the surf (which seemed to have subsided a bit temporarily too). I was very relieved when I finally made it through the first ~250m to the first buoy. Surprisingly, there were quite a few people swimming in my vicinity. I was wondering if those were some of the age groupers warming up but then realized that those were the physically challenged athletes, who started 1min behind my wave (the age group rolling start was another 7 minutes back) I didn't get much draft off the PC athletes since at that point I was mostly passing them but it was nice to not be completely alone out there. Maybe halfway through the swim, the first group of age groupers passed me. There was little chance of me hanging onto their feet since they were probably doing well under 30min pace for the 1.2mi but I did try a little (OK, maybe not since I was afraid that they'd swim over me - something Lenny warned me about :-p). When I got out of the water, I was actually relieved to have swam under 40min, even though my original goal was closer to 30min. I was obviously dead last in my category at that point but better that than a DNF ;-)

T1 (3:48):
Nothing to report here other than that it was a pretty long transition (0.40mi according to my watch).

Bike (02:39:06):
Even though it felt like I was passed by quite a few people in the water, the bike course was not too crowded (or rather, pretty empty compared to most of my previous Ironman-branded race experiences). I did pass a few age group men, maybe one or two AG girls who passed me in the swim and two pro women (one in the first 10 miles and one in the last 15 miles) but other than that it was mostly me being passed by AG men and riding at my own effort. I think I paced the bike decently well, even though my normalized power dropped a bit after the first hour. There were two points during the bike where I almost crashed myself but fortunately stayed upright. The first time there were a few cracks along the road right before turning onto the bike path and I managed to ride my rear wheel straight into one. Then at the end of the bike path there was this yellow dotted surface (for blind people, I think) that was was very slippery and we needed to make a sharp right turn right across it. The volunteers were actually very good about warning us about it as we approached, which made me think that someone already crashed there. Later I learned that one of the male pros fell on it and broke his collar bone :-(

T2 (2:44):
T2 was only about half the run of T1 because we biked the first half of what we ran in T1. It was slightly awkward to have people ride along this winding narrow path alongside transition but maybe it was better than having people push their bikes for an extra 0.2mi?

Run (1:32:21):

The run was pretty much two out-and-backs, so it was easier to get an idea where the rest of the field was (quite far ahead of me). The course was mostly flat with one or two false flats and quite a few short but steep inclines between the beach level and street level. I knew at least one of the girls who I passed on the bike is a faster pure runner than I am, so that motivated me to keep pushing. Also, seeing how fast and focused most of the other pro women ahead of me were was pretty inspiring! Justin did a great job cheering me on at several points on the course. The run went pretty smoothly other than my foot cramping a bit with about 2 miles to go (not sure why) but it came and went and didn't really slow me down much.

I was very glad to cross the finish line still in 16th place (out of 19 female pro starters and 18 finishers) in a bit under 5 hours (4:54:55), though I wad also a bit disappointed about the swim. I almost immediately started considering signing up for St George 70.3, mainly to have another go at the swim (in a bit less scary conditions). We hung out at the finish line for a little bit (and got pretty sunburned in the process), then we walked back to the harbor area to meet up with Alon and Melissa (also friends from MIT Triathlon) and their two little boys. It was great to see them and catch up. 

Overall, I really enjoyed my Oceanside experience. The town, the course and the volunteers were great. We had an awesome homestay experience (thank you again, Melissa!) and I'm very glad I got to know a fellow pro this way too. I might consider doing this race again if I learn how to swim through surf (or if they move the swim start back into the harbor :-p). 

As always, big thanks to Justin for making the trip down south with me, for getting my bike race ready and doing the majority of packing, unpacking and lugging the 60-pound bike case around for me. Thank you, Mary Beth, for coaching me, thank you, Pedro for fitting my new bike and thank you to all my friends and family for support and encouragement!

Ironman World Championship Race Report!

