Leading into Kona, Ironman Chattanooga & Ironman World Championships

       I race best with a lot of races under my belt and my last race was when I won Raleigh 70.3 back in June 5th. This meant the rest of June, July & August I didn't complete a big race.  I attempted to race Ironman Mont Tremblant in August but my day ended short with a bike mechanical.  With all of this said, I did not want to jump into Ironman World Championships with Raleigh 70.3 being my last race. If you follow me, you know I race a lot.  If you follow me closer you can find a trend that I race better my 2nd back to back Ironman. Examples: A DNF at mile 17 on the run at Ironman Arizona to 2nd at Ironman Cozumel, a third place at Challenge Wanaka full distance triathlon to breaking the course record at Ironman New Zealand, A 5th place at Wildflower half to 2nd at Ironman North American championships in Texas.   This was all within the last 10 months. As history shows I bounce back fast and perform better my 2nd race two weeks after another hard race. Well, I wanted to keep that trend up.  This lead me to the Ironman Chattanooga and Ironman World Championships race which would be my 8th and 9th Ironman within 12 months (7th completed Ironmans and 2 DNFs).  IMChoo and IMWC were 13 days apart but plenty of time for me to bounce back and perform better at IMWC. 

  At IMChoo I had a career best swim and exited with the main contenders of the race.  Onto the bike I rode the first 70 miles taking turns with Marino Vanhoenacker.  It was nice seeing another competitor drop back 20 meters like I do when we swapped back and forth taking pulls.  At mile 70 Marino took off at an aid station. Then the next 30 mile I rode with Eric Limkermann.  The last 10+ miles I rode solo into T2 and was 3:30 behind Marino. As soon as we started the run I could tell my running legs weren't there. A combination of pushing it with Marino, all the climbing on the course and lack of running miles in training. Around mile 14 Jeff Symonds passed me and I fell back to 3rd place as I continued to run 7:00 run pace in the record breaking 95+ heat. Around mile 17 Matt Hanson passed me but the gap never opened. By mile 19 I re-passed him.  At mile 25 I turned my head and saw a charging Matt Hanson. At this point I didn't want to make it a sprint finish so I ran a 5:50 last mile with .3 miles at 5:15 pace. I was happy to finish in 3rd with my current fitness and thought it was a good prep for IMWC. For most of the run I didn't run a fast marathon for me (3:04) so my legs were able to bounce back fast. 

The 13 days in-between I didn't taper.  In fact, my taper is 2 days easier. Seven days before the race I did the IMWC swim Hoona course race and swam a 53:4X which was a new personal best for me. Six days before the race I rode 109 miles of the IMWC course with my friend Hans in 4:40. Five days before the race I ran 13 miles easy in 1:30 with a college XC/track teammate. 

Race Day! 

I weighed in at 170 pounds at 5'11. I find I race better heavier vs lighter. Body and mind felt ready for a good day.  The guys went out FAST but I felt like I had a decent swim start and found myself settling in a group of 7-8 other guys. I felt pretty comfortable in the group and wasn't exerting much energy. I felt like we were going to swim a 56 vs the effort I gave for the 53 swim one week earlier. I exited out with a black eye (I think I was elbowed on accident during the swim start) and a time of 54:02 in my BlueSeventy swim-skin. Six minutes behind the lead swimmer. The swim is the one thing I've been working a lot on and the hard work is finally paying off.  In past years at Kona the swim course has been 2.62 miles. Thankfully this year the swim course has been corrected to an accurate 2.4 miles. 

I had a speedy transition of 1:39 and was out on my bike. Body felt good and for the first hour I know I was pushing a lot of watts. How many? No idea because I was riding by feel. No watch or anything on my wrist or bike. About 25 miles in I was only 3:30 down from the lead bike group.  I caught up to this long string of cyclist and I was probably pushing around 500 watts or only 100 watts to putting on my brakes. I certainly don't like riding in a large group. Around 30-35 miles I let the group go in hopes to reel guys back in that would fade. Sure enough this happened the rest of the ride. Around mile 107 I caught up to a small group of 6 riders. I could either overtake them all or rest my legs and ride in the group for the last 10-15 mins. I decided to roll in with the group. 

In T2 I had another fairly quick transition into my USA flag running shorts and exited with Patrick Lange.  Flashback of Ironman Texas! Patrick quickly sped away as I settled into 6:25-30 pace.  I exited transition in 21st place.  I tried to stay consistent as possible by the last 8 miles showed that I haven't put in my normal run mileage in training to run another sub 2:50. With 1.5 miles to go I was only 10 seconds behind Andy Potts who was 11th place. Then all of a sudden he picked it up.  On Palani he opened up the gap and I ended up finishing 17 seconds behind him.  I ran strong to the finish with a 6:08 last mile to finish with a Blazeman roll (In memory of my mother and others who have/are battling with ALS) in 12th place. I ended up running a 2:54:24 in my Skechers GoRun 4 with a total time of 8:25. 

I beat my bib number of 17 (always one of my goals to beat my bib#) & World ranking of 14th!  From 2011-2015 I would have been in the top 10 with that kind of finish time.  However each year competition is getting tougher and faster. Overall I was happy with my performance given my current fitness level and the crazy year of traveling/events. Next year will be a different story as I'll be able to consistently train in one place.  With the points I've earned from IMChoo and IMWC, I have enough to already be qualified for Kona next year. With that being said, I will still be racing a lot because it's what I love to do.

It's been an amazing year of racing/traveling with major life events and the year isn't quite done yet. Thank you for all of the support!

Sponsors & Supporters: Skechers, BASE Performance, FitPro GO (the best protein recovery drink), BlueSeventy, Rudy Project, Torhans, Stages Cycling, Diamondback, Knight Composites, CeramicSpeed, TriRig & Castelli