ST: Have you raced against any of the guys who were on the podium back then recently?
Ryan: None that I recall. I did not really know anybody in the sport so I’m not sure who they were. It was rather that I knew there were people going over an hour faster than me.
ST: Back to Texas. I think you posted before that when you swim sub 60-minutes, that it typically sets you up well for the race. Was this close enough?
Ryan: Honestly, I was a bit frustrated with the swim. With it being wetsuit legal, I thought that I would at least be under 60 minutes as I swam 59 in 2017 with no wetsuit. I try not to let the times fluster me too much as you never know if the course was long or short so my swim of 61 minutes may have been good if everyone was slower as well. I didn’t have anyone out in Texas with me, so I wasn’t even sure how far back of my main competitors I was coming out. I just knew I needed to stick to my plan and that there was a lot of racing left in the day.
ST: When you got back out of the water how many folks were around you and did you feel confident?
Ryan: I definitely felt confident coming out of the water. Looking back, I felt as if I didn’t even swim when I got out and that was maybe a sign I swam too easy! There were plenty of people around me when I got out, but none of them that I knew. From the start of the bike, I rode steady and strong and was passing others for most of the race.
ST: What did you see and experience in terms of drafting in that race and how was it similar or different from other events you have done?
Ryan: This race was quite different in terms of the drafting than say a race like Kona. From the times that I’ve raced Kona, the most congestion is all in the first half up to Hawi. So many people come out of the water in such as tight time frame coupled with everyone being pretty strong riders is what makes it difficult to avoid. Once the heat, wind, and miles add up, people tend to get broken up quite a bit more on the back half. In Texas it was almost opposite for me. I rode solo for the first 70 miles and encountered no drafting. I noticed very large packs in front of and behind me when I made the turnaround at 60 miles. I was more concerned that I would get gobbled up by the pack behind me, but I must have been rolling pretty quickly as they never caught me and instead I rode up to a big pack that was about 3 minutes ahead of me at the turnaround. Once I caught them, I never was able to shake away off the front. It was frustrating, but I had to remind myself that I needed to stick to my plan as best that I could. I put in a few efforts to try and ride away, but with my legs getting tired that late in the ride, I wasn’t able to hold big watts for a long period of time.
ST: What are big watts for you and what wattage were you averaging that day? And please forward your file too.
Ryan: Sustained big watts for me would be anything over 350. I’m a pretty small guy at 135 pounds, so putting up really big numbers is tough.
Average for the day in Texas was 218. [Strava file here slightly under reported compared to the Garmin file where the distance was listed as 110 miles, NP at 218, a TSS of 229 and a IF of 0.73]