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Ironman Miami 70.3 Race Recap
It’s always easier to write a race report for a race where everything clicks. But all races - especially the tough ones - provide an opportunity for growth and are just as important to reflect on. Ironman Miami 70.3 was an incredible experience and a lot of fun, but I definitely feel like I left behind some unfinished business.
First a little background. Following a half-marathon PR in June at the Garry Bjorklund Half-Marathon in Duluth (easily one of the best race experiences ever) and the Rochesterfest Road Mile less than a week later (easily one of the worst race experiences ever), I found myself faced with stress fracture number six.
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| 2 main reasons why Grandma's Half was so great. |
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| Hello old friend. |
Miami
I took a 5:30am flight from MSP to Miami Thursday before the race. While I like early mornings, the ridiculously early o’clock wake-up call was a bit much. Ufffff.
I was able to sleep on the plane for a few hours and arrived in Miami around 11:30am local time. I took an Uber from the airport to a rented Airbnb condo right downtown and a half a mile from the race venue. Uber was easy, fast, and cheap and also felt super big-city cool. :) After unpacking, I had plenty of time to take the estimated 25 minute trip to the bike shop where my bike had been shipped and still have time to get to the ocean for a quick open water swim. However, bike shop miscommunication, the weather, and President Obama himself had other plans. The quick 25 minute trip turned into an hour and a half car ride due to a visit by Obama to the city and some serious presidential traffic. Uber stopped being super big-city cool pretty quickly. When I finally got to the shop, I found out they had accidently sent my bike to the race site where it wouldn’t be ready for pick up until the next day. It had also started raining, so a bike ride was definitely not happening. And by the time I took another hour and a half Uber trip back to the condo and beach, it was dark and left no time for a swim. Conclusion: impromptu rest day. I rolled with it though. 1. I was exhausted. 2. I took a complete rest day before my last 70.3 and figured it was well placed in the week here. 3. I had all day the next day to get in a ride and swim after a much needed solid night’s rest.
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| Miami Traffic |
PSA: Despite the bike shop mix-up, bikeflights.com is the bomb.com. I paid less than half the price of FedEx to ship my bike and the customer service was stellar. (Thank you Gmail for trolling my inbox and sending me extremely helpful advertisements.)
On Friday, I was reunited with my bike (halleluiah!), swung by the expo to pick up my packet and check out the gear, and enjoyed a nice hot Miami training ride and calm ocean swim. I checked out a little more of downtown Miami (lots of lights!) and then headed home to await my mom’s arrival. Yay! Doing cool things in a cool city is even cooler with cool company. <3
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| The best race sherpa |
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| New swim skin! |
Saturday was filled with pre-race workouts, route previews, and visiting the expo again to address a bike computer that decided to stop working the day before the race. Wonderful... But I rolled with this too. First, I had my Garmin 920XT watch as a back-up, even if having to wear it on my wrist during the bike was less than ideal. Second, I was sure someone at the race expo would be able to help. Turns out, the Garmin guys were all too happy to sell me brand new one! While negotiating an expo Garmin special though, my old computer spontaneously came back to life! Despite the miracle, my mom wisely insisted on getting the new one just in case old-trusty decided to take the day off on race day too. I was already on a first-name basis with the bike shop guys after the delivery issues, so they graciously helped my set up the new computer with my exact preferences. Huge props to these guys! They stood out in the hot sun for 3 days, put together and tuned up thousands of bikes, and still acted liked they enjoyed it. One was a Minnesota native and now we’re Facebook friends. #minnesotaniceforthewin
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| Best bike friends |
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| Transition set up |
Despite the building nerves and minor glitches, I soaked in the experiences of the day as much as I could. The days leading up to a race are filled with so much excitement and so many wishes for good luck that never cease to amaze me.
