Sérgio Marques Blog

With this in mind I just wanted to have a regular prerace week where I just stress about….the race. It happened in Austria, I was sure I didn’t want to try anything new for the race, I didn’t had a place in Hawaii and that was my goal, I was aiming for another podium finish and of course the slot.

What can I say, I got to the start line without any problem, finally. The swim started in a weird way, I didn’t heard the cannon and don’t think anyone heard, all of the sudden the pros where starting one by one, almost as if the marshals would stop them for a false start. As I finally see that the big bulk of the pack where already swimming I began as well. Body contact, punch, kick, the usual, nothing new there for a race start, I got a pretty big one around 1km that took my right google out of place so I had to make a really quick adjustment that didn’t take more than 3-4 seconds, I was feeling a bit sluggish, my stroke was kinda slow but I didn’t make any importance out of it. A few meters before the canal entry I got another punch, this one definitely with a elbow and that HURTED, with the goggles filled with water I just wanted to get out of the water, the canal part of the course its nice, you see the crowds around you but for me it took like forever to get to the exit, maybe it was because I thought it was a lot shorter that it really was. I left with 53 min and a pair of after race spotted black eyes. Like I usually say, I don’t care much about the time, more to the time I loose to the leaders, and I had no idea at first, after getting to my bike I realized that most of the bikes where gone, especially the ones I taught would be behind me in T1. It wasn’t like looking for each bike with the startlist at hand, a blink is enough for that.

Onto the bike, my prerace plan was to ride around 260W average, my training and especially key training sessions with my ergomo where pointing in that direction. After dealing with the crowds in the beginning of the bike I established that rhythm but soon the “number” was hard to maintain, and I pretty much was being passed by a lot of athletes, I tried to keep calm, eat and ride, but I wasn’t feeling any better and it was more and more difficult to produce some decent wattage. At the end of the first lap I was already far far away from everyone, ridind alone, around 2:22 for the first lap that wasn’t good news at all. I was keeping myself motivated hoping that I could at least negative split for the second lap, something that I have done in other laped courses (IMAZ for instance), but I got nothing but empty roads (the whle course is closed to traffic, that is very cool) and from time to time I spoted an athlete or other, some that blew up other that passed me. I wasn’t having a good day in the saddle I got into transition with around 4:50 of riding witch is waaaay to much time and averaged 243W, a lot lower (11w) than in my last race,IM hawaii and of course not even close of the 260 that I had in mind.

As I got my red shoes on, finally after 2 tries, I didn’t have a clue of what was happening, where was I, gaps etc. I knew one thing for sure, with 4:50 I was miles away from the action. I made a decision in the first km of running, I had nothing to loose so I got into a really fast pace and hoped that I could at least maintain for the majority of the marathon and pull something out of the race. I started pumping coke, gels, water etc right from the beginning, and was running at around 3:40/km pace steadily, in a “normal” day I would perhaps hold back a little but this time my only thought was eat and run till I couldn’t anymore. The course is fast of course, totally flat, I passed half marathon at around 1:18, that is of course ridiculous fast even if its only an half Ironman, I knew that somewhere in the second lap I would probably blow up but I risk it anyway and took my chances. Again I had no idea where I was, I passed a lot of athletes in the first lap and that was what I knew  with the second lap of course is a lot more difficult to spot the competition in the middle of the crowd. At km 27 I was still running under 4min/km and at around 31-32km where you pass the transition area one lat time I blew up, really hard, so after that it was all about getting to the line, and I got there with nothing to spare in that day. What I didn’t knew was that I was 7^th and surely didn’t know that 5^th was kind of close. After all, with a piece of information early on I would definitely start more coservetaly the run and probably end up with low 2:40’s, but that really doesn’t matter now.

I was really happy that I finished this one, it certainly gives me back the motivation, it wasn’t a perfect day, not even close in my opinion, I didn’t match my objectives for the race but I am back to racing and this is pretty much the first race I finished this season. The season starts here for me. I honestely don’t know what im going to do next…