Flora Duffy took some time to reflect on her IRONMAN 70.3 South Africa winning performance two weeks ago.
Duffy wrote on social media, “I have been meaning to share a little bit more about my 70.3 experience but race fatigue & a stomach bug last week left me pretty useless. Thankfully I am feeling more myself today.
So the race, it was long and I could not imagine doing double that distance. The swim was fairly straight forward as it is not much longer than a typical Olympic Distance Triathlon and luckily, I didn’t have to Swim at WTS level intensity.
The Bike is where things got interesting. Within the first 10km I noticed my left glute was quite tight but figured it would loosen up at some point in the 90kms. I focused on hitting my specific power ranges (thanks @catalystcoach) and my nutrition + hydration (also thanks @catalystcoach). I took an SIS gel every 35mins, so a total of 5, which worked very well for me.
Back to the glute issue....it did not loosen up and I fact got worse-much worse. By 45km I really struggled to push power and over the last 45km and I lost 9mins. I thought of stopping but sitting in a follow car sounded horrible, so I pedaled softly to T2 and told myself I would reassess the situation once off the Bike.
I gingerly went through T2 and thankfully everything felt pretty good.
The initial goal for the run was to be conservative but that went out the window when I came off the Bike way down. I was really frustrated at this point and just wanted the race to be over. So I ran as fast as I could for as long as I could. Turns out I had a pretty decent 21km in me.
The main goal was to get a slot for 70.3 Worlds and I am extremely happy I managed to achieve that. So my Shiv and I will spend more quality time together in September.”
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