Ironman 70.3 Steelhead / Michigan
First big race of the season Ironman 70.3 Steelhead. Finished 9th overall and 4th AG.
Overall: 4h15min:46sec
Swim: 26min19sec
Bike: 2h18min
Run: 1h27min
70.3 Steelhead is in the books. Not the race I wanted and trained for but lots of lessons learned. A top 10 finish plus a slot for the 2022 Ironman Worlds Championship. About the race, it was a windy morning, looked like it will be a choppy wetsuit swim. It was a triangle course. I started around 15-20 people in the water. My plan was to try to get a little draft in the beginning of the swim and hopefully someone can swim with me and we can have a good lead for the bike. By the first turn buoy I passed everyone except for one guy who I passed and he started drafting on me and we started swimming like that and he passed me in the last 100-150 meters but we came out of the water pretty much together and swim exit was around 150 meter running up in the sand and I was able to get a little separation there so I was first out of transition. Took off my wetsuit, grabbed my bike and went out on the bike course. The first few miles I quickly realized that I didn't have the legs today. So from then on, the whole bike leg was a mental struggle honestly because I just couldn't hold my power that I originally planned. Three guys passed me on the bike and after that it was 2 guys that came by and we kind of worked together on the second half of the bike and I got into transition with them around 4th place. Going out onto the run, the same thing happened as on the bike. I just wasn't able to hold pace on the run and the first lap went by fast and on the second lap I was just trying to finish the race with a decent pace.
Overall, I didn't have a good race which might go back to a little over training and not resting enough, it's really frustrating that I couldn't show my real potential on race day that I do on trainings. But no time to look back. I will be doing Ironman 70.3 Ohio end of July. Few weeks of hard training and then I will try to do a much better job of resting and nailing my taper week.
Thanks for everyone's support. Also, special thanks to SBR St. Louis, ROCKR Training Boards and Kota Nutrition.