Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga

Background

This race would be my sixth consecutive time racing Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga. Clearly, I love racing here because I keep coming back. Chattanooga is among the best at hosting an Ironman event. Not only that, so many of my triathlon firsts happened in this city. It doesn’t matter how many events I do. This will always be among my favorite places to race.

For 2025, one thing would be a tad different. I’ve always looked at Chattanooga as an A-race. Not this year.

My 2024 race season didn’t conclude until mid-December in Haines City. It was a productive, but long year. Mentally as much as physically, I wanted a chance to downshift during the winter. I’m glad Tif, Cait, and I decided to do Ironman 70.3 Puerto Rico as a relay team in March. It gave me an event to train for, while also giving me a break from the usual grind of being a triathlete. It wasn’t until April that I really started to feel the fire for wanting to settle into the routine of following a triathlon training plan again.

With all that in mind, I saw Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga as an opportunity to find my baseline for the upcoming season. Rather than this being an A-race, this would be the starting point to figuring out what to expect during the rest of 2025.

Race Week

In terms of where to stay for the race, I’ve been all over the city. The Marriott Courtyard across the street from transition. Red Bank. Northshore. Even one time over the state line in Georgia. This year? Missionary Ridge in a house overlooking the city.

I booked this Airbnb basically because of the large deck alone. The house had two medium-sized bedrooms, but the deck had 14 different chairs spread across three seating areas. It was huge. What’s funny is instead of sitting, I think we all spent a bunch of time just standing at the railing looking out at the view.

At night, the blue lights from the aquarium really pop. That’s where the finish line is!

Our first full day in Chattanooga was Friday. That morning, we headed to the dam to do a practice swim.

The swim went well! It was my first time wearing a wetsuit in a while, and the water felt pleasant. Unfortunately, that would be the only time I’d be swimming. While I was showering after the swim, Ironman sent everyone an alert that severe weather earlier in the week would cause the swim to be canceled. ☹️

When we went to registration down by the river, it was pretty easy to understand why they made this decision. Ironman cited the fact that their safety assets wouldn’t be able to maintain static positions along the river as the main reason for the cancellation. While I was standing there, I watched this log zooming down the river. OK fair. I get it.

The bummer about the swim being canceled is that my biggest goal was gone before the race even started. I’ve been inching closer to a sub-5 race time in a 70.3, but have yet to actually get over the hump. Without a swim to do, barring something catastrophic during the race, I’d be finishing in less than 5 hours for the first time. Hooray! But this obviously doesn’t count.

With no swim, there would be no PR to chase, no sub-5 milestone out there, and arguably you can’t even really compare the bike and run disciplines either. As I thought about the race, Drew Carey popped into my head.

With no swim, the distances are made up, and the times don’t matter.

In spite of losing my race goal before I even started, I don’t recall feeling upset or sad. You can only do the race you are given, right?

On Saturday, I went through my race day backpack, pulled out all of my swim stuff, and set it aside. Then I went for a shakeout run with Caitlin. Missionary Ridge is full of these huge cannons from the Civil War. As we wrapped up our run, clearly we needed a photo with one.

When we dropped off our bikes that afternoon, I realized how valuable All World Athlete status can be. If you qualify for AWA, you get a low bib number. And without the swim, everyone would be starting the bike ride in sequential order by bib.

In an event of ~2500 athletes, I had bib 262. We wouldn’t have a long wait in the morning.

Race Morning

With no swim, it meant my alarm would be an hour later than normal! Ironman can't change the times that some of the roads are closed to vehicular traffic. So, we kick off our rides around the time that the first athletes would have been exiting the water.

When we got to transition, everything with my bike looked OK. There’s always a big sense of relief when I get everything set up on race morning. There’s nothing left to do but hope for an efficient port-a-potty experience and wait to start the race.

Swim

It would have been a gorgeous morning for a swim in the Tennessee River. Oh well.

Transition 1

I was pretty impressed with how orderly Ironman got everyone started. We were told to wait by our bikes and be ready to go. Row by row, someone would walk over and send that row to the exit of transition, which would now be our race start line.

They even brought the cannon from the swim start over to the bike start and fired it when the race began.

Eventually, we’d end up in three lines, with three athletes starting every five seconds. From where I was, it took about two minutes from leaving my rack to getting to the start line.

Caitlin was in the same line, directly ahead of me. As I watched her set off and waited for my five second countdown, I suddenly became conscious of the fact that I sure better make sure I clip in on the first attempt! Five seconds isn’t a long time, and somebody is going to be coming up right behind me if I don’t get this thing started correctly.

Thankfully, all went well, and off I went to begin Ironman 69.1 Chattanooga.

Bike

For the first fifteen miles, I was always just behind or just ahead of Caitlin. That was an added bonus of starting five seconds apart. Always a familiar face nearby.

What’s funny is that this wasn’t a new thing for us. A year ago in Chattanooga, we came out of the water about ten seconds apart. In Ohio, it was about the same, where we were never farther than a minute or so apart almost the entire bike ride.

Last year, when I approached the first aid station, I ended up in a crash, taking a tumble onto the asphalt. I’d rather not rehash that memory, but you can read about it here if you wish. This year when I got to that spot, I stayed about as far left as I could, skipping the aid station entirely. Bad memories there!

Strava says this is my 12th time riding this course between all the years I’ve raced here and the training rides I did early on in my career. If you just showed me a still photo from somewhere on the course with no other details, I could probably tell you where it was within a mile or two.

With that familiarity in mind, it felt like I was hitting landmarks faster than I expected. I knew what my overall bike time a year ago was, but not down to splits or anything like that. So as I pedaled through the rollers, up Andrews, and then back towards Chickamauga like I’ve done so many times before, I knew this ride was going well, but had no additional context beyond that.

