Lottie Lucas' Reflections and Lessons Learnt: Age-Group Win at 2019 Ironman 70.3 Dubai

Most of Friday’s race at Dubai 70.3 is a blur. I positioned myself in the 10th wave of participants on the swim and managed to race on a fairly clear path without much obstruction and with accurate navigation, despite the morning sunrise on the approach to the beach. I was out on to the bike course far ahead of the masses, and again, could just focus on my own race with my head down. The next thing I remember is getting to the 16km mark on the run, looking down on my watch and seeing that my overall race time was around 4:15:00. At that moment in time, I realized that the sub 5-hour goal could definitely happen, even if I had to walk a little bit… and as long as I didn’t “blow up” (self-talk) and could continue my current running pace, the 4:45:00 marker was also going to become a reality. With no gels left (I will share my nutrition strategy in a later blog post), I was relying on a combination of red bull, cold sponges and mental strength to get me through.

3km to go and I run past one of my swim training partners and inspirations, Deirdre Casey. She yelled at me that I was “comfortably in 1st place and pulling away”. I couldn’t believe it and had to bottle my enthusiasm and just focus on my breath to the finish line. I knew that I had entered the run course in 3rd position in my age category, after unsurprisingly being overtaken and left behind by 2 strong competitors on the bike course… yet, the wise words of Filipe were resonating in my head: “don’t kill yourself on the bike or you are not going to run well”. I’ve done it in training before and have called him in tears when I was 2km into a 14km bric run and completely wrecked. He did not give me the answer I was hoping for: he told me he didn’t care about the pace, but I had to complete the 14km. Since then, I have always remembered lesson number 1: this is a triathlon, not a cycling race. Keeping calm and cool on the bike, meant I was able to do the fastest run in my age category on the day. I have previously considered my run to be my weakest discipline.

So, what other lessons have I learnt since 70.3 Dubai 2018 (finish time 5:30:03) to 70.3 Dubai 2019 (finish time 4:40:47)? 

The truth is, I have learnt so much about triathlon and life in general these past 12 months, it is impossible to summarize them all in this first blog post. Many of us already appreciate that Triathlon is a both science and an art. There are so many facets to this sport, so many factors that can go right or wrong… so many areas of discussion and debate. At Fawz Concept, we will approach these slowly in our upcoming blog posts. For now, I would like to share with you the two other major lessons I have learnt this year. 

Lesson number 2: don’t create huge expectations of yourself on social media. I can imagine that my result may have been surprising for those who like to document everything they do on social media. The truth is, I can’t remember the last training post I have done; I don’t smash myself around the Loop to record a world-class time and I don’t hammer myself around the athletics track. 1) because I can’t and 2) because it is not wise if I want to train well for the rest of the week. I didn’t post on social media to show that my bike was racked or share my bib number on the day before the race. In reality, the day before was a stress… I was awake at 6am to cram a sea swim in between sunrise and work, I didn’t have time to sit on the sofa and relax as planned, and I managed to fall off my bike and bruise my knee when riding to transition. When life doesn’t go perfectly in the build-up… you can be quietly confident you will have some good luck on the day, yet you don’t need to share it with the whole world. 

Lesson number 3: if the work has been done, you don’t need to create the perfect race plan. Many friends asked about my target time or my goal, but I never discussed with Filipe a potential finish time for my race. We had a bet that if I finished in less than 1 hour behind him then he would pay a nice dinner somewhere, but that was it and I didn’t take it too seriously as I knew it would be around the 4:45:00 mark. We only spoke about a few points of the race. Cadence on the bike – I needed to keep this high and as close to 85 as possible, in order to minimize the risk of ‘grinding’ and getting a DNF again, after stopping at the 70.3 World Championships in South Africa. Watts – I knew the target average watts was between 80 and 85% of my FTP on the bike course, but wouldn’t get too caught up on this if I wanted to follow lesson number 1. Nutrition – I knew the distance markers on the bike and run course when I would consume a gel and would try to stick closely to this, unless I felt a serious lack of power and ‘bonk’ about to happen. Enjoyment – if you don’t enjoy the race what’s the point? That was it. You can’t draw up a perfect race plan, because there are so many variables on the day. Yet, you can put in the perfect training to try to control the controllable and have the race result you deserve.