70.3 World Championships: Race Recap
St. George 70.3 World Champs 2022: My do-over race. After the crazy conditions of this event last year, I knew I had to try and qualify for this event again when Ironman announced they were coming back to St. George in 2022. I qualified at North Carolina 70.3 in October of 2021; I literally had a whole year to prep for this race. No pressure!
Warning: This post is going to be long. This post is going to take a tangent, or two, and I can’t guarantee I’ll make it circle back around to the point I was making. So, grab a cup of coffee if you feel like jumping down this rabbit whole with me, and let’s get started.
Tangent 1: The Hang
This year, while I really wanted to race St. George, I was also feeling very nostalgic about last year’s event. It wasn’t about the race itself, but it was centered around the moments I shared in the BEST athlete house with fellow coaches and athletes. We all got along. We all had fun. We laughed a lot. It was all about “the hang”. I was listening to a podcast, Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, in which he was interviewing Tom Hanks. The two of them started talking about the hang. The hang was/is a term that is used on a movie set or television show to describe how the actors and crew interact off camera. If the hang is good, the cast/crew get along and love talking with each other when not filming. If the hang is bad, it makes filming and time on set drag along. They both lived for the wonderful hangs they spent with their fellow peers. This year, my hang was going to be different. This year we didn’t have a BEST athlete house, and it felt off.
4 Days Out
Herchel and I packed up our Mercedes Metris and drove out of Nashville at 5 a.m. Monday morning. The sky was dark and the Interstate quiet as we made our way along I-40. We would drive 14 hours and stay overnight in Amarillo, TX before continuing on to St. George on Tuesday. The day was uneventful as we passed by miles and miles of flatlands through Oklahoma and Texas.
After a hotel treadmill workout the following morning, we loaded back into the van for the final leg of our trip out West. We made it into St. George around 6 p.m. on Tuesday. After unloading the van and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner, we crashed pretty hard.
2 Days Out
Today I needed to do all the things that come with bigger events. This included getting in a bike workout to open up the legs after two travels days, a short p.m. run, and get down to the Athlete Village to pick up my race packet. While this doesn’t seem like a lot, the time required for it all is quite long.
I got started a bit later than normal, 8:45 a.m., as the temperature was still only around 40 degrees. I had a two hour ride with some work and the the plan was to ride from downtown St. George out to Snow Canyon to preview the climb. It took a while to warm up, but I was able to hit my target power numbers and felt solid riding along the four mile trek up Snow Canyon. Bike legs were making me feel confident.
Herchel and I finished up and made our way to Farmstead, the most delicious bakery in St. George. With full bellies and lattes warming us up we headed over to the athlete village so I could check in. An hour or so later we were leaving the village and it was time to eat, relax and then get in a short run.
Tangent 2: The Freak Out
Every race usually involves some sort of the following:
calm
excitement
apprehension
freak out
nervous anticipation
calm
While the order, duration, and timeframe this happens in leading to the event might be different for everyone, I’m here to tell you today I experienced it ALL on Thursday, one day before race day. The day before a big event is also a very busy day. And because this race had two transition zones, that meant double the driving and double the time.
I did sleep in, as race day would be early, and did a short 25 min. run to loosen up. The day was then supposed to go like this: Short swim at T1. Drop off Bike Bag at T1. Drive to St. George. Drop off Run Bag at T2. It did NOT go like this, exactly.
The day was blustery. And when I say blustery I mean 30+ mph winds with temps in the 40s. We parked at Sand Hollow Reservoir and I started putting on my SLEEVELESS wetsuit (water temp was low 60s, which I was NOT prepared for) as sand was flittering across the parking lot, swirling through the air, and then depositing itself in mounds wherever it fancied. The excitement had just reached apprehension.
I was shaking with cold as I watched other athletes enter the white capped waves of Sand Hollow Lake but started walking down towards the waters edge. I made it halfway before the apprehension turned into a full blown freak out. Nope. Can’t do this. Not with a sleeveless wetsuit. I’m going to DIE in Utah. I turned on my heels and started walking back to the Metris. Abort mission. Herchel and I drove all the way back into St. George to the athlete village and practically ran to the ROKA selection of full sleeve wetsuits. They had my size. I made the unplanned, very expensive purchase, and left athlete village to go back to the Reservoir. I was back to apprehension.
Back at the lake with my full wetsuit on I determined I needed to just march myself down there and run right in. So with sand whirling in my face I walked right back down to the waters edge and “ran” right in. I made it 200 yards. Nope. Can’t do this. Not with a full sleeve wetsuit. I’m going to DIE in Utah. Freak out status achieved again.
I got back to the van, took off the wetsuit and tried to just shove the last 2 hours from my mind. I went and dropped off my T1 bag, which included many clothing items I’d never needed to think about in a triathlon before (such as gloves, arm warmers, vest) and then Herchel and I drove in to St. George, again, to get to T2. T2 was fine; downgrade to apprehension.
