St George 70.3 2019 recap

Signed up for St George 70.3 as a way to test my fitness before IM Boulder in June. I have been training steadily since mid January. Spent a lot of time climbing on the bike on Zwift and in real life. By April I had felt pretty good about the bike and the run, and the swim training was actually showing some real progress too after a year spent working on a Vasa trainer. My easy time for 100 yards free was about 1:38, with a hard effort repeats time being around 1:26-1:27. I made some improvements to the bike, lightening it up a bit and getting a custom storage box that attaches to the area above the bottom bracket.

Arrived at St G on Thursday afternoon. Checked into the hotel (Tru by Hilton, very convenient!), unloaded my gear and went to the town square square to pick my registration packet.  Got there right around the time when Andrew Messick was starting his announcement of the full IM returning to StG in 2020, with the 3 year rotation. I tried to listen to the speech but the tent was too loud, and I really did not want to lose my space in line, so I just turned on their Facebook live feed and listened to it instead. Much better J. The pickup lines were pretty long and I ended up spending about 30 minutes waiting for this and that. 

Got back to the room, laid everything out on the spare bed and assembled the gear, sorting it into 3 piles (morning/bike/run). Everything was in place except for the chain lube, so I breathed the sign of relief. By that time, it was almost 6:30pm local time and it was time to get some food. I went out to the local diner called Black Bear. Had a substantial dinner by my standards – with Cobb salad and a baked potato. The diner was teeming with the tourists (non triathletes by the looks of it) and the locals. The food was quite good, especially the bacon. Yum! Afterwards I drove to the nearest supermarket and got some fuel for the race day morning – ie Gatorade, peanut butter, bananas and a few bread rolls. Got back to the hotel, watched TV for a bit and turned in for the night. 

Slept pretty well, although the noise from the Interstate 15 right outside the window was a bit annoying.Woke up at around 6:30am and headed downstairs for breakfast. The hotel clearly was doing a good amount of business with the triathletes – saw quite a few loading up on carbs or heading out/returning from rides. I had some oatmeal with cranberries and a banana with coffee. After that it was time for some equipment testing. Rode my bike for about 15 mins, no hard efforts, just making sure that the shifting was working the way it was supposed to. No issues, although the return route via River Rd was not great – the bike lane was too narrow to stay in aero. Rode it on the bullhorns mostly. Got back, put on running shoes and headed out for a quick run. The sun was already pretty hot, and there I made my first mistake – not putting on lots and lots of sunscreen right away.  Went downstairs, had a waffle and more coffee, and then headed to a bike shop up the street to get some chain lube. It was so fantastically dry outside that I realized that the chain needed to be dry lubed. Picked up some dry lube and after that was finally all set.

Loaded my gear bags and my bike into the car at around 11:30am and headed towards the town square. The plan was to listen to the athlete meeting, drop off the run gear bag and then head towards the reservoir. By the time I got the stage, the area in front of it was pretty full and I ended up sitting sort of high way between the shaded area and the area exposed to the sun. That was a really dumb move. I got baked there big time, while learning absolutely nothing new from the presenter. And then I had to wait another 30 mins for T2 to open up. More time in the sun without the proper hydration and sunscreen. Arggh.

Once I had dropped off the run gear, I headed to the reservoir. It was a bit longer of a drive than I had expected with the traffic being heavy. I got there eventually and the parking situation was not great… had to make myself a parking spot. Lubed the chain, racked the bike, hung the bag on the numbered rack and then went down to the water to see what condition my condition was in. The water was definitely not warm, but felt about 62-63 degrees, which was exactly what I was expecting. I walked ankle deep in the water of the shallow end of the boat ramp for a few minutes and decided that it is going to be a 2 swim cap thing. Finally got to the car at around 2:30pm and drove back to StG. Stopped by a supermarket on the way back and got 2 slices of pizza and a chicken sandwich for dinner. Was back at the hotel at 3pm. Charged all of my electronics, mixed my Infinit drink, rolled a little bit on the foam roller.... At that point, the plan was to park myself in front of TV, and only step out of the room to drop off the stuff I won't need in the morning by the car at around 6:30pm.

I followed the plan to the T, but unfortunately, when I went down to the car, I had discovered a huge nail sticking out of the rear left tire. Not sure where I picked it up, but there it was. I checked with Google for the tire shops nearby that were still opened and the only one without 2 miles that was still open was a WalMart down street. Drove there quickly, but they had a line of cars out of the door and the manager told me to come back tomorrow. At that point, I simply put on a spare and drove back to the hotel, bummed knowing that I had to take care of the tire right after the race.

