It's been a week now since I finished the Clash Daytona half iron triathlon down in Florida, and in the last 2-3 days I've finally started walking normally again. But the extreme soreness and hobbling around for days afterwards was worth it to do something I wasn't sure I'd be able to do again after such a long break from higher level training and racing- setting a new personal best time in a triathlon. 4 hours and 19 minutes for the 70.3 distance.
This race wasn't an Ironman branded race, but it was every bit as well organized and produced. There were even fireworks just before the start, that's a new one for me! And for the entire 56 mile bike course we had a lane to ourselves, totally coned off and separate from car traffic. That doesn't always happen in an Ironman 70.3 race.
The course was centered around the Daytona 500 race track- I've never been to a Nascar stadium, car racing just isn't my thing, but I must admit this was pretty cool. I had no idea how big those tracks are- one lap of the track was ~2.5 miles around, and the 1.2 mile swim portion of the race was held in a rectangular manmade lake entirely contained within the infield of the track. Logistically, everything was really close together which was nice. I stayed at a hotel across the street, so it was an easy 5 minute drive to park, and then the parking lot was basically a few minutes walk from the swim, transition area, expo, registration, and finish line. For the pro race on Friday they did laps on the track for the whole bike and run portions of the race, so it's very spectator friendly and a very fast course. There are too many age groupers to bike on the track the whole time, so we did one lap and then left the track to do a double out and back on a nearby road. Aside from the u-turns which slow things down, our course was also very quick- it was almost totally flat and being Florida, the pavement was super smooth. For the run, we did a couple laps on the track, which they extended to get the full 13.1 distance by also looping us around the infield and under the grandstands, which was the only shaded portion of the run. This is definitely a race I will consider doing again in the future and would recommend to others.
As for my training leading into the race, it's been pretty good but not great. I took a few weeks off after the Chicago Tri in August to recover from the season, and have been back at it now for about 3 months leading into this race. My training this fall was not quite as good or consistent as it was through last winter, spring and summer due to work and other things, but it has still been pretty good overall and the main training goal for the fall was accomplished- improve my run. In my summer races this year, the run was the weak point every time. It's the one discipline that hasn't returned to the form I had in my late 20s. So, that's been my main focus of the past few months... even if the swim and bike training were to fall off a little bit, I was fine with that as long as the run was improving, which it did. By race day, I had shown recently in training that I can run an open half marathon now in around 1:22-1:23, which I wasn't anywhere close to this summer, or at any time in the past 6 years. But, what remained to be seen was how close to that I could run after a swim and 56 mile bike ride- triathlon running is not just about running fitness, but also about bike fitness and race execution- pacing, nutrition and hydration over a 4+ hour race.
My run started off great- the first three miles went by quickly and somewhat easily at a ~6:20/mile pace. Stride was feeling smooth and I had just moved into 3rd AG, 10th overall so motivation was high to continue at the pace, which I felt like I could, at least aerobically. But then a bit after mile 3 I started feeling a twitching in my quads which got more frequent over the next couple minutes. Knowing this is a pre-cramp warning sign, I decided to slow down my pace so that I could at least continue running, rather than be forced to walk most of the last 10 miles. Ultimately, I never fully cramped but my legs were tightening up and getting heavier through the middle of the run. When I was running, it was at ~7:15/mi through the middle miles, plus there were some walk breaks through aid stations during that time, and then I brought it down to ~7:00/mi for the last couple miles. I was passed by 4 athletes during that time and got bumped off the age group podium, and finished with a run split of 1:33. While this split didn't quite reflect the running gains I've made this fall, it was a big improvement from the 1:42 I ran in a half iron in 2019, and because the swim (27, 1:15/100yd) and bike (2:14, 25.0 mph) were as good as they were, I was still able to set an overall PR of 4:19, down from my previous best of 4:21.
So, despite a rough middle few miles of the run, I came away from this race very pleased with how it went and how I've been able to get my fitness back in the past year. And that didn't come easy... I've had to be very disciplined, consistent, and time-efficient (because coaching and my athletes come first before my own training), not to mention willing to push myself to the limit many times over in workouts, while at the same time being smart about recovering adequately and not over-working myself. (easy=easy, hard=hard) But in the end, about a year and a quarter out from being in the worst shape of my life, I was able to put together the best long course race I've ever done, with clear potential for improvement. Still a ways to go to match my best short course performance (20/59/35), which in my 20s I was always more competitive at than long course, and who knows if I'll ever get back there, but Daytona showed me that moving forward into the future, if I continue training consistently and am smart about it, there's still a lot of potential for fast racing and PRs. But more importantly than that, I'm feeling healthier again in the past year, I'm fitter and stronger that I've been in awhile, and I'm having fun doing it. It was also nice to hear from many of my athletes and other friends before and after the race that were following along- that's a good motivation to keep pushing throughout the race, and I hope that my efforts can help inspire others to work hard and accomplish their goals!
In the past month I've been asked by many "what's next?" I wanted to wait until after this race to think much about that. The one thing that I knew beforehand was that I planned to continue training and build on the progress I made this year- I don't want to lose all my fitness again by taking another extended break. So I'll take a couple easy weeks and then start working again. But now that this race is in the books, next season's plans are starting to come together. Because Nationals is coming back to Milwaukee, I'm going to plan for that as my A race for the summer. I'd also like to race another half iron or two, and attempt to lower my new PR even more. But if I try to race both short and long course next summer at a high level, one or both will end up compromised, since the training should be different for the two. So what I'm planning to do at this point is to focus the spring and summer on short course training and racing. Then after Nationals, I'll shift my training to a long course focus and hit one or two 70.3s in the fall. Maybe I'll be back to Daytona, but there are also a few other good options I could do. So in terms of specific races, things are still pretty up in the air other than Nationals, but the big picture season structure seems to be coming together. So if you're following my Strava, you'll probably see workouts pick back up in a few weeks. Otherwise, I'll probably check back here with a training update sometime in the spring. Thanks for reading, and happy training!
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