The day ended with a homemade meal and time to “relax” and allow my apprehension to grow into nervous anticipation.
Race Day
I woke at 4 a.m. to a very dark, very brisk, 35 degrees. Thankfully it was going to be a very calm day (wind that is) as the temperature by the time I finished was only going to be in the 50s. I was packed. I had my coffee and my breakfast. I donned all the cold weather gear I could and made my way to the shuttle bus that athletes had to ride to the start.
My race start time was 7:58 a.m. I arrived at the start at 6:15 a.m. I basically had two hours to pump my bike tires and then try to stay warm. I found a spot near one of the race trucks that was running (heat!) and sat, alone, until Herchel was allowed to get on a shuttle bus to come to the start.
full on frozen
Pro women were set to go at 7:30 a.m. so I knew once that happened things would roll along pretty quickly. About 7:20 I began putting on my wetsuit then trying to find warmth again. At 7:30 they started grouping us and lining us up in our age groups to begin walking down the chute. Shaking with cold my nervous anticipation finally turned to calm. Race time was here. Whatever happens, happens. I put in the training. I did the things I needed to do in order to be successful. Just: swim.
At 7:58 a.m. I ran into the 62.5 degree water without a freak out or realization that the water was that cold (partly I think it was because I was so cold beforehand, the water actually felt warm). I just swam. I felt pretty good and halfway through found some feet I could actually draft off for a while. I held on for several hundred yards until we rounded a buoy to come back toward shore and the convergence of other swimmers caused me to lose those feet. I came out of the water feeling strong.
T1 was longer than I wanted it to be. I grabbed by bag, dried off as quick as I could to pull on my arm warmers and socks. I donned a vest as well and wore gloves. This was part of my hiccup. As I was running out I hadn’t put my gloves on yet and I dropped one. I couldn’t find it so had to run back to grab it before I could continue to hand over my bag to the nice volunteer and then out to my bike. If you’ve ever tried to put gloves on when you can’t feel your fingers, then you know how long this took as I was trying to run and put on gloves.
I started out on the bike trying to get up to power quickly as the cold was already seeping in. Quads? Couldn’t feel em. Toes? They might be there, but I didn’t know. Face? Frozen like a popsicle. I held race power for the first 30 miles or so as I went up and down the climbs and descents. We made it over to Red Hills Parkway and it was around that time that power dropped just a few watts. At this point I still had very cold legs and didn’t know how my toes were so I just attributed it to not being super warm. I still felt fine, was taking in nutrition, so kept on pedaling. Somewhere around mile 40-45 we hit Snow Canyon. Finally, I had some sensation coming back in my feet. Power was okay on the climb, but not as high as I knew I could go and still recover from it. I did what I could and felt fine enough. The last 10 miles were basically all downhill so the goal was to push it down and have a really fast last few miles.
I felt like I had a pretty decent finish to the bike portion and made it into T2 quickly. Here I was rushing through to take off all my stuff and was in and out. I made one mistake, forgetting to take off my vest in my flurry.
I was out and onto the run course. My expectations were not super high here. The run starts out with a 3 mile steady climb out of downtown and through a golf course before looping back down the hill and into a small park in St. George. Two loops. My first mile was where I thought I would be, pace-wise so I told myself to just hold it. As I kept going I noticed my pace kept getting faster and I was still feeling in control. I made the decision to go with it and not let myself hold back. I kept up with my nutrition and focused on a smooth cadence. Lap one was done and lap two felt a bit harder. The long climb on the second loop had me slowing down. I talked myself through it; once you make it through the golf course it’s all downhill. The final miles were tough as they should be at the end of a race, but I was able to hold on and give a little push. I finished super pleased with how the day turned out.
Race Stats
Swim: 33:38 (1:38 per 100 yards), 5 minutes faster than last year
T1: 7:06 (too long)
Bike: 2:46:25 (20.23 mph), Normalized Power 8 watts lower than planned but over 8 minutes faster than last year
T2: 1:50
Run: 1:38:49 (7:32 pace per mile), 5 minutes faster than last year
Total Time: 5:07:45 (17th Place in my Age Group)
The Takeaway
All in all I was very happy with the day. I came back to this race knowing that I had a better performance in me, and on the day I was able to execute a much better overall race. The race this year had its own set of challenges (cold!) but I was able to manage my fear and my performance to a much better degree.
Racing is hard. We all want to race our fastest every single time. But the reality is that is really hard to do (i.e. Chattanooga 70.3). It’s a long process. Every year you train you gain more knowledge and more training load that makes you more resilient and allows you to do better, or just be better. Keep training. Keep putting in the time and it’ll click. I’m enjoying the process and finding I can handle more than I could even last year. And that is exciting. So, I’ll keep showing up and racing.
Sheppard, Dax, “Tom Hanks”, Armchair Expert with Dax Sheppard, Sept. 5, 2022, https://armchairexpertpod.com/pods/tom-hanks