RACE REPORT – Challenge Roth 2024 – Juliet

Bus left hotels at 4:30am to get us all to start so long time between waking at 3:30 and start. Lots of snacks. Boiled eggs, later banana then gel.

Swim- 8:20am Wave Start ~ Last wave for 6000 starters. Made myself be at the front of wave start, last wave start of 300 people in each wave. Did I say last wave . Starts are a bit like old days. Of IM all thrashing about it was awesome! Avoided being kicked in face a few times. Swimmers spread out quickly, was able to draft for about 1km but after turn point everyone was on their own. Of course, I can’t swim in a straight line, so my first km had me head towards the centre line a bit.

Pre course practice swim tips told me to stick to edge of canal as one can stand up if needed and due to bend in canal it slightly shortened the return trip. I actually found I overtook some swimmers which was a first for me & made me work harder to stay in front of them. I think if I’d been in an earlier wave start with 1000s of swimmers, I would have done even better but happy anyway. A PB which is more evidence consistency does pay off. Listen to your coaches and trust the process!

Bike – It was raining as I came out of T1 which I was ever so pleased about. Not. 500m run in mud to bike then 500m to mount line in mud had pre planned my line to go around mud and that worked so even though the 8:20 wave start was annoying and meant second lap of bike was lonely it gave me two hours locked in transition to pre plan my route to avoid mud. Yes, once you enter transition you can’t leave and transition closed at 6:30am.

Once rain stopped about 30 minutes in, and as I felt good, I pushed a bit hard on the bike, was a little conservative to start due to rain and wet roads. Mostly smooth surfaces but small bumpy section at start of course. Loved the hills, my descending was fast and smooth best cornering I’ve done yet. The work I did at Bright helped. Switchbacks were wider though and closed roads helped I actually went past people on the descending another first. And of course I went past them on way up. That’s my thing . Great course. Rolling hills only two that were taxing and I probably pushed to hard going up them and that impacted the start of my run.

Solar hill amazing the crowds made you feel like you’re a rockstar in Le Tour and it’s not a hill if you’ve trained hills. Not as steep as Oliver’s hill but about same distance and the crowd means you don’t even notice it. I was blocked in as you can only go up it single file or two abreast. I wanted the guys in front of me to hurry up as they were a little slow, but it allowed me to enjoy the atmosphere. Atmosphere on whole bike course is great as you ride through small towns and the people are out cheering and drinking cheering and drinking. Think Oktoberfest!

Second lap of bike was a little like my first few IM. Only my wave and teams left out there but was still enough people left for me to be around. Bike Garmin died at 120km battery went flat it’s an old one. I thought about what Greg said and didn’t worry and worked through problems without panic or negativity. Positive talk is everything. I spent the last 60 km doing math. I knew what I was on when it died. I think I would have pushed more on second lap if I had my cadence and power kms etc but couldn’t do anything about that so just went with it.

Finally, no real gut issues on the bike and finally fuelled well. It only took 8 Iron distance races & 2 DNFs to get there! Made the effort to fuel more on first lap of bike as second, I began to get sick of the fuel, but the first lap of fuel set me up for not totally bonking on the second lap.

Another first. I peed on the bike. I needed to pee from about 45km but lots of small, gorgeous towns with locals cheering curb side made me hold on. OMG once I let it out, relief and warm strong flow I did it again an hour later the poor bike catcher . It did tell me I was drinking enough so that’s a positive.

I have not looked at my times yet had long shower & went straight to bed. Hôtel is half an hour from Roth and leaving Roth is dictated by bus & tri travel so did not get to bed until 12:30am.

Run. Legs were really sore coming off bike with a niggle in right calf from almost cramping on bike. Possibly need to add some salt to something to avoid this in future

So began with run/walk was not great but reduced the amount of walking into the second half of marathon. First half lots of uphill inclines so in the second half I ran every downhill and walked through aid stations. As my bike computer died again, I did math the whole run as I had no idea of my times. I used my watch in the run and asked spectators for time on course which didn’t always work as some told me in German so that was funny.

My math told me I would finish just after 14hours as I knew I started at 8:20am so counted forward hours based on what people told me the time was and my watch. Was really surprised I was 13:58 then when I crossed so very happy about that. Fuelling on run was terrible, and good. Water whole way and ice chips in mouth. Thankfully it wasn’t sunny, but it was warm and humid due to earlier rain. A couple of bits of watermelon some handfuls of fruit/nut mix & pretzels kept me going but after the chews and cliff bars on bike I didn’t feel like more chews. My brain couldn’t stomach my gels at all so didn’t even try them. Good because it was the first time without nausea. One thing I didn’t enjoy on the run was the blue stone roads. Training at the tan is perfect for Roth as much of the run is gravel. Some paved roads and several kilometres of bluestone. This slowed me down on run as I was wary of last year’s broken ankle and my calf niggle. Blue stone is very hard on the feet legs everywhere. I’d suggest some running in sand or finding some back streets to run on if you plan on doing Roth.

Roth is a great race. But IM does a great race too, Roth is extremely expensive, even more if you take your family. Of course Monty’s pumped for Busso now and says Roth in the future. It would not be as expensive if you don’t bring family, but I wanted them here for the first time. Travel to races is expensive but we love it so we must do what we love. Tri Travel was awesome 3 hotels 390 people. 10 staff leaders based across each hotel to answer all questions take you to course recce, tips and tricks and get you to places on time. Comfortable buses good medium-priced hotels.

Huge THANK YOU to Greg Nugent for his continued support advice and coaching. He is a coach that works for me, so I’ll be sticking with what works . I’ll aim for a PB at Busso but it’s so flat we will see. The rolling hills help me, but I’ll have to think about working more with my power meter to push at Busso. The plan is to really just beat Monty there. A big shout out to Evan as he kept popping up around Beer mile on the run, not sure how many beers he consumed or pizza or kebabs, but it helped enormously he also took photos & gave me so much encouragement. Thanks to the TA members who sent me messages you know who you are! Definitely some lifelong friends there. If you ever are thinking about doing ROTH get in touch and I’ll give you a more detailed breakdown. An AWESOME race! Time for recovery – see you in three weeks – off to sail Italy I’m told you can’t come to Roth for just the 10 days of the race so make sure you budget for that too