Qualifying and racing in Kona has been my goal for a long time (4 years at least), so finally getting there felt a bit surreal at first. Sadly, we didn't get to make a long vacation out of the trip but it was long enough to see how beautiful Hawaii is and since it's relatively close to us, we might be back sometimes soon - if not for the race, then maybe for vacation / training camp :-D

Pre-race:
Since we got to Kona kind of late, there wasn't much time to do things outside of the usual pre-race activities. We got in on Wednesday a bit after 3pm, checked into our airbnb (which was conveniently only 3mi from the airport and about 7mi from the race start), stopped by at Trisutto party and got the most essential groceries. Oh, and Justin built my bike too :-) Thursday we checked out the race venue, I checked in, did a short bike ride on Queen K (while Justin bought me CO2s for the race) and a little swim in the ocean. (Oh yes, and we ran into Lucy Charles when we went to pick up Justin's ticket to the Welcome Banquet.) In the afternoon we went to a beach that our airbnb host recommended. It was beautiful! Justin went for a little swim / turtle chase while I relaxed on the beach.

Justin thought this sign was funny - until a seal came to take a nap at the beach :-D

Seal napping on the beach

Turtle that Justin chased around with his camera

In the evening we went to the welcome banquet + athlete briefing, which was longer than we expected (started at 6pm and went past 9pm), so we were quite exhausted by the time we got home.

Friday was already the day before the race, so I did my usual short and easy morning run, a short ride and a short swim (this time at the Kona Aquatic Center). I checked in my bike and bags as early as I could (a bit after 2:30pm) and then we went back to our airbnb to rest and relax. We made some pasta for pre-race dinner (I didn't want to risk a restaurant, plus I imagine most restaurants were crowded and expensive) and we went to bit relatively early (8:30pm).

Race morning:
We woke up at 3:30am with the goal of getting out of the house between 4:15 and 4:30am. There was almost no traffic going into town and we were even able to get parking very close to transition. The body marking was a bit more involved than in other races (volunteers applied our race tattoos and then also weighed us) but because we arrived relatively early, there was almost no wait. I dropped off my special needs bags, inflated my tires (never saw that many race-provided pumps in transition!), lubed my chain (it rained overnight) and put water bottles on my bike. I went back out of transition to say bye to Justin before the 1st wave of the race (pro men) went off. I tried to watch the pro swim start from transition but I couldn't really see through all the people who were standing in the VIP section at the edge of the pier. I did see Jan Frodeno and Bob Babbit spectating though :-o (Bob Babbit even wished me good luck :-D). I did a decent warmup (about 12min) and soon after it was time for my wave to line up.

Swim (1:11:23):
The start line was about 100m from the shore. I got there as early as I could, so I wouldn't get stuck too far in the back (they let us in right after the age group men departed - 15min before our start). In the end, lining up near the front was not a big problem. The start line was pretty wide and it looked like most of the people wanted to be closer to the buoy line, so the crowd was not too bad where I started (maybe 15-20m to the left?). I positioned myself maybe 3-5 people deep, which was about 1-2 meters from the start line. When the canon went off, I tried to start a bit faster than usual to hopefully get on some faster-than-me feet. I think I did an OK job with this but it definitely could be improved. Also, maybe I should have been a bit bolder and line up even closer to the front. After the first 15-20min, I ended up swimming around people of about my speed. Maybe a tiny bit faster than me since I was not really able to pass and drop them (I tried a few times) and drafting off them felt a bit easier than swimming next to them at the same speed, so I tried to mostly draft. We did pass a decent number of men (who started 15min ahead of us), so that's always a good feeling :-) The water felt nice and it was very blue. The only not so great thing was that my neck started chafing pretty badly not even halfway through the swim. I only applied a little bit of body glide prior to the race, thinking that it's not really needed since I was not wearing a wetsuit (just a swimskin over my trisuit). But it seems the top of the zipper on a swimskin can still do quite a bit of damage to the skin, especially in salt water. Next time I'll definitely use vaseline. I felt like I was swimming alright but I never really know until the swim is over and I can see the time. I was hoping for sub-1:10 but was prepared for the worst since I haven't done a non-wetsuit Ironman swim since 2013. 1:11 was a nice surprise!

