Ironman 70.3 Raleigh Race Report, NC USA, 4 Jun 2017

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Preparation


I tried to follow a training schedule in preparation for this race. The training schedule however had every day at least some training, I changed that to have every Friday a recovery day to prepare a little for longer training sessions over the weekend. I felt pretty good about my all round physical condition going into this race, I think I was better prepared compared to all of my previous races. Only negative thing was that I had some soar tendon on the inside of my right foot, forcing me to dial back a little the intensity and frequency of my run training. Basically started the race with the goal of breaking my PR.
Compared to my previous races I lowered the base bar of my road bike with the clip on aero bars, this in the hope to get a little more aero out of my road bike. Besides that I changed my running shoe laces to elastic ones you can just yank on so you don't have to worry about tying your laces with cramped/numb fingers.
I read some race reports to get an idea about the race in past years, they basically all said the same: hilly on the bike course with the heaviest part near the end and hot, humid and hilly on the run.

Location


Selected the Raleigh race because its pretty close for me, less than 3 hours driving. Never had been to Raleigh before and the only thing I read about it was that it's kinda hilly and that during past years it had been hot and humid during race days.
Swim start and T1 are at the same location at Vista Point at Jordan Lake, which is about a 40 minute drive outside of Raleigh center. T2 and the finish line are both in the city center and are like 1 block away from each other.

Stay


Because of the price of the host hotels in the city center we opted not to go for a host hotel this time and go for one not to far out of the city center neither. We stayed at the Red Roof Inn a little south of the city center, by car I think it was less than 10 minutes tops to the convention center where the athlete check-in was. We were pretty happy with our hotel choice, in combination with the rental car we had multiple food options close by and didn't had any problems getting to the various locations.
I always prefer to get at the event location 2 days before race day to do the athlete check-in, join an athlete briefing on Fridays and to check my bike that evening as well to see if anything is missing so I would still be able to buy it on Saturday.
We drove up there on Friday morning and arrived around noon, after checking into the hotel we went to Olive Garden to start carb loading. After that we headed for the convention center for the athlete check-in and the briefing which was useful to clear some doubts as this is a particular race with T1 and T2 being so far apart. As always I bought some goodies: some stickers to add to my bike box, a coffee mug and a new race belt. For the rest of the evening we walked a bit in the city center, rested and had some sub for dinner.
Saturday morning we head breakfast at IHOP, did some more carb loading with eggs, hotcakes and steak. We bought hot cakes to take with us, to have our breakfast ready for race morning. Then it was time to get to T2 to drop of the running gear bag, you can drop this one of at race morning as well but I prefer to leave as little as possible for race day. After that we drove to T1 at lake Jordan to drop of the bike and the bike gear bag, this had to be done during a time window chosen on Friday during athlete check-in. It wasn't allowed to do a practice swim at the T1 location because of security reasons, some local athletes told me that Ebenezer Church Recreation Area was a good option to get a swim in. It was pretty close to the T1 area so we decided to give it a try. The water was HOT, felt like swimming in a hot bath tub, besides that there were a lot of boats around causing plenty of waves. So after like 15 minutes I called it a day, at least if gave me some idea about the visibility during the swim, which was almost 0. Having all the pending items taken care of early, it was time to just eat and relax. We returned to Olive Garden for some more pasta and to watch the final of the UEFA Champions League.
On race morning we woke up at 3:00 AM, ate some bananas, hotcakes and had some Gatorade. By 4:00 AM we were already in the first shuttle to T1, everything went really smooth. As we were on the first shuttle I was one of the first to get my tires up to pressure, so didn't had to get in line and wait at all. During the long wait till my AG wave was allowed to start I ate one more PowerBar and had some more Gatorade. 15 minutes before my wave started I did some warm up, it felt much much better than my swim the day before, so that felt comforting.

