Ironman 70.3 St. George

I wish I had known at the time how good I had it the first time I raced in St. George. I struggled with the ice-cold swim and knee pain on the run, but the weather was absolutely perfect that day and I cruised to a sub-6 finish, in spite of the challenging course. It quickly became my favorite race.

I got a taste of the real St. George last year. I went with an aggressive goal of improving on that sub-6 result; I was confident I could achieve that despite the sweltering heat on race day, with just some minor tweaks to my pacing plan. I was wrong, so wrong. The heat clobbered me on the bike and I completely fell apart on the run—it was my worst result in a 70.3 to date. Of course, I immediately signed up for this year’s edition, which as it turns out, will be the last one for now.

So, one last dance in St. George. I hoped for cool weather again, but as race day approached it became clear that wasn’t in the cards—the weather forecast for race week saw steadily rising temperatures, with a blistering high of 34.4°C on race day, even worse than last year. With that, my race goals went from “personal best” to “just finish,” with a stretch goal of “no regrets.”

Read on for my last race report from the final edition of Ironman 70.3 St. George.

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Howdy, and welcome to my third season of racing triathlons. This year, I’m starting my season again with Ironman 70.3 St. George, a race I did for the first time last year and enjoyed enormously, despite some issues during the swim and the run. I wanted to come back and try to improve on that effort.

Last year, I managed to pull off a sub-six finish, with a total time of 5:55:12, so my goal was simply to be faster than that, with a stretch goal of finishing in 5:30. That seemed attainable if I shaved ten minutes of the bike and run, plus a few more from the swim and transitions, but I also knew it was very aggressive; I got lucky last year with the great weather and cool temperature, and it seemed unlikely that would happen again. Sure enough, the forecast this year indicated a high of 31°C on race day, but I was confident I could still beat last year’s time at least.

Spoiler alert: That, uh, did not happen.

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After a long and brutal Jackson Hole winter, it’s finally race season again, and I just finished my first race of the year, Ironman 70.3 St. George. I chose this as a B event for a few reasons: it’s within driving distance of where I live, it looked like a tough challenge, and I thought it’d serve as good race prep before my first full Ironman next month in Coeur d’Alene.

I originally planned to come to this race prepared to put in a decent effort and improve on my 6:14 finish in Boulder, but after facing some challenges with my swim training over the winter, and a potential knee injury in the past couple of weeks, I ended up downgrading my race goal from “sub-6 finish” to “just finish.”

Despite that, the race went both better and worse than I expected—read on for my first race report of the year.

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