T1 (4:02):
Most crowded women's changing tent I've ever seen :-o I guess because my swim time was pretty average here (actually below average in my age group).

Bike (5:11:31):
The first few miles were a small loop around the town and a short out-and-back on a relatively narrow road, which was quite crowded. I tried to pass some people on the uphills but I took it easy on the downhills (and got passed back) since passing people at high speed with not much space seemed a bit risky. The crowds didn't really thin out much during this race but once we were on Queen K it wasn't a problem to pass people. The course was pretty scenic and without too much wind it was quite fast too (my bike time ended up being a 2min PR for the distance for me!). I checked my power from time to time but I mostly went by feel. I had no idea what my average power was until after the race since the fields displayed on my watch were slightly different than what I remember setting them to (maybe a software update reset them?) But my power ended up being right where it was supposed to be (161W average and 170W NP if anyone is interested in the numbers). In terms of nutrition, I had my 6 bottles of Infinit (3 on the bike to start with and 3 more in special needs) and I supplemented that with maybe 1-3 bottles of water. I used my original bike Infinit formula for the first 4 nutrition bottles, then switched to what used to be my run formula (slightly less calories than the bike formula and no protein) for the last 2 bottles. I think that helped my stomach feel a bit better for the run. I saw a lot of people grabbing water at aid stations just to cool off and also keeping it on their bike to cool off between aid stations. That did seem like a good idea but since I wasn't feeling too hot for most of the bike, I chose to not take anything from most aid stations in favor of not having to slow down. When I did grab a bottle, I always used it both for drinking (filling my front aero bottle a bit) and cooling with whatever was left. Fortunately, right when I was starting to feel a little too warm in the last 30 miles, it started raining, so that took care of it :-D (otherwise I would have probably picked water for cooling at next aid station) I did take water at what ended up being the last aid station, about 15 miles from transition, which was a good decision (thank you, Mary Beth for pointing this out to me!).

T2 (3:53):
I was pretty pleased with my bike time and was ready to run!

Run (3:53:59):

Once again, I tried not to start too fast. I think I did a good job with not overdoing it in the first few miles, even though I got passed by quite a few girls (I did pass some of them back eventually). It didn't take long (8 miles?) and we were up on Queen K again. From the beginning of the run, I was paying special attention to cooling at every aid station (mostly with sponges) since I was feeling a bit too warm (and so many articles that I read about the race emphasized cooling on the run too). Getting a bit sunburned on the bike certainly did not help - my forearms felt like they were on fire. I was of course drinking quite a bit too (Infinit + extra water and lots of ice) but despite all of this, I started to slow down. Also, since the special needs station was not until mile 18, I eventually ran out of my nutrition and was doing mostly water for the last 3-4 miles before special needs. (I did take 2.5h worth of nutrition with me but ran out a bit quicker than I expected.) Once at special needs, I filled maybe 3/4 of bottle with a bottle worth of Infinit and drank about half of it in less than 10min since I was starting to feel pretty out of energy. My pace was pretty slow at that point (over 9min/mile) and the race quickly became a survival shuffle. It didn't help that my watch was consistently getting ahead of the mile markers (overestimating the distance). Up until mile 20 I was hoping that the mile markers were just misplaced and eventually they'll align with my watch. Sadly, they didn't, so the finish was a mile further away than I hoped for :-p Also, my stomach started feeling slightly weird around mile 20. I considered going to a portapotty between mile 20 and 24 but every time I passed one, it was occupied and often had another person waiting. I guess I was not that desperate. Plus, I was running alongside a girl (from a younger age group) who was puking every half mile or so and still running faster than I was. My stomach discomfort was probably nothing compared to that. (though at least she could relieve herself without stopping for too long and without having to go to a portapotty, LOL) The puking girl eventually dropped me and seemed fine after we both finished - she actually got 3rd in 18-24 age group, only 48 seconds ahead of the next place in her AG (and 63 seconds ahead of me) - no wonder she was so relentless!
  Justin was cheering me on about 1.5 miles from the finish, from which point it was pretty much all downhill, so I got a bit of a second wind - thank God. I think it was the fastest last 1.5mi of an Ironman for me up to date (which sadly cannot be said about my entire run but at least I kept moving and did not do any walking). I was very happy to cross the finish line (in 10:24:48) and even managed to smile a little :-)

