Ironman 70.3 Miami Race Report – Part I – Before The Race

This race report is going to be a long one, so I’ll split it up into a few parts.  The last triathlon of the year was 70.3 Miami on October 30.  Being in Miami, I extended the trip on both sides of the race so it could be a vacation as well.

 

We flew out early on the Wednesday before the race and were treated to a nice sunrise on the flight down:

Once in Miami, we connected with my parents who drove us to our first hotel of the trip, The Palms on Miami Beach.  The plan was basically to just relax for 2 days and spend some time outside to acclimate to the heat and humidity and load up on calories at the hotel restaurant.  Wednesday I went for a short run in the late afternoon.  It was certainly hot, but I felt good on the run – holding sub 8 min pace comfortably.  I ran up the boardwalk along the beach and back down A1A.

After a great dinner at the hotel, got to bed early again with a plan to get up early for some sunrise pictures and a wetsuit test the following morning.  There was a rainstorm just offshore, so we got some interesting shots.

It was still unclear at this point whether wetsuits would be allowed, so I needed to try out my new sleeveless wetsuit before the race.  I also had brand new goggles to try out as well. 

Here I am trying to get in a swim.  As you can see the onshore breeze was creating quite a bit of swell which made swimming parallel to shore pretty difficult but it was good enough for a quick 20 minute test.

As the day went on it cleared up and we got in some quality poolside time and a nice lunch with the parents.

Later that afternoon my parents drove me into downtown to handle packet pick-up and the athlete meeting on Thursday, before the masses on Friday.  The packet pick-up was a mess with no indication of which line to stand in.  Most people were needlessly standing in the USAT one day registration line (presumably because they were internationals who don’t have a US license).  I was able to bypass that and get the packet quickly.  The race swag was disappointing with a cheap sling bag that broke almost instantly and a bunch of coupons.  Next up was the race meeting which was even more embarrassing for the organization.  The speaker led off with “I don’t know anything that isn’t on the website”.  Brilliant.  He had no answers to anything specific that people were asking questions about.  Another red flag indicating the serious disorganization of the race.  I was pretty much expecting this though as the race had been blasted online for a lack of communication and changing the race course multiple times prior to the race.  The only valuable thing we learned was that the race would not be wetsuit legal.  After this it was back to Miami Beach for 1 more night and another great dinner.

 

The next day we packed up and moved to the host hotel at the Intercontinental.  The first order of business was putting the bike together.  After some initial frustrations I got it together.  I had Marc make a safety check before we headed out for a short ride.  Good thing I did – I had forgotten to clamp the stem to the steerer tube!  That would have been an ugly fall.  Once everyone was ready, it was time to head out for a brief ride and then drop the bikes at transition before the cutoff.

On our way to the Specialized tent to inflate tires.

Our ride was cut short by a thunderstorm which materialized out of nowhere.  We made it into transition when we discovered the next race miscue.  Not enough transition racks.  They were short several hundred racks so we had to leave our bikes on the side of the transition leaning on the fence and other bikes.  This wasn’t particularly comforting as it seemed all too easy for anyone to walk up and lift bikes over the fence.  Not much we could do about it and the thunder was getting louder so I made a run for the hotel.

I made it back to the hotel with only a minute to spare before the sky opened and a torrential rain fell.   After a quick shower, it was time to meet the rest of the crew for the pasta dinner (L to R Valerio, me, Rico, Marc, Mike).

The pasta dinner was about as bad as expected, but it was quick and right downstairs.  They showed a video about John Blaze and his parents were there to acknowledge the money raised for their foundation.

After that it was immediately off to try to get some sleep before the 5am wakeup call the next morning.

 

Up next – the prerace and the swim.