2018 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship Race Report - Port Elizabeth, South Africa

Back in May 2018 I inadvertently qualified for the IRONMAN World Championship. I raced hard but I really wasn't expecting to be able to qualify. So when it happened, I jumped on the opportunity. Fast forward 13 weeks, and after a lot of training and planning I was ready to race.

After having just raced Bintan two weeks earlier, setting a PB, and then seriously reflecting about the ingredients that make a fun or not-so-fun race (see my post on pressure vs performance), I went into the World Champs pretty relaxed. As my friend Andrew S. put it, consider this a celebration of all the training and racing you've done over the year, and don't stress it.

There's not a lot more we can achieve - no World Champs spots to take (except for the first finisher in each age group - they automatically get one for Nice in 2019 - but I'd be very far off from that level - anyway I had already earned one for 2019!), no special ranking we can expect to earn as we're up against the best in the world, and no real reason to be uptight.

We were excited to race alongside Jan Frodeno, Javier Gomez, Alistair Brownlee, and Daniela Ryf - world champions and Olympic gold medalists.

Friday, Andrew S. and I did a short ride around the area, just to get a feel for the roads and the conditions. We were impressed with the scenery and knew we'd have a scenic ride.

Impressive scenery

Saturday, 1 September the women raced. I went down to the beach and watch them start. They fired a big cannon Kona-style, which was cool. I met Arturo there whom I ran with in Danang. Watching the women the first day gave us a chance to see them on the course a bit and get a feel for what to expect. The sky was clear and by the time the women were into the bike it had started to warm up. They may have had a bit of wind on the course, but overall, it was great weather.

Cheering for Charlene on Saturday

By the time they were running it was actually pretty warm. We sat at a restaurant and cheered them on from our table. Ideal spectator conditions! The weather for the next day, however, wasn't supposed to be so good. So when I was down at the beach on Sunday with Andrew S., and the announcer stated that the water had warmed up so much that wet suits were optional, it was a bit of a surprise.

The day before, when we had done a short swim, the water was freezing. My cheeks, fingers, and toes were numb. But suddenly today it's warmer? Odd, because the weather wasn't. It was drizzling and windy, and considerably cooler than 24 hours beforehand.

Swim to the beat

The energy at the start was electric. Andrew S. and I stood around and watched the other age-groupers set off while we nervously waited until 9:30. At least we have some cool African drumming to keep the energy up.

And to my left: The Swim Reaper.

A 9:30 am swim? I had never started so late, and had never started in the last wave. The only good thing about this I could think of was that it would be easy to find our bikes in T1 as most of the others would already be gone. The thing is, I'm not quite the fastest swimmer, and I really didn't want to be last out of the water...

That's me, yelling and cheering to nobody

Going in was fine. The temperature today was so much warmer than yesterday. Absolutely zero discomfort. I was looking forward to this. Still, I was glad to have the neoprene swim cap for warmth, given to me by fellow-Oregonian Bryce. He had just used it in British Columbia, full IRONMAN.

The water was clean, despite the large port nearby. I could sometimes see the sandy bottom. But it was overcast and visibility was low.

Once past a few big waves, I tried to find my rhythm. I wanted to hit sub-40. That's good for me, but in the very bottom of the pack, I expected, at the World Championships. Still, I was living my dream, and how I finished really didn't matter.

“We live as we dream - alone...”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

As I swam, it seemed to get more and more lonely. No packs of faster guys coming up from behind. Nobody nipping at my heels or cramming me against the rope. In fact, there was no rope. Just buoys.

Being in the ocean alone is bad enough to begin with. But was I really alone?

I started imagining I was the last one. Indeed, I did go out towards the back of my wave, which was the last wave, so there was hardly anybody behind me. I wanted to stop and look behind to see if there was anybody there, but I knew that was pointless. And it would be really demoralizing if it were true.

But then I passed a guy. And a few others. I even found a breast-stroker. Maybe I wasn't as slow as I thought. Anyway, it was OK. I just had to press on to the best of my ability.

