Race Coverage

Run Mantras & Tribal High Fives...

Thursday, 13 July 2017 23:10

By Erin KLegstad (sweetsweatlife.com)

RACE REPORT - Ironman 70.3 Madison can be summed up with Hs - heat, humidity + hills. It was also really hard...but then again, it's supposed to be hard. Ad it was the perfect race to dust off the multisport cobwebs and test my fitness seven weeks out from Ironman Canada. Work to do, but overall on tack!

We kicked off the race festivities Saturday morning with a shakeout at Olin Park, followed by a brunch at Marigold Kitchen (a must when in Madison). After a quick midday run + bike, we racked out bikes and were ready to go.

Swim // 34:51  ....

The race started from Olin Park, just around the bend in the lake from the start of IMWI. It was a run-of-the-mill time trial start, so for me at least, waters were calm and there was no fighting for position. I swam straight on the inside of the buoys – so close that I hit a couple with my arm – and maybe a third of the way in, Nick popped up to my left. I felt like I swam pretty strong, so I’m not super stoked with my time. Clearly I still need to work on finding my edge in the water… why is that so difficult?! Swim time aside, the new arms-up technology on my ROKA wetsuit was fantastic! Much more range of motion, and for the first time ever in a race, zero neck chafe. 

Bike // 2:46:23, 20.19 mph

There really wasn’t anything easy about the bike course. If you weren’t climbing or descending – several at 40mph+ – you were turning… 40+ times, in fact, with a few at the bottom of 40mph descents. Needless to say, there wasn’t much of a steady rhythm – exactly the type of bike course I thrive on. And despite an out-of-whack power meter (pretty sure there’s something wrong with it because there’s no way I biked what I did at the watts it read… the same thing happened at IMAZ), now, a couple weeks later, I feel good about my ride. READ MORE