After the world championship qualifying 2nd place at Ironman 70.3 Thailand, I almost immediately decided that in the next two races (Geelong and Florida) I would participate just for fun and base fitness. Focus would be on travelling and enjoying the trip. Well, the latter worked out well, but as I already discovered in Geelong, I’m having quite a hard time just racing for fun without any target at all.
Main take out of the race in Geelong was that the base fitness was definitely there, and that running wise I even made some progress. I wasn’t happy with the bike split however (and the effort it took) so in the weeks coming into Florida 70.3 I decided to focus quite a bit on the bike. After the amazing travels in New Zealand it was time to get some decent training in in Clearwater Beach, Florida. Chris made a plan for me with quite a bump in bike hours, and I was determined to commit to it. It made up for a block of very hard training (like, 26 hours in 6 days at the peak).
One week before the 70.3 race I joined an Olympic race in Ocala. I raced hard, got 4th overall and 1st in my AG, but lacked power on the bike and run(also due to some back problems) and I started to doubt whether I would be in decent shape at race day. By this time I already set myself the target to go sub 4:30. Going sub 4:30 has been a long time coming, but never happened due to a variety of circumstances (cancelled swims, running bridges in bike course to name a few). Although the course in Florida wasn’t super super fast (swim and run are far from fast, bike is a fast one though) and the heat could ruin my plan, I was happy to set this target and try to smash it on race day!
Swim
The swim was a kind of “M-shaped” course, with quite some turns. It wasn’t super fast, looking at times from past years. I didn’t really put too much thought into it and just planned to go hard all day long and see what would happen. Just before I entered the water I saw a supporter holding up a banner with ‘PR or ER’ on it. It really got me going. I was going to race hard and stop at nothing today. I felt fit and it was an amazing feeling to toe the line here in Florida!
After the gun went off I sprinted out and had a good start. After 200m I started to get into a good rhytm, that felt OK fast, but not super fast. I didn’t find feet to swim on, so decided to never mind and take this one on by myself today. What didn’t really help in going fast was that our agegroup was starting behind the female 45+ and male 55+ agegroups again. Really, who makes these things up? It’s straight up dangerous to have a bunch of 30-34 year olds race into the back of these agegroups, right? It’s very hard to dodge everybody, especially when out of nothing the competitors stop swimming to orientate.
Dodging the other agegroupers resulted in quite some extra meters, and after 2000m on my garmin I excited the water in a time around 32:30. Not happy. Not happy at all. This should have been a swim around 30 minutes. And although this course wasn’t super fast I felt as if I swum harder. Guess I have to put more hours in (actually doing that now) to go sub 30 again like I did in Thailand…
Bike
The bike course can be split up in two segments: 45k of flat, awesome roads (at race day also with some tailwind) and 45k of rolling hills (with at race day some headwind). I knew that I had to hit around a 40k/hr average on the first stretch to get myself in position for a fast overall bike split. This worked out very well. Heading into the first hills my average was spot on, and my watts were higher than I expected.
A couple of guys from my agegroup passed me just before we hitted the most serious hill and I decided to hold on to this train (outside the 12m draft rule ofcourse). One guy obviously didn’t like this for some reason and yelled at me twice to take more distance. On the hills I was much stronger than this guy and I blasted passed him, asking what was wrong. He had no breath to respond. I never looked back and hammered it back towards T2. My watts were still very good and I ended up riding 258 watts NP (250 watts average). With 2:22 and almost 38k/hr avg I was happy and in a decent position to go sub 4:30!
Run
The run was an absolute killer. It was hot by the time I got my running shoes on and the 3 loop run course was super hilly. For the Dutchies reading; the course had 60 meters of altitude more than the Zevenheuvelenloop ;-). I had a hard time finding a good rhythm because of the hills, but my pace wasn’t too bad. I knew that I had to run below 1:29 on the half marathon to reach my goal, so I focussed on averaging kms of around 4:10. This went pretty well in lap 1 and halfway lap 2 I started making plans to increase speed in the final lap!
Entering the 3rd lap the wheels started to come off a bit. I started worrying about keeping my average pace fast enough to make sub 4:30. Unlike in Geelong I couldn’t accelerate anymore. The legs were gone, the tank started to get empty and I felt little cramps coming up. A guy who I ran with in the second round (which was his first) passed me and encouraged me to stick with him. I decided to do so at all costs. All of a sudden I remembered the banner I saw before the swim start: “ PR or ER”. This was it. This was the where I could crack or make it happen. The moment I trained for. I really loved it. It is an awesome feeling to fight hard in the closing minutes of a race knowing the reward is big.
I got in a flow and even increased speed a little bit coming in the final 3kms. By this time I knew I was going to make it and I started high fiving some kids and started to take everything in. These moments are magic. Like the final km’s in Maastricht or Phuket, these are the kms you envision in your hard training sessions. Such a good feeling. I entered the finishing street and finished in 4:29:15 and a 1:28:18 half marathon.
So. That was the Florida part. Time flies like crazy and it feels good to be back in Girona again. After some days of having a cold/mini flu I am ready to kick it up a notch and get some hard weeks of work in. I’m especially looking forward to my parents coming over and being able to ride with dad here, as well as training hard with Jorrit the week after. Gonna be a lot of fun. And suffering. But more fun :-).
K
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