Got to the room at 7:30, had my sandwich and did my best to calm the nerves down and prep for sleep. I really started to feel the sunburn on my neck and my back and even my arms. Slept fairly well, not great… got up at 3:45am. Had 2 bread rolls with Justin's peanut butter and honey mix, a banana and a Starbucks Espresso shot can. Rolled on the foam roller, got my bags, checked out and stepped into the cool, dark night. The hotel was about 1.5 miles from the finish line, so got there at 4:15am, parked 3 blocks from the shuttles and headed out. Boarded right away, no wait… the drive to the T1 in the darkness is always a weird experience (somewhere between exciting and terrifying) – listened to Burzum as I always do before races, and his magic was lifting my spirit off this planet one more time.

Got to my bike, re-installed the eTap batteries, pumped the tires to 85/90 front/rear, put in Infinit, filled up the aero bottle with a mix of Gatorade and water, milled around… was looking for a couple of my buddies, but the T1 got hectic quick, and suddenly it was 20 minutes to the start and the portapotty lines were long as always… I did not get to the swim start til about 5 minutes to 7. There I made another mistake. I did not realize how long it’d take to let everyone into the water, so as I lined up with the 35-38 minute swim section, I did not start swimming until 7:35am. One weird thing was that I felt something in the right eye as I was tightening the goggles. Perhaps, I somehow overtightened one side? 

The swim was uneventful but.. once again, just like in Palm Springs earlier this year, I could not find my groove. I was not struggling, but it was not a smooth swim at all. Although the water temps were in the low 60s I felt cold, and was not just in my element. The course was very easy to navigate, as it is a simple triangle swam counterclockwise. At one point, somewhere before the 2^nd turn, suddenly the wind picked up and it got choppy. In any case, I was out of the water in 40 minutes. Well, 40:34 for those who care. Garmin file here.

In T1, somehow the wetsuit got stuck on the right leg (the one that did not have the chip on, go figure) and I had to get down on the mat to get it to come off. Once that was done, I grabbed my bag off the rack and got the helmet and the shoes on. Ran up to the bike in shoes since we could not leave them clipped in and we were off into the desert.

I got on the bike and only then had realized that somehow I got either some speck of sand or something like that into my right eye. It was starting to itch bad and would kind of get worse every few miles, and then let up. I managed to sort of initially wink through it, but then a thing happened that could have ended my race right there. We were going up the first incline when some guy in front of me dropped his bottle and in some inexplicable fashion turned around to catch it as it was rolling down. In the process, he almost took me down, but thankfully I was able to  make a stealthy evasive maneuver. After that I rode the next 10 miles trying to warm up and get the hips going again. It was not going well, and I kind of tried to just work through it. Things got better once we turned left on the highway (Hwy 6/State st), but the problem was that by then I was riding against a fast moving traffic on the right, and the left lane/shoulder was full of rumble strips. Basically til mile 19 I could not do much and was just going as fast as possible given the conditions.

Once we turned on Telegraph Road, I felt a bit better. I was not shivering anymore and was pushing good wattage up up the inclines. There was one descent that could have been taken very fast in aero but it was so crowded that I had to brake hard in a few spots. Nonetheless mentally I was feeling pretty strong but the power in the legs was just not coming back. The course was starting to wind through the suburbia for a while until we hit Red Rocks Parkway where we rode on the opposite side of the run course - but that time the pros were starting to climb the infamous Booyah Bend. At the top I managed to drop the chain shifting into the big ring... that was a big bummer, and I kind of lost my motivation there. 

We rode back into town and did an out and back on Snow Canyon parkway which is basically just a series of false flats. It was starting to get a bit warmer and I could feel the sun on my arms and my back. Once we started going up the actual Snow Canyon climb past the ranger station, I started to feel back in my element and powered through the segment. To be honest, it is not that hard of a climb if you pace with power - although it does get fairly steep within the last mile or so. Oh and it also is completely exposed to the sun. Once I crested it, there was a water station - grabbed a bottle of water and poured all over the head/neck/back... and then I dropped the chain for the second time. The irony! That was the point when I mentally threw in the towel and decided to just cruise through the rest of the race. 