The swim went out 800m, to the left for 300, and back another 800m. At the first corner I started smelling exhaust. There was what looked like a rescue boat with red flashing lights. I wondered if anybody quit during the swim. It happens all the time in normal 70.3 races. But at the World Champs?

At the end of the race, the announcer said we had a 97% finish rate. I checked online and found that 30 of the DNFs were in the swim. That's surprising to me.

Feeling great coming out of the water. The guy behind me has two swim caps (for warmth).

Like two weeks prior, coming out of the water, I glanced down at my watch to see a reading of 39 minutes and some seconds. Cool. Segment 1 complete...if I could only get this wet suit off.

There were pairs of guys lined up along the exit. One told me to lie down on my back in front of him. I had already unzipped my wet suit and pulled the arms out and shoulders off. These guys grabbed the suit and in one swift yank stripped it off of me.

I stood up, jogging towards transition. Another local guy cheered for me, and I yelled back. As I got closer to him he leaned in to me and hugged me! It was totally appropriate and aligned with how I felt: I was grateful for his support and volunteer work, and he was feeding off my and the other athletes' energy.

This transition was different than others. More like the full IRONMAN in Busselton. We had our blue (bike) bags hanging up in a giant rack. It was easy to find mine, as most of the others were gone. I pulled it down, and started clawing open the drawstring. It had rained overnight and it was a good thing I tied it tightly or else my shoes and helmet would have been wet. I came back before the swim start to loosen the knot.

I sat on one of the many dozen plastic white chairs. A woman practically did my transition for me: She took my shoes out while I put my helmet on. She gathered my wet suit, swim caps, and googles, and put them in the bag. This was real race support!

Trotting to my bike, I was reassured to see there were a few dozen other bikes still racked. I pulled mine out and rolled it to the mount line, pushed start on my Garmin, and was off.

Remember before how it just felt lonely? Now I was cold and lonely. My toes were ice. Nevertheless, the race officials, police, and volunteers lined the curbs, blocking all traffic and side streets. I thanked almost all of them. And many of them cheered, equally alone, in the rain.

Coming out of a very quiet T1.      Photo: Marianne

And to rub the loneliness in, I even saw the pros running. Yes, that's right, some of the pros were even off their bikes and had started the run. And I wasn't even 100m into my ride.

The first 10k of the ride took us through the city of Port Elizabeth. The road was good, smooth and straight, with no potholes. There were plenty of newly-repaired sections that had been patched up just for us. I was still cold, and mostly alone.

After we made it past the robots (that's 'traffic light' for you non-locals) and towards the outskirts of town, the roads turned into rolling hills. This was very pleasant riding, as the ascents were easy, and the descents were a nice break. It didn't cause any power fluctuations that would throw off my numbers. I was trying to maintain a Normalized Power average of 215 watts and an Average Power of 205. So far so good.

At the 15th kilometer, we met oncoming cyclists who had started much earlier than we did. They were at their 60th. I wanted to keep my eyes peeled for friends or any of the few others I knew, but was way too captivated by the scenery. And way too focused on my numbers.

The hills were rolling, almost like a combination of the California and Western Australia coasts. Low, dry scrub, but also lots of green. At a latitude of -33.9, Pt. Elizabeth is very close to Busselton, which is -33.6. For reference, Los Angeles is at a latitude of 33.9.

Those are robots behind me (traffic lights)

A few guys rolled past me, clearly stronger cyclists that I. One was French, but lived in Malaysia. He said he'd be at Langkawi. I would always seem to catch him on the downhills, but he'd pass me on the ups. There were others that I passed multiple times, too. A Japanese guy, some Americans (there were 500 Americans), and others. But I never really fell into a pace alongside anybody else that I could ride with for more than a few minutes, due to the hills.

It was slow going and the only thing that looked good was my power. That, and the wind. Or lack of it! This was a notoriously windy place and it was pretty much guaranteed that we'd have strong gusts from any or all directions, but nope. That was good news. But my average speed was just not cutting it. I was holding right at 30, sometimes 29, when I should have been doing closer to 34.

