After a few weeks focused on training at home where I tried to disconnect from my laptop, and a few days of quietness and tranquility after travelling, racing and getting back to work, I finally find some time to sit down and reflect on what the last couple of weeks and months have been!!
As I said I spent most of my summer holidays in Spain training with my new club and team mates. I absolutely loved it and wish it was the same every day but September came and it was time to fly to America!! The time of flying towards Chattanooga to the Ironman 70.3 World Championships had arrived.
We did 2 connections in London and New York but instead of doing it all at once, spending too much time at the airport, we spend a night in London. Reflecting on it now it ended up being the right decision as I was able to fit a couple of sessions in London (swim at night and run in the morning). This made me travel a bit more relaxed but also more tired so by the time we got to Chattanooga I was quite tired and had a nice sleep. Despite we left London at 2pm and got to Nashville at 10.30pm (including the 7h time difference), I even found easy to adapt to the time difference. Winner!!
The trip started with one of the most common adventures when travelling with your bike. Checking it in when I hadn’t pay for it in advance!!! Luckily we got to the airport with 2h and a half spare plus a normal bag included. That probably helped and after a good 15 minutes of talking with the nice lady who was at the counter, I managed to get it checked for free and even add some extra kilos of overweight (it weighted 41.6kg against the 32 allowed). Best bit is that she changed my return ticket to not pay for the bike either. Winner Winner Chicken dinner. Were to start a trip!!!
As you may expect, the first thing I noticed when we landed in New York was the massive portions of super fatty food… and their flag absolutely everywhere! Compulsory picture after the boarder and off to find some “healthy food”. Quick power nap and last flight to Nashville where we rented a car and drove 2h south to Chattanooga.
As we were getting closer to Chattanooga I started to appreciate how amazing that place was. We were super surprised with how much nature and incredible places there are there and we understood why Ironman had chosen this city as the host of the Ironman 70.3 World Championships! We later would also appreciate how the whole city was involved 100% on making the event an absolute party for triathletes making us all feel welcome to their house. Obviously we tried our best to fit as much tourism as we could whilst paying attention to resting and training on the days before the race. We got there on Tuesday but we headed to the hotel to have a proper rest and get all my stuff out of the bike box. Thankfully everything was in one piece!!!
It was on Wednesday when everything really started. On that day the Ironman village opened and we decided to do the first shopping before some of the race products sold out. I also did the check in for the race to get it out of the way for the rest of the weekend. With the check-in they gave us the athlete wristband, t-shirt, 2 caps, a bag full of products from the sponsors of the race (energy bars, gels, shots of caffeine, drinks, creams for pre and after exercise…). It was during the check in when I met a group of Spanish people from the Canary Island with whom we would end up spending most of our time during the rest of our trip. Something else I did during our time at the Ironman Village was collaborating with Ironman foundation by filling one of their bags with educational products. These were going to be distributed afterwards in a campaign with people who need it more than us. Well done Ironman for also being involved in helping others.
Anyway, despite feeling okay, I decided not to train that day and rest well so that was pretty much the end of the day for us. What I did however, was a 10 minutes ice bath that my coach recommended me to do. Unluckily we had an ice machine just out of the room so it was literally an ice bath and I struggled to stay for the 10 minutes (see the photo for the pokerface).
Thursday started super early. At about 6am for me. I went for a small snack with the receptionist of our hotel (super funny guy from Florida) and then I went for a run to kick off the day. No pace or time as a goal but just moving the legs and feel how they were. After so many hours spent inside airplanes, cars, restaurants… being outdoors and seeing the sunrise by the Tennessee River was almost a must do. Here is when one of those best moments of the trip took place.
As soon as I left my hotel I bumped into a man and woman who were about to start running as well. As we exchanged some greeting words, I was going to make a turn and the end of the street when they shouted at me if I wanted to go with them to a good trail by the river. Didn’t hesitate and said yes straight away. That was the beginning of an hour conversation with them talking about the race, previous experience, sport in general… until he told me who he really was. The man was Ken Glah, a triathlon legend who has completed 33 times in a row the Iroman Hawaii, first as a professional (10 top tens with a 3rd place in 1988) and now as an age group. He is also part of the hall of fame in the USA Triathlon and is now focused, among other things, in his Endurace Sport Travel Company (photos on the second part of the post!!). They not only gave me loads of advices, but also helped me to mount my bike and one of his mechanics did a pre-race check so I knew I was ready to go with my bike in perfect conditions. It was a pleasure and an honour to spend some time with someone like him and also to see what a normal guy he is (thanks triathlon for not creating footballers!!).
