IMNZ 2017 Bike 1 Here I come!

  Well, surprisingly, I took less damage from this race than I expected, and I’m already fully recovered 😊.

Yesterday I even went for a recovery swim and a light run. It’s been a while since I exercised without a race looming ahead, and it feels so relaxed and fun 🎵. Since I don’t even have a target race set right now, I think I’ll just take it easy and enjoy myself for the time being 😊.

Last time, I wrote about how I somehow managed to finish the swim despite a rather pathetic performance.

I could already feel that the swim had drained my legs, and I was a little worried—can I really handle 180 km of biking and then a full marathon after this?—as I passed through the swim finish gate.

Then I saw a tunnel of cheering spectators lining the way to transition 🤲. And amazingly, even for those of us coming through so late, the cheers were still loud and enthusiastic 😂. In that instant, all thoughts of my miserable swim completely vanished 😏. (As you can probably tell from all my forgotten items before the start, I’m a pretty forgetful person 👍.)

However, in the previous 70.3 here, I made the mistake of getting carried away and sprinting in this section, which led to cramps in both legs 😞. This time, I took a slow jog toward transition instead. (Forgetful I may be, but I do learn 👍.)

As I neared transition, I started peeling off the top half of my wetsuit… but I got this uneasy feeling 👀. I’d had a vague sense since before the start that I was forgetting something important. Watching other athletes take off their wetsuits, it suddenly hit me 😲—I had forgotten to put on my race tattoo 😅.

"Wait… could that get me disqualified?" A wave of anxiety crossed my mind 😞, but there was nothing I could do now. I reassured myself: “It’s probably only for the swim—should be fine.” Just in case, I left my wetsuit half on so as not to openly advertise my blunder 😜.

When I got to transition, I saw there were still quite a lot of bikes left. (I would later learn this was just because many people had dropped out—something I had no idea about at the time 👍.) Feeling encouraged, I grabbed my bag and headed into the tent to change.

One of the amazing things about Ironman is that volunteers help you change from start to finish 😲. I barely moved—one even put my socks on for me! It felt like being treated like royalty 🎵.

Thanks to the volunteer’s full-service help, I changed in record time and headed for my bike. Since I had a local entry slot, my bike was racked at the very front, alongside the pros. I saw my family waiting right in front of my bike 😊, and while telling them how disastrous my swim had been, I got straight to my preparations.

(I stuffed into my jersey today’s secret weapon—rice balls—that I had put in an empty bottle cage that morning 👍.)

The bike of my local rival, R-kun, was of course already gone. I’d hoped to arrive here before him, but no such luck. I wondered how far ahead he was, then hurried with my setup and headed toward the exit.

Passing my family again, my wife didn’t shout something like “Good luck!”—instead she called out just one thing:
"R-kun’s 15 minutes ahead of you!" 😂. After 20 years together, she knows exactly what I most want to know, without me even asking 👍.

Well—if a man can’t get fired up after a comment like that from his wife, he’s no man at all 💪. Fortunately, R-kun’s biking isn’t particularly strong, so I thought, “15 minutes? I’ll catch him within one lap!” Suddenly I had a target, and my motivation soared 🔥.

Once on course, I first tested how I was feeling today. This section is part of my regular training loop, so I know my usual pace well, and I was going 2–3 km/h faster than usual despite taking it easy. That was exactly the effect I had hoped for from my training: wearing what I call my “training weights”—a loose, high-vis jacket with huge air resistance—right up until two days before the race, and not switching to race tires until then. The plan had worked perfectly 😊.

The course now entered the first long climb, after which we would pass through Taupō’s town center. I had planned to use this section as a warm-up to loosen my legs after the swim, so I spun lightly up the hill.

My race plan for the bike was to reach the run with minimal damage, so I had decided to cap my heart rate at 145 bpm. My max is around 187, so this would keep me in my aerobic zone. In test rides, this level of effort had left me feeling capable of running a solid marathon afterward.

By the time I crested the hill, the excitement of the big race had me pushing a little hard, so I worked to bring my heart rate down. Thanks to starting early, I got it into the target zone by the time I exited the city 👍.

Now the real race began. After a gentle climb came a long descent and then flats—the perfect place to make time. I gave my Merida the go signal, and it responded like it had been waiting for it 🔥. I flew down the hill and held speeds over 50 km/h on the flats 🌠.

Since I’d fallen behind in the swim, my speed difference with those around me was big, so—like in the last 70.3—I stayed in the passing lane, overtaking nonstop 🎵. But this was Ironman, so as I passed I saw plenty of expensive TT bikes with disc wheels, full aero gear—probably 1 million yen’s worth of equipment—everywhere 😲.

Meanwhile, my Merida was a bargain I’d bought secondhand for about 30,000 yen 😉. But this time, I had also bought an aero wheelset—secondhand again—for 40,000 yen, actually more than the bike itself 👍. Compared to the “iron sandals” I’d raced on last time, my setup was much more competitive. The result: another overtaking spree just like in my previous race 😊.

I must have passed about 100 riders in the first 30 km. As I moved further forward, speeds increased and I no longer needed to stick to the passing lane, so I slipped into the riding lane now and then and started on nutrition, which I’d neglected a bit early on.

This is a long event—about half a day. That’s as long as I’d normally have three solid meals, so I needed to eat as much as possible on the relatively easier bike leg. Time for my bento 😊—I bit into my first rice ball.

Delicious 😊.

In races I usually just have those overly sweet gels that don’t taste good, so this was heaven 🎵. A Japanese person just can’t get full power without rice 👍.

The surroundings were all countryside, and I was soaking in a picnic-like happiness when the top pros came back on the other side of the road. Out in front solo was perennial runner-up Bozzone! I couldn’t help but think, “If he’s pushing that hard, I hope he doesn’t blow up later.”

As I got closer to the turnaround, more of the faster age groupers came back past me, but they didn’t look too lively 👀. The outbound leg had been quite a tailwind, but as any triathlete knows, tailwinds on the bike don’t feel that strong—you just notice that you’re going faster. Until you turn around, you can’t tell exactly how strong the wind is.

Of course, having ridden this course many times, I know that on days like today with a strong westerly, the outbound is downhill with a tailwind and the return is uphill with a headwind, and the times drop drastically. I’d pushed a bit to build a time cushion, but I still didn’t know how much I’d banked—or whether the return would be as brutal as my test ride, when I couldn’t even average 20 km/h and limped home. With that worry in mind, I reached the turnaround.

This post has gotten quite long, so I’ll stop here. Looking at the official results, my average speed to the first turnaround was 36.13 km/h. For comparison, in my last 70.3 (same course, just one lap) my average was 31.83 km/h, but the wind direction was opposite. On that day’s outbound, I’d had a slight headwind and averaged 29.66 km/h. On paper, it looks like I’d built a decent cushion this time—but would it be enough to offset the headwind? We’ll find out next time 😊.