21st Ironman start / 19th IM finish / 9th time for IM Texas / 4th KQ / First IM was in 2005
Venue Stats:
Total Registered Athletes: 3132 / DNS: 746 / DNF Swim: 14 / DNF Bike: 147 / DNF Run: 125 / DNF (Over Time Limit): 7 / DQ: 14
Race Stats:
Swim: 1:13 - 23rd AG (Fastest IMTX swim ever)
T1: 6:05 - Moved to 17th AG
Bike: 5:19 - Moved to 6th AG
T2: 4:57 - 6th AG
Run 3:51 - Moved to 3rd AG. (Fastest marathon time in AG)
Total 10:34 3rd AG / 158 Overall
Prerace Details:
When you’ve done this 9 times, it gets to be a routine :)
Wednesday:
Flew into Houston from the San Francisco Bay area, hotel check-in, athlete check-in, pick up pick from TriBike Transport, take everything back to the hotel, go for lunch, go through my gear to make sure I have everything, go for a short run and then feet up. Had a great dinner with fellow Forward Motion triathlete Amulya Parthasarathy who was doing his 2nd IM.
Thursday:
Short bike ride around the run course with Amulya, shopping, feet up. Athlete’s dinner and hang out with a couple of other 9-time IM Texas folks.
Friday:
Practice swim in the lake. Huge breakfast. Bike and gear check-in. The family arrived around noon. Wander around a bit. Have lunch and hang out. Dinner at the same restaurant we’ve gone to almost every year. Early to bed - late to sleep!
Race Day:
Up at 4:00 am. Shower, eat and out the door for 5:00 am visit to T1/T2 to complete race gear with fluids and fuel. One mile walk to the swim start. Hang out for a bit, meet Amulya and then head over to the swim start. The water temperature fluctuates wildly on a daily basis. Early in the week the water was really cool but was warming all week. Final diagnosis, 75.5 degrees; less than 1 degree needed to be wetsuit legal. Lots of happy people, especially me! I lined up with the 1:15 group. As always, I never knew where I would end up time-wise on the swim. My Master's coach tells me I’m the most erratic swimmer he has ever met. Some days I’m swimming 100’s near 1:30/100, some days I’m over thinking, screaming (internally) at 2:00/100s. As always, I swim wide, closer to the shore to avoid contact and have a peaceful start to the day. ⅔ of the swim is in a small man-made lake in a golf resort, the last ⅓ is in a canal. I could tell my times were faster than previous years as the canal is usually really crowded with a lot of banging around. I didn’t touch anyone.
Out of the water in 1:13; my fastest Ironman Texas swim yet.
T1 was uneventful. Normal routine plus socks and lots of sunscreen. Passed 6 people in my AG here.
Bike.
The course is in multiple sections. 10+ miles or so of bad road/admin stuff. 85+ miles of a mostly flat, well-paved road made up of 2 loops on the Hardy Toll Road and then bad road/admin stuff back to T2. As always in Texas, the winds were crazy, picking up during the day. At one point I heard they were blowing close to 20mph. The first 20+ miles of the Hardy Toll Road had the wind in your face. Tiring and demoralizing. Flipped the bike and all of a sudden you were coasting at 25mph. Super fun. Rinse and repeat! I felt very refreshed coming off the bike, having the wind at your back for the last 30 miles.
I had planned on holding 200W for the race but it never really materialized. I did a lot of indoor practice rides at this pace and a couple of outdoor rides and thought it was doable. I averaged much closer to 175W but never felt that concerned. I rode mostly alone for the day, slightly ahead of the crowd and felt good with my pacing decision.
Nutrition wise I stuck to my plan. One bottle of Gatorade Endurance every 30 minutes, so 10 bottles in total. I had 3 bottles with me and then used course materials. Bars or gels every 45 minutes. Carried it all in my back pockets. A little concerned that I didn’t empty my bladder at all, but felt confident that I was taking in fluids appropriately.