Swim 0:40:47 AG-48/126

  • The swimming course looked beautiful in the morning light! The course is laid out as a big triangle, which goes clockwise and start and finish are at T1. The water was way warmer (82°F if I recall correctly) than the swimming pool I train in and the visibility was near 0. I was surprised by the amount of volunteers and rescuers on paddle boards, canoes etc to provide support if needed. Unlike the previous races that I did where there was a rolling start, here the start was in waves per AG. 
  • It took me a while to find some space to swim. As always I prefer to swim on the outside of the course, it probably adds some distance to my swim but you can swim there without getting kicked around to much. I didn't feel to good at all during the first half before getting to the first turning buoy. Felt like I started way to fast although I am pretty sure I wasn't going that fast at all, probably just to much excitement at the start of the race. Even thought about taking a break at one of the canoes but decided not to as I never had done that in any of the previous races. After a while I finally was able to get into some rhythm. My huge disadvantage is that I always breath to the left, and I mean always! I knew that this race was clockwise so I did try to train to breath on the right side during my training in the pool but it just doesn't work for me. It feels like I need to turn my whole torso about 90 degrees to make sure I breath air and don't swallow some gallons. On my left side I barely need to turn my head and never have issues with swallowing water. So because of this I had to sight way more often compared to a counter clock wise course. I didn't feel like there was a lot of current but I had to adjust my barring quite a lot of times, guess I ain't swimming in much of a straight line after all. The 0 visibility doesn't help much with that as you can't see the ground which would help to keep swimming straight as well. After about half way into the course I started to feel some pain while kicking my left leg, some old injury playing up that I normally only feel while playing soccer, hadn't felt it for years! I just kept going on and tried to ignore it. I was able to maintain my pace and was able to pass quite a few folks during the swim, so during the swim I thought I was doing rather good. Getting out of the water I noticed that my watch had stopped marking my time during the swim, luckily I saw my wife at the barrier where my bike was located in T1 and she told me I swam around 40 minutes. Compared to my 2 previous open water swims 34 and 43 minutes, both ocean swims though, that was somewhere in between, so I wasn't to pleased with it but not to disappointed neither.

T1 0:02:42


  • No wet suit legal race and as I don't have a speed suit for the swim this is a pretty easy transition for me. Removing goggles and swim cap the moment I get out of the water, drying my feet, putting socks and pressure socks on, putting my bike shoes on, helmet on, sun glasses on and ready to run out of T1. I had a pretty easy rack spot, just had to follow the barrier on the right side and when the barrier changed color, there was my spot!

Bike 2:28:58 AG-20/127

  • I read that the bike course was very fast in the earlier part and got more hilly to the end. That basically describes it perfectly, although I would call it very fast overall. I read as well that there were some dangerous curves but didn't see any of those, guess my MTB background helps with that. There were some hilly parts but none were dramatic, i.e. I never had to use my smaller chain ring up front. The police and volunteers were amazing in blocking all roads and keeping the course free for us. I didn't stop at any aid station so cant tell you much about what they had to offer and if all of that was okay. 
  • When jumping on my bike I felt pretty good, during my past race my legs felt really bad until like half way into the course, but this time I didn't had that issue. I did had a concern though, about 1 or 2 miles into the course my calf started to cramp up, but that basically went away within a few minutes. The first half or so of the course was indeed really fast. I felt good and kept on passing people, I didn't really pay to much attention to my bike computer and was quite surprised that I had completed over 37 km in the first hour, this was way above the 33 - 34 km/h average I was aiming for. I had 2 bottles and 1 aero bottle with me on the bike with Gatorade Endurance Formula + Electrolytes instead of water as I tend to sweat a lot. So I didn't had to stop to grab anything at any aide station, just had to stay left and keep out of trouble. My nutrition plan was to eat/drink every 15 minutes as I had done during training. Each hour I would make sure to drink 1 bottle and eat 1 PowerBar for the first 2 hours and then at 2h15 take 1 GU Gel to go easy on my stomach for the run. Seems like my nutrition plan worked as I felt great all the course through, I could keep op pushing till the very end. After doing the first hour in over 37 km/h I knew that I could get a bike PR out of it, but I was a little worried about the hilly part that would be coming in the second half of the course. It did become a little more hilly but not that bad at all. During the last 2 km I tried to stretch my legs and shake them out a little to be ready for the run. Arriving at T2 I noticed that I had completed the bike course in less than 2h30 which is way faster than my fastest bike time so far, I had improved my bike PR with about 13 minutes so I was pretty pumped up about that.

