Ironman New Orleans 70.3 (First Race as a Pro!)

I flew into Baton Rouge, LA so I could have a fun visit with friends Ted and Shanelle and Tiago and Paula.  I feel lucky to have met such great people through the sport of triathlon!  Staying with Ted and Shanelle was a blast, they have a gorgeous new house and we have a super primo dinner that all of us contributed to (ok Shanelle made the best chicken ever, Ted's garlic bread and asparagus were awesome and I tried to contribute with a salad).

I got to get some sleep during the day (leaving Columbia was hectic and I got only 3-4 hours sleep the night before I left).  We had a nice swim session on Friday morning at Crawfish Aquatics, with some solid sprint sets and Tiago (who is a superstar swimmer) filmed us and I got some really excellent feedback on my stroke, which was especially helpful.  Hilarious how bad my stroke looks compared to true swimmers, lots to work on!!!

As you might imagine, I was really nervous about my first race in the pro field.  I wanted to belong and I didn't want to be racing by myself but I knew this was an honest reality given the strength of the field amassed for this race.  The weather had been extremely windy and lake Pontchartrain was boiling with waves and really scary so they cancelled the swim and replaced it with a 2 mile run.  The bike was also shortened to 52 miles due to debris on the course.  I was disappointed but I knew this would be an advantage for me since I am a weak swimmer compared to the other girls.

We drove down to New Orleans at 4:00 am on Sunday for the race.  Ted, Shanelle, Paula and Tiago all came down (BEST FRIENDS EVER!!).  I felt like I had a posse/hommies/goons/entourage with me, so pro right?!?!  Ted and Tiago (both PhDs in Exercise Physiology) distracted me during the drive with various super tri-geek discussions varying from crank length to power/wattage graphs and I almost forgot I had to race.  See Ted and Tiago pictured with fellow Baton Rouge Tri-club member Doug.  Talk about double trouble !! ;)

I was glad I had discussed my plan with Joe before the race, I was prepared to go out hard to stay with the pack but wanted to cap my pace around 6:00/mile given the length of the race to follow.  There were some serious big-time girls including Mirinda Carfrae, Caitlin Snow, Magali Tisseyre, Heather Wurtele, Amanda Lovato and Amy Marsh.  WOW, talk about some awesome competition!!  They started us in a corner around a traffic circle and I had flashbacks of my track days.  I started at the outer corner so I could run the tangent to the curve.  The run felt effortless and I checked my mile split and it said 5:45, holy SH**!!  I calmed it down a little for the second mile and came into T1 about 30-40s behind the lead pack.  It was the experience of a lifetime to come into T1 that close to the World Champion and multiple Ironman champions, I was giddy!!  

The first 10 miles of the bike course was more windy than any conditions I had ever experienced.  I had a 808 front and disc rear which probably wasn't the best choice but it was what I had, my bike lifted off the ground completely a couple times, YIKES!!  I decided to not put my shoes on my bike and put them on in transition.  I felt like a tool doing this but I noticed a lot of girls stopped during the bike to put their shoes on because of the wind making it so dangerous to take their hands off the bike to get their feet in their shoes.  The most exciting part was I had girls to bike with and they were going for it!!  I thought, well if I stick to my standard 70.3 pace which is 180 watts I will get dropped right away so I'm going to risk it and ride with these girls and stay in the fray for as long as I can....first 20 miles I had 200 watts and ended up with a 189 watt average which was absolutely stellar for me and almost 10 watts better than I've ever done before!  I wasn't last off the bike!!

Starting the half-marathon I knew I needed to be conservative because I had biked really hard.  I started out with 6:40/mile pace and was feeling good but I was careful to really try and stay in 6:50-7:00 range for the whole race.  I caught a few girls and was passed by one in the first 5 miles, when I came around the loop for the first time Ted was yelling that I was only 1:30 down on the next girl (who is really good and I was shocked to be anywhere near her).  I continued to run conservatively and carefully in my goal-pace range and it was starting to get harder to achieve this.  With 1 mile to go I caught the last girl and took the pace down to 6:30 and ran as hard as I could into the finish.  I was really excited to run 1:29 (a PR of over 5 minutes) off such a hard bike and with training focused on full Ironman distance predominantly!!  It was a huge relief to complete my first Pro race 15/20 (not last!!).  I felt like although I wasn't in contention for a podium or top 10 I did belong in the pro field and it gave me an opportunity to get such a great race out of myself due to the incredible talent I had to race against!  Next up, Ironman Texas on May 19th!!  Check out the nice flag behind me in the photo below!!

I flew back a few hours after the race as I needed to be at work first thing on Monday, still do love my day-job!!  It was awesome using Tri Bike Transport so I didn't have to take my bike box to the airport, they transported my bike from the site directly to a partner shop in St. Louis!  So convenient!