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| Race outfits ready |
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| Support crew outfit ready |
Race Morning
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| Gorgeous sunrise |
While it was nice to have a little extra time for breakfast in the morning, waiting to start in the 17th age-group wave -- an hour after the pros! -- was torturous. By the time I made it to the dock, I could not wait to get going! There was no chance for a swim warm-up :(, but we did get to jump into the bay feet first from about 5 feet up - so fun! The water temperature was 86 the day before and 82 race morning, so I was excited to try out my new pink(!) Roka swim skin and not have to worry about getting out of a wetsuit in T1.
The Swim
:35:57 Division Rank: 1
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| Swim start |
After a quick prayer, I was off. I kept an eye on most of the girls during the slew of elbows and feet at the start and at the first turn about 300 yards in, I thought there was only one girl still ahead. I made it my mission to find her and her feet. It wouldn’t be easy though. We were starting to come up on the thousands of swimmers ahead and it was too sunny to make out swim cap colors and figure out who was who. But quite unexpectedly, I suddenly had a huge number 32 on someone’s calf right in front of my nose. Nice! The girl in my age group! I was hoping to draft off her the rest of the race, but after we made the next turn, the girl slowed a bit and started to drift away from the buoy line. I had to make the call to veer back on a more straight course and hope I could maintain decent speed without the advantage of a draft. This, along with not getting kicked in the face more than 3 times, became the new goal of the swim. Do all triathletes wear size 16 shoe? A few fat lips later, I spotted my mom on the final stretch down the shore line, smiled, and made my way to the swim exit. T1 was full of energy! A ton of cheering and noise! I sprinted to my bike, where I then very carefully ran to the mount line across wet, slippery concrete tiles trying not to fall on my face.
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| "Don't get kicked in the face." |
I’m glad I didn’t see my final swim time during this. The times were very slow across the board due to a strong current, no wetsuits, and some chop in the water. I guess I was having too much fun and didn’t really notice the conditions, but think I would have had a hard time thinking I was far behind!
The Bike
2:28 Division Rank: 1
The bike course was a super flat, out and back course. The plan was to keep my wattage a bit lower on the way out into the wind and crank it up a bit on the way in when the wind would be to my back. My coach had meticulously calculated what time split he thought I could do with different levels of wattage and I was thankful to have a time goal to think about. But again, starting in a late wave made the bike pretty interesting. It was almost impossible to stay legal while there was a constant stream of bikers ahead of me. I felt like I was in a constant in a pass zone. I did my best to be extremely obvious while making a pass and backing off when being passed. A course officials on a motorcycle road alongside me for a good 5 minutes at one point and no penalties were called, so I was confident I was doing the best I could. With the wind in my face, the first half seemed to take forever, but at the turnaround I got a burst of energy and felt like a new person with the wind at my back. I felt strong and although my wattage was a little shy of the optimal goal #notabiker, I was happy I was still making decent time. I lost half of my last gel at the end of the bike after going over a huge bump and made a gigantic sticky mess on my shorts, but my fluid and nutrition was also going as planned. Coming off the bike, I knew if I had a decent run, I had a chance to give the amatuer women’s course record (4:40) a run for it’s money. I saw my mom again as I pulled into transition and gave her a big fist pump and cheer.
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| Feeling strong on the bike |
The Run
1:34:33 Division Rank: 1
T2 was a little slow after first running past my spot on the rack, but I grabbed my run gear and was off. I typically come out of T2 a bit fast unintentionally, so I focused on a controlled effort. Unfortunately, my Garmin informed me at mile 1 that I had actually gone about 20 seconds slower than my goal. No worries, I thought, the first mile is always weird, I’ll settle into my pace now. Mile 2 was a little better, but still a bit slow and I wasn’t feeling like I could push much more without a significant amount of effort. Somewhere during mile 3 we hit the causeway for the first time. This was a bridge that went up and over the bay we swam in that we’d eventually go up and down a total of 4 times on the 2 loop run course. My pace for that mile was still a touch slow, but considering the climb I, again, tried not to worry much. 1 climb down, 3 to go. Coming down the causeway was pretty fun though, and each time I told myself I was having fun. By mile 4, my pace hadn’t dropped where I wanted and the fatigue was kicking in quickly. Ugh. The rest of run was a mental game. Holding goal pace was now out the question and I was forced into making the decision to ease off a bit in order to make it to the finish rather than push it and collapse somewhere on the causeway’s hard pavement.
