… and Groundhog Day strikes again … Last year I missed the World Championship qualification by a laughable 96 seconds. This year it would be an even more mind-boggling 13 seconds … simply unbelievable. Especially if you were there for the slot allocation — it was completely detached from reality. In every other age group, roughly 30% of athletes declined their slot — in some age groups it was even over 50%. And then my age group comes up and the unthinkable happens. Every single person placed ahead of me takes the slot. Every. Single. One. I’ve never seen that before, and many of the others there said the same thing… ...

A full race report will follow in the next few days — for now I just want to hit the highlights in bullet point form. “Monster conditions” is, by the way, a direct quote from men’s winner Faris Al-Sultan. We headed to the lake at 4:45am Shuttle buses were running late, so we were only in transition 45 minutes before the start Last-minute bike prep in a hurry, wetsuit on, and shortly after — swim start Swim went well, much more relaxed and no survival battle like last year Swim time 1:00:23 — I wanted to go just under 1h, just barely missed that goal First transition was okay, put on an extra jersey and arm warmers → turned out to be nowhere near enough in hindsight It rained for 4.5 out of 5 hours on the bike, strong and fierce wind made it even worse After just 1 hour completely frozen, goosebumps all over, legs with a solid blue tint I’ve never experienced bike conditions like that before — it was very, very, very hard Roth 2008 was similarly wet and cold, but without the wind Cramps meant I could only pedal seated — standing up or stretching my legs wasn’t possible At that point I genuinely had no idea how you run a marathon in that state At times I was seriously struggling to stay on the bike, the wind was that brutal The cobblestone section in Maintal also left its mark: the lid of my tool box flew off, my spare tube came loose (it was taped on multiple times), and my bottle cage was just dangling from the handlebar (has anyone ever seen a zip tie snap before???) The bike conditions cost me roughly 10–15 minutes — fortunately the same was true for almost everyone Bike time 5:04:19 — similar to last year, except last year’s course was 5km longer T2 was okay, though they handed me someone else’s bag first After that I ate and drank everything I could get my hands on, especially lots of salt to get rid of the cramps By two kilometers in I’d found my rhythm From then on it was full-on risk. I knew I was 18th in my age group (there are 12 slots in my AG) Set off at 4:30/km pace toward the finish Rain showers and fierce wind on the run too — I was actually freezing out there at times In the first two laps I kept getting passed; from around km 17 I turned the tables and started picking people off The marathon went without any major issues — I ran very evenly throughout From lap three on the course got crowded, making aid stations and passing trickier Run time 3:09:20 — the best running performance I’ve ever put together I knew it was theoretically possible — but actually doing it … especially after that bike leg. I’m very, very proud of that Finish time 9:18:55, 50th overall and 14th in my age group 13 seconds too slow for a guaranteed slot — the sweating continues. Should be fine in the end though Takeaway: new personal best, the hardest race of my career so far in the worst possible conditions — all in all I’m very happy, and a Hawaii slot would be the icing on the cake.

Today the schedule called for a 30-minute bike session and a 15-minute run, each with 2 very short intervals. After that the bags were packed and it was off to check-in. That’s always interesting — 90% of the people there have top-end gear and look like they’re about to win the race tomorrow.

Yesterday at noon we finally headed off to the race — together with my training buddy Tobi I made my way to Frankfurt. The drive went smoothly and traffic-free, so we arrived right on time for the race briefing. During the drive, each of us had a very interesting top-tier piece of information to contribute: My mouth holds just under 60ml, meaning I need to take two big sips per minute from my aero bottle to hit my nutrition targets 30g of extra weight in a running shoe, at a cadence of 168 and a run time of 3:30h, amounts to an additional 1,058kg you have to lift (kindly measured and calculated by Tobi) The race briefing had some interesting news. Right after that we went to pick up our race packets, which went pretty quickly and smoothly, so we made it to the hotel just before 6pm — and headed right back out again a short time later for the pasta party. ...

Or: what did it actually take to show up at the start line on Sunday reasonably prepared? After pulling the numbers together I was genuinely shocked by how much of my life I’d burned through for this — not meant negatively, I did all of it voluntarily and very, very, very, very happily. A few general notes first: Season start: early October 2010, unstructured, with alternative sports like inline skating Structured training start: mid-January 2011, calendar week 3 All data from season start through 22.07.2011 I train by hours, not kilometers — so all figures are in hours, with kilometers as a side note in parentheses And now for the facts: ...

Luckily that question is answered pretty quickly … It’ll be the FX Race Short and FX Race Top from my sponsor SLS3. Short version: mostly black in front, mostly white in back, race number 3 ;) In marketing speak the colors are of course “raven black” and “icy white”: More information about SLS3 and their products can be found at tripugna.de.

I got a bit ahead of myself with the bike setup photos — there were two last-minute changes: The spare tube was still missing and has since been attached directly under the saddle The “3” on my disc wheel has matured and now requires a bit more space That should be the final change though — here’s how the bike looks now:

Yesterday I gave my TT bike a thorough clean and then got it set up for the Ironman. What did I change? Swapped the wheelset: from my “Fulcrum Racing 3” training wheels to an “Easton Tempest II” front wheel and a Zipp disc wheel in the back Because of the wheel swap, the brake pads also needed to be changed. The standard Shimano pads were swapped out for special carbon brake pads from Kool-Stop Removed the bottle cage from the down tube Replaced the seat tube bottle cage with a Bontrager aero cage that fits a special aero bottle Additionally mounted a standard bottle cage between the extensions right at the handlebar, for grabbing regular bottles at the aid stations Here’s how the bike looks for race day: ...

The week kicked off on Monday with a well-deserved complete rest day, and Tuesday’s 75-minute bike ride contributed nicely to recovery as well. On Wednesday there was one more longer brick session on the schedule: 3h on the bike with 2h at race pace, followed by a run at race pace and above. For the bike we were prepared for rain and rode the cross bike and MTB accordingly. Particularly annoying in hindsight was that we somehow managed not to get wet … Oh well, at least the cross bike got some use. ...

The last big training week before the Ironman started as always with a swim session on Monday morning — unfortunately not a great one, so I called it after 25 minutes. I had the body position of a brick, zero power, zero technique; carrying on would have done more harm than good. Tuesday brought an easy GA1 bike ride of 75 minutes, including 6×90 seconds at threshold. All in all an easy session and exactly what the legs needed to open back up. The lingering fatigue from Sunday was finally gone. ...