All that went out the window when I approached one of the longest ascents ever. That's not saying much, with me coming from Singapore, where the longest hill is like 300m. What was scary was less the uphill and more the downhill. There were guys four-deep barreling down at breakneck speed. When one guy is trying to overtake another, and the front guy doesn't see the guy behind, you have the recipe for disaster. On top of that the roads were kind of rough.

Almost all were in aero positions, hands away from brakes, necks craned. One was even doing the Froome. On a tri bike. Pure insanity.

Don't do this on a tri bike in a group, please. Even if you're Froome.

There were water bottles all over the place. I even saw a guy stop his bike on a downhill section to pick up a bottle cage. Well, it was the $100 X-Lab cage that never launches bottles. But if it's not fastened down properly, the whole thing will go.

A Garmin mount in the middle of the road. Weird bits of plastic. Various aero hydration systems, in pieces, strewn across the road. Basically, whatever is not bolted down is flying off.

Suddenly a strange phrase popped into my mind:

CDGW: Carnage from Descents Gone Wrong

This was not really a welcome thought, for I would be hitting that very same downhill soon after. After I went up it the other way, of course.

As I crested the summit, I was greeted with a stunning sight. In front of me, a vast expanse of sand dunes unfolded. The end of the beach and the beginning of the dunes was indistinguishable - they were one and the same. But how this bleached white sand - powder really - was so plentiful and powerful that it could overrun all vegetation and even the land until it WAS the land, was astonishing.

And not a scrap of garbage of man-made eyesore to tarnish the view.

This is very close to the view that greeted us on the ride (actual location is Sardinia Bay)

The sheer striking beauty of it distracted me from the concentrated focus I was trying to dedicate to my ride: watts, speed, heart rate, time. In that moment of visual shock I very well may have stopped pedaling, and taken my eyes off the road, awestruck.

But equally welcome was the stretch of road (downhill I may add) that suddenly revealed itself to me. Out of granny, I shifted the front chain ring, and into a smaller gear in the rear, ready to pick up speed. One or two guys coming from the other direction neared the summit, probably relieved to be finishing a long climb, too.

Spray painted on the ground were three white capital letters: KOM.

"KING OF THE MOUNTAIN!" I screamed, with a bit too much enthusiasm. Nobody heard me.

There was one guy 100 or 150m ahead of me, enjoying the downhill.

"OK," I thought, "Enough screwing around. Let's make some time back."

I love downhills. And as much as it's fun to fly down them, I know I can never make up time lost on the ascents, in the descents. This is a lesson I learned while mountain bike racing in Malaysia. I'd always get dropped on the uphills, and despite being a faster downhiller, could never catch them.

If a 500m long uphill takes you 6 minutes (22.5 km/h), and your planned pace is 30 km/h, you will lose two minutes. To gain those two minutes back on the downhill, assuming it's the same distance, you have to do it in two minutes flat, or at an average of 60 km/h. Not impossible, but certainly a challenge.

Still, I tried to do it, without creating too much of a power spike or burning a match. Ironic, isn't it? Imagine you save all your energy ascending a steep hill, in granny, heart rate low, power nice and flat, only to blow it all up going down, in an attempt to make up time...

As I got on the pedals and felt the cadence increase, the bike started vibrating. The road surface was weathered and rough, battered and worn by shifting dunes and ocean salt and spray. The gap between me and the guy in front started closing. I was really picking up speed. The road was curving to the right, vanishing behind the corner, yet still descending.

I looked down at my Garmin to check my speed but everything was vibrating so violently it was all a blur. It reminded me of Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff when he broke the sound barrier. He was going so fast and his plane was vibrating so much that one of the gauges just shattered under pressure.

Remember this scene?

I had just had my bike serviced at the shop next to my hotel (Wayne Phieffer) and I had to trust they had tightened anything that might have been loose. All I could do was hope.

I briefly imagined my front skewer rattling open and losing the entire wheel at speed. My fork would shatter into the rough chipseal tarmac, splintering into a million pieces, my aero body and weight, directly above it, pushing down in the armrests. The wheel would probably trundle down the road at full speed, peacefully and silently ignorant of the 80kg of carbon and corporeity it had just disconnected from. The road a cheese grater, my body street-meat. Perish the thought.

