PreRace - 2 days out

My awesome husband and my daughter Alessia and I arrived to La Quinta 2 days prior the race. La Quinta is is almost completely surrounded by the colorful Santa Rosa Mountains. While driving we noticed a lovely picturesque surroundings. I was not looking forward to swim in a cold lake. I’m not a fan of lake swims. I just don’t feel very comfortable in lakes. I probably just need more open water swim practices in them. I registered for this race before qualifying for IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship. Yes this was a back up race. However I had everything booked and I had to do it!

Pre race logistics…

..were a bit confusing, but after the athlete briefing everything was clear. T1 was at lake Cahuilla and T2 at the Indian Wells tennis garden. They were pretty far from each other.

PreRace 1day out

I spent a lot of time visualizing and thinking through each part of the race; contents of each transition bag, how much nutrition and fluids to take on the bike, the steps I needed to take in each transition, etc. This helped a lot with pre-race nerves because I was confident in my plan to manage the added logistics of day-before gear checks, changing tents, and split transition locations. With my solid plan, we then spent most of the day running around decontaminating and turning in gear, visiting the Ironman village and braiding hair. We had to follow the wetsuit decontamination protocol. The protocol is designed to eliminate the possibility of introducing the quagga mussel into Lake Cahuilla. All we had to do is to submerge the wetsuits in water containing 2 parts per million chlorine solution for 30 seconds. To ensure the protocol is followed, the volunteers were tagging the wetsuits in the designated area after the submersion.

After this…

process was completed, we had to hang the wetsuits in designed area and pick them up only on race day. Therefore there was no pre swim practice. The wetsuit must remain tagged until the race.
NO ONE WILL BE ALLOWED IN LAKE CAHUILLA WITHOUT A TAGGED WETSUIT.

Race Day

Alarm set at 3 am. We were at the tennis garden by 4:05 am, therefore we took one of the first buses to get to the lake. There is no other way to get there due road closure. One good thing about racing in California for the Eastern athletes is that being in the Pacific time made us wake up early very easily. Those three hours made a huge difference.
I took my time setting up my bike and nutrition. I stayed in my warm clothes as long as I could.
At the 5 minute call to exit transition, I put on my wet wetsuit, the hoodies and the neoprene cap.

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I warmed up with some running in place , high knees and some usual push ups to bring my HR up.

The Swim

The Coachella valley race begins with the swim, set to be a 1.2 mile loop through the waters of Lake Cahuilla. This protected and picturesque reservoir provides an ideal rolling beach start. Let me just say that no one looks good in a wetsuit. No one. It was cold and cloudy. We lined up at the swim start, the cannons sounded, and we dove in. I ran into the water expecting some sort of warm barrier between me and the wall of ice, but my face froze the instant the water grazed it. I could not breathe with my face in the water for the first 200-300 yd., so I was alternating freestyle and backstroke.

As soon I was putting my face in the iced water I felt hyperventilated. Then I stuck with that thought and focused on straight lines and smooth powerful strokes but the congestion, and chill, in the water made it difficult to get into a good rhythm. I have poor circulation to my extremities and before the last two right-turn buoys, my right hand started to go numb. After the first turn around the buoy I felt fast as I lined up with the 40 min swim prediction time. I was passing everyone and it was a bit hard passing them. It was congested. This was probably a mistake. I should have started earlier. The plan was to feel a bit warmer on the bike. I was hoping for the sun to come out so that I would not freeze once out of the water. Oh well! We never finish learning from our own mistakes. It was good that I could see my arms going through the motions of swimming. Time passed. I was counting my strokes before sighting not to get bored or panic.

42-minute swim, done. 69.2 miles left to go. I was expecting something faster than 40 min.

T1

Finally got out of the water and a stripper took my wetsuit off. I ran to the blue hanging bag where all my bike stuff was waiting for me. It was a long transition because I also had to take off the booties and place everything back into the bag and give it to the volunteers. I dried quickly with a big towel and put on arm warmers. I was debating if putting a cycling jacket or not since it was cold and cloudy. Getting out of transition was a long way. Maybe more than 400 mt running out pushing the bike until the mounting line. Phew!

The Bike

I wanted my normalized average power output to be about 85-90% FTP just like my last 70.3 race and I nailed it. The difference was in the speed. My last race speed avg was 23 MPH while in this race It was 22 MPH due the many sharp U turns and the new addition of the race track. I caught up to a Mexican guy who was working at about the same pace, we traded positions every mile or so but we both respected the no draft rules and kept enough distance between us when we weren’t passing each other.

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However, I noticed many group of riders drafting on the other direction with total disregard for drafting rules. But let’s talk about the actual course. Everyone has their own opinions. These are mine: Bike course was great, super flat and relatively fast. Road surface coming out of reservoir is a bottle shooter, in fact it is pretty rough through first big right turn. Probably not the place to get overly excited out of T1. I saw many bottle on the road and a couple of riders down especially at the turn arounds. OUCH! Nice long straight after that. There were definitely some rough patches during the whole course, but overall it was pretty decent.

The Race Track

was totally rad, but very technical for a freak like me 😂. Many sharp turns made me go out of aero.... As I mentioned before here were a lot of 90 degree turns. In these corners we found the worst road conditions on the entire course. Very bumpy and poorly patched. I used caution. I almost stopped at those turns. Coming from Portland, the ride felt flat as a pancake. Not totally true though. Most of the (not much) rise is at the end, in fact going to T2 we were gradually climbing and found some headwinds on the second half.

I stayed on top of my nutrition. I drank 3 (and not 2 and 1/2 as usual) of Infinit GoFar because it was cold and our body needs more calories when temperature is lower. I peed 4-6 times… I lost count. It was still cloudy and in the temperature was in the upper 60s. The sun never came out until mile 50. Really? Now that we had to run?

At mile 40 my back had started to hurt, so I was SO GLAD to be done with the bike. That is very unusual since the bike leg is my favorite.

T2

I made my way to the rack, grabbed my bag and a volunteer helped me switch gears. I grabbed my bib after switching shoes, and started the run. The “ShutUpLegsRun".