Ironman Lubbock 70.3
RACE REPORT – by Jim Peplow
Early in the year when I decided to train for an Ironman 70.3 event I originally looked at Oceanside in early April, but it was already sold out. I then looked at Coeur d'Alene on June 28 and started training for that date. We planned to make a nice couple of week car trip out of it and visit my sister and her family in Utah on the way there. However we also wanted to visit our daughter and her family, including a one-year old grandson, in Texas this summer. So I finally settled on Lubbock (on that same June 28 date).
Lubbock obviously doesn't have the beauty and the draw of Coeur d'Alene, but the chance to spend more time with my family was the main factor. With that date locked in and training going well, I was also thinking about Santa Rosa in May as a warm up training event. Then in mid-March the world as we know it changed forever. All sporting events were canceled or postponed. Oceanside, Santa Rosa, Coeur d'Alene and all other Ironman events worldwide were shutdown. However I was optimistic and continued to train for Lubbock. After all if any state is going to fight through this and hold their Ironman event, it's Texas.
As the COVID situation grew worse, I continued to train. What else was I going to do? Working out is what I enjoy doing and during this time of everything being locked down, going out for a run or bike ride was the perfect remedy. The hardest part about training was finding a place to swim. With In-Motion Fitness closed and the water at One-Mile very "iffy" I didn't swim for four weeks. I then discovered that the Thermalito Forebay was open and made regular trips to Oroville to get in some great open water wetsuit swimming. In fact, with my job overseeing the local bus system being considered “essential,” my daily routine hardly changed at all. The biggest change was no longer being able to go out to restaurants for dinner.
The Thermalito Forebay turned out to be the perfect place to swim while most places were shut down due to COVID. I first heard about the New Wave Buoy at the Santa Cruz Ironman event last September and I finally decided to buy one. What a difference. Despite training in open water with no one around, I had total peace of mind because of the New Wave Buoy.
Whether Lubbock happened or not we were going to make the 2+ week car trip to Texas to visit the family. It was with great joy when Lubbock officially announced in late May that they were a go and would be the first IM race in North America this year, and the first one in the world in nearly four months. This little race, which usually draws one of the smallest fields for an IM event (under 1000), was suddenly on everyone's radar. The closer the race drew the more excited I was about it. Turns out the race director, Mike Greer, is a legend in the triathlon community. He is a former president of USA Triathlon and has completed over 400 races and since this is the comeback event for Ironman, the voice himself, Mike Reilly, will be calling the finish line.
We headed out the weekend before and visited my sister for a couple of days in Utah. We spent some time in Moab and had a final night in Santa Fe before reaching Lubbock on Thursday, where my daughter and her family were going to meet us (a 6 ½ drive from their home in Bryan/College Station). As I was going to bed Wednesday night the news broke that because of high COVID spikes in Texas the race was being canceled. Less that four days notice! My Chico Tri Club teammate Greg Watkins had decided to fly out to Lubbock since it was the only game in town. The news came just in time for him to cancel his flight.
I quickly called my daughter and told her about the change of plans. Instead of four days in Lubbock, we decided to meet them in San Antonio for a few days before heading to their house in Bryan. There is definitely a lot more to do in San Antonio than in Lubbock! However after all the time I'd prepared for the race I at least wanted to check out the bike course, so we spent Thursday night in Lubbock and I planned to ride the 56-mile bike leg on Friday morning. When we checked into the hotel Thursday night, they said a lot of people had checked in Wednesday night and then immediately checked out Thursday morning. A photograhpher (Scott Flathouse) who was the admin for the Lubbock 70.3 group page on Facebook saw that I was planning to ride the course Friday morning and actually caught up to me on the course and captured some beautiful photos.
Talk about social distancing, when I left T1 there wasn't another person within a 100 yards of me :-) They say the main thing about this course is the winds and that was no joke. When I left the lake at 7:08 the winds were about 13 mph. About 15 miles into the ride they ramped up to 20 mph and stayed there the rest of the time. Consistently out of the south, they were either side winds or headwinds for about 3/4 of the ride and only helped as a tailwind for maybe a quarter of it.
After spending a few days with my family in Texas we headed back home through New Mexico and Arizona and then spent a couple of days at Joshua Tree National Park in So Cal. Since I had my bike with me I was able to get a lot of nice runs and bike rides in during this 2 ½ week trip, especially considering I didn't need recovery time after the race. Other than the ride on the Lubbock IM course, my favorite ride of the trip was a 50-mile loop through Joshua Tree.
When the race was canceled we received an email with deferral options for other races. Among the dozen options listed it included a straight deferral to next year's Lubbock race or several races later this year that had already been postponed or had their date changed. However one race on the list stood out to me - Oceanside, March 27, 2021. People can't even sign up for that race yet, but now I had a guaranteed entry into it. It's funny how things work out. Not being able to do Oceanside this year because it was sold out, to being entered into it for next year before registration even opens up.
The roads of the Ironman Lubbock 70.3 bike course. Thanks to Scott Flathouse for some great photos!
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