I am very happy with my first Kona experience. Sure, the run was not as good as I hoped for but other than that, it went very well. Big thanks to my coach, Mary Beth Ellis, for helping me to qualify for Kona and to prepare me for racing here in the best possible shape (the training between Mont Tremblant and Kona was at times quite intense!). Huge thanks to Justin for coming to Hawaii with me despite his limited vacation and tough work travel schedule. And thank you to all my friends and family who support me in training and racing - your cheers, kudos and words of encouragement mean a lot to me.

Next up: a few running races in November and probably December. Not completely sure about next year just yet but there will almost certainly be some half and full Ironmans involved. Stay tuned! ;-)

Ironman Mont Tremblant Race Report

It didn't take me long after a slightly disappointing race at Ironman Santa Rosa to sign up for another Ironman. After a few days of considering almost every Ironman in the US or Europe that still accepted registrations, I decided I'd give Kona qualification another shot at Ironman Mont Tremblant. It turned out to be a good decision! With over 3 months to go after Ironman Santa Rosa, I had plenty of time to do some more solid training and and test my fitness at a few local races as well.

As I mentioned in my race report from Santa Rosa, I did make a few changes to how I carried my bike and run nutrition for future races. First, I replaced my frame mounted, relatively small aero bottle with a rear X-lab hydration system that can hold two regular water bottles. This almost doubled my liquid-carrying capacity to what should normally be sufficient for a half Ironman distance bike ride. Second, I decided to carry my spare run drink powder in solid-walled containers, so that it's easier to pour the powder into my bottle while running. Mary Beth suggested mini M&M tubes for this purpose and even though I was skeptical about whether they would fit into my run bottle holder pouch at first, it turns out that they are the perfect size. I can comfortably carry 2 of them (a one-bottle serving) and up to 3 if needed. Third, Mary Beth suggested using special needs for the nutrition for the 2nd half of both my bike and run, which I was also slightly worried about since I've never used special needs before but it ended up working out great :-)

In terms of training, it was similar to my training for Santa Rosa but probably better since I didn't get sick at any point and I also knew my way around SF better, so I could ride and run more freely without having to check for directions or not knowing if a road will be suitable for intervals. (Though let's be honest - I do most of my cycling intervals on the trainer anyway :-p) I also tried to do some open water swimming in addition to lots of pool swimming since my OWS has been quite a bit slower than my pool swimming. I also practiced some drafting of Justin in the pool and in open water, which I'm still not very good at but I think I did improve a bit. I did not do any super-long bike rides or runs. My longest training ride this year was 85mi with 6,000ft of climbing in a bit under 6h. My longest training run was 18.5mi but since Santa Rosa I haven't done more than 16.5mi in one run (or even in one day). In the past, this would have had me worried about how could I possibly ride 112mi in a race when I haven't done at least 100mi rides in training or how can I run 26mi in a race when I haven't done at least a few 20-milers in training but I decided to just trust my coach and do what she thinks is best. The training was plenty challenging even without uber-long runs or rides - trust me :-) It was also more fun than most of Ironman training I've done in the past. And in the end I did put in a decent amount of hours too - they were just more evenly distributed across the week on most weeks and had much more intensity than what I used to do in previous years.

