Race Report: 2024 Ironman 70.3 Washington Tri-Cities

Last fall, Ironman announced a new race in the Pacific Northwest: Ironman 70.3 Washington Tri-Cities, in Richland, Washington. I signed up almost immediately---the venue looked great and I was thrilled to have one more race within a reasonable driving distance. A chill end-of-summer race seemed like a great way to end my season, especially since this one has had a few ups and downs: I had my worst result to date at Ironman 70.3 St. George; I ran my fastest half marathon ever in June, but was forced to pull out of Ironman 70.3 Boulder a week later thanks to COVID; I had a great run at Ironman 70.3 Coeur d’Alene, but the swim was shortened; I stupidly almost derailed my season at a trail running race; and I finished my first full-distance race at Ironman Canada, but with a huge asterisk because the swim was canceled. Given that this was my last triathlon of the year, my only goal was to end the season on a high note---just give it everything I got and try to get the best result possible, hopefully at a complete race. Long story short, it was a success. Read on for my last triathlon race report of this year. Pre-race preparations I arrived in Richland late on Thursday before the race, staying at the Courtyard Richland Columbia Point, less than a five-minute walk from transition and the Ironman Village, and right next to the run course. By the time I checked into my room and unloaded my car the sun was coming down and I was beat from the long drive, so I just had dinner and settled in for the night. The following day I checked into the race as soon as the Ironman Village opened, to try to score a low bib number, in the unlikely scenario that the swim somehow got canceled again and the race started with another bike time trial. After checking in, I stayed for the race briefing; I mostly wanted to hear about the conditions in the river, since I had never done a race with a river swim. The briefing mentioned that a group of people had done a practice swim that day and a person who normally swims in the “under 27 minutes” wave had finished in just 18 minutes “without working too hard.” It’s hard to extrapolate without knowing exactly what that person’s normal pace is, but assuming they normally swim the 1.9 km in 25 minutes, I could expect a roughly 27-minute swim, which sounded too good to be true. After Penticton, I haven’t been as consistent as I would have liked with my swimming, so I welcomed all the help I could get. After the briefing, I walked around to scope out the swim exit and transition layout. This race does a single transition at Columbia Point Marina Park; it doesn’t have much shade, but it’s well laid out, brightly lit on race morning, and it’s all on grass, which makes the jog from the swim exit much easier. The swim itself is point-to-point in the Columbia River, with the start about a 30-minute walk away, in Howard Amon Park. As is common for 70.3 races with a single transition, they didn’t hand out gear bags, with the exception of a morning clothes bag to place whatever you’re carrying to the swim start, such as a coat, shoes, hotel key, etc. You hand it over to the volunteers at Howard Amon Park before getting in line for the swim and they give it back to you after crossing the finish line. That afternoon, I went on a run to scope out part of the run course on the Riverfront Trail, followed by a brief shakedown ride to verify that my bike was in working order. Everything, including my ankle and my bike, seemed to be working properly, so I went back to my room for some dinner and a good night of sleep. All my gear, organized before the race. Not pictured: trisuit and wetsuit. I didn’t do much the day before the race. I thought about going out for a recon drive on the bike course, but I was feeling lazy and didn’t want to give up the sweet parking spot I had right next to my hotel room. Instead, I walked over to Howard Amon Park to time how long it’d take me to walk there on race day, scope out the swim start, and talk to a few of the folks there in case they had any good intel to share. I spent the rest of the day watching TV while preparing my gear, before checking in my bike at transition in the afternoon. All checked in at transition the day before. The race was scheduled to start the next morning at 6:30 AM, and transition would be open from 4:00 AM to 6:15 AM, with athletes starting the walk to the swim start at 5:45 AM. Since my hotel was on the way to the swim, it made more sense to walk from there rather than hang around in the chilly 9ºC morning. I woke up shortly before 3:00 AM, took a COVID test, had a bagel with jam and coffee, and headed over to transition as soon as it opened to finish setting up my bike and lay out my gear next to it; the person next to me turned out to be a no-show, and I was grateful to have additional space for my stuff. With that taken care of, I went back to my room and warmed up while I waited for the start of the race. The Columbia River at sunrise on race morning, on the way to the swim start. At 6:00 AM, I put on my wetsuit and joined the long procession of athletes and supporters walking to Howard Amon Park. After the national anthem was sung and the traditional cannon was fired, indicating the start of the race, I handed over my morning clothes bag to a volunteer, seeded myself in the 44–46 minute group, and ate a Maurten 100 gel while I waited for the start. It took almost an hour to get in the water, but I enjoyed chatting and trading stories with the people around me, including some familiar faces from previous races, and before I knew it, I was in the starting chutes. I started my race at 7:23 AM. The swim This swim was a blast, there’s no other way to put it. I walked into the river, and although it was chilly that morning, the 19.2ºC water felt great, so I just dived in and got to work---no cold shock