World Champs, recovery and the plan moving forward
Welcome to this week’s newsletter, coming to you from Mykonos.
Since my last check-in here, I raced the IRONMAN World Champs in Nice, finishing in 10th place. The Nice course was a great one for a world championship race. Equally beautiful and challenging. Truthfully, I think Kona has a better overall vibe, possibly because it is a much smaller place and therefore the race really dominates the atmosphere around town, whereas Nice is obviously a larger City with things going on outside of the race too. So, the atmosphere isn’t as condensed. But the course in Nice is really special and I think possibly a better world championship course than Kona (in my opinion).
In the race I had a great swim, a bike that was going well until I got a puncture, and unfortunately not my best marathon like I had hoped for going in. A couple of people have messaged and asked where the puncture happened and how did I fix it. So, I thought I would share the specifics here. My front tire went suddenly flat at 105kms, just after I had caught back up to Fenella (and was excited to have someone to work with!). I stopped and firstly checked if there was anything obvious in the tire that caused the puncture but didn’t find anything. Since I was riding tubeless and I decided to use a co2 to try and reflate the tire without needing to put a tube in. Unfortunately the co2 did not inflate the tire well, and it remained pretty flat and was actually slowly deflating (as discovered later). Thankfully there was just enough air for me to get back on and start riding, hoping to come across the roaming mechanical help or an aid station which would have a bike pump to use. I rode about 15kms on the to the next aid station. I could tell the tire was getting flatter as I went and, in the end, I was riding very cautiously as I was worried about rolling the tire off the rim. When I got to the pump and the aid station the tire was at 0 psi, so I was lucky to get there!
From that next aid station, I was able to ride back to T2 as per normal as the sealant seemed to do its job once I could put more air in. Mentally I was still feeling happy and positive in the race and was confident I could still have a decent day despite losing time on the bike.
Even though I didn’t run as well as I had hoped for, I was able to achieve that top 10 I was aiming for which I was really happy with. Of course, part of me is still a little disappointed as I do wonder what I could have done had I not lost the time on the bike, and I would have liked to run better. But that’s racing, and at least I could carry on, unlike poor Anne Haug who had an irreparable flat.
It goes to show that if something does go wrong in an IRONMAN, if you can carry on then you must not give up. Because even if you lose time, or have a rough patch, you can still have a good day in the end. It’s a long day and a lot can happen!
Now that the 3 x IRONMAN’s in the series are done, I am having a short mid season break (hence being in Mykonos!), which will include around 2weeks off structured training, and then I will be returning home to start 70.3 training.
What does 70.3 training look like compared to full training?
Well, actually very similar hours overall. Just not such long rides or runs, and intensity will be higher in some sessions. I’m looking forward to dialing back into 70.3 power and finding leg speed again in the run. I have done hardly any running below 4min/kms this year due to the IRONMAN specificity and I miss some of those hurty fast run session ;-) no doubt ill share more details as we go over the coming months!
Kiwi athletes: Summer racing is on its way!! Don’t forget to stock up on your summer training and racing nutrition from TriKai now. You can use the code HANNAH10 for a 10% discount on products.
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