Cancun Ironman 70.3 2nd place! Yes!

Cancun, Mexico September 20th, 2009.
6am and I'm at the transition zone in the parking lot of The Aquatic Park, Wet'n Wild.

We are just 1 hour before the start of the Cancun Ironman 70.3 2009. Today after so many races I feel nervous again, maybe because my inner type A Triathlete, knows that especially today I "have" to race well for so many reasons, first because is the only Ironman 70.3 in Mexico, and second, after an excellent start of my 2009 season I will race against the whole Mexican Triathlon Community, many of them being this race their primary target or key race of the year. So this time I "HAVE" to do well. So I check my gear, once again and we all start walking the 300 meters to the swim start at NIZUC Beach, the time flies as I put on the speedsuit, warm up, and Paola shoots some pictures, before I know it, I am at the starting line and the siren goes off, normally my heart rate is about 80 bpm but this time reaches 3 digits. And the reason is that in the last 3 races, the swim has been very violent the whole time, specially in Hawaii and the X-Terra, so the last couple of months I've been working in my swimming, and it's time for the truth. The Siren goes off and here we go! I swim as planned, fast as I can for the first 200 meters, I was expecting violence but this time after the first buoy I see that I left behind the chaos. I realize that now I have no one around to push my pace, and I will have to keep up the pace alone, so I do my best to keep up the pace and I exit the water in 29:56, not bad knowing (after the race) that the Elite group and the Overall winner, Oscar Galindez swim time was 27:23.

Already on the Bike is time to work my strenght, that is, and has been always the bike. In the first 5 kms I pass at least 20 guys and when I reach the first aid station I found myself alone, at this point the course consisted of 2 laps of 40kms to complete 85k and then back t2. For the next 20 kms I ride alone, and as I was getting closer and closer to the turnaround point, I realize that I was in an excellent position overall, I see the first pro, then the second, and then Oscar Galindez with another 4 guys, I try to count everyone, and I get to the turnaround surprised and of course very happy, seeing the there were no more than 15 in front of me. After the turnaround I pass 2 of the 3 Women that were in front of me, the remaining one, was Michellie Jones, then in the 45k mark I see that I'm getting closer to a couple of the guys but I also realize that I have at least 5 guys hanging on my wheel, very annoying by the way.

And I have no other option than keep up the pace, hoping to leave some of them behind. At least the Race Marshall saw a couple of them and penalized them with a 3 Minute stop, but the others just kept drafting behind me. The first 40k split was 1:01 and as I said I had no other option to keep up this high pace, even knowing that I would have to pay later.

So I get to t2 in 2:22 and start the run with my passengers haha! in the first mile, finally they blow up, the split is 7 minutes, second mile 7 minutes again, and then I found myself chatting with Chris Davy from Florida, he is the guy who was second place last year, he was looking strong and he confirms my idea that the first place was ahead of us, a guy from Argentina, that I think was having breakfast with Oscar Galindez, it was in this 3rd mile that Chris left me.

I was not sure if he pushed the pace or I was slowing down, so after checking the split in 7:30 I knew I will soon start to pay that 2:22 Bike split in that kind of heat. The next 2 miles were hard but I think that realizing that I was running in 10 or 12th place overall helped a lot. But after mile 5 the real crisis started, I couldn't drink water, I had some abdominal pain and the Gatorade made me feel like trowing up, so I had to walk at the aid station in mile 6, bad choice because there was Paola waiting for me, she shouted as loud as she could "keep running! keep running!" so I had to run again, then I had to walk two more times and after mile 10 is when I started to feel good again, I pushed the pace again and there I see Chris Davy, he was not running as he left me, you could see he was in bad shape and maybe in the middle of he's own crisis, so I got behind him, trying no to alert him with my presence and I matched his footsteps, I knew that no one was closing on me, so I rested there for a couple of minutes, trying to prepare for the battle for second place, so after the marker of mile 12, I attacked, running as fast as I could for what seemed like an eternity, later I knew that from the marker of mile 13 there was another 2 miles left!!!! so as my friend Erich said in his Blogspot, it was the Cancun Ironman 72.8.

At the end I feel very happy with my second place, because this might be the hardest race I've ever done. Next time that I wish for a hot race, I will think twice......