After this, we headed to the Riverfront where we met with the other spaniards and some good friends from Mexico I hadn’t seen in a year (another of the great things of triathlon). We went for a swim in the river and after hearing about it a lot, we finally experienced how strong the current was. It was a short loop what they had prepared. About 450m that we completed in almost 10 minutes and looking at the Garmin files, we saw that we swam the 200 metres upstream at about 1’53/100m… Okay, not the ideal swim we wanted but it was going to be the same for everyone so lets assume it and just deal with it.
After a couple of laps trying different things, it was time to get out of the water and head to the athletes briefing and the press conference. We bumped into some of the pro athletes and had a chat with Javier Gomez Noya and his coach Carlos Prieto who are super humble and nice people (thanks to the people who introduce us!!!).
We then did some bounding with food and food and decided to go doing some tourism to Rock City and the Lookout Mountain. Just amazing. What a place to visit!! We found ourselves so impressed with the incredible landscapes and such an amazing piece of nature. We were so surprised with the trails through the middle of the rocky mountains that we spent almost 3 hours visiting them and enjoying the views at the top. One of the top locations in the Lookout Mountain is, as you may expect, the lookout at the top to which you get by crossing one of the longest suspension bridge in America, and from which you can see 5 states on a perfectly clear sunny day (we luckily had it!). We ended up so tired that we headed back to the hotel and went to sleep straight away.
Friday would be a bit similar to Thursday. Early morning and breakfast, a bit of stretching and off for a swim at the riverfront. This time we got there earlier so we could spend more time in the water. Being the women race on Saturday, pretty much everything was ready for race days and the Riverfront and atmosphere looked just incredible.
Surprisingly, the swim course was faster (not much, but it was notorious). Apparently they had asked the electric power plant to close the gates and so they did! Thank Ironman and council for working together to make an incredible event!! It wasn’t a massive difference, but times started to get better and if that was not enough, we were told that water temperature had dropped. It had gone from 26ºC to 25ºC so yeah, still felt like a warm bath, but at least it was going down. It was more likely to swim with wetsuit on race day.
As our little tradition, from the swim we headed for a quick coffee (something to improve in Chattanooga tho. Only one place with sort of decent coffee in town!!!) and got ready for a short bike session. As with all the other sessions, it was more about checking that everything was working properly with the bike than for any other reason. For me, it also meant trying the disc wheel on the killer Lookout Mountain Climb.. but also for the first time!! I went to Chattanooga with lots of confidence on my bike strength after training in the mountains in Spain but using a disc was something completely new for me. Marcos, Manu and myself met Tamar (a super strong woman from Lanzarote who would finish 20th the day after) and headed to the top of the Lookout Mountain (first climb of the course) following the course route. First impressions were that the climb was real. It was a tough one peaking at 13% slope at some points but one that could be done “easily” sticking to the watts and being conscious of what we had afterwards. We did in the first 15km of the course almost 500 meters of climbing which considering it was almost half of the total climbing we would do on the bike, was super encouraging. Decisions were made then. I would be using the disc with tubular. I knew my strength wasn’t going uphill but actually on the following downhill and flat section so I had nothing to lose. It ended being the right decision, but that will come later on.
After the bike, we all headed for food to an amazing Italian restaurant called Tonny’s. It was at the top of a hill where we could see the river and most of downtown. Being there at the top we also appreciated how steep the hills on the run course were going to be and we started to worry. We got worried. We had decided not to go for the run course as we didn’t have much time so that we sink our worries in food. Anyway, we were there to enjoy so we kind of forgot about it for a while. It was good to cluster with our Mexican friends again as well so we literally forgot about the race.
We, men, forgot until the girls mentioned they had to check the bike in as they were already racing the day after!!! Crazy how time was flying away… With not much to do and having to check everything in transition the day after, we all called it a day and went back to our hotels.
But first, one more coffee!!!!
So this is all for today!!! To know about Saturday and Sunday stay tuned and I’ll post the second part soon!!!
Pablo Marcos 