The weather for Sunday is much more promising so IMNZ will be hosting a 70.3 event to replace the full-distance event. We get to race and it is considered an Ironman still, but I won’t leave New Zealand as an actual Ironman even though I will have the finisher’s medal. At least a 70.3 race is better than no race!

Ironman is working to make opportunities available to enter another Ironman race this year so I am already looking forward to giving this a go, possible at Ironman Texas.

We assembled our bikes yesterday and took them out for a short ride today.  Our coaches are playing it conservative and we are minimizing our activities. What we are doing is mostly to bring us out of taper and ready for 7am on Saturday morning.

Anxiety is building some and adding to the fatigue from the traveling.  Another night of rest should help to shake most of that off.

Early morning swim tomorrow and then time to pick up the race registrations.  No turning back now!

My coaches have said from the start that it is better to be 20% under-trained than 1% over-trained.  I trust their wisdom, though I have occasional doubts that I reached at least the 80% point.  Training for a full Ironman distance race, while working 40+ hours a week and managing a family and kids is a constant compromise.  Skip a training day here for work or travel, do a little extra there to make up for what I missed.  The constant juggling of priorities is draining and at times I envied how much focus a professional triathlete could have.  But nine months later, I find that the journey has been richly rewarding and I managed to keep my life mostly intact, gaining a significant amount of fitness, wisdom, and friendship along the way.

My goal has always been to just complete IMNZ as a finisher.  In less than 7 days, I will find out if I actually can.

(approximately 3.1 miles).  That is 100 laps at the Coronado Community Pool in the 50m competitive pool.  I can’t even imagine doing that swim at LA Fitness with the 25 yard pool.  I also like Coronado because it is a non-chlorine pool so I can use my wetsuit. Being that had minimal time swimming in the ocean or bay due to frequently poor conditions, we haven’t had that much time working in wetsuits.  And since Lake Taupo is in the mid to upper 60s, wetsuits are prudent for the 2.4 mile swim.

I have been using my wetsuit while at Coronado for the past four swims.  On Monday, the swim wasn’t that productive as my right shoulder became very sore about 2500m into the workout.  It felt like my wetsuit was pulling too much against my right side.  But today, it felt much better and most of the soreness was absent.

So after 1 hr 45 min, I finished the 100th lap and the longest swim of this season and likely the last visit to Coronado for a while.  I was obviously tired, but my legs felt fairly  good and I think I will be fine for the 112 mile bike that follows.

IMNZ Team ready for the time trial

This past Saturday was a 4 hour time-trial ride at Fiesta Island.  In typical Fiesta Island fashion, the winds picked up about 2 hours into the ride.  16 laps, 66.7 miles in just under 4 hours, with an average pace of 16.7 mph.  I ended up pushing myself harder than I wanted but I was doing the TT race specific.  16 laps around Fiesta is really boring and a good mental test for the 112 miles we are going to face. And I am expecting that the second 56 miles of IMNZ are going to be brutal with the infamous Taupo (toe-paw) winds sapping our legs.

The TT was followed up with a typical one hour transition run.  I found it very difficult to keep my HR out of high zone 3/low zone 4.  It is clear that I worked harder than I should have on the ride. I expect that I will have to cut my pace down to about 16 mph as prudence on the ride is critical for a successful run.

This is as real as it gets!

It has been a long season, the start back in June is a fuzzy memory now.  So many miles run and biked, hills climbed, and pool laps swam.  While my coaches say it is better to be 80% trained than over trained, I hope I am trained enough!  I feel like I just need yet one more long ride, or long run, or long swim… I find that my anxiety is building a bit, but I am told this is normal.

Here are the logged stats from my Garmin 310xt:

There were many more unlogged activities, especially walks and short runs during work.  On my Fitbit, which I started to use on Oct 5, I have logged nearly 2 million steps and more than 7000 floors.

I think I might need new shoes!

I pushed myself a bit on this ride to gauge how I would feel post ride since I would still have a marathon to run! I mostly rode in mid-to-high zone 3 with a few zone 4 points and around mile 65, a few of us did a fast, hard 4 mile lap, hitting 24+mph.  It was refreshing and good for the mind and body.

I completed the ride, 101.56 miles in about 6.5 hrs and I didn’t feel wiped out for the 45 minute transition run that I still had to do.  It was re-assuring knowing that I can do these long distances and still run after!

On Saturday we faced the “Great Western Loop” twice! It was warm and very windy thanks to the Santa Ana conditions.  I wondered if our coaches made special arrangements to have the winds delivered!

The goals were to treat this like how the bike portion of IMNZ would be.  Two loops, with

Ready to tackle the Double GWL!

minimal SAG stops.  Carrying enough nutrition and hydration on the bike turned out to be an interesting problem to solve.  Recently I switched to Hammer Perpetuem Cafe Latté (protein and carbs) which really seems to be working well for me as it has a, so I setup 2 bottles of 550 cals each, and had two ready in my “special needs” bag for the half-way point.  Also had a bottle of Cytomax (carbs) and a bottle of plain water to ensure I had enough hydration.  Throw in a dozen electrolyte tablets and 8 SportsLegs to balance the heat and in the event that liquid nutrition wasn’t working for me, I had Cheez-its, RedVines, and Fig Newtons stuffed in my Bento box

The ride was very tough mentally and physically!  The first loop was difficult enough but the winds really picked up during the second loop making the long uphill climbs feel like I was attempting to ride up a wall.  I elected to use my new Cervelo P2 which isn’t geared the best for this much climbing and I was grinding all the way up both loops.  I persevered, faced the wind demons and made it through the hills.  My P2 was an advantage on the flats with the winds and being aero saved my legs a bit.  And with all that climbing up, the downhills were a blast and the scenery was beautiful!

A long and slow 90.2 miles and 8200′ feet of climbing later, I was relieved that it was over.  It seems I had enough nutrition where I didn’t bonk, but I probably should have taken in more fluids due to the heat, winds, and very low humidity.  The ride was excellent conditioning for the race!

I expected to be very sore and uncomfortable on the run, but surprisingly, I felt strong, without much soreness.  I was still tired from yesterday’s training so keeping my HR down in zone 2 was tough.  I settled into a 13:40 pace and my HR floated between high zone 2 and low zone 3. I could have slowed my pace down, but feeling as good as I did on the run, I decided to stay at the 13:40 pace. At a 13:45 pace, I am looking at 6 hours to complete the marathon distance portion of IMNZ, a time that I am very comfortable with. The route I took also had about 800′ feet of elevation gain, so my HR would have been lower if I ran a flatter route.