My tune-up races went pretty well too and I think I learned something useful at each of them. Most importantly, I tested my equipment and nutrition setup. At California Olympic Distance Triathlon on 6/24 I learned that my swim still needs work (and I need to draft more!) but also that I should make sure my bike shifts into all its gears earlier than the day before the race and that my wheels are true enough to not make my whole bike wobble when going more than 30mph. I'm glad the bike course was relatively flat or else these "little" things might have been a bigger problem. At Donner Lake Triathlon on 7/22 I learned that bottles can jump out of rear bottle cages and also that one should know the course 100% since there might not be volunteers or clean signage at every turn :-( Also, because of the elevation profile of the bike course (2500ft across 24mi with 1200ft up in the first 3 miles and the same amount down in the last 3 miles), I decided to use one of Justin's front race wheels with aluminum braking surface. This was a good idea (as well as pre-riding the initial climb and descent). I quickly dismissed losing a rear mounted bottle at Donner Lake since the course was quite bumpy and I lost the bottle while descending at 30-40mph. However, when the same thing happened a week later and I lost both of my rear mounted bottles not even 10 miles into the bike at Santa Rosa 70.3, I got quite concerned. Turns out it's not an uncommon problem on bumpy roads, even with X-Lab Gorilla cages. Several of my friends recommended I use elastic bands to secure my bottles (thank you, Cari and Jim!), which is what I did and so far it has worked 100%! BTW, Santa Rosa 70.3 still went pretty well. Since I lost 2/3 of my bike nutrition, I grabbed Gatorade Endurance at almost every aid station. It worked OK, though I would definitely not want to do that in a full Ironman (not having my tried and trusted nutrition, slowing down at every aid station and pouring a bunch of Gatorade all over my bike). My run was also solid, though slightly slower than at Texas 70.3. The highlight of it was getting passed by Rinny in the first few miles (she was already on the 2nd out of 2 loops since she started quite a bit earlier than I did and, well, she is also still a little faster than I am :-D)

Mont Tremblant Trip:
We arrived at Montreal airport on Thursday morning after a late night red eye flight. I was actually able to sleep through most of the flight, so I didn't feel too bad upon arrival. Justin's parents were already waiting for us (they woke up extra early to drive from Ottawa to Montreal by 7:15am, which we were very grateful for!). The 3 days before the race went by pretty quickly. On Thursday evening we went for dinner with fellow Trisutto athletes, which was organized by Coach Ed Rechnitzer and it was a great way to meet some new people. I also ran into quite a few friends from NEMS during the long weekend :-)

Race morning:
We got to the transition almost as soon as it opened (5am) since I didn't want to be rushed or stressed, especially with the extra task of dropping off special needs bags. Everything went smoothly and I was at the swim start ready to warm up around 6am. After a 10min swim warmup, I learned that the start was going to be delayed by 30min because of the fog. Oh well, could have been worse (like a cancelled swim at Santa Rosa 70.3). The fog wasn't nearly as bad as at Santa Rosa and it seemed to have improved by the time the original (6:45am) start rolled around. But I guess the race director wanted to be extra safe, so the start was pushed back another 30min. Unfortunately, by then (7:45am) the fog got even worse than what it was at 6am but off we went anyway.

Swim (1:06:24): 

The swim felt pretty crowded, probably because the rolling start was executed a bit quicker than usual - 5 people every 2 seconds. I started around 1:05-1:07 predicted time, which was pretty close to the very front of the age group start since the fastest predicted swim time corral was 1:05 and under. I didn't feel like I was swimming particularly hard - just steady, trying to draft when I could but staying away from people who seemed to have been swimming all over the place. I think I actually got a pretty decent draft for most of the swim. I couldn't see the buoys from more than 50-70m distance (I think they were 200m apart?), so I just followed the general direction of everyone else. I had no idea if I was swimming well or not until after the swim was over and I saw my time (which made me quite happy - a PR by over a minute!). I feel like I could have swam harder but I didn't want to burn too many matches on the swim. Plus it was not like there were many people passing me (if someone passed me at a slightly faster speed, I tried to draft them, but I think in general people around me swam at about the same speed as I did).

