Bad day at the Office
Not much to report unfortunately from today's race at Rhode Island Ironman 70.3.
Due to this weekend's huge calendar of events, including LifeTime Fitness Tri, and 3 other Ironman's in Europe, I thought it was a great opportunity to hit a 'softer' race for a hitout. However I think completing 3 Ironman 70.3 events in June finally took their toll and left me with little zapp before this one even began.
The logistics of the race in Rhode Island are like none I've seen before. The swim and T1 were located around 75km from T2 and the finish line, and considering a compulsory bike check-in the day before Sunday's race, makes for a lot of hassle and mucking around.
The race:
I did manage a pretty reasonable swim and by the completion of 2km in the choppy ocean was only 60 secs off the pace of leader Tim O'Donnell and well placed with the real danger men Richie Cunningham in tow and Oscar Galindez a further minute behind us.
During the first Mile I already knew I was in for a rough day out as the gas tank seemed to be blinking on empty. I did manage to round everyone up and by Mile 20 had hit the lead. I kept this up, swapping the lead with Paul Ambrose for the next 10 miles until Galindez caught us and tucked in for a while to catch his breath, and Cunningham was hanging tough on the back also. When Galindez decided it was time to clear out around Mile 35, I stepped on the pedal but had nothing - the tank was completely empty! I could tell Cunningham was also struggling and tried to hang on to him, however I couldn't even manage to do this, and knew I'd completely blown.
For the final 15 miles I had to soft pedal back to downtown Providence where T2 and finish were located. I thought there was no point in digging a deeper hole for myself by knocking out a half marathon so decided to call it a day - very begrudgingly.
I guess your limit's are supposed to be pushed so you can find your boundaries, and today I realised mine - 3 half Ironman's in a month is quite enough and then take a break to recharge.
Thanks again everyone for the great support. After a small break for the remainder of July, taking in New York City, some of Canada and then Vegas with Merridee before heading back to Australia, I'll fire up again in August.
Cheers
Leon
TEXAS GOLD STRIKE
G’day Folks,
Well, finally, I got there after paying my so called ‘dues’. Today I finally took my first top step on the podium in a significant Triathlon in the US at the Buffalo Springs Ironman 70.3 event, held in Lubbock, Texas. My previous victory on foreign soil was the World Duathlon Championship in Canada back in 2006, so I was super hungry to get back in the winners circle after several other minor placings at Ironman 70.3 events recently.
This win continues a stellar start to 2008, with other victories including Geelong 70.3 and the Aussie LD Champs, and goes a long way to helping me achieve the goal of becoming a more consistent top level athlete whenever I toe the start line at any event anywhere in the world.
The pre-race hype had Paul Amey as the odds on favourite after 2 recent blistering wins at Ironman 70.3 events, and I guess rightly so. However my training mates that made the trip from Boulder with me, Gav Scott, Steve Hackett and Paul Matthews were confident we could give Amey a real run for his money after putting together some great work at the base over the past couple of weeks.
The week leading into the race saw temperatures most days hovering in the mid thirties (celsius) and had me reaching for a drink just thinking about the idea of competing in a half in those kind of conditions. However as race day dawned we encountered completely different conditions with light rain falling and gusting winds which kept temperatures in the low twenties, much to everyone’s relief.
Controversy surrounded the swim leg as the shape of Buffalo Springs lake lends itself to some shifty wading for the first couple of hundred metres, thus record swim times for a 1.9km leg. For example, my swim here was about 5-6 minutes faster than the 1.9km swim leg at the Ironman 70.3 Kansas event only a few weeks back. I’ve been working hard on my swimming however this kind of improvement would be a miracle!
American ITU racer Tim O’donnell led the field from the water, switching to compete in some 70.3 races after missing selection for the US Olympic team. I climbed out my usual 2 minutes down but only 1 minute behind Hackett and Matthews and had race favourite Amey in sight at only 30 seconds.
I was able to round up all but O’Donnell 20 miles into the bike, which is when light rain began to fall and made cycling on these farm to market roads a little sketchy, like riding on an ice rink. O’Donnell continued to dictate terms and rode a great race to marginally increase his lead by an extra 30 seconds – pushing his lead out to 2:30 by T2. Gav Scott hung tough and had a great ride to enter transition just behind me with Hackett also.
To be honest, not having raced O’Donnell before lead me to have absolutely no idea how he was going to run but kept in the back of my mind that being an ITU drafting racer, he may be a little short on miles in the legs coming to the back end of a half Ironman. To my dismay, I think he had actually increased his lead out to 3 minutes by the half way turnaround point at Buffalo’s own mini ‘energy lab’, and at that stage I was almost resigned to running for 2nd place. About 10 miles in the age groupers started to filter past in the opposite direction, and I was getting reports from them that O’Donnell was starting to look a little weary. That’s one of the things I love about racing in America – that the age groupers, whilst ensconced in their own battles, always have the energy to encourage the Pro’s racing out front.
