2016 Season Wrap-Up

Posted on by Anthony

All I can say is…WOW! 

The season started up in January with a handful of running races, where I set personal bests in the 10km, half marathon (twice) and marathon. In March, I ran a 1:17 half marathon at Rock n Roll DC and then followed it up with a 1:16 half marathon at the New York City Half Marathon a week later.

In early April, despite getting hit by a car during an afternoon run, I was able to bounce back quickly and defend my title at RaceAwesome’s Cedar Creek Duathlon in Merrick, NY.

Triathlon season started  at the Kinetic Half Ironman, where I set a half ironman personal best while watching Christina take the overall Women’s win!

matchy matchy!

June was a busy month with some shorter distance triathlons, highlighted by a 2nd place finish at the Port Washington Triathlon. Then came July and August, where we raced IRONMAN 70.3 Muncie & 70.3 Steelhead and climbed Whiteface mountain on our bikes.

At 70.3 Muncie, Christina and I qualified for the 2017 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships, which will take place in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Moreover, at 70.3 Muncie, I set personal bests in the 56-mile bike and 13.1-mile run that resulted in an overall finish time of 4 hours and 18 minutes, besting my time at the Kinetic Half Ironman by nearly 15 minutes!

By September, I had started ramping things up for IRONMAN World Championships in Kona, Hawaii. As part of the build-up towards Kona, I raced the Lake Placid Half Marathon and TOUGHMAN Half Championship. Thanks to an overall net-downhill course at the Lake Placid half, I was able to take the overall win in 1:17, less than a minute slower than what I ran at the NYC Half Marathon. A week later, I consolidated my training with a 2nd place overall at the TOUGHMAN Half. 

Afterwards, I had 3 events left for the season, all of which have their own race reports:

2016 highlights:

  • Qualified for the 2017 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships (September 10, 2017)
  • 2nd overall at TOUGHMAN Championship
  • IRONMAN World Championship finisher (2x – 2014 & 2016)
  • Qualified for the 2017 Boston Marathon (April 17, 2017)
  • Personal Bests in 10km, half marathon, marathon & half-ironman [70.3]

I am now very much enjoying some extra free time to catch up with family friends, do non-triathlon related things, and spend quality time with CCL 😉

2017 is right around the corner and training will be in full swing after Christmas. 

Thank you to all my sponsors – you help make training and racing even more enjoyable!

And, stay tuned for some exciting news!

IRONMAN Cozumel Race Report [November 27, 2016]

Posted on by Anthony

My first time in Mexico was surely a memorable one! I will post a non-race report post later on, but for now, I want to get the race report out of the way. 

Travel:

Getting to the race was very simple – I flew on Thanksgiving morning from NYC, took a little break in Miami where I met up with Jill, a fellow Team Chocolate Milk teammate. By 1-o-clock in the afternoon, we had landed in Cozumel and was on our way to the resort. After a quick bite, Jill, Tom and I went and picked up our bikes from TriBikeTransport over at Chankanaab (swim exit/ Transition 1). Because our hotel was hosting an American style Thanksgiving buffet, we stayed put and did not go in Centro Cozumel (downtown) until race check in.

teaming up with Tom to pump up Jill’s tires
first night in Cozumel, Thanksgiving
pre-race selfie w/ TCM teammate Jill

Swim: The swim course is a point to point 2.4-mile swim from the Marina Fontaur and exits at Chankanaab dolphin aquarium. Jill and I lined up in the 60 minute to 70 minute corral. Our plan was to swim together for as long as possible. We ended up swimming about 20 minutes together before the cross currents split us apart. Apparently, the swim currents had changed depending on which line you took – if you were closer to shore, it was ‘slower’, whereas if you swam further out away from shore, the current was more predictable. Hindsight is 20/20 and if I had the opportunity to do this again, I would have swam as far from shore. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the swim despite a very slow 1:17:07 split, nearly 6 minutes slower than my 1:11 swim at IRONMAN Kona just 6 weeks prior.

I exited the water in 36th place in my age group, giving myself plenty of work to do if I wanted to content for a podium spot.

