holy crap!!!

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80/20 Endurance Ambassador

M40-44 took a 4:05 time to win!

All:

I too was a little bummed about the race weather. I was 1.3 miles away from a PR and one of my best races.But....

I put it in perspective. I think that Ironman made the right call. The weather went from nice to downright dangerous in a matter of seconds. And I think that they did everything that they possibly could have done in the short amount of time (2-3 minutes from initial downpour to multiple cloud-to-ground lightning strikes and 50mph winds). They have to take into account spectators, volunteers (there were young kids out there manning the aid stations!), and athletes. One injured person and they would have had a lawsuit on their hands, not to mean having it on their conscience. So, I think that they made the right call. There will always be another race and another chance for me to go out and prove myself.

I also wanted to give a shout out to Moody Gardens. The setup in the morning was great for the spectators, plenty of food and drink options both in and outdoors. According to my wife, they welcomed in spectators to the aquarium, etc pyramids after the storm started and let people roam inside while the weather improved. Not to mention the staff inside the hotel who were walking around with warm towels for all of us athletes (and the spectators) that were freezing after getting soaked, knowing that many of us were not staying at the hotel, but still felt like it was the right thing to do. And all of them had smiles on their face, even through the mess.

So, bummer no PR, but we made it out safely.

i agree with all of that.

i was so close to finishing i just added a few seconds to my run pace for good measured and figured out my run time, which gave me a very close estimate of my overall time. really i’m good with that.

plus i got me a coupon for the next race i was planning on doing anyway!

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80/20 Endurance Ambassador

Same! I think I will use mine for Lubbock

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the world's still turning? >>>>>>> the world's still turning

That appears to be pretty accurate. Woah

they gave a free race entry to people who weren't able to finish? that's actually pretty good, surprised they did that.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

Not free. $100 off a HIM or $250 off an IM. Can only be used for a 2019 race in the US.

That's a fairly generous offer, especially considering weather is not something in their control, and we all know how bad weather can affect a race. Props to Ironman for doing this.

I was there as a spectator. My wife was racing and around mile 9 of the run when the weather bomb went off. I was watching the radar all day and when I saw that this was going to most certainly go pear-shaped I got her stuff out of transition and into the car. Within about 3 seconds of getting her stuff in the car the storm swept in with quite a fury. I started regretting my decision to sit in the car as the it started really rocking and I wasn't sure if I would get blown over! But I realized the only other option was to run to one of the Moody Gardens buildings which from the parking lot was a few hundred yards away and that would have been much less safe.

Anyway... crazy day and I think they handled it about as well as they could have. Although my wife was saying she would have liked just a little more communication during the stoppage. Just someone with a walkie talkie or whatever to help communicate the situation.

Smart move on getting her transition stuff. As stated earlier, I was 2 mins from the finish when it was shut down, but didn't go straight to transition, I waited it out in the expo tent and had some food. When I got to transition later, my bike had flown off the rack and was laying on the ground about 10 feet away. Rear derailleur is toast.

And yes, I think it was a nice offer by IM. My only minor nitpick is that TX 70.3 2020 is not on the list of races eligible for the discount. So I signed up for Waco.

That is a nice outcome for sure.

Come and race Lubbock with me!

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"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Elliot | Cycle2Tri.com
Sponsors: SciCon | | Every Man Jack

I’m surprised they let you get her stuff. Or was it just a shit show so they were doing whatever?

I had her orange gear checkout ticket

quite the contrary... after it was cancelled and i was able to make it to transition to get my bike and bag they had people there making sure you either had a ticket or you were the athlete with matching number. with rain ongoing and lightening popping not even miles away. that impressed me greatly.

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80/20 Endurance Ambassador

Agreed, and they let people start getting bikes as soon as the race was halted, which was well before 2pm. Volunteers were out there working in that wicked storm so that people could get out of there.

Ah I didn’t realize they let you do that now.

Clip from finish line (Instagram)

Everyone should check out that clip. Apparently this was after it was called and people still wanted to cross the finish line. Would have been quite the legal battle if the timing clock had fallen about 2 seconds later.

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Benjamin Deal - Professional - Instagram - TriRig - Lodi Cyclery
Deals on Wheels - Results, schedule, videos, sponsors

Wow. And to me the more telling bit is that the athletes seem totally unphased by it. Or more to the point the cold / rain / noise of the fatigue is impeding their awareness. As athletes we need to appreciate that we aren't the best judges of things between the start gun and the finish line. We tend to lose a bit of reality when in race mode. I say this as athlete, ex-technical official and race Technical Director.

IMNZ a few years ago had a cyclone hit on raceday Saturday. Race was cancelled 6pm night before, so we all had to get bikes out of transition. 'Race day' was incredible, you could hardly stand in the wind, so definately right call. In that case, and this is a full testament to race organisers and volunteers, they put a 70.3 on for the Sunday AM, and then also gave a priority entry/discount to the next year's race, and opened some additional slots for other oceania races that were 'full' for people wanting to put their full training to the test.

For all that Ironman Inc gets flack for their commercial nature, in these cases they do make a pretty good job at responding.

I raced Sunday (I actually posted that Video to IG which IronmanNews re-posted) and wanted to give a huge shout-out to Roka. After we made our way back to Transition you can imagine what it looked like, it was an absolute mess (FYI there was no security checking bands, at all). Some entire bike racks had blown over, helmets where everywhere, and once full porter potties were sideways ... Come to find out someone inadvertently took my Roka wetsuit, that or it flew/floated away or it was stolen. I'd like to believe it was one of the former two. In any event, I searched all of the nearby racks and even the Lost and Found section after Transition had been cleaned out and came up empty handed. I contacted Roka Customer Support asking if they could get me some kind of discount to help with a replacement which I'll need for 70.3 Chattanooga, they totally hooked me up with an early Memorial Day (25%) discount. It was pretty much an instant response, no questions asked. Just awesome.

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AV8 | Team Wattie Ink Elite 2019

Some of the shade thrown at Ironman is due to past behavior of being entirely intransigent when it comes to situations like this. The timing of this change does seem to coincide with the sale from the VC firm to Wanda. When it was held by the VC firm, it was obvious that they were trying to squeeze every penny from the company they could, and to hell with actually satisfying its customers. But in the past couple of years, Ironman has made a number of actually decent decisions that clearly cost the company a large amount of money. Part of why they can do that is, sure, they make a ton of money on these races. So they are able to absorb a loss like that and make the customers happy.