Ironman racing is back in North America.  Ironman Texas 70.3 went ahead as scheduled today, and it was so much fun to track athletes again.

I spent a lot of time looking at the Ironman tracker app this morning.  I was following the professional triathletes, a good number of teammates and an athlete who I coach.  The tracker app was frustrating at times, because it would stop refreshing, but I still had fun.

The professional races were great to follow.  These athletes are so fast.  It was also fascinating to watch the effect of a tailwind, and then a headwind, on the bike.  Lionel Sanders, who eventually won the race, averaged 32.9 miles per hour for the first half of the bike leg.  For the second half, he averaged 23.9 miles per hour.   That right there, shows how windy it must have been on the bike course.

The top four in the men’s race all finished within two minutes of each other.  That tells you the depth of the field , for this first race.  The gaps in the women’s race were much bigger, but it was still an exciting finish.  When Skye Moench took the lead with only seven miles of the run to go, Jeanni Metzler was about four and half minutes behind her.  Jeanni however, was running much faster.  Unfortunately, not quite fast enough, as she was only able to close just over three minutes of that gap, by the end of the race.

Ironman Texas 70.3 turned out to be a great race.  I cannot wait to track more races as the year goes on.