Ironman 70.3 Texas Race Report

On Sunday, April 6th, I finished my sixth half-distance triathlon (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run) at Ironman 70.3 Texas in Galveston. Thanks largely to favorable winds on the bike and my stomach holding together, I improved my personal record for the distance (previously held by my last triathlon in Kerrville last September) by nearly 12 minutes. I had PR bike and run splits, and finished in a time of 5:33:38. The weather was both challenging and beneficial: The wind made the swim very difficult, but somehow gave more on the ride out than it took away on the ride back; the threatened rain fell pretty much only on the far end of the island; the air temperature was warm enough, but not too hot, helped by the cloud cover. I finished 140th out of 297 in my age group, leading to my new tagline ("I'm a very average athlete, and I have the data to prove it"), which I mean as an encouragement to others, ie you don't have to be extraordinary to do the kinds of things I do.

Fight For Air Austin

Today's Fight For Air climb in Austin (benefitting the American Lung Association) marks the start of three years as a stair racer, and one year as a member of the West Coast Labels/X-Gym national stair racing team. It's been fun, even if it is a ridiculous sport, and I have no intention of stopping now. I really enjoy getting to see my "step siblings" at these races, since none of them live in Austin to run into the rest of the time. While my result at today's race is not what I had hoped, considering I've had a cold most of the week, it was better than I thought it might be. I was nearly a minute slower than last year in the "extreme" double climb, and my third single climb (later after some recovery time) was nothing spectacular. None of my climbs were under 4 minutes, but at least none of them were over 5. I wound up finishing fourth in the extreme, 10th in the single. I would have been second in the extreme if I had matched last year's time. Oh well. I'll come back next year.

LBJ 100 / Enchanted Rock Duathlon

On March 30, I did the Enchanted Rock "Extreme" Duathlon for my second and, unfortunately, probably last time (the race director said he won't be able to do this race again in the foreseeable future). Also unfortunate is that my time this year was two minutes slower than last year. If there's any one cause for the slowdown, it was probably that I biked 100 kilometers the day before in the LBJ 100 ride. It was a really nice ride, the weather the whole weekend was beautiful, my legs weren't trashed, but they did feel less than completely fresh for the 5-mile trail run, 16-mile road bike, 1.1-mile run duathlon, ending at the top of a big bald pink granite knob.