Anyhow, this gave me that extra little push I needed to throw in some surges, and through mile 11 and 12 I must have pulled back more than a minute per mile and before you knew it I hit the lead with around a mile to run. And as they say, ‘the rest is history’!
O’Donnell staggered in for 2nd, with Aussie Matthews in 3rd, Gav Scott in 4th and Hackett rounding out the money winners in 6th place.
The Aussies have a great history at this race, with Belly winning it 2 years ago, and Chris Leigh last year, so it’s great to keep the trophy in local hands.
A BIG Thanks for the continued great support from my girl Merridee, Mum, Dad and the rest of my family, friends and sponsors. Without the encouragement to keep chasing the dream, I think I would have been an unsatisfied pencil pusher right about now.
Next up for me will be the inaugural Rhode Island Ironman 70.3 event in 2 weeks time, which I have switched on my program from the originally planned Life Time Fitness Triathlon. I made the change because I think I have found my niche with these half Ironman distance events and feel I’m a contender for the pointy end of the field every time I race.
Cheers
Leon
'Ironman 70.3 Kansas - 3rd Place
HOT - that's the first word that comes into my mind when reliving the days action at Ironman 70.3 Kansas yesterday.
As it turned out the race was one of attrition, with temperatures soaring up into the 30's with high humidity also, making conditions very oppressive.
The town of Lawrence, Kansas was better known for its Championship winning NCAA College Basketball team, but Sunday was the first time the town had ventured into holding an Ironman 70.3 event at the nearby Clinton Lake reservior. It attracted a very strong field for it's inuagural event, ready to take on the fresh water lake swim, rolling hills and strong winds (Kansas is known for it's tornado's) through rural farmland on the bike and hot and steamy flat looped run.
Living in Colorado, which borders Kansas, gave me the opportunity to drive to this event and avoid the airport circus, however 5 hours into the 9 hour drive I was having second thoughts and a short 1hr plane trip suddenly became more attractive. Driving across the plains in middle America offers the occasional food/petrol stops amongst paddock upon paddock upon paddock. A rather uninteresting journey. Worse still, we had to make this return drive after the races conclusion - it actually ended up being harder than the half ironman itself!
Getting back to the race - We had some great pre-race entertainment lined up with a few NAVY SEALS parachuting in to the start line before things kicked off, and one of the parachuters was actually racing so he stripped down from his jump suit to reveal his race suit and then took his position on the start line - talk about a cool warmup for your race!
I had a swimsuit malfunction before the race had even kicked off with a broken zipper so had to settle for a swimming in my endurance race shorts. As it turned out I had a rather poor swim, exiting the water some 2 minutes down on the leaders. If I was going to have a good end result I had my work cut out for me this day.
The bike course was interesting in that you made your way out of the park aorund 5 miles where you came to a 4 way intersection, known to locals as the Ironcross. You had to cycle around 15 miles out and back on each of the 3 other sections of this 4 way intersection, so it gave you a great idea where all your competitors were. I was cycling as hard as I possibly could but for the first half didn't seems to be making any inroads on the 6 or so guys hovering around 2 minutes in front. It was so hot and steamy I was a little worried about later ramifications to the amount of sweating I was encountering. Then all of a sudden around 70km guys just starting popping. I caught and passed Paul Mathews, Simon Lessing, TJ Tollakson at various points and drew level with Craig Alexander with a few miles remaining, leaving only Paul Ambrose and Terrenzo Bozzone out front coming off the bike to run. Fastest bike-split for the day was some consolation for hanging tough I guess.
Crowie quickly put a gap on me at the beginning of the run as we passed Ambrose early, so this left me in 3rd spot. The positions remained the same throughout the run, it turning into a real race of attrition. Terrenzo was out front and firing his way to a blistering run leg, widening the gap out to around 4 minutes at race end. Crowie was dangling about 30-60 seconds in front of me but I had nothing left in the tank and was just hanging on for survival, crossing the line in 3rd place for my first podium since I arrived in the US this season.
Just to spice things up for the agegroupers, a Wild storm blew in around 3/4 the way through their race, and it was so severe (as I'm told most storms in middle America are) that the race for them had to be stopped and everyone had to take shelter before you were blown away with the wind! Crazy!!
Next stop for me will be the Buffalo Springs 70.3 in Texas in 2 weeks time.
Cheers
Leon