colinlaughery wrote:
sciguy wrote:
mbwallis wrote:
He was referring to JR dropping out. It was JR who posted a FB video of him assembling his bike the other day.
I understand but am not sure if Jordan had a mechanical or just wasn't "feeling it" today. They mentioned PA had a mechanical in the same post where they mentioned Jordan pulling the plug. Perhaps I missed another post.
Hugh
I'll leave it up to Jordan to comment on why, but I was A few meters behind when he pulled Suddenly. It was a mechanical.
My seatpost was slipping. I had not had any trouble with it at home in the month+ of riding the bike. But since coming to the woodlands, the same torque didn't seem to hold securely (and yes, I did actually re-do everything about my build after I did the FBLive build). Not sure why. Maybe the humidity? Change from hotel room (AC) to outside? Maybe I didn't get the expansion plug put back EXACTLY the same way when I built it back up after travel. Anyway, I'm not sure. But after about an hour, it was clear from my saddle height marker tape that my saddle had dropped about 10-15mm, and I was starting to feel it in my hip flexors. So I pulled over to raise my saddle.
But it was clear that something was off even before that. A slipping seatpost doesn't explain why I came out of the water 2min+ back of where I should have been. Matt Hanson and I are very comparable swimmers, and even if you say that he had a career best swim (which I think he did), I still came out 2min+ back of Ronnie Schildknect, another guy I swim with at virtually any race we both do.
Anyway, my basic conclusion is that I've figured out how to manage training with a bunch of young kids, but that I'm still figuring out the recovery aspect. I was able to do exactly what I thought I needed in the two months leading up to Texas. I just think, with four kids, it probably takes me a bit longer to bounce back from that - because I can't just completely shut down outside of training the way I could before - than it used to.
At both IMTX and Kona last year, I did the gut-it-out-and-finish. But especially after Kona, which was by far the hardest Ironman I've ever done, where I basically dragged myself the last 20miles of the marathon, I simply couldn't do that again on this day. And I knew that was what I had in front of me, so I called it early.
While, given the nature of how the race played out, my slipping seatpost could have been a huge factor had everything else gone right, on this day, it was just another sign that good fortune was not on my side.
"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp