Ironman 70.3 St. George- Race Report

Sean and I at the iconic Ironman statue in downtown St. George

When I think back to how I ended up at this race, I can’t really remember. It was a deferral of a deferral from some race in 2020. That whole year and the movement of all those race registrations is somewhat of a blur. I was originally signed up for Ironman St. George (the full) in May 2020, which got deferred to the fall of 2020, which ultimately got deferred somewhere else (I think Coeur d’Alene in June 2021). However I ended up here at the 70.3, I’m so glad I did. This race was awesome.

I decided to drive from Grass Valley to St. George via Bakersfield over 2 days. I drug a friend along for the long journey (thanks for joining me Sara!) and joined a caravan with 2 other athletes. Although the drive was very long (735 miles), it went by really fast. From northern California, it is a faster drive to go up through Reno, however, the hotel options are very limited in that direction which is why I opted for a longer route with more sleeping options. Since this was a Saturday race, I left Grass Valley on Wednesday and wanted a good night's sleep that night, which we ultimately got in Bakersfield.

We arrived in St. George on Thursday afternoon. We had just enough time to get to the expo to complete athlete registration which was nice to complete Thursday (instead of Friday). However, by the time I was able to get onto my bike for a little tune up ride, it was 6:30pm Thursday night, which was too late for me. If I had it to do over again, I would’ve left a day earlier (Tuesday) for a Wednesday evening arrival in St. George. That would’ve allowed for a more relaxed workout and race registration process on Thursday. Like many, I didn’t think about the long drive from Bakersfield on top of the 1 hour time change (an hour lost) from Nevada to Utah and Thursday just ended up being a really long day.

Most of the Gold Country Triathlon crew preparing to get into the cold water for the first time (that's me holding onto my friend Todd wishing he would just drag me along. LOL!).

FRIDAY, APRIL 30
(1 day out from race day)

We met up with our triathlon club at Sand Hollow Reservoir at 8am on Friday morning for a mini swim, bike and run. I saw so many posts on social media platforms about the swim temperatures being SO COLD (high 50’s F), but I personally was pleasantly surprised how it felt when we got in. Don’t get me wrong, it was COLD! But besides my face, the water felt comfortable on the rest of my body.

My family flew in later that morning and we generally spent the remainder of that day resting and preparing bags for the next day. I dropped my transition 2/run gear bag later that afternoon, which was fully stocked with everything I needed for the run. I had no intention of revisiting that bag on race morning, even though we had the option to do so.

PRE-RACE DINNER: Chicken thighs, cooked sweet potato with butter and roasted broccoli.

Sean and I before I got into my swim corral with the amazing sunrise behind us.

SATURDAY, MAY 1, 2021
Race Day!

Woke up at 3:30am, even though the alarm was set for 3:45am. Excited, I guess.

BREAKFAST: Two gluten free waffles with butter and 1 scoop of Vital Proteins Coffee Protein Powder with unsweetened coconut milk over ice. I don’t eat waffles very often (like 2x a year), so it felt like a treat and was really easy for me to eat. I don’t typically have an appetite on race morning so I like to find something that I look forward to eating. Waffles were a good choice for me. :)

I chose to have Sean drive me and 2 other athletes to swim start. There were plenty of athlete shuttles running from the finish line to the swim start, but honestly, I didn’t want to leave that early (my bus time was 4:15am with a 7am swim start...no thank you). There was a bit of a walk (maybe 1 mile) from the spectator parking area to swim start, but I was happy to do it. Most of my gear had been dropped the night before so I was only carrying my swim stuff and bike nutrition. It was an easy walk and I’d do that again in the future.

Once in transition, I got my bike loaded up with nutrition and got my swim stuff on. They called athletes to the swim corrals by swim time. I was aiming for a 30ish minute swim and decided to line up in the :30-:33 corral.

PRE-RACE NUTRITION: At 6am (about 60 minutes out from swim start), I slowly sipped 1 serving of Apple Cinnamon Skratch (a seasonal flavor that I order in the fall and save enough for all race mornings). If you haven’t tried it, you should! Other than Skratch, nothing but water from breakfast to swim start.

photo from swim exit (that's me in the pink cap looking for my people!)

THE SWIM
1.2 miles in Sand Hallow Reservoir

There was no swim warm up, so I did a band warm up while waiting at my bike and just did my best to stay warm and loose once I got into the swim corral. I peed 4 times (FOUR!!!) waiting to start the swim. Just stood there around all the other athletes and peed right there in my wetsuit standing up. I wasn’t alone. The ground was wet everywhere and we all know where that fluid was coming from.

It took about 14 minutes from the time the cannon went off for age group athletes to the time I got into the water. The water temps felt great (Garmin says 63F) and I felt pretty relaxed for the first 200ish yards which was great seeing as it only my second open water swim of the year (the first being the day before!). I had fairly clear water and there wasn’t a fight, which felt great. But once I got about 200 yards into the swim, I started catching up to other athletes in front of me and passing them. I HATE being swimmed over, so I try really hard not to swim over others. This means I had lots of maneuvering around other athletes which went on for the entire swim. In hindsight, I would’ve self seeded earlier (27-33 minute corral) so I didn’t have to deal with this for the entire swim. In general, I felt really good about my swim. My lungs felt great (I was definitely working, but I never felt like I was over exerting myself), but my lats were ON FIRE. I remember thinking towards the end of the swim: “more pullups and pushups next time around!”

Swim time- 00:33.29
13th out of 115 athletes in the 40-44 age group

I was happy with that. (And when I say “happy with that” I was actually a little bummed with my swim time when I got out of the water, but was able to brush it off very quickly. I became happy with that time when I looked at the pro swim times and they seemed slightly slow to me also, so my attitude about it changed.)

photo of me wishing I had another gear in Snow Canyon

THE BIKE
56 miles with 3.162' of elevation gain

Transition 1 from swim to bike was a little slow, but I wasn’t in a hurry at all. I knew what was coming (the hills and the heat) and I wasn’t about to forget anything. I ran from where my bike was racked to the mount line with my shoes in hand. Once I hit the mount line, I stepped off to the side, leaned my bike against the fence and threw my shoes on. A group of spectators standing there cheered me on, gave me lots of compliments on my swim, transition and bike set up, then I was off. Spectators are the best.

The bike course was AMAZING. The roads were SO SMOOTH (until the very end) and the scenery was gorgeous. My riding plan was to ride mostly off RPE (rate of perceived effort) and not worry too much about HR and power. My garmin power pedals have been off lately (something I need to fix ASAP) and I feel very confident using RPE for a 56 mile ride like this. My goal was to have a strong ride, but not burn too many matches as my REAL goal was to run the entire run and not fall apart. The hills on the bike course didn’t worry me coming from a hilly area, but I certainly underestimated them. By the time I got to Snow Canyon around mile 44, I was really feeling my legs A LOT. I gained a little confidence as I passed male rider after male rider (most of them with full disc wheels) either standing on the side of the road trying to catch their breath, or walking their bikes up the hill. But let’s not be fooled, I had been passed by TONS and TONS of riders from the very beginning of this ride and it was hard to ignore that I knew I was losing time on the ride when others were excelling. In hindsight, I would’ve trained differently into this course. I would’ve added much more low cadence work on my bike and kept up with strength training until much closer to race day. Something I plan to add in for my lead up to Coeur d’Alene since that course is very similar.

BIKE COURSE NUTRITION: I had 2 bottles on my bike. My aero bottle was for clean water, and my down tube bottle was full with a double serving of Skratch. I had 6 gluten-free Honey Stinger waffles (all cut in 1/2) in my bento box along with 1 Spring gel and 1 packet of Skratch chews in my kit pocket. The plan was 60g carbohydrate per hour in the form of 2 waffles and 1 serving of Skratch for the first 2 hours and a gel for the last hour. So I basically took 1/2 waffle at the 10 minute, 20 minute, 40 minute and 50 minute on my watch. I took a generous amount of Skratch at the 30 minute and 00 minute on my watch. I had planned for at least 2 salt caps per hour in addition to 1g BCAA capsule at the top of each hour. Unfortunately, my aero bottle top broke at mile 11 on the bike course and the entirety of my bento box was soaked. So I managed a few salt capsules, but by the middle of the ride, they were all mashed up in my bento box. Luckily, the cloud cover stuck around for most of the ride, so it wasn’t as critical as I expected (race day weather prediction was 96F!).

Once I hit Snow Canyon (around mile 42ish), my nutrition plan fell apart a bit. This is also the time of day when the cloud cover had burned off. My Garmin shows temps around 88F in the canyon. When I finished off the bottle of Skratch around mile 44, I passed up my nutrition from that point on. Just water from that point to the finish of the ride. From a nutrition perspective, in hindsight, I would’ve taken my Spring gel at the top of Snow Canyon (mile 46) to “top off the gas tank” before the run. But once I started that descent, I wasn’t taking my hands off the bars! I topped off with a speed of 46.2 mph…so not really a time to be eating.

Once I hit Diagonal Street, the road conditions were awful…but it didn't last long. At the first round-a-bout downtown, I started to get out of my bike shoes. A little early for that. I should’ve waited until I got through the second round-a-bout then wiggled out of them on the last stretch of road into transition.

Since transition is more like the olden days of triathlon, we had no bike catchers and you rack your own bike. At your designated transition area, you also have all of your T2/run gear waiting for you from the night before. With bikes being so spread out and honestly, being a little rusty at transitions, I had a little bit of a hard time finding my rack location. Probably a 5 second loss of time which felt like 5 minutes in the moment.

BIKE TIME- 03:04.16
35th out of 115 athletes in the 40-44 age group

photo of me (ice in hand and cooling bandana around my neck) giving my family a thumbs up before I climb one of the steepest hills on the course at mile 3.

THE RUN
13.1 miles with 1,267' of elevation gain

I was THRILLED to see my friend and training partner Stacey in T2. So we headed out on the run course together! It was nice to “talk shop” for a few minutes before we quickly got back to our individual race plans. 

The run course is hard. I don’t know any way to sugar coat it. I had been warned over and over again by athletes who had raced it previously and I feel like I prepared appropriately for it, but it didn't make it any less hard. We drove the run course the day before and I won’t lie...it scared me. The hills are just so long with some pretty steep sections with absolutely NO flat sections to be found. 

In training, we did a lot of long brick workouts (long rides followed by long runs) where we left for the run with a straight 1 mile uphill between 3-9% grade. It was GREAT training for this course and I highly recommend that style of brick for this event. The course is all asphalt with some cement sidewalks but it is certainly hot and exposed. Absolutely ZERO shade to be found. In the end, I felt pretty ‘good’ for the entire run (‘good’ for me meaning I wasn’t having long conversations with myself about why I really should keep running even though it was hard). I managed to run most of the course, minus a few sections at aid stations and one super steep section around mile 8, which was a HUGE accomplishment for me on a course like this. And since this entire race was a “training race” for me into Ironman Coeur d’Alene in June, this run gave me a big boost of confidence for that event. 

RUN NUTRITION: I was ready for a HOT run in addition to the hills, so right from the very first aid station, I started taking on ice. I actually stopped at the aid station in T2 and wet my cooling neck wrap and stuffed it full of ice. I didn’t skip a single aid station for ice. I chose not to carry anything with me for this run and rely fully on the aid stations for hydration. I still had my Spring gel and Skratch Chews in my kit from the bike and around mile 3.5 (at the top of the first climb) I opened the gel and started to slowly sip on it. This particular Spring gel has 45g carbohydrate so I made sure to take it on slowly (it literally took me 45 minutes to eat the whole thing). It was a little annoying to have that plus a cup of ice in my hand for 45 minutes, but I’m not sure I would change that if I did this race again. I never felt overly hot. I never had any gut issues. And most importantly, I never really had a drop in energy until the last mile. In total, I took on one Spring gel and 2 sips of coke around mile 8 and 10. In hindsight, I would’ve taken on a few more calories towards the end so that last mile didn’t feel so bad, but that would’ve just been icing on the cake.

RUN TIME- 02:03.34
33rd out of 115 athletes in the 40-44 age group

Happy to be finished!

FINAL TIME- 05:50.38
29th out of 115 athletes in the 40-44 age group
185th out of 704 females

In total, I LOVED this event. The community of St. George was incredibly welcoming and seemed genuinely happy to have us all there. There seemed to be plenty of Air BnB’s and hotels for athletes to stay, although not many of the hotels are that nice. Sean and I were hosted by some friends in their Air Bn’B on the west side of town and loved everything about the condo complete and area. There were TONS of athletes there and I would definitely stay in that area again if I were to go back. So about that...registration for Ironman St. George has opened and although I have good friends signed up to do it and I really did love this event, I’m holding off on my 2022 plans for the moment. I’m eager to head back to Ironman Cozumel but that’s all I have in my sight at the moment. 

If you’re racing this event at the World Championship in September 2021, GOOD LUCK! You’re in for a treat. Just plan accordingly for a very hilly course and I’m sure you’ll do great!

The Gold Country Triathlon Club crew...aka, my triathlon family.

Post Race...

Sean and I packed up and headed home via the 395 route. We took a side trip to Mammoth Lakes where we relaxed at Wild Willy's and slept mostly. LOL! After moving houses the weeks before this race, we were running a little shy on our zzzz's.

Many other athletes spent time in Zion and Bryce National Parks which I HIGHLY recommend! Sean and I have done both of the those national parks multiple times and knowing they would be crowded, opted for a different experience on our way home. But it you haven't been, be sure to add Zion and Bryce Canyons to your travel plans!

Wild Willy's Hot Springs, Mammoth Lakes