Chattanooga 70.3 Race Report — First 70.3, Lots of Lessons Learned

Alright, so here’s my race report for the 2026 Chattanooga 70.3.

This was my first 70.3. I had one Olympic tri under my belt from a few years ago, somewhat unsuccessfully, and I’ve done a marathon before (like a decade ago), but this was by far the biggest endurance goal I’ve taken on.

Why I Signed Up

Earlier this year, I sold my company. Coming out of that season, I was honestly in a weird headspace. A little depressed, a little lost, and definitely in need of structure. I'm 42 so maybe this is what a mid-life crisis looks like, lol.

I had always had the idea of doing a full Ironman somewhere in the back of my mind, but jumping straight into that felt like too much, especially considering I had only done one triathlon and didn’t exactly crush that one.

So a 70.3 felt like the right kind of big. Big enough to scare me. Big enough to stretch me. But still realistic if I approached it the right way.

I talked to my friend Lindsey, who is an amazing triathlete and a coach. Together, we decided that with five months to train, this was doable.

My original goal was six hours, mostly because I Googled “good 70.3 time”, scientific right?! But as training went on, and as I talked to more people who had done these, that goal became less important. There are just too many variables in a race like this, especially when I've never done the distance before. I needed to treat this more like planting a flag in the ground as a baseline.

So the goal became: finish, race with effort, don’t blow up, and hopefully have nothing left in the tank at the end.

Training

Training started in January. Lindsey gave me my weekly plan, usually on Saturdays, and the week typically looked something like this (with some variability throughout the training):

• Monday - swim + weights/plyo work.
• Tuesday- Brick
• Wednesday run workout, usually intervals or some kind of pace work.
• Thursday was more of a Zone 2 ride, sometimes with a short brick.
• Friday long bike day, building up to around 3.5 hours.
• Saturday long run, which eventually got up to around 12 miles.

The biggest thing I underestimated was not the training time itself, but all the extra time around the training.

Everyone talks about 15–20 hours of training a week. What they do not tell you is that there are also hours of washing bottles, doing laundry, prepping food, eating constantly, cleaning up after workouts, charging devices, packing bags, and generally managing all the chores that orbit the training.

I swear I could not wash enough laundry. I could not eat enough food.

Since I wasn’t working full-time, I had the flexibility to do it, but even then it felt like a full workday once you added everything up.

That said, I LOVED the training (most of the time, lol). My body felt great. I never felt completely wrecked or sore, at least not in the way I would after hard gym sessions. I felt light. Airy. Like I could just go.

There were definitely hard rides where my legs were on fire, and I learned very quickly that the amount I sweat on a bike is absolutely ridiculous. I wrestled in high school and have been active most of my life, but I still underestimated how much fluid I could dump on an indoor trainer.

But overall, the training was one of the best parts of the whole experience.

Back in January, I could maybe swim 200 meters without stopping before grabbing the wall and sucking wind. By the end, I was swimming 3,000 meters continuously. That kind of immediate feedback and transformation is one of the things I fell in love with. I could feel myself being sharpened.

Okay, that was a hell of a preamble. Hopefully you're still with me.

Race Weekend

I live in Atlanta, so Chattanooga is only about two hours away. I drove up Saturday, May 16, and raced Sunday, May 17.

Chattanooga is beautiful, and I’ve been there plenty of times, but the energy during race weekend was a different beast. First impression: WTF are all these peole doing riding their bikes and running...isn't there a race tomorrow. I mean, I did a short Saturday workout but some of these people were pushing HARD. Kinda intimidating tbh.

I got to the hotel, parked, and walked down to athlete check-in. The volunteers were fantastic. I just want to pause here and again call out the volunteers. EVERY SINGLE ONE I interacted with was a delight.

Next Impression: The scale of this event. I had seen the Ironman hype videos with all the athletes jumping into the water and spectators everywhere, but actually seeing the volume of people in person was alot. Not necessarily in a bad way, but I remember thinking, “How crowded is this race actually going to be?”

My only small gripe here is spectators crowding around the athlete only areas making huge bottlenecks. Again very minor issue but definately makes navigating around the village at checkin challenging while carrying gear.

Check-in went smoothly. Got my timing chip, stickers, bag, shirt, all that good stuff. The swag was solid.

One thing I was confused about was transition setup. I thought I might need to set everything up the night before, but my coach told me not to worry about it and just bring my stuff in the morning. When I checked my bike in, almost nobody had their transition stuff laid out, so that seemed to be the move.

Huge recommendation: stay within walking distance of transition if you can. I booked my hotel as soon as I signed up in January, and I was so glad I did. Not having to drive around town with road closures and detours was massive. It also made things way easier for my family.

Pre-Race Food and Sleep

I felt like I did a pretty good job with food leading into the race.

Friday started with my usual smoothie: three bananas, chocolate milk, protein powder, greens powder, creatine, cocoa powder, peanut butter, and blueberries. I eat that almost every morning and it always hits.

