My Story To The Finish

Ironman 2021 70.3 World Championship Re-cap

Snow Canyon

Do you see that title!? Is that even REAL! I am re-capping a World Championship Race! Ok so I am going to lay out how that was even possible and then go into a bit of the race.

I wouldn’t have ever imagined myself even trying to get into the race if I hadn’t read a group email my coach sent out to all his athletes back in April. Just like any other Championship, you can’t just decide you want to compete in it, pay your money and get a bib like you do for most races. You have to qualify. That means you have to complete a different 70.3 distance Ironman event, that has slots available, and then do well enough there to be offered one of those slots. Some of those slots will hopefully become a roll down slot. A roll down slot is where the person who finished ahead of you does not accept their slot so it is offered to the next person in line and the next person and so on until someone accepts it. Hopefully you!

The Reader’s Digest version of the email I received was that this was going to be the easiest year to get into the Ironman 70.3 World Championships. This was largely due to all the race cancellations combined with the travel restrictions that have gone on over the last year and a half. #Covid And it was going to be one of the most affordable years(for most of his athletes that is) since it had been moved to St. George Utah in the US, instead of New Zealand. Which is where I was going to be moving in in just about 2 months! St. George I mean, Not New Zealand! Boo. But still pretty cool. And by cool I mean HOT AF! We got here in June so it was having record highs of around 115 degrees F! Anyway, after talking to my very patient husband and then my coach I decided to try for it.

I had 4 major hurdles before I could even hope to toe the starting line. The first being I had to pick a race to qualify with that gave me enough time to train, enough time to recover if I got a slot and was close enough for me to drive to. (I have a very limited budget) This was in April and 70.3 Worlds was set for mid-September. Aka 5 months. I picked Ironman 70.3 Salem Oregon because it would be closer to future me aaaaaand was not sold out like the ones in Colorado. I wrote about that one in a separate race re-cap.

Alli On the Left and Me on the Right

Hurdle number 2 was that I didn’t own a bike. Yup, I decided to try to qualify for 70.3 Worlds before I even owned a bike… Up to this point I had trained on the stationary bikes at the gym and borrowed bikes from friends in order to do 2 sprint distance races. P.S. the gym doesn’t really like it when you come and use one of their 2 bikes in the weight room for a 3-4 hour ride, even when they have a whole room of them just down the hall for the spin class. So I started scouring Craigslist and KSL for a bike. I did mention I had a limited budget right? On April 20th I saw a bike that I thought would work and messaged to see if it was still available. By miracle it was! She is a Fuji 2011 D-6 3.0 with a custom wrap done by the woman I bought the bike from. Her name was Alli and she is a rockstar ambassador for the sport of triathlon! We still text and let each other know what races we are up to.

The hurdle I was most concerned about was that my family and I were moving. Across the country. With 2 little kids and 2 dogs. I needed to sell my house, load my moving truck, stay in my sisters house for a few weeks(Katie and Scott are the BEST!!!) and then unpack and get my boys set up for school and doctors/ dentists while simultaneously not falling too far behind in training. Haha! Right! I ended up skipping most of June. But I made it to race day at the end of July and I can’t argue with that.

My last hurdle was to perform well enough at that race in July to be able to qualify. I knew going into it that even with there being 8 times the number of usual qualifying slots I had a slim chance of making it. I would realistically have to finish in the top 10-15 of my age group. That was my first time doing a 70.3 distance triathlon and I am still a complete rookie in this sport. Turns out, 50th in my age group was good enough. The trick was simply to out wait everyone. You had to accept your slot in person and they only offered the slots after completing the awards ceremony. Which started 2 1/2 hours after I finished and easily took another hour. Theeeeen you had to wait for them to get to your age group, about another 30-45 minutes. Aka I waited around the finish line for around 4 hours after I was done with the hopes that I might get a roll down slot. I was ready to call it quits after the first sets of age group slots were handed out because I figured there was no way I was going to get one being 50th. But my Aunt Babs (the queen sherpa of the day) had remembered that my goal for even doing the race was to try for a slot to Worlds. She said we should just wait it out (and then settled in with her book because she wasn’t moving…). My age group was offered 10 slots and there were only 8 of us who were still there who wanted them. Aka I MADE IT!!! Thank you Babs!!!

Honestly. I wasn’t excited at first. I had just finished my first ever 70.3 distance triathlon. By the time I had started the run, I was hurting. A lot. Somehow I finished. Then I hung out for 4 hours in the heat with my hands seizing up because my blood sugar had plummeted and my reward was that I got to sign up to do it again…It felt like volunteering to have another baby. In less than 2 months. Without an epidural. I had even tried to text my husband and “doublecheck” that he was ok with me spending the money to sign up. Our conversation went like this:

Me: “Kelan. The St. George race is $575…I still doubt I’ll get it but what are your thoughts?

Him: “I thought that you’d go for it if you qualified, but if not, you wouldn’t? Maybe I’m misunderstanding the question?”

Me: “No, you’re right. I just feel bad at the cost…” (I was laying it on thick here)

Him: “As you should, but in my infinite benevolence, I have decided to smile upon your most expensive request.” (He also knows how to lay it on thick)

And the rest was history.

Now you know how someone like me actually made it here. Here being actually writing a re-cap of an Ironman 70.3 World Championship race. Race day was September 18, 2021. I had had a lot of nerves about the heat. But Heavenly Father had smiled on me and sent the only day in months that had temperatures in the 80’s instead of upper 90-100’s. It was a miracle. Or so I thought. I learned a lot, I experienced even more and I don’t think I am done yet.