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| Climbing the causeway |
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| Palm trees with the causeway in the background |
As we went out for the second loop, I was fighting the thought that the pavement didn’t look so hard at all. The water stops were crowded and I collided with more than one person, but I grabbed as much water and ice as I could. It wasn’t unbearably hot (high of 81-82 degrees), but staying cool was still a challenge. The course had little to no shade and, most disappointingly, had very little crowd support to pull from. I love hearing cheers and seeing signs, but fans only lined the first and last mile of the 6 mile loop, so the rest felt pretty lonely. I held ice cubes, I looked at the words ‘gratitude’ and ‘believe’ written on my wrists, I smiled when I saw my mom, I repeated mantas: “This is hard, but I can do it.” “I love running.” “I love racing.” “I’m so lucky to be here.” “Just stay with that guy.” Mostly, I put one foot in front of the other, counting down the miles to go. My pace continued to slow and my hopes of a strong finish was slipping away. I didn’t see any women in my age group, but my observance of others wasn’t the most focused either. With tears of disappointment as I entered the final chute, I couldn’t wait to collapse into the volunteers’ arms.
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| Start of the run: still smiling. |
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| End of the run: not still smiling. |
What had happened? I went into the race thinking I had a pretty good gauge of what I was capable of and had at least one or two confidence-boosting swim, bike, and run sessions. My nutrition plan went well; no cramps, no GI distress. We were cautious with my run training, but weren’t we always? Also, the run is always my favorite! I felt like I had let it down. More disappointingly, I felt like I had let down the dedications I had set for important people in my life for each mile of the run. Thinking of them was difficult and I didn’t feel like I did them justice either.
But, here is what I know. Seeing my mom after I left the med tent (and getting to experience losing my lunch after a race for the first time -- due almost entirely to disappointment rather than fatigue), helped me immediately reframe the experience. Pride radiated from her face. “Do you know how well you did, Dani? I’m so proud of you.” SO MUCH SUPPORT.
I was stunned I managed to win my age group and take 2nd overall amateur female (4:43:35: results). I was also beyond grateful I met my main goal of securing a slot in the 70.3 World Championships September 7th, 2017 in Chattanooga, TN. Not every race is going to be a course record or personal best, but there are always lessons to be learned. I’m glad I eased back a bit to secure a finish. It was frustrating, but I think it was the wise choice. I’m hoping to work on the frustration a little more too though and remember that a ‘fixed mindset’ isn’t helpful when the human body is anything but predictable at times.
Also, every text, message, note, smile, word of encouragement and congratulations truly makes me appreciate how lucky I am to even be able to test my limits. I get to swim, bike, and run to my heart’s content every day and live my life surrounded my amazing friends and family. About 10 minutes after I finished the race, I wanted nothing more to get back out there and redo the run right then and there. This lasted about 2 minutes when I tried to climb the stairs back to the condo (#ouch), but I know I’m capable of more. Every training block becomes more enjoyable: more friends made, more little goals met, more knowledge gained. I’ve been able to balance more life stuff with training than ever before and know I’m capable of more here too.
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| Nice hardware |
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| Securing my 70.3 World's slot |
In the end, a fire has definitely been lit and 2017 will be a year for the record books. It will be hard work and will likely hurt at times, but one of my favorite Oiselle runner’s quotes seems like a pretty good mantra for the upcoming season.
See you at the finish line!
Huge thanks to my genius coach Joe, TerraLoco for gearing me up, the amazing swimmers and coach Tom Walsh with the Orca’s Masters Swim group who push me and make me laugh every day, and to all of my friends and family. Whether it is joining me for a run, ride, swim, or even an aqua-jog; the best part of the sport is getting to connect with those I love the most. <3