Realizing how slow I swam…

Bike: One thing that I learned from Kona was that I needed better nutrition management in the heat. 6 weeks ago, I had depleted my sodium and potassium levels on the bike and I was not going to have a repeat here in Cozumel. So this time around, I decided to do a full change into cycling bibs and my ZOOT Kona cycling top. Having a cycling top gave me the sense of security that I would have all my nutrition for the ride – until I can find a better way to store and allocate my nutrition, I will take the time penalty from changing into cycling gear.

There really isn’t much to the bike course. It was 3 counterclockwise loops of the island. The west side of the island was a slight tailwind throughout the ride and the entirety of the east side of the island are all cross-winds. And yes, the winds became more intense with each loop of the island. 

The plan was to stay in aero position as much as I can, with occasional back stretches. It was important to stay tucked in and low, especially on the windy eastern portion of the island. My ride had a Normalized Power of 201 watts, my first time holding over 200 watts for the IRONMAN 112-mile ride. 

Being that the course was actually 113-miles long, I rolled into transition just over 5 hours at 5:01:35. This relatively strong ride dug me out of my 36th position after the swim and put me into 5th in my age group (which I later found out from Maggie out on the run course). 

5 hours of this position

Run:  I sure wasn’t going to run the 26.2-mile marathon in my cycling shorts and jersey, so I did another full change into my favorite running gear – my New Balance 3-inch split shorts and Team Chocolate Milk singlet. I also wore 2XU compression socks, which I found much more comfortable than not wearing any compression. 

After 5 hours on the bike and the sun beating down on my back and head, I felt very hot once I hit the pavement. My legs felt like bricks for the first few miles. In fact, I couldn’t find a ‘comfortable’ run stride until the first turnaround at mile 4. Did I mention that the run course is also 3 out-and-back loops? Essentially, each out and back was 7km out and 7km back. 

To take my mind off the fact that I had to run 3 identical loops, I decided to break down the 42.2km marathon into 4 repeats of 10km and one repeat of 2.2km. The 10km splits were 50:27, 53:17, 55:52 and 56:45, follwoed by 10:28 for the final 2.2km. Total marathon run time: 3:46:47

Finish Time: 10:16:40, 84th overall, 4th in Men’s 25-29

Kona Gallery Part 2 & NYC Marathon

Posted on by Anthony

As promised in my previous blog post, I would upload some more pictures from Kona. 

[ngg_images source=”galleries” container_ids=”5″ display_type=”photocrati-nextgen_basic_thumbnails” override_thumbnail_settings=”0″ thumbnail_width=”120″ thumbnail_height=”90″ thumbnail_crop=”1″ images_per_page=”20″ number_of_columns=”0″ ajax_pagination=”0″ show_all_in_lightbox=”0″ use_imagebrowser_effect=”0″ show_slideshow_link=”1″ slideshow_link_text=”[Show slideshow]” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″]Since my last post, I have been swamped with writing my final thesis paper, catching up with friends, pacing the New York City Marathon, and wrapping up a short, but intense build-up for Ironman Cozumel this upcoming Thanksgiving weekend. Good news…the paper is more than half-way done and on track. Bad news? Nothing to report here!

The 40th running of the New York City Marathon was on November 6th. The week leading up to the race was filled with fun events, like the 5km run with Shalane Flanagan sponsored by Jack Rabbit / New York Running Company. My training partner, David and I, went for an easy run along Central Park’s bridle path the Thursday before the marathon and found ourselves spotting pro athletes everywhere!

Pacing the marathon was super fun, especially when I get to see so many familiar faces along the route! Coming off a hard training week cycle, I was 95% sure that I could hold the pace (7:10 min/ mile), but also knew that I might put myself in the hurt locker. Luckily, I ran with a Ryan P, my co-pacer from Fort Collins, Colorado. Even though we both had to run the complete 26.2 miles each, having Ryan by my side was half the battle. Our goal was to hit 3:09:30, and my official time was 3:09:27, with a 29 second negative split from the half-way point. Mission accomplished!2016-11-07-12-18-41-1

Here’s a bonus gallery of NYC Marathon photos.

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And thus, we are now finally here – Thanksgiving week and more importantly, RACE WEEK for IRONMAN Cozumel [Mexico].

Let’s see what I can achieve in my final race of 2016.

More updates will be on the Facebook Page! 

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