Another race, another PR! IM Victoria 70.3 is now in the books. To recap the race, first let me tell you about how beautiful Victoria is! The landscape is amazing with water and mountains all around you, pine trees for days, and not a flat section as far as the eye can see. This location was definitely one of the more scenic locations I’ve done.
I traveled into Victoria Thursday before the race, which was great as this gave me one extra day to prepare from what I normally have. Because I had the extra day to prep, I decided to get registered on Friday along with picking up my bike. Friday was the day that I realized parking was going to be at a premium for this race, and probably not super convienent. However, Thursday was great to see IM Village, check in, and grab my bike.
As I drove around Victoria on Friday I started to get a little nervous about the bike course. I realized everywhere I went it was hills, and the roads were in pretty rough shape. So, Saturday I drove the bike course with my family to check it out. Sure enough…it was hilly! The way the course was designed you spent the first 28 miles (roughly) doing rolling hills in an overall decending elevation, and the last 28 miles was rolling hills all in an elivation gain. The total gain for this bike course was just shy of 3000ft total making it the largest gaining course for me on the season thus far. Besides the fact that the elevation was a bit intense, the roads were in really rough shape. Pot holes everywhere, and the bulk of the roads seemed to be chip sealed and asphalt making them rough rides in general, requiring a bit more effort/watts to turn out the same pace as a better surface.
After seeing the course, and of course getting myself a bit worked up over it I went back to the hotel to rest and prepare myself for race day! The temperature called for a high of 60deg F on race day making me a little nervous about the temps on the bike as it had been overcast the first two days I was there. So, last minute I decided to pack in a bandanna and take some arm warmers which would be a game time decision whether I would wear them or not. Once I was all packed up it was off to bed…at 8pm…while the sun was still up (insert eye roll here).
On race morning I was up at 3:45am as the gun went off for the swim start at 6am, and my hotel was 25min from the race location. Also, there was no parking near the site. All the parking was to take place at the other side of the lake and shuttle buses brought you over to T1/T2…by driving the long way around (took about 15min for the bus to get from the parking lot to the transition zone). I got into transition at 5:20ish and began to set up. I decided that it was definitely cold enough that I would wear my bandanna, but I didn’t want to deal with the arm warmers in transition so I set it up that way and head over to the swim start.
The swim start was a rolling start (as it seems that is the way IM is going now), so I seeded myself at the front of the 30-35min group. The gun went off at about 6:15 for age groupers and we were off! It was a single loop course with a water temp of 67deg. I actually felt pretty good during the swim, about normal on my pace. My goal for the day wasn’t to do anything stupid on the swim, but just keep myself in the hunt on the swim, and I did that. I finished the swim in 31:42, and a placement of 31/126 in AG, and 217/1451 OA.
After my swim it was a short run over to T1, where I felt like I was fumbling around a bit but got out of there in 2:39 which is a fairly quick turn around. I had one gel in transition and then head out on the bike.
Once I was able to get on the bike…had some issues with my wet shoes/mud clipping in…I hunkered down in aero position and started heading out on the course with a little bit of fear. It was still fairly cold (in the 50’s at most) so my body was having a hard time getting in rhythm. About 15-20miles in all I could think was “man this feels like crap”…everything in my body said this wasn’t going to be a good ride. My goal HR was around 150 for this race and watts were to be around 250. Honestly I had no problem keeping the HR at 150, but the watts just didn’t seem to want to come…or so it felt. At about mile 48 or so there was a double step climb that was basically put on the course to make you hate everything about riding a bike. The climb wasn’t terribly long, but it was very steep, however coming down the hill was super fun as my max speed coming down the hill was just under 48mph and I didn’t pedal once! As I approached the dismount line I felt bad about the ride as it felt slow and hard for me giving me little confidence coming off the bike. I finished the bike in 2:37:32, and a placement of 19/126 in AG, and 107/1451 OA.
Since I didn’t realize that I had gained that many position back on the bike I was originally bummed as I headed into T2, until I got into T2 and hardly saw any bikes in the racks! Once I realized there wasn’t that many bike in the racks I got a sudden jolt of energy realizing maybe I was doing better than I thought. Again, my T2 time felt slow…I even stumbled on some peoples bags (as they were allowed to line the fence with them and of course they fell into my running aisle). However, once again my transition time was much faster then anticipated with a time of 1:23!
Finally came the run! The run is what all the days goals were wrapped around. My goal time for the run was 1:59:59 or better! Coming off the bike, my body was fairly cool but not too bad with exception of my feet. My toes were so numb from the cold ride it took about 2-3 miles of running before I got all the feeling back in them, however I didn’t care as I had one goal…SUB 2! I started out the run a little quick as always, but I said let’s focus on HR and see what we can do. Unfortunately, my HR was off the charts. I ran the first 10k of the run in 54min, which is around a 8:35/mile pace…way faster for that distance then I had ever gone before. Had I been able to carry that same pace to the finishline I would have had a 1:48:00 run! But, like I said my HR was off the charts which did start to slow me down. I did up my salt intake this race, and added 2 gels (one at mile 4 and one at mile 8) which definitely helped. Even though my run slowed a little, it didn’t slow too bad as I finished my run in 1:56:36! A SUB 2hr TIME!! I couldn’t believe it, as my HR ended up averaging around 165 which is dead middle of my Z4 HR…SUB THRESHOLD! I should have been running closer to 155, but that 2hr time limit was looming over my head and I wasn’t going down without a fight on this one! My time finished me in 29/126 in AG, and 185/1451 OA.
My final time was 5:09:52 which was was super pleased with on that course. It wasn’t a sub 5hr race, but that bike course was no joke and I set out to do what I wanted which was go sub 2hr on the run! All in all it was a great day!
