IRONMAN 70.3 MALLORCA 2022 RACE RECAP

On 7th May I crossed the finish line in Mallorca for my sixth middle distance triathlon and fourth Ironman branded 70.3.

This race meant more than most, back in May 2019 I lined up for Ironman 70.3 Mallorca with high hopes of a PB, but these hopes were quickly dashed as I run from the beach to the sea. As soon as I entered the water I felt something go in my leg. This turned out to be a grade 2 calf strain which resulted in a DNF at Mallorca and six weeks out. I managed to get around the swim and the bike but pulled out in T2. As soon as registration opened I had signed up to race in May 2020 which like everything in 2020 was postponed to October 2020 and then cancelled. I deferred to May 2021 which again ended up being postponed to October 2021. At that point, I had, had enough and deferred to May 2022. Ironically, October 2021 went ahead but I had picked up a stress fracture of my sacrum so I wouldn’t have been able to race anyway.

Long story short, I am out to get my redemption here after 1 DNF and 3 cancellations.

Ironman 70.3 Mallorca 2022 isn’t a big A race for me this time around. It comes just a month after I set a new marathon PB at Marathon De Paris which was followed by 10 days of recovery in Florida over Easter. To be honest, in the 2 weeks since I got back into more normal training, I have felt tired and fatigued so I am not going into this one with any big hopes. Just a training day ahead of the next A race in July at Challenge Roth.

Thursday – Arrival & Registration

So I flew out to Mallorca on Thursday morning, arrived in Palma shortly before 10am and was in the taxi to Alcudia within the hour and checked in an hour later, all went smoothly and pleased to be checked in well ahead of the 4pm check-in time.

Arriving early gave me time to get the bike built up and head out for a shakeout ride to make sure everything was running smoothly. No issues with the bike but that Thursday was so windy! When I was riding out along the coast to Port de Pollença on the way up to Lluc the crosswind was insane. I was literally leaning to the right to keep myself upright, I swear had the wind dropped I would have fallen over I was leaning that far out. I checked the weather app when I got back and it was 45mph winds!

Really nice ride once I got off the coast and headed up into the hills.

Another selling point of Sol de Alcúdia Hotel is they have a secure bike room so you don’t need to sleep next to the bike.

After a quick post-ride lunch I went over to get registered for the race. Really nice walking along the beach on the way to the even village. The hotel was about a 20min walk.

Registration was straightforward. I got suckered into buying another Ironman tee with the athlete’s names on the back but other than that I made it out of there with my wallet intact.

The rest of the evening was spent chilling in the room and sorting the gear out for racking tomorrow

Friday – Racking

I had a nice lie-in on the Friday morning and headed straight down to the beach for a 30min shakeout swim. It was good getting in the water around the same time as the race start so I could get an idea of the temperature. It didn’t feel that cold so no worries there. This was my first open water swim of the year too, nothing like leaving testing the wetsuit out until the last minute.

After that refreshing swim, I grabbed breakfast at the hotel and then headed out for a 45min easy run with some strides thrown in. Nothing too exciting but nice to do three-quarters of the run course.

I spent the next few hours sitting around on the beach again then got my stuff together and went to rack the bike and drop the bags off just after 6pm. The good thing about Mallorca in comparison to my previous Ironman 70.3 events at Staffordshire, Bolton and Ironman UK, is no split transition. Both T1 and T2 are in the same location which makes the logistics much easier.

I wanted to leave the racking as late as possible so that the bike wasn’t out in the sun for too long. I still lowered the tyre pressures just in case but wasn’t expecting any issues. Better to be safe than sorry though.

The transition area for Mallorca is one of the longest on the calendar at just over 1km long (not counting the run from the swim exit to transition entry).

On the way back from racking I stopped off to grab the traditional pre-race pizza.

After dinner, I went back to the room, went through my stuff for the morning and set the alarm for 5:15am, not too early really.

Race Day!!

In what is starting to become typical fashion, I didn’t sleep well at all last night. I was tossing and turning most of the night and only managed to get around 4 hours of sleep. I have had issues sleeping the night before a race for my last few races, I haven’t had these issues in the past so not really sure what is causing it. I wasn’t worried or excited about today’s race so there were no pre-race nerves or excitement. Maybe I was just going over the race plan in my head and not settling.