At the Swim Start With my Mom!

But that is getting ahead of myself. The race director had let us know that they had divided the first transition zone based on your starting time. Which was epic! Because it meant I didn’t have to be there by 6:00AM when my start time wasn’t until 9:10AM. I really appreciated that they not only acknowledged how long it was going to take to get over 4000 people in the water but that they planned for it and let us know the plan. I got to sleep in until 5:30AM on a race morning, eat like normal and then casually drive down to the shuttle location. My super awesome Mom, who flew in from VA, came down with me. We ended up on different shuttles because all the athletes had to go first. She met up with me at transition in no time though.

We had all received the announcement that it was going to be a non-wetsuit legal swim as the water was temped at a balmy 78.3 degrees Fahrenheit at 4:30 that morning. Which was good because I don’t have a wetsuit and wasn’t about to rent one for the race. I happened to be in the porta potty when they called for my wave to start lining up. So I had to run/ dodge my way through a backlog of 2 other waves of swimmers to get up to mine. I made it just in time and got in the water to start my swim at 9:14AM. This did have the benefit of giving me a bit of a chance to get my heart rate up before I got in the water which set a really good tone for the whole day. I had never done a reservoir swim before so I purposely tried to keep it chill and comfortable. And I succeeded! The first half of the swim seemed to last forever while the second half flew. Transition was clean and easy. I loved the bag system and keeping the ground under the bikes empty. Things didn’t start to get interesting until I got out on the bike. Which is a really good thing! Anything that qualifies as an “interesting” swim would probably not be how I would want to start a 70.3 mile day.

Outrunning the Storm

Then they got REALLY interesting. I got hit with 20-30 mph crosswinds before I hit mile 5. Keeping my bike from sliding out from under me quickly became my first priority!

Radar Map for the Bike Leg

My second was to try and not let the wind simply push me off the road or into another cyclist. I got to experience hail and lightning for the first time ever while on a bike between miles 5 and 15…my answer was to be as small as possible and keep my arms tucked in. I finally got some clear weather around mile 21. This is also where I discovered that my bike was struggling to shift from my big ring to my little ring. I convinced it to shift by mile 25 and I left it there for the rest of the ride. There was no way I wanted to be stuck in my big ring when I hit Snow Canyon!! That started at mile 42 and went until 45.5. It is a good thing I did a lot of big gear work with my coach or I would not have made it up. That mountain was a 1000 foot gain in 3.5 miles!!! The crazy part was that the whole ride up the canyon was dry/ sunny and then when I turned the corner to start the decent (at last a break for my poor lady parts!) it started pouring again! The decent had been the part of the course I was actually scared of. Going downhill at any kind of speed freaks me out. But I kept hearing my Dad’s voice in my head “just keep the rubber side down” and then thinking about how hitting the breaks locks up the wheels and it is much harder to stay in control. So I just tucked in and FLEW!! I vacillated between having a heart attack and having the time of my life! It almost felt surreal when I got down to transition and had to dismount my bike. I even forgot how to unclip my shoes for a second! Then I got to hand my bike off to a “bike catcher”. That was a new experience! You just get off your bike, run it about 10 feet and then someone takes it from you and puts it away! Amazing!

Me with My Run Bag

I found my run bag with no problems. Again, I loved the bag system! One thing I discovered when getting to the chairs you use to put your shoes on was how many of them had been peed on by an earlier athlete. I mean, I had heard that people often would just let it go while changing their shoes but it didn’t occur to me that they do it while sitting in a chair that someone else was going to be using…live and learn I guess… The run was 2 loops of a course that took you up 600 feet and then dropped you back down. My plan was to speed hike the uphill portion and pull a Katie Wilkins (my twin) and bomb the down. It worked like a charm. The last downhill portion of the loop boasted a max grade of 26%. At least according to Google Earth Pro anyway. I really just had to hope I didn’t trip because if I did I would roll my way down like one of those cartoon character animations. My Mom, twin sister, all her kids, my husband and both my kids were cheering about 100 yards from the finish line. It was amazing to see them! I found out later that my older son kept asking my husband and sister “is Mom last?” To which my sister generously answered “no, she is in the middle”.

This really was a race to remember. And I think I have finally told the Whole Story. So all that’s left is my normal post race of: Things I learned, things I did well and things I would do differently.

Things I Learned:

1. My tri top is causing some chafe which started in the swim, went under the radar for the bike and really started to be painful on the run.

2. I really like the 2 transition/ bag set up

3. Bike catchers are legit!

4. My bike needs to have some of its cables adjusted, it was hit or miss for my bike to switch between the big and little ring.

5. My training was on point! I made it up that canyon without having to walk my bike!

Things I Did Well

1.  Stuck to my fueling and hydrating plan

2.  Was able to tuck in and FLY down the canyon on the bike!

3.  Was also able to fly down the downhills on the run

4.  Brought my handheld on the run and used it to spray down my face and head when I even thought about being hot.

Things I Would Do Differently

1. I would try to push a little harder on the swim, I really did take it super easy!

2. I would like to run a bit of the uphill portions, once again, I was more cautious of burning out than I maybe needed to be.

3. Actually get that bike tune-up before the race

There isn’t much left to say. I really enjoyed this race. I learned a lot, mostly about myself. It was a challenge but one I found out that I could conquer. I am not a “natural” athlete. But I do believe that hard work and consistency can substitute for and even surpass talent.

My Husband Found Me at the Finish

Swim 45:10

Bike 3:37:33

Run 2:18

Total:6:51:31