Bike (5:20:46): 

When I got on the bike, my heart rate was kind of high, even though I didn't feel too bad. But since I had overcooked it in the first half of the bike way too many times, I tried to keep it controlled. I think it's generally good for me to not go much over 160bpm heart rate on an Ironman bike but I just couldn't get it down for most of the bike (maybe also because it was getting kind of warm?). So I just kept going by feel, trying to not overdo it on the hills. This was the first race I used my new Suunto 9 watch at (thanks to Justin for getting it for me!), mostly because it seems to have more reliable power readings. It worked great, except for not having a normalized power field (looks like Suunto doesn't support it (yet?)). But maybe that's for the best - it seemed like going by feel / heart rate / checking the current power from time to time worked pretty well. As for nutrition, I went through my bottles a bit quicker than expected (one every 45-50min instead of one every hour). So 3 bottles were just enough to get me through the first lap and up to the special needs. I got 3 more bottles at special needs and suspected that I might have to get some extra water on the course towards the end of the bike. Special needs pickup went very smoothly. I was slightly worried about losing too much time stopping and replacing bottles but I think I was only stopped 30-60s and caught up with the people who were just behind me before I stopped within a few minutes of getting moving again. 

I felt pretty good on the second lap - maybe even better than on the first one, even though my time for the second lap ended up being 5min slower than the first lap. Still, I was passing pretty much everyone on the second lap (even though the course was much less crowded at that point, so there were not that many people to pass). I ran out of almost all of my sports drink with about 20 miles to go, so I started taking water from the aid stations. Maybe in the future I should start this water supplementation earlier on the bike. 

I suspected I was doing pretty well coming into T2 since I passed a lot of people on the bike, including a few pro women (which baffled me since they started more than 10min ahead of me, though they were not allowed wetsuits and I suspect maybe some of them went a bit more off the course on the swim since they didn't have a big crowd of people guiding them through the fog).

Run (3:40:56): 

I realized half way through the bike that I forgot to put on sunscreen in the morning... So I was glad that they had some in T2 (they made it sound a bit like we should have brought our own). I did not feel the greatest at the beginning of the run. I did not feel terrible, just not super-energetic, which was probably for the best because it prevented me from starting too fast. (I remember 4 years ago I ran the first mile at 7min pace, followed by a few 7:30s, which was definitely a bit of an overkill, especially with the hills). This time I did the first few miles around 8min pace, which I think was appropriate. Once I got over the hill and onto the bike path, I was running 7:45-7:55/mile and felt pretty good until my stomach started protesting. I stopped for a portapotty at mile 10 and then again at mile 17. My legs didn't feel too bad (though not as springy as for the first 10 miles) but my stomach kept feeling weird, so I couldn't really push it too much without accelerating the need to go to the portapotty again. I was also getting slightly tired/nauseated of my sports drink around 2.5h in. I've drank almost 3 bottles by that point and since my stomach was giving me trouble anyway, I switched to just water and ice for about 40min. Then I got another 1/2 bottle of sports drink in the last 30min because I was afraid I'd fade too much if I continued drink just water. My legs hurt a lot on the last 5K, especially the last 2K but I knew I was leading my AG and that the girls behind me might have been running at a slightly faster pace, so I tried to not let up (much). (Justin told me that I had 9min lead after the first lap, which was pretty good, but might not have been enough if I started walking or shuffling too slowly). 

I was very glad / relieved when I crossed the finish line still in first place in my age group (with a time of 10:15:47) and super happy that I finally qualified for Kona! :-) 

Big thanks to Justin, Nancy and Dono for doing an excellent job cheering me on during the race. Every time I passed within a mile of transition, they were there (usually at a slightly different spot each time) cheering and waving the Slovak flag that Justin bought for me :-) They even made a cheer video that was played on a big screen when I passed 20K and then again at 41K: 

Thank you to my friends and family who supported me in preparation for this race. Special thanks to my coach Mary Beth for providing me with a challenging yet fun training plan and answering all my questions along the way. And of course thank you to my husband Justin for accompanying me on many of my long rides, taking care of our bikes and doing most of the chores when I'm too tired / lazy :-p

Next stop: Kona!

Ironman Santa Rosa Race Report

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!