CDGW.

I passed the guy in the downhill with enough momentum to carry me almost all the way up the next ridge. Two or three more of these and I had reached a turnaround point. Volunteers with a pick-up - sorry, I mean a bakkie - were stationed at then end, directing our u-turns. It appeared that the road had been just recently paved extra-wide to accommodate u-turns.

One of the volunteers yelled, "Good work, you're halfway!"

A glance down at my Garmin and it read 1:17. This mean that if I was halfway, I'd do the ride in 2:34. Wow, I was making good time. I knew I had a good swim, and I was sure my run would be a PB in this cool weather, and now I see that my bike will be ahead of schedule? Would this be a sub-5 race?

Couldn't be...my pace was only 29.x km/h. I checked the numbers again, only to find I had only just done 40 km.

Never believe the spectators.

They probably don't know that to us "half" means exactly 45 km. To them, since this is the turnaround point, it's half.

Oh well, I was fine with it.

A few hundred meters down, the waves were crashing against the rocky shore to my right. They were pounding against dark brown rock which protruded from the sand in hundreds of parallel lines angled at 45-degree angles. Each wave break chipping away at the rock, creating sand. Millions of them ceaselessly eroding the hard stone, over millennia.

The water seems so weak against the stone, but in the end it prevails. Not too different than our pedal strokes. One stroke is so minute, so small, across 90 kilometers, but collectively, they beat the hills, they push through the weather, they make sand of this course. All 15,000 of them. But like the waves, they must be consistent and concentrated.

Like the waves beside me, stay consistent and concentrated

I counted myself lucky to be able to do that scary downhill where four guys were aero-ing abreast alone. Far safer this way. I hit 75.5 km/h here, probably the fastest I've ever gone on a bike, and it felt fine. No wind, no other cyclists, no rough road, and no hazards. Again, this quick descent would not make up for the slow spin up it.

It was a largely uneventful ride back to the town. I did see one guy that had crashed out who was being loaded into an ambulance, and another sitting on the grass with some locals who were cheering, presumably down with a mechanical issue. Three to four others had flat tires - quite a lot I'd say - and others were just spinning very slowly, taking their time.

Some of the locals were cheering with tin boxes full of rocks. They sure beat those cowbells! I waved at every single one of them.

I was looking for Andrew S. I knew he was at least 12-13 minutes ahead of me coming out of the swim, so it would be hard to catch him on the bike. I would probably see him on the run.

Rolling in to T2 made me anxious as our course overlapped with some of the run. Hundreds of athletes were already off the bike - thousands really - and many were already crossing the finish line.

Bike catchers grabbed my bars as I hopped off before the red line. They'd take care of the bike from there. The red run bags were hanging, this time more of them than when I had come out of the swim. A swap of the shoes and start of the other Garmin and I was out of there.

A 2:51 was really pretty far from what I was shooting for, but it would have to do. I was happy knowing that I stuck to my watt plan perfectly, something that's always been hard for me to achieve with such precision.


Coming into the run I felt fantastic. I was hoping to break my standalone half marathon PB of 1:43. I ran the first kilometer by feel, not really aware of my pace. I just wanted to see what a baseline pace that would feel comfortable would be like. It was 4:50.

Before the rain really started. Notice the cyclists on the left and the runners on the right.

I had my watch's Virtual Partner set at 4:55 which would give me a 1:43:43. But when the next few splits came around and I was doing them in the 4:40s and even 4:30s at times, and I still felt good, I knew I'd blow that 1:43 away. Forget about my 70.3 run PB of 1:46:22, set just two weeks prior.

I had a lot going for me:

1. A flat course (mostly)
2. Cool weather (ok, rain)
3. No plantar fascists pain
4. A heart rate that while high, didn't bother me one bit (it didn't feel high)
5. Good nutrition on the bike and no signs of cramping
6. A ride with a VI of only 1.03 (meaning I didn't burn any matches)

I was not about to let up. On the other hand, I wasn't going to kill myself obliterating that 1:43. Somewhere in the middle sounded right - no need to get greedy.