response to deal with this time. The first buoy was a red turn buoy, and after that right turn, the rest of the swim was a straight shot towards transition, with a huge assist from the current. That first turn buoy was aligned with the rising sun, but after that I had no problem whatsoever sighting. The water was clean and pleasant, albeit murky, so I couldn’t see much underwater, which suits me just fine---I’d rather not see anything down there. The volunteers in kayaks and paddleboards tried to keep the swimmers close to the buoys, but despite that, there wasn’t much of a washing machine effect; I made contact with a couple people, but I didn’t get kicked in the face even once. I felt great the entire time, and although someone in the swim staging area said the current wasn’t very strong that day, those buoys just kept flying past me. I have my watch set to buzz every 100 meters during the swim, and it seemed like it was buzzing every minute. I could swear I was swimming with great form, but perhaps it was just an illusion from the current's speed. The only part where I had to work hard was after the last turn, entering the marina towards the swim exit. That had a slight current going out, but it only took me a couple minutes to swim that last stretch and exit the water. My swim split was 26:34, with a pace of 1:23 min/100 m, pretty much bang-on what I had guesstimated, and needless to say, it was way faster than my previous times in a lake or reservoir. It was fun to pretend I’m actually good at swimming for once, even though I probably could have just floated down the river and still made the time cut. T1 It was a fairly long run from the swim exit to the mount line, so after getting my wetsuit ripped off by the wetsuit peelers, getting all my bike gear on, spraying on a coat of sunscreen, and using the porta-potty, I spent 10:40 in T1. The bike For this race I set an aggressive target intensity of 86%; I wanted to go hard, even at the risk of overcooking the bike and blowing up on the run. At that intensity, Best Bike Split gave me an estimated finish time of 2:28:47, which put me in the yellow in my pacing table, but I hoped the altitude would give me an edge---I live and train at 1,950 m, while Richland is at just 117 m above sea level. Bike pacing table for Ironman 70.3 races. | Credit: TriStar Athletes With my pacing plan set up in my Garmin, I headed out on the bike course, which consists of a single lap through Richland’s neighborhoods and the countryside just outside of town, with 625 m of elevation gain from a handful of punchy climbs to spice things up. It’s a gorgeous course with beautiful views, especially after leaving town and riding alongside farms and vineyards in the Washington countryside, and had some of the nicest, smoothest pavement I’ve ever ridden on. I was a little concerned when they said at the briefing that the course was on open roads and that we should ride defensively because it’s a first-time race and local drivers may not be used to sharing the road with a race or even know that there was a race in progress, but for almost the entirety of the course we had an entire lane of traffic closed off for the race, and the roads had little car traffic anyway, so it felt safe. The only sketchy segment was the last descent along Dallas Road; it’s a fast descent with only the shoulder and half a lane to maneuver. Cars had knocked over some of the cones into our half of the lane, so a few people in front of me had to swerve into the car lane to avoid them. If I had my way, that entire lane would be closed for the race, or alternatively that descent would be designated as a no-passing, no-aerobars zone for safety (even though in my experience people tend to ignore those). View this course in Garmin Connect or Strava. Overall, though, it’s a very enjoyable bike course, although it was extremely crowded. I don’t know if there was a particularly high number of participants for this race or I simply started way at the back after my swim, but I’ve never seen a bike course with so much bunching, drafting and blocking. It was just back to back cyclists almost the entire way, sometimes riding two or even three abreast. I don’t think I saw a referee the entire time, but if drafting and blocking penalties had been enforced, they would have needed a much bigger penalty tent. I tried to stick to my power targets while following drafting and position rules to the best of my ability, but there were many, many times where I was completely boxed in with nowhere to go. It was frustrating at times, but I tried not to be an asshole about it and simply announced myself, passed as safely as I could, and thanked people when they let me through. My final intensity was 75%, far short of my target, but I did my best under the circumstances. The silver lining was that I had plenty left in the tank for the run. There were only a few climbs, but I loved them. | Credit: FinisherPix For nutrition, I stuck to my usual plan for 70.3s: Two 24-ounce bottles of Maurten 320 Drink Mix for about 80 g/h of carbs, with two Maurten 160 gels in my bento box as a backup if I ejected a bottle; I didn't use any of the aid stations. My stomach felt great the entire time and I didn’t have a repeat of the digestive issues I had at St. George this year and Coeur d’Alene last year. I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure the cause of those issues, but at least I think I can rule out my nutrition itself as a cause (I did make one change to my fueling plan for the past few races, though: I’ve completely cut caffeine out of my race nutrition, but I don’t know how much of a difference that made). I only had one mishap on this race: I switched my setup to have a single Gorilla XT cage at the back of my Profile Design behind-the-saddle mount and I just could not for the life of me pry the bottle out of its kung fu grip when I needed