T2 0:03:12


  • Didn't had any problems jumping of my bike and for once my calves didn't cramp up right away. I was happy with my rack position here as I didn't have to count any racks, I could just follow the barrier and got straight to my spot. Putting my shoes on with the elastic laces was way easier than trying to tie them with hands that get kinda numb after 2h+ on the bike. I even took my time to pass quickly to the portable toilets before starting the run, a good sign that I hydrated well on the bike I thought, and had some volunteers spray sun blocker on me before running out of T2.

Run 2:35:42 AG-88/127

  • The run part is located in the center of Raleigh and consists out of 2 identical loops. Before the race I had read some race reports and they were talking about some serious hilly terrain during the run. In my opinion its rather flat, okay there are some minor inclines but nothing major. There is a big roundabout at about halfway into the way out to the U turn, so you can use that as a point of orientation to know how far you are in the course during the race. As well via the race reports I was warned about the heat and humidity, but this as well didn't feel so bad as I had expected, I have raced in worse conditions before.
  • With the time of the swim and the great time on the bike in the back of my head I started the run knowing that I should be able to easily pull of a PR if I could complete the run without major issues. I never feel great when starting to run after the bike leg, so I wasn't surprised that I didn't feel to great while starting the run. However after maybe 3 minutes into the run I already started to cramp up and had to stop, I couldn't even walk for a while. Continued to jog / walk / jog but was cramping up over and over until at one point both my legs were totally cramped up and I was standing in the middle of the road unable to move. Some spectator brought me water and another one brought me salt and assured me that it would get me back up and running in 5 minutes. I didn't wait for that long though and tried to start at least to jog again, but quickly had to go back to walk / jog / walk. And all of this was still in the first loop, I think I completed the first loop in over 1h30min so it was a big disaster. After a while I think the salt did kick in and I could continue to jog, I still felt that my legs could jump back into cramp any moment if I tried to increase the speed but at least I could pass the finish line jogging instead of walking. At the finish line I even let some folks pass to make sure I had a clean finish picture, I knew I wouldn't be getting anywhere near my PR anyway so those few extra seconds wouldn't matter.

Overall 5:51:21 AG-58/127

  • I finished this race with very mixed feelings, I'm not the greatest swimmer and my last open water swim was 44 minutes, so I guess I could be OK with my 40+ minute swim. On the bike I scattered my PR with 14 minutes, I remained under 2h30min something which I didn't even thought was possible with my bike! But the run ... 4th race in a row the run turned my total race time into a disaster! I started the race with the goal of breaking my PR of 5h39 but didn't even got close to that so I cant be happy about my total race. Only positive note was surely my bike race and getting to the finish line. 
  • Ow one more thing, I loved the idea of the wrist bands that the athletes could hand out to any volunteer of their choice, not sure if that is a normal thing they do here in the USA, but it didn't exist in the previous races I ran. During the run I gave it to some volunteer kid that was having fun spraying athletes with his water gun, loved the feeling of that cold water!


Some lessons learned

  • Really need to try in my next 70.3 to keep the breaks on a little during the bike portion of the race in the hope to improve my run time
  • Add sodium capsules or solution to the nutrition on the bike, apparently my level of sweating depletes me of salts even if I drink electrolytes instead of water 
  • Adjust the training to add more brick sessions, specifically the bike / run sessions as there I have serious problems
  • Having a rental car was a huge plus for us because of T1 and T2 being far apart

Result

  • Swim   0:40:47     AG-54/127
  • T1       0:02:42
  • Bike    2:28:58     AG-20/127
  • T2       0:03:12
  • Run     2:35:42     AG-88/127
  • Total   5:51:21     AG-58/127

Tags: HIM Raleigh race report, race report HIM Raleigh, 70.3 Raleigh race report, race report 70.3 Raleigh, Ironman 70.3 Raleigh race report, race report Ironman 70.3 Raleigh

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