My best swim to date, a great bike split, but my run time something i've already forgotten about. The beaches of Lake Michigan are beautiful. Clean and very much spectator friendly is the entire event. I'd rate Racine right at the top of one of the best 70.3 events I've attended. The only down fall were road conditions were mediocre to poor. Many racers were troubled by the continual roughness unlike Mont Tremblant where the road conditions were practically flawless.
Racine 80,000 people is located right on Lake Michigan between Milwaukee and Chicago. A pretty friendly community. The downtown has many unique artistic boutique shops along with the Racine Art Museum. For followers of Frank Lloyd Wright there are buildings to be explored. In addition, Racine is about 3 hours from Green Bay and about 2.5 hrs from Madison which is also home to Trek. My bike of choice.
One thing about being in the 45 -49 age category is you usually get to start the race in one of the later waves. At 70.3 Racine we started in the 18th Wave of 23. That means the Pros go off at 7 am and my age category starts about 7:53 AM just that much later in the day when the sun will be that much warmer. Most athletes were struggling with the heat and perhaps the bumpiness of the bike course, when it came to run. I remember going into T2 already feeling zapped. I knew my legs were gone (a first for me). Regardless, push on finish strong. I began walking a lot. I thought to myself give it a little time and the leg strength will return. The end result was a 2 hr 16 min half marathon run. Ouch! On the bright side I did run a negative split. 70.3 Racine is a race I will do again. In summary, to the State of Wisconsin, invest in repaving the bike course and 70.3 Racine will be one of the most beautiful events Ironman has.