I remember thinking at one point that it would be a cool feature if my Wahoo Roam knew my route and could give me an ETA based on my current speed and power. Maybe that already exists? Either way, I don’t load routes ahead of time on race days. I just hit the start button and go.

Since the distances are made up and the times don’t matter today, that gave me a liberating freedom to push harder on the bike ride than I have in the past. My goal that I decided upon was a bit subjective. When I finished the ride, if I wasn’t feeling some fatigue and nerves about having to run a half marathon next, I didn’t bike hard enough. If I go down in flames on the run, who cares? If I don’t, that’s great, and I learned something about myself.

I finished the bike ride in 2:25:09.

This was my fastest bike split on a 70.3 course ever, eclipsing pancake flat Ohio last year where I turned in a 2:31:28.

Of the 23 Strava segments on this course, I set a PR in 21 of them. I set my fastest time anywhere for 20k, 30k, 40k, 50k, 80k, 50 mile, and 90k distances. I set my all-time highest power averages for 1 minute, 20 minute, 60 minute, and 90 minute segments.

But the metric that stands above all others for me is my time from 2019. It took me 4:10 back then. With 2:25 today, on the same course, I was 1 hour and 45 minutes faster.

Transition 2

It was an uneventful transition, except that I wasted about 3 seconds because I almost forgot to grab my race bib and had to backtrack. Whoops!

Run

I have a bad habit of starting the run at far too hot of a pace. It’s a double whammy if you do that in Chattanooga. Once you run alongside the river, there’s a moderately steep hill as you pass by the Hunter Museum. Charge up that thing too fast, and you might screw up your entire run before you even get started.

In spite of turning in a speedy bike split, I still started the run too fast. It wasn’t until I hit the base of the hill that I realized I needed to get this thing in check. That first mile was not great both in terms of finding the appropriate pace and also shaking off the fatigue from the bike ride.

However, once we leveled out on the highway, I settled into an 8 minute pace and maintained a slight negative split the rest of the way. Outside of that first mile, there really was no negative impact or extra fatigue from the bike ride.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the day are the two times you get to cross the Tennessee River on the Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge. The bridge is always packed with spectators, and it’s such a massive jolt of positive energy.

When you hit the bridge on the second lap, it’s such a wonderful moment. You’re only about a quarter mile from the finish. All these years later, I still vividly recall crossing that bridge as I was about to finish Ironman Chattanooga for the first time. I still get goosebumps thinking about that moment, and I got them even as I typed this!

This year, though? The bridge is very different.

Chattanooga is in the middle of a two year renovation project where the bridge is closed…except on Ironman race days. And even then, only athletes and Ironman staff are allowed on the bridge. Instead of running by hundreds and hundreds of spectators, we ran by construction equipment and tarps.

But here’s the thing I remember most: the silence.

The best way I can describe it felt like watching sports in 2020 when the world was locked down and socially distanced for COVID. Even when the TV broadcast was zoomed in on specific players, you could feel the absence of the crowd as much as you heard the silence. That energy just wasn’t there.

Don’t get me wrong, I am so happy that Chattanooga decided to invest in the bridge. It has started to show some wear and tear in recent years. I can’t wait to see the finished product. But I do feel a little sad for athletes racing here for the first time in 2025 and 2026. They’re missing out on one of the best parts of racing in Chattanooga.

And also! Kudos to Chattanooga for letting us use the bridge at all! I’m sure it complicates the construction schedule to accommodate Ironman. To go back to the 2020 analogy, sports without fans was better than no sports at all. An empty Walnut Street Bridge is better than no bridge at all!

After you exit the bridge, the crowds and energy return at the Edwin Hotel. And from there, I turned left and headed for the finish line.

I completed my run in 1:46:58, which is the second fastest run split I’ve ever had in any 70.3. A year ago in Des Moines, I finished my run 27 seconds faster, but that was a completely flat course. Chattanooga is hardly flat!

Post-Race

I hope I never take for granted getting to run down that red carpet.

Just because this has become a common thing in recent years doesn’t mean it’ll always be this way.

I know this is a useless exercise, but I have to briefly go down this road. It is impossible for me not to look at my times today and wonder what might have happened if the swim hadn’t been canceled. My overall time was 4:15:33. If you take last year’s swim time of 36 minutes and T1 time of 5 minutes, that puts me at a finishing time of 4:56.

I know that you can only do the race you’re given. But man. Sub-5 could have happened for the first time here today. Instead, the goal remains unfulfilled. I shouldn’t be thinking like that though.

This wasn’t an A-race. Today was supposed to show me my baseline for the rest of the season. Turning in my fastest ever 70.3 bike and nearly my fastest ever 70.3 run far exceeds anything I ever thought possible.

Not bad for my first time in the 40-44 age group!

Final Thoughts

Caitlin wasn’t too far behind me crossing the finish line. I saw the bright orange coming my way long before the race announcer called out her name.

Usually before I leave Chattanooga, I have already signed up for next year’s race. But this time, I didn’t. As much as I love racing here each year, it means there are other early season races I can’t do at full strength. I’ve doubled up St. George and Gulf Coast with Chattanooga in the past, but two 70.3s two weeks apart is not for the faint of heart!

I’m sure I’ll be back in Chattanooga again. But I wanted to give myself an option next spring to try something different. I’ve been eying Boulder for a while. If I’m going to travel all the way to Colorado, I’d like to do that without the fatigue of having just raced Chattanooga. Either way, that’s another conversation for another day.

I have settled on two more 70.3s this year: Louisville in August and North Carolina in October.

For all the 70.3s I’ve done over the years, I’ve never been more eager to get back to work and race again. I’ve been knocking on this sub-5 door for a while now. It’s time to finally kick the door in.