As I write this, it is less than four days till I toe the line in Wrightsville Beach for the Beach to Battleship Ironman. I am extremely happy with my prep this year, and my peaking workouts over the past two weeks has me primed and excited for a great race!
This will only be my second Ironman distance race ever. The difference between the two couldn't be greater, both in terms of preparation and the race itself. In fact, the only thing that is similar is that there were separate transitions. My first race was St. George in 2011. That was an early season race (May 7) while this is late. The bike and run were super hilly (if not mountainous), B2B is completely flat. The swim was freshwater and 59 degrees, this will be salt water and should be a balmy 70. The temps in St. George tapped out at 95, while the forecast in Wilmington is calling for a high in the mid-60's. And in terms of my prep - I have put in no less than 80% of my total lifetime volume on the bike in the 2.5 years since St. George.
Needless to say, my expectations are high. But without a great deal of experience at the distance and almost no experience with a largely flat course, I found it difficult coming up with concrete goals. This time around, I wanted to be strong the entire event - I wanted to be able to race, not just survive. But that's ambiguous. In St. George I was averaging 18mph on the bike at mile 80 and limped in with an overall average of 16.9mph. I ran the first 1/2 Marathon strong in 1:45, but cramped and walked the uphills on the second half and cruised into the finish with a 3:54. I was pleased with the day, then, but shouldn't be too hard to "race" strong in comparison this time. I've structured my training this year to build strength on the bike. I backed off the swim, as that has always been a strength, and due to some late season injuries last year maintained a general maintenance mode on the run, until mid August. That said, I am swimming well and my run has never been stronger or faster, no doubt in part due to the 50% increase in bike volume.
The swim is always tough to establish a concrete goal - will there be current? will the course be accurate - long or short? And especially in a mass start, like B2B, you never know the swimming backgrounds of the other athletes. I just want to be near the front and relaxed, coming out of the water. The lack of a current this year should aid me in that effort.
The bike again, is a total unknown. I've been getting stronger, but the only time I've raced over 56 miles, was in Bend 5 weeks ago and that had 6000 ft of elevation gain. I believe I am much stronger, relatively, on a flat course. We'll see if that is true. My goals for the bike are to monitor my effort and maintain a mid zone 2 HR. I averaged 152 HR in Bend, for 7:13:00. I would like to average slightly above that for this course, as it will be shorter and will not have the variability of large downhills. I will also have to even out my effort, as I peaked into zone 3 for 49:00 in Bend.
My biggest goal is on the run. I don't care about overall pace or time; I want to run a sub-3 hour marathon. I have done a great deal of pace work and intensity runs up to 2 hrs that indicate my fitness level is in line with that goal. I have been planning for that run all year and have hit all my pace goals in workouts over the past few months.
Now all that's left to do is go out and execute, and see what the day brings!
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