Anyway, I woke at 5:15am mixed up my drinks for the bike and ate my two pots of porridge before leaving the hotel at 5:50am to walk over to transition.

I was a little anxious about getting there early enough to get a track pump to put some air back in my tyres. This turned out to be straightforward there were plenty of track pumps plus other athletes had brought their own and were willing to let people borrow them.

Once I had air in the tyres, nutrition on the bike and the head unit paused with the route loaded, I was happy.

I left transition and went to the beach for a 15min warm-up swim.

Swim – 1.2 Miles – 32.22

The swim start is a self-seeding rolling start where you enter the pens based on the time you think you can swim. They then let 6 athletes go in every 6 seconds beginning with the fastest pen through to the last group.

I am a big fan of this process. I have seen YouTube videos of the big mass swim starts and it looks like chaos! The newer approach of spreading the start field out does mean you have to wait around a little longer but gives more space in the water.

I seeded myself in the 30-minute pen, with a swim PB of just over 32min I was hoping to dip under that today and wanted to go with some faster swimmers to drag me along.

In reality, I was probably lined up middle to the back of the pen and probably closer to those who were aiming to sneak under 40mins (the next pen).

I really enjoyed this swim when I did it in 2019, besides the calf tear on entry to the sea. That year I ran as fast as I could on the sand before diving into the sea. This year I had that whole experience in the back of my mind and being honest, I felt really nervous about a repeat so once my countdown went off I jogged to the water and slowly run into the sea. Not the fastest in my group but not the slowest. I wanted to play it safe and at least make it into the water without injury.

Success! a few strokes into the swim I thought to myself “well I have already done better than 2019”.

Now came the easy part, swimming 1,900m. I have felt good swimming in training, I am never going to get close to leading the pack but all I aim to do is keep improving and swimming faster and more efficiently.

The water was 17.5’c and it felt nice. I had the wetsuit lifting my legs for me and the added bonus of the saltwater giving more buoyancy too. The swim is more or less 900m out, 90 degree right, 100m, 90 degree right and 900m straight back to the beach. Sighting was really simple, there were lots of yellow triangle buoys dotted along each of the straights and the sun wasn’t in your face.

It did feel very crowded despite the spread-out start. They also had the full Ironman Mallorca on that day and they set off shortly before the 70.3. By the time they got to set off my 30min wave the Ironman swimmers were coming around for their second lap, this meant I was swimming in and around the 70.3 athletes who had got in front of me in the pen and the Ironman athletes coming around for lap too. I was getting kicked and punched quite a lot, albeit giving as good as I got as well. It was difficult to find a space and get into a rhythm.

Things got worse on the two turns as they always do when we all bunch together to take the best line. After that, the swim back home wasn’t too bad. I had passed as many of those “slower” swimmers as I was going to and was with a decent bunch.

I was relieved to see the beach by the end of it, this year wasn’t the enjoyable swim I had in 2019 but it was injury-free and also a new swim PB by over 1 minute. Can’t be unhappy with that at all.

T1 – 8:42

The run from the beach to transition isn’t too long but it is a good 90sec – 2min of running. The transition zone in Alcudia is massive, I believe it is one of the longest on the circuit at just over 1km. I struggled to find my blue bag, someone had knocked it off. I like to take my time to make sure I get my feet dry, socks on and sunscreen on so my transition times are never blistering fast.

Being an AWA Silver athlete for my sins, my bike rack was close to the bike exit. Usually a good thing but today that meant a long run through to the other end of transition. Quickly grabbed the bike, ran to the mount line and jumped on the saddle, clipped in and off I went, narrowly avoiding others who had run to the mount line and stopped in the middle of the road to climb on the bike, not giving any thought to those coming behind!

Bike – 56 Miles – 3:04.39

The plan for the bike leg was to not go hard, take it steady and hold the power back to around 250w – 270w, don’t spike it too much on the climb. Leave enough in the tank for a strong run off.

The first 10km from Alcudia through Pollenca to the bottom of the climb to Lluc was just mental, there were so many riders on the road it was like riding in a sportive for that whole stretch. Nose to tail riding 2 or 3 abreast, drafting all the way. There was no way to avoid it and certainly no way you could drop 12m back, you would keep continually dropping further and further back.

I got to the climb averaging just shy of 22mph and under 210w, just getting dragged along. All to my benefit I thought.