it. I used a similar setup last month at Ironman Canada with two of the same bottle cages on the same mount and didn’t have any problem getting the bottles out, so I didn’t think to test this out before the race. In other words, I fell victim to one of the classic blunders: “Nothing new on race day.” After struggling for what felt like an eternity without getting the bottle to budge, I finally had to stop to get it out and move it to the cage between my aerobars. I don’t know what the aerodynamic penalty is for having a bottle cage in my downtube, but next time I’ll just do that instead. Speaking of aerodynamics, I wore these Zoot Elite aero calf sleeves for the first time after reading about the aero benefits. I can’t speak for any aero gains I may or may not have gotten, but they did have an unexpected benefit: They made putting on my wetsuit so much easier; it just slides right over the calf sleeves. It worked better than TriSlide spray, to be honest, so that's good to know for next time. The rest of my gear was the same I’ve used in my past two races, including my Trek Speed Concept SLR 7, Giro Aerohead helmet, Roka Gen II Elite trisuit, and Shimano S-Phyre SH-TR903 shoes. I’m very happy with this setup; I think I’ve managed to resolve a lot of the comfort issues I’ve had in the past. My next step is to get a professional bike fit and see if I can improve my aerodynamic position without sacrificing too much comfort. Despite the setbacks, the bike leg was fast and fun. I think it was mostly the altitude, but I felt so strong putting down power in aero and in the climbs, and even though I missed my target intensity and had to make that unscheduled stop to deal with my bottle, I rolled into T2 in just 2:37:33, my fastest bike split to date in a 70.3. Not bad at all. T2 I racked my bike, took off my helmet and bike shoes, put on my running shoes, threw on my hat, sunglasses and race belt, put on some more sunscreen, used the porta-potty, and ran out in 7:40. The run After my run at Ironman 70.3 Coeur d’Alene, I had a pretty good idea of what pace I could sustain, so my goal was to beat my time there. I aimed to hold a pace of 4:50 min/km, slowing down only at the aid stations, and if I still felt good at the halfway point, I’d try to push the pace and aim for a negative split. The run course was a single-lap out-and-back on the Riverfront Trail along the Columbia River and a few residential side streets. It’s pretty flat, with only 77 m of elevation gain, a decent amount of shade, and great vibes from the neighbors along the way, especially as you get closer to the finish line (those who bring out their garden hoses to the course are the real MVPs, by the way). The entire course is paved and even, except for the last 500 m or so before and after the turnaround, which were on rough, chunky gravel. View this course in Garmin Connect or Strava. The weather forecast said the high for the day would be 28ºC, which worried me since I tend to get clobbered by the heat, but it actually didn’t feel that hot during the run. I’m not sure if it was because I was still carrying heat adaptations from the summer, but it just felt very pleasant and breezy, even though I was pushing a hard pace. I felt good despite the hard effort, with no pain anywhere. My ankle didn’t bother me at all, although I was very cautious on the gravel portion before the turnaround; I could picture myself rolling my ankle again there and having to limp all the way back to the finish line. For nutrition, I tried something different. I liked the Maurten bars so much last month at Ironman Canada that I wanted to try using them exclusively for fueling this time around. I had three bars in total, one every thirty minutes. It worked well---they’re easy to eat, tastier than gels, didn’t cause any stomach distress, and I appreciated eating solid food after drinking two bottles of liquid carbs, so I might do this from now on. Besides the bars, I had water at every aid station and although I didn’t think I needed any sodium, I had a couple cups of Mortal Hydration along the way, just in case. I was still feeling strong at the turnaround point, so I tried to push the pace on the way back. I didn’t manage the negative split I hoped for, but I gave it everything I got and crossed the finish line in 1:45:25, with a final pace of 4:55 min/km. For those keeping track at home, that is 57 seconds faster than my time at Coeur d’Alene, so mission accomplished, I did beat my time there, thank you very much. My total time was 5:07:45, my personal best for a 70.3, with the obvious caveat of the current-assisted swim (although both the bike and the run were my fastest to date). I placed 43rd out of 187 in the M40–44 age group, and 304th out of 2,069 overall. I don’t think I truly emptied the tank, but I’m more than satisfied with this result. About to cross the finish line. Success! | Credit: FinisherPix It’s funny---I started my season with my worst result to date in a 70.3, and ended it with a personal best. I can’t think of a better way to wrap things up for the year. I was so tired after the long drive to Richland that I thought this would be a one-and-done for me, but I had such a great time here, I think I’m adding this race to my schedule next year, along with St. George and Coeur d’Alene. It’s a top notch race with a great course in a beautiful venue, and I can’t say enough good things about the volunteers and locals, some of whom I spoke to before the race and who, despite the inconvenience a race like this represents in terms of road closures and traffic, seemed legitimately excited to be hosting it. Hopefully this one will be around for a while, because I’d love to come back. I thought the wine glass charms on the medal were a nice touch. And with that, that’s it for my triathlon season this year. If you’ve read this far, thank you, but stick around---it won’t be my last.