Race #4 is in the books! I’m familiar with Wisconsin as I have family that lives there, so I was a little nervous of the potential for humidity. However, they had several days of rain prior to my arrival and the temperature was perfect! Wisconsin is a beautiful place that is very flat with nothing more than some rolling hills here and there, so I knew that it would be a good opportunity for strong bike.
The day before the race I checked in and went over to athlete briefing (even though I normally skip it as I’ve been through so many of them at this point). During the briefing they talked about the normal stuff, but what I waited for was the swim details. During the swim portion of the talk they discussed that the water temp was currently 58deg, and anything under 57deg would cut the swim in half…then they finally said anything under 53 or 54 (I can’t remember exactly) the swim would get cancelled. So, while I was a little bummed out over the possibility of having the swim cancelled there was nothing in the forecast that should make the water temp go any lower, so all you could do was hope for the best.
I was with my family, so we decided to ride over to the transition area and swim to scope it all out. During that time I got to meet up with a fraternity brother who was also racing, with whom I haven’t seen in over 10yrs! We walked around the beach a bit, checked out the transition area, and even walked up the run course a bit. Once we were done with that it was time to go find my standard issue Chipotle dish…though it wasn’t fully standard. My normal prerace meal when I travel is burrito bowl from Chipotle with extra brown rice, chicken, tomatoes, veggies, little mild salsa, and of course guacamole. However, over the past month my wife and I have been trying to eat closer to vegan to see how that would make us feel. So, I swapped out the chicken with tofu added black beans for some additional protein and away we went.
During the morning of the race I felt good, got my breakfast down, drove about 15min to get to the site and I was ready to rock. As I pulled up to the parking lot I hear an announcement come over the walky-talky of the parking attendant: “let the athletes know the swim is cancelled”. Immediately I was bummed confused as to what the day would bring on from here. The morning was cool, probably in the low 60’s and the water temperature had dropped to 51deg which was well below the cancellation point. As I wondered over to T1 it was clear people were a bit confused as to how the rest of the day would go. We were finally told the start of the race would be delayed about an hour, and we would do a time trial start with 2 people at a time based of your AWA status.
After an hour or so passed, it was finally time to start the race. As the race official pulled 2 racers side by side at the start of the timing mat (loaded up on their bikes) he’d shout “Go!” every 5sec as he worked his way through all the athletes. I have a silver status in the AWA standings, so I was towards the front which was nice as I didn’t have to compete with the large groups of people ahead of me. When I took off on the bike it was a slight climb right out of the gate to get up from the beach area to the main roads, and from there it was fairly flat the rest of the ride. The winds were gusting between 20-22mph all day with a steady wind of 16-18mph all day. The roads on the bike course were terrible! I’ve rode some bad roads before during a race, but nothing like this. About 7miles out on the out-n-back course the roads got a little better and I started to turn up the speed. Where I started in the time trial starting block there was no female athletes ahead of me other than the pro women who had around a 5-10min head start. About 15miles into the ride I spotted my first female and got excited as I knew I was closing the gap on the pro’s (or at least some of them), which meant I was probably holding my own with my age group. The rest of the ride was fast as I chased down all but 2 of the pro women in the field, and was only passed by a handful of other age groupers. My final ride time was a PR at 2:18:40 which is a 24.21mph average, which was a new PR from my previous PR this year at Chattanooga by 5min!
As I came into T “2” I was feeling pretty good about my time knowing I passed who I could, held off who I could, and only gave up time to a few. I ran through T2 fairly quickly adding only 1:26 to my time. My new thing through transition is now grabbing a honey stinger energy gel, which has worked out great for me. This gives me a few extra seconds to bring my HR down and ensure I get some calories in before I head out on the run.
Heading out on the run, I knew it was a fairly flat course with only 400ft roughly of climb on the run course so I only had one goal in mind…break that 2hr run again! If I could do it again, that would be 2 times in a row that I was able to stay under that mark. As I head out I was rolling pretty well with a low 8min/mile pace for the first few miles feeling pretty good. At about mile 5 or so I began to feel a twitch in my stomach, but I was hoping to let it pass, so I ran past the porta-pots at mile 5. As I continued to run I realized this stomach pain wasn’t going away. As I finally approached mile 6 I made my first pit stop…that’s right my FIRST pit stop. Coming out of the bathroom I was feeling much better, and took back off on the run course. My legs were still feeling good, and unfortunately better than my stomach…but I began lap two. I took off on lap two cruising at a 9min/mile pace feeling pretty good until the bubble hit me again. Around mile 10 or 11 I stopped for my second pit stop (I'm sure you can see both stops in my running data below...haha). I was starting to get discouraged as my 2hr time was slipping from my fingers all because of 2 pit stops on the run course. After that I started giving it everything I had left to the finish line. As I crossed the finish line I looked down at my watch and saw that…I DID IT! Even with the 2 pit stops on the run course I actually broke the 2hr run mark. My final run time was 1:59:27…BOOM!
When all said and done I had a solid day with a PR bike split, and only my 2nd sub 2hr run in my career. My final time was 4:19:32 which was good enough to put me in 25th/138 in my division, and 175th/1,260 overall. A solid day for sure, and only 1 place from 70.3 World Championship roll downs. Next time!