The climb is always my strong suit, being on a road bike I don’t have the aero gains from a good streamlined position but I have the gears and leg strength to power up hills fast. That wasn’t the plan for today so I found a gear and held the power to 300w on the way up. I still passed well over 100 people up there before coasting down the other side.

Going up is a strong point but coming down is a weakness of mine so quite a few came back past me.

After the downhill, the rest of the route is mostly flat or a general downhill trend. I tried to get back up to the 250w – 270w target I had been riding at earlier but what once felt comfortable at 270w now felt comfortable at 230w, the legs were not playing ball. My chain came off twice to add to the torment.

In the end, I got through to transition around 1 minute faster than in 2019, which whilst that is good to see an improvement. That bike in 2019 was using pretty much one leg after tearing the calf on the swim so this year was somewhat of a disappointment.

On the final drag into Alcudia, I had accepted that the run wasn’t going to be what I had been planning so I focused on getting a decent dismount instead. I took my feet out of the shoes, cycled the last bit with my feet resting on top of the shoes and hopped off right at the dismount line and went straight into the run to the bike rack.

T2 – 4:27

The bike-to-run transition is much easier than swim to bike. The shoes were already off, left clipped on the bike to be picked up later. The helmet and sunglasses came off on the run to the bag pegs. The red bag was still where I had left it thankfully so it was just a matter of putting the vaporfly’s on, Roka sunnies and a white cap to keep the heat off my head. Time for a top-up on sunscreen and a toilet break.

I often plan the toilet breaks for when in transition so I can focus on biking and running and not finding a toilet.

Run – 13.1 Miles – 1:42.31

On the bike into Alcudia I had accepted that today’s run wasn’t going to be what we had planned. I lacked energy on the bike and had struggled through the last 10 miles.

The plan had been to have a strong run off the bike, aiming for 6:30/mi like I did at Cholmondely Castle Tri last year. My new plan was to try and hold a 7:00/mi pace which would still be a decent run.

That lasted a whole 2 miles before I started to slow. I was dripping with sweat from just the first 15mins. The pace from miles 3 – 5 gradually got slower but one lap was down, two to go.

I then made the decision to walk the feed stations to take on as much water as possible and tip a cup over my head for cooling. This coupled with my plan of a Maurten Gel every 30mins worked ok. I wasn’t running at the pace I wanted but I was moving around the run course.

From mile 8 to 12 the pace dropped to 8:30/mi, something I would usually run on an Easy run, but today felt anything but easy. It picked up for the last mile when I wanted to pass a couple of people who had come past me, I knew they would be on the same lap as me and I used them as bait.

I finished up averaging 7:54/mi, some way off the 6:30/mi we had planned. Again, like the bike leg, I felt disappointed with that. Today hadn’t gone to plan or even close to it. I did do something I didn’t do in 2019 and that is run down the red carpet and finish! I do really enjoy this race and the stunning surroundings, some times you have to take solace in the beauty around you and not the pace or time your watch says.

Post-race I noticed that my trisuit and legs were white with the salt from the seawater and sweat from the run. Looks like sand on the leg below but that’s the salt the body lost.

Overall:

5:32.39 – 111th in 40-44 Age Group out of 344, 700th overall out of 2,637

Final Thoughts:

As I said above, I love this race. The bike course is second to none for the stunning natural beauty. The run course is flat and very well supported with very few spectatorless spots.

My race plan was to swim a PB, ride the bike steady at around 250w – 270w and have a strong run off the bike at 6:30/mi.

I didn’t even get close to that. Yes, I did PB the swim by over 1 minute which I am over the moon with, this set me up for a good race. I then really struggled on the bike despite riding at a steady power for the first, I faded and only ended up with 235w, which is ok but how I felt in the last 10 miles of the bike was akin to how some of those long 100+ mile big efforts have felt.

The run never got going thanks to the struggles on the bike but I am happy that I didn’t stop and walk other than through the feed stations. It was hot running those 13.1 miles today. Training during the cold UK winter months hadn’t prepared me for that.

Overall thoughts are that I can do a lot better than this but I am happy to have finished this race. This had been a race that has been hanging over me since May 2019, that race where the calf let go is the only time I have DNF’d so today I got some redemption for that.

With training so hard for the Paris Marathon 4 weeks prior, there had not been so much focus on the bike training. That showed today. I now have 4 weeks until Ironman 70.3 Staffordshire and I know where the focus needs to be. Strength on the bike!