Cool = fast

As I approached the restaurant where we had been cheering the day before, I scanned the crowd for my wife and kids. I saw them, loyally out in the middle of the road, braving the rain and cold. Andrew S's girlfriend was there, too, taking pictures.

Great picture, Mariane

And then I saw Andrew. He had done the first of two u-turns on the run already, and was easily 20 minutes ahead of me. He must have had a good bike segment after what would have certainly been a fast swim.

I like out-and-back courses because you can see your friends and competitors when you double-back. And add to that, this was two loops.

Lap two couldn't come soon enough for me. The streets were lined with fans, flags of all nations waving, cheers of various languages erupting from the sides. Flags from Chile, Costa Rica, Argentina, Brazil, and Taiwan stuck out.

"Chile! Chile es el mas fuerte!" I screamed, while passing some wildly energized Chilean fans.

"I want one of those beers," I announced to a few guys sitting under a tent, drinking Castle Lager. They laughed and told me I could have one, but of course I kept running. I gave kids 5. I gave old men 5. I acknowledged all volunteers.

Then there was a Red Bull truck, with a counter of that sugary drink. It looked like they set up up guerilla-style, on their own. They just invited themselves. I didn't take any. I didn't want any. Nobody took any. Kind of sad. In fact, I didn't want to drink anything.

I kind of wanted to run faster - I could - but what for? I was already set for a big run PB. Why tread too deep beyond PB territory into uncharted land? What dangers lay in that wild frontier? What would happen?

It usually hurts a lot worse than this

I started calculating my likely finish time. "Let's see..." I thought to myself. "I started at 9:30 and now it's somewhere around 2:15 pm, so I must be 4 hours and 45 minutes in. Can I finish in another 15 minutes? Depends on what time it is."

"What's the time of day?" I barked, at a guy standing on the side of the road. "2pm!" he answered.

"Never believe the spectators." I reminded myself.

If it was really 2pm I'd easily finish within 5 hours, but as I did the math I didn't think it was possible. Anyway, I pressed on. Saw Andrew S. again, and he was coming in for his final stretch. Then I did the other u-turn, and a guy yelled out to me.

"Sorry, I got the time wrong. Now it's 2:30!" I thanked him, and realized Andrew would be in for a 5-hour finish. I still had about 3-4 km to go.

I managed to keep the pace up, and headed toward the finish chute. There was a guy about 50 meters in front of me. It looked like I'd have a nice, clean finish photo. But then I heard footsteps from behind. I should have crossed the timing mat and then just let this guy go. But I thought the timing mat was at the very end, so I increased the pace.

This is no place to sprint

Now I don't really think it's good etiquette to race in the chute. Let each guy have his own glory running down that coveted carpet, one by one. But I wasn't going to have this guy beat me at the last second or jump in front of me and ruin my picture.

I'm really not happy about what happened next. I ran up behind the guy in front of me, probably ruining HIS finish. He had opened the Kazakh flag and was set for a beautiful crossing. I ran around him on his right, and the guy behind me ran around him on his left.

We both crossed the line at the same time.

5:17:27

I felt terrible and I immediately apologized to the Kazakh guy. He seemed OK with it.

But I learned a lesson, and that is not to race in the chute. If anyone wants to pass you, let them do so, and you should take your own time. After all, we had already crossed the timing mat.

Shot from the TV finish

Nevertheless, we were presented with the biggest and heaviest medals I had ever seen. Then we were given a finisher hat, shirt, and towel, along with a space blanket.

By now, the rain was really coming down

Right there at the finish, but on the spectator side, were Andrew S. and Mariane. Andrew had done an awesome 5:01. I think he was a bit disappointed he didn't go sub-five, but that's just one more [very attainable] goal for him to shoot for at his next race.



I headed over to the massage tent - I never pass that up - and then went out to meet Eda and the kids who had hopefully found some shelter.

Post-race snack. I didn't eat it all though, only about 2/3 of it!

Overall, I'd say this was my most memorable race yet. We found South Africa to be a fascinating country with friendly people, incredible scenery, and great food. We are definitely going to come back to South Africa, not to race, but to see more of the country.

Not a PB in terms of time, but a PB in terms of fun