Lunch was a sandwich and a cinnamon chip muffin. Dinner was breakfast for dinner.

Saturday morning, we went to Waffle House, because obviously. I had the All-Star Special: waffle, toast, eggs, hash browns scattered and covered (this is the way).

During the drive, I had Hawaiian bread pretzels (sounds better then they are...they're fine), a bagel with honey, and later a turkey and cheese sandwich on a bagel. Around mid-afternoon, I had Mellow Mushroom — small pizza with garlic and olive oil base, chicken, and light cheese. I ate most of it around 3:00 and finished the last piece around 5:45 or 6:00.

I also took a couple of CBD/Delta 9 gummies around 6:00 to help me sleep, and I was out around 8:30.

I know a lot of people struggle to sleep the night before a race, but I actually slept pretty well. I think part of that was because I had slept poorly the two nights before from all the packing-list anxiety and mental rehearsal...and also gummies.

I also had my own hotel room while my family had another room. That was extremely helpful. I have a 10- and 12-year-old, and I love them, but I also know myself well enough to know that if people are keeping me awake before a huge race, I am not going to be my best self.

I laid everything out in the hotel room in the exact order I would need it in the morning. Breakfast, vitamins, toothbrush, race bag, everything. I wanted to be able to wake up and just move sequentially down the line without thinking.

That was one of the smartest things I did.

Race Morning

I woke up at 4:30 and was basically ready to walk out the door by 4:50.

My plan was to head to transition, set up, then get on the bus to the swim start around 6:15 or 6:20. For some reason, my brain immediately started trying to change the plan. I thought, “Maybe I’ll walk to transition first, then come back to the hotel, chill, then go back.”

Then I did the math and realized that would add 30 minutes of walking for absolutely no reason.

So I told myself to chill and stick to the plan. Very glad I did.

Transition was dark. Really dark. A headlamp would have been clutch. I could immediately tell who the experienced people were because they all had headlamps.

I also noticed everyone carrying full-size bike pumps. I did not have one. I had used an electric pump at home and figured there would be pumps there. A volunteer had told me the day before there would be a bunch along the wall, so I wasn’t too worried.

Then I went to pump my tires and had a complete brain meltdown.

I had never used a manual pump with this bike and Presta valves. I fully deflated my front tire trying to figure it out. I switched pumps. Still couldn’t figure it out. Instead of just asking someone, I stood there like a creep and watched another guy pump his tires so I could reverse-engineer what he was doing.

Eventually I figured it out, but for a minute I genuinely thought, “Of all the things I prepped for, am I really about to get taken out by not knowing how to use a bike pump?”

Tires finally pumped. Crisis avoided.

I got on the bus around 6:20 and headed to the swim start.

The age group start was at 7:05, but what I did not understand was how long it would take for my swim group to hit the water. I had lined up near the 40–43 minute group because that was my estimated swim time, but it took forever to get moving. I think it was around 40 minutes after the official age group start before I actually jumped in.

Also, I peed approximately 400 times before the swim. I peed when I got there, again around 6:30, again around 6:50. Now you'd think at this point, this guy has no more piss in him, and you would be wrong. 20 feet from jumping in, line moving forward, I gotta pee again.

So I timed it up and started pissing myself on the dock just before the person in front of me jumps in. Got about halfway through and jumped in - good start.

So that’s how my first 70.3 officially started.

Swim

I jumped in, saw the first buoy, and immediately realized, yeah, this is not the pool.

That sounds obvious, but it hit me hard. There are people everywhere. You’re trying to find buoys. The water is brown. You open your eyes and see absolutely nothing. There is no black line at the bottom. Nothing to orient yourself.

My biggest mistake of the entire race was not doing any open water swims before race day. I knew that was risky. Everyone in this forum says to do an open water, they're different. I get it. "But I'm surrrrrre I'm different".

I grew up swimming in the ocean in Florida. I love body surfing. I’m comfortable in open water. But I completely conflated “comfortable being in open water” with “comfortable actually swimming freestyle in open water during a race.”

Not the same thing.

Within the first couple hundred meters, I was in a low-key panic. Not a full “grab the kayak, I’m done” panic, but definitely panic.

My wetsuit felt like it was squeezing my neck. It wasn’t actually cutting off air, but I could feel it, and that sensation combined with the murky water and people bumping into me was enough to throw me off.

The issue wasn’t even people swimming over me. It was the rhythm breaking. I’d be swimming, hit someone’s arm, have to lift my head, re-sight, adjust my line, restart my breathing pattern, and then do it all over again.

I started drifting inside just to create space, but then I was swimming like a snake. I flipped onto my back three times in the first 200 meters just to slow my breathing down.

I have never done that in the pool. Never needed to.