Off the bike in 5:19. My well-trained family Sherpas informed me that I was 6th off the bike.
T2: 4:57 - 6th AG Uneventful.
Run.
Knowing that I was 6th off the bike gave me a ton of confidence. Every year someone in front of me implodes. Last year one guy stopped at mile 25 for over an hour. I passed him and took the last spot to Kona. I also felt I could easily run one person down. I do that every year. So my thoughts leaving T2 were; one person will implode, I’ll pass one person and as long as I can hold my planned place I should get 4th spot, which should be good for a Kona spot.
My run training this year involved a lot of running at or slower than Ironman Pace. Very little fast stuff. My two key workouts were a Thursday hilly 13 mile run and a long run on the flats on Sunday.
If I could hold an 8:15 to 8:30 pace, which I did for months in training, I would be good to go.
Texas is a three-loop run course. My family could see me on both sides of the canal, so twice per loop. Finishing up the first loop I was told that I had moved into 5th place and I was feeling pretty good. Halfway around the second loop, around mile 11, I could feel the slowing start. I felt good but just couldn’t run any faster and my pace dropped to a 9: 00-minute mile. I started to get a little concerned that I was going to get over-taken but just couldn’t go any faster. As I came into town for the second time my family shouted that I had moved into 3rd place, passing two more people on the second lap. As I passed them again I asked and was told I was in a solid 3rd and to keep going. That comment really helped the confidence. I may have been fading but so was everyone else. Loop 3 was 9: 00-minute miles, running slowly past most people who were now walking because of the heat. Coming back into town for the last time my sherpas confirmed I was still in 3rd place and I headed to the finish line.
The nutrition plan was for a bottle of Gatorade Endurance every 45 minutes and a Cliff block every mile. I carried a bottle with me and filled it when empty. I did that and also consumed a cup of water at every aid station. I never did empty my bladder until an hour after the race. I felt great after, had no GI or other issues. I may rethink my hydration and add more but I tested my plan every long bike and run and felt that I could pull it off.
Run 3:51 - Moved to 3rd AG. Had someone told me that that time would be the fastest in the age group for the day, I would never have believed it.
Total 10:34 3rd AG / 158 Overall
Post Race.
Back to family rituals :). TriBike Transport valet service is the best! No dealing with all that stuff until the morning. We stayed at the Westin again, 500 yards from the finish. Back to the hotel to rest and clean up. Dinner with a few glasses of great wine at the hotel restaurant and then off to bed. In the morning we wandered over to the same breakfast place we always go to and came back to start the pack up process. At noon we wandered over to the awards ceremony and slot allocation. I was a little nervous because you never know until the trophy is in your hand and you’ve written a $1K check to Ironman that you are really going to Kona. I felt a little bad for the 5th place guy that missed Kona by a minute, but I wasn’t giving him my slot!
Half the family left town Sunday afternoon and I flew home with one of my kids (who didn’t think missing another day of school was a big deal) on Monday.
I posted this paragraph to my Facebook page but thought I would include it here again. It’s not over until it’s over!
Sometimes if you want an Ironman Kona slot, all you have to do is show up to the awards ceremony and roll down allocation. Texas is an early race and there are typically only a couple of roll downs for the entire group of athletes. Today at the 50-54 men’s group there were 7 slots awarded. No one finished in the 80-85 slot so they added one more to the men’s 50-54. Mike Riley started calling out names and the first 5 or so accepted their slots to Kona. The next three were no shows and lost their chance. He kept calling out names with no takers. At one point he asked if there were any more in the room. In the end, the last slot went to 27th place! Wow! Never seen anything like that before and I can tell you that guy was pretty happy!
For anyone that wants to know what my training looked look from January 1st through the week before the race, some data is below. I’m on Strava if you want more details. Trained 7 days a week. Only days off were in early January when I got a really bad cold at one of the schools I volunteer at. I do the Napa HITS 1/2IM two weeks before IM Texas as race prep, then recover and taper.
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