The descent into town was a lot of fun - it really is fast and by then the road was pretty open since the climb broke up the packs of riders. A few sections were exposed to the wind so I had to get off the aerobars but generally it was a pretty screaming ride all the way to the turn off on Diagonal street. The last mile or so was along the run course again... and I was pretty surprised to see a few age groupers clearly on the way to the finish line. Assuming the run in the range of 1:30-1:35 and them lining up at the front of the swim - that meant that the faster age grouper times were going to be in the 4:40 range. Ouch. The final bummer was the fact that the bike course was about 0.6 miles short and I stupidly did not get my feet out of the bike shoes fast enough so that I ended somehow with the right foot on top of the right shoe, but the left foot dangling on top of the left shoe... at the dismount somehow the left foot ended back in the shoe, which almost caused me to drop the bike... just the series of unfortunate events. Bike time - 3:02:38, which is pretty sad. Nutrition wise I had about 550 kcals of Infinit mix, 2 GUs with caffeine, about 15oz of Gatorade  and 1 half of a Clif Bar. I think that I could taken about 200 kcals more since I came off the bike feeling a bit low on fuel. Garmin file here.

The T2 was already hot and I somehow ended up having trouble getting the run gear back untied. The the Nikes shoelaces would not tie... at least I got 2 packets of sunscreen smeared on quickly, but another 5 mins wasted. 

The run was the least eventful leg of the race. I would take a cup of water and a serving of Cola for nutrition and try to stay as cool as possible by dumping water on my head and shoulders at every station. The first climb was steep but went by quickly, About a mile into it I saw my co-worker and studly triathlete Jeremy running down towards the finish. From there onward I was not definitely working particularly hard, keeping the heart rate around 160bpm give or take. Somewhere towards the top some dude ended up running along with me, and we basically ran together until mile 12 where he pushed forward and I had no real desire to push any harder. We chatted as we were going up and down Red Hills parkway and the time flew by quite fast. We passed a ton of people, don't think that anyone really passed us at all for the entire stretch... the course is actually quite fast if you did not burn all your matches climbing Snow Canyon or going up the Booyah Bend climb out of town. The only thing that bugged was the soreness in the right eyelid, which was probably aggravated by the sweat and the sunscreen running down... it got bad enough with 0.5 miles to go that I had to stop and pour some cold water on the eye. It did not bother me until I sat down to get some food after the race. Run was done in 1:40:58, average heart rate 159bpm, Garmin file here. All together, the total time was 5:34:28.  

The finish line was a bit disorganized by the WTC standards. I got my medal and my finisher's hat and then sort of hung around the chute, waiting for god knows what, until I had realized that we were supposed to walk back towards the town center square. I was so overheated that I jumped into mini creek where the kids were splashing and just submerged in it for a few minutes. Was joined by a couple of other triathletes.. one of them stated rightly - hey, we're all just big kids! That made me laugh, and I felt so much better... proceeded to the food tent, got a box of what looked like Chipotle food with a banana and a soda. The eye was still bugging me, and at that point I just wanted to get to my car quick because I had some artificial tears in my backpack... I got my morning bag and my T1 bag from the volunteers, thanked them, piled everything up, grabbed the bike and walked to the car. Still was a bit out of it, and took some time to actually find where I had parked 😁. 

Threw everything back into the car, and then drove back to that WalMart place. Half way through the eye started hurting so bad that I had to stop to drip in more tears. The mechanic told me it'd take 2 hours to put on a new tire, and I used the time to get more food at some local BBQ place (which was just awful, as an aside) and catch a cat nap on a patio furniture at the Garden section of the said supercenter (very comfy). The sun was just burning me up, the eye would itch like crazy every 10 minutes or so... not good. At that point I bailed on the plan to stay overnight in Las Vegas and instead called the hotel where had I stayed the night before and booked a room for 1 more night to get myself together. In the hotel, I could not stand to see any screen glare at all, so I listened to podcasts, ate the leftover peanut butter, bread and bananas... fell asleep, woke up at 7am, had the breakfast downstairs and decided to take a chance on driving back to LA... with the hope that the eye won't be an issue anymore. Drove without any problems (not counting the Vegas traffic), although had to stop twice to stretch the legs and the back.

What are my thoughts, now that it's been 2 weeks since the race? I think that it is a tricky course for a number of reasons. I was told by the number of people to bring a compact crankset to avoid overbiking on Snow Canyon. Well I did that and certainly did not overbike by any stretch of imagination, but I also spun out on every downhill losing a bunch of time.  I will switch back to  52/36 upfront and 11/28 in the back for Boulder. To hopefully fix the chain drops, I am going to set my front derailleur as close to the SRAM specs as possible. My OWS continues to be my weakness and it keeps me from riding a less crowded course - will try to get more ocean swims in summer. The run is the only reliable constant. Lastly, definitely no more athlete briefings or ignoring the sunscreen or hydration in the dry climates! Lessons learned hopefully.

Some pretty pictures of the pretty sites I saw on the way there and in StG