At one point I said out loud to myself, “If you need to swim on your back a bunch, swim on your back a bunch. If you need to grab a kayak, grab a kayak. But we are not getting out of this water unless something is actually wrong.”

That was probably the turning point.

After about 200 meters, I started settling down. I began counting strokes and sighting every 10 strokes. That helped a ton. Ten strokes, sight, breathe, reset. Ten strokes, sight, breathe, reset.

The swim opened up eventually, and once I hit roughly halfway, I felt like I was cruising. I still hated the wetsuit. I felt constricted through my shoulders, even though I thought I had pulled it up correctly. I also later realized I probably should have gotten water into it before starting to help it settle.

I ended up swimming around 48 minutes, which was slower than I expected but fine. I had definitely seeded myself too early. I was getting passed more than I wanted.

Beginner lesson: there is very little upside to over-seeding your swim. It just creates more chaos.

If I do another one, I’m absolutely doing open water swims beforehand.

T1

Coming out of the water felt great. I wasn’t wobbly, which I had been worried about. I got my arms out of the wetsuit and hit the wetsuit strippers.

My coach had told me exactly what to do: arms out, lay down like a dead cockroach, legs up, and let them rip it off.

They were awesome. It was super fast.

Then came my next mistake: I had to pee, ran past bathrooms, got to my bike, then realized there wasn’t an aid station until mile 15 and I didn’t want to be stuck needing to pee on the bike without water to dump on myself.

There was one bathroom near the bike exit. One. A guy went in right before me and took what felt like forever. I probably lost 1.5 to 2 minutes just standing there waiting.

My T1 was around 8 minutes. "This is a learning moment, its okay" I tell myself. Definitely room for improvement, but I didn’t forget anything, I got all my nutrition, gear, and sunscreen, and I felt good heading out.

More importantly, at that point I thought, “There is no way I’m not finishing this unless something major happens on the bike.”

Bike

The bike was smooth overall.

My coach had given me a simple plan: don’t burn matchsticks. On the climbs, spin easy and deliberate. Don’t mash. Don’t chase people. If I was going to push, push on the downhills and keep the climbs under control.

That became my mantra.

“Don’t burn matchsticks.”

I probably repeated it 50–100 times. yeah, there are A LOT of hills on the Chat-town course.

The course was hillier than most of my training. I had done a lot of relatively flat solo rides because I was trying to stay in areas without many cars. So Chattanooga was definitely more shifting and climbing than I was used to.

But I felt like I handled it well.

People were smoking me on some of the climbs. Standing up, mashing, flying past. I just kept telling myself, “That’s fine. Let them go. We’re going to win those spots back on the run.”

The other phrase I kept in mind was: 10 minutes gained on the bike can cost you 30 minutes on the run. (Thanks reddit)

I had three bottles of Tailwind on the bike and no plan to grab nutrition from the course. I had practiced my bike nutrition a lot, and it worked well in training. I never came off the bike hungry or bloated, so I wanted to stick to what I knew.

At aid stations, I grabbed water mainly to dump on myself and stay cool.

The course itself was gorgeous once you got out of the city. The weather was perfect early, but by mile 40 or 45 I could feel the heat building and started thinking, “The run is going to be warm.”

There was one scary moment around mile 24. I knew from reading about the course that there was a fast downhill into a hard left turn and then a climb. People wreck there. People drop chains there. I knew it was coming and was watching for it.

As I’m descending, someone starts passing me. At the bottom, someone had wrecked and there was an ambulance. The person passing me saw it, realized they wanted to swing right to set up the left turn, and moved right in front of me while we were going maybe 25–30 mph.

I had to hit my brakes, and my back wheel started fishtailing.

Randomly, a lesson from when I was 17 flashed into my head. I had fishtailed my car once, and the police officer who came out told me that when you start sliding, you get off the gas and off the brake because both can make the slide worse.

Somehow that stuck with me for 25 years.

So as soon as the bike started fishtailing, I released the brake, the bike straightened out, and I made the turn.

That was the only real close call of the day.

The ride back into town felt good. There was one section of rough road that felt like my kidneys were being shaken out of my body, and then we hit smooth pavement and it felt like glass. You really gain an appreciation for smooth roads during a race like this.

Funny thing: for some reason, I thought the bike was 55 miles. It is 56.

So when my watch hit 54, I was looking for transition. Then 55. Still no transition. I was like, “What the hell is going on? Is this course long?”

Nope. I just apparently didn’t know the distance of the event I signed up for.

T2

Coming into T2, I made a dumb split-second decision.

My plan was simple: dismount, run in cleats, rack bike. Then, in the moment, I decided to change the plan. Because why go with a well thought out, meticulous plan, when you can spur of the moment switch things up to maybe gain 8 seconds of time back.

I ran maybe 20 steps in my bike shoes, then decided to do what ABSOLUTELY NO ONE around me is doing. I take my bike shoes off and carry them while also pushing the bike. Suddenly I’m awkwardly trying to hold