4/21/11

New Orleans 70.3

This past weekend I headed down to New Orleans with a few other wisconsinites - Paul Eicher, Mark Hering and Jackie Arendt. For all of us, this marked the first race of the season. For Jackie and I it was also our first professional race. I was a little nervous for the race, particularly in the days leading up to it but mostly I was excited to finally race. I think it was calming knowing that Jackie was going through the same experiences as me.

We did the usual pre race stuff and soon enough it was time to race. Race morning brought a couple of surprises, the first was that I managed to rip the valve extender off my rear tire trying to inflate it (I blame Paul's pump). The volunteer mechanics at the race site were able to fix it right away so that was awesome. The second surprise was the swim was cancelled due to wind and the race would become a bike run. Part of me was happy but also I wanted to see how I would fare in the swim starting with a smaller, faster group of swimmers. I guess I'll find out soon enough in St. George.

For the bike, the pros started every 30 seconds. I didn't have much of a plan for the bike. I wanted to ride competitive and see were that put me for the run. I managed to catch the 2 riders ahead of me within the first ~ 15 minutes but I took it out a little too hard. When a couple of faster guys passed me a few miles later I couldn't hang with them. I also couldn't ride away from the 2 guys that I had caught earlier. We rode together passing some other riders until we hit the ~ 35 mile mark. At this point Dirk Bockel came flying by! I didn't try to go with him then, but I should have, because I tried to bridge up to him a mile or so later. Despite my effort, Dirk continued to ride up the road but I felt good and continued to hold a pretty good effort into T2 and I was also able to pass a few more people.

I started the run not knowing exactly what place I was in. My plan for the run was to start conservatively and build into it. I was passed by 3 people right away but I kept to my run pace. I didn't have a watch on so I wasn't sure of splits but I felt good through the first few miles. The middle miles of the run went by quickly. I wasn't getting paced and I was making up time. At mile 8/9 I was starting to hurt a bit but I had passed 2 of the 3 guys who had passed me earlier. The last part of the run was probably my favorite race finish ever. The run ended in the historic french quarter and the last 600m of road was packed with spectators. It probably didn't hurt that I felt like I was having a good run too! I ended up passing a couple more guys in the last mile or so.

I finished the run in 1:18.36, which was a pretty big run PR. Combined with a 2:12 and change bike and I finished in 3:32.51, 18th place overall. I was pretty pleased with the result. I wasn't too far behind some very good athletes (http://ironmanlive.com/tracking.php?race=neworleans70.3&year=2011). But I also know that even if I swim well, i'm still going to lose (hopefully only) 3 minutes to the faster swimmers so the results probably would have been different had there been a swim.

After this race I have a pretty good idea of what I need to work on. Ideally I need to drop ~4 min on the bike and ~3-4 min on the run as well as continue to improve my swim. It's not realistic to improve this much in one year, or maybe two years but I'm going to enjoy trying.

Jackie, Mark and Paul all had solid performances as well. All three are going to have very good years!

The trip was a lot of fun. I look forward to racing NOLA 70.3 again in 2012.

Thanks to all my sponsors and teammates for their support!


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