re: Triathlon/Ironman/Half Iron Man Thread

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80-84 age group

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That's my goal. Compete in the 80-84 age group.

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19 mph average on the bike

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Yep, that's damn impressive.

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But, for a self proclaimed all world athlete like mango, he can run circles around me in most athletic endeavors

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Absolutely

Wow! Didn’t know about this. Will have to check it out.

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March 15th in Dallas seems like a 50/50 type day. It could be absolutely perfect or an ice storm.

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Uh, no. It’s more likely to be hot as balls or thunderstorming

You probably have these best chance of good weather then and mid October til early November. It's a crap shoot though and I would say your odds be fifty fifty.

Bumping to update how I did at Ironman Wisconsin that I trained 15 weeks for

Swim 1:06 (new PR)
Bike 5:24 (toughest bike course in North America IMO)
Run 3:22 (new PR)
Overall 10:03 (12th AG 53rd Overall)

I turned down 2 slots to the Nice World Championships to race this instead, having looked at finishing times the past few years at this race and realized that having a good enough time to get a Kona slot here wouldn't be too big of a reach. Unfortunately a lot of others had the same idea I had. My time last year would have been 3rd AG 14th Overall and a slam dunk for a Kona slot. But a lot of good people showed up for this one. The guy who won got 2nd in Kona last year and the guy who won my age group was a former pro. 5 people went under 9 hours where no one has gone under 9 hours here before.

My goals going in were 1:05 Swim / 5:20 Bike / 3:15 run. Which was achievable.

I swam a 1:06 so 1 minute slower. I think going forward I will consider using my form goggles because its tough to tell how fast you are going especially because my strategy was to draft off a guy almost the whole way trusting his pace. I definitely could have gone faster as I didn't burn too many matches.

The bike course is really tough so I split the course into 45 different segments into a custom workout on my Garmin with prescribed power targets for each segment to keep my normalized power at 222 Watts and TSS at 275. Thats the exact numbers I ended up hitting. 222 Watts got me a 5:24 so 4 minutes slower than I hoped for but I wasn't going to overbike just to hit my target.

The main issue I ran into which ruined my race somewhat was that I got new bottle cages installed a couple months ago. In the 2 months I've had them I never had a bottle eject so I decided to run my bike nutrition among 3 bottles + 1 backup in my 4 cages with no rubber bands. The bike was really rough at the start and I lost 3 of my 4 bottles in the first 5 miles. With only 1/3 of my nutrition available I had to rely on the on-course Maurten gels to get my carbs but there was just no way I was going to be able to replace the sodium/potassium I had in those bottles. After about 5 or 6 Maurtens I could not take anymore so I was falling behind on all my carbs where my plan was to take in 120g/hour. Still finished the bike at my 222 watts despite that but knew it was only a matter of time before my nutrition troubles caught up to me.

When I got off the bike I was told I was in 14th place and 25 minutes behind 5th place. At Ironman Texas I made up a 15 minute gap to 5th place so this was going to be a challenge but I decided to go for it anyway. Held a 7:25 pace the first 12 miles of the run but my stomach got to a point where I had no choice but to go into a porta potty and puke. Spent 2 minutes in there according to my Garmin. Felt better stomach wise upon getting out but the damage was done. Falling behind on carbs and sodium finally caughlt up to me around Mile 16 and my pace slowed to 7:50-8:00/mile and I couldn't go much faster no matter how hard I tried and my hamstrings were cramping badly.

Despite all of that I only did 44 second total worth of walking according to my Garmin, where I only walked 2 aid stations to flush my legs out. Proud of myself for toughing it out despite the cramps and underfueling.

I ran with the girls winner most of the 2nd loop and we paced each other.

Overall I am not disappointed as I'll have 3 more cracks at getting a KQ this cycle. 10:03 is still a respectable time on this course and I can hold my head high knowing I gave it my all despite my misfortunes. Even if I didn't lose my bottles and hit that 9:50 overall time goal I wouldn't have gotten a KQ or podium.

Next up is IM 70.3 Waco in 4 weeks then Ironman Arizona in November for my 2nd KQ attempt. At the end of the day it all depends on who shows up.

Ive done Lake Placid as well and I still think Wisconsin is harder simply because there are more rollers, more turns and worse road quality.

Lake Placid the climbs are much more sustained, less rollers. About 1k more elevation at Lake Placid but the better road quality helps a ton. There were times at Wisconsin especially on the downhill that I didnt drop into aero because I felt the roads were too rough and uneven and wanted the extra control on the hoods

Just did about my 5th swim since June and held just under a 2:00/100m pace.

31:40 for a mile swim. Decently happy with that considering I haven’t been in the pool and it felt like more technique than capacity.

I’m sure the technique would come back with increased capacity, but heart rate stayed down and I could have held that pace for forever.

Not sure what next year looks like, but I’d like to do at least one 70.3 schedule permitting

I know Arizona is a fast course, but that’s still moving

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Nick Bare

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Can’t knock the guys success, but man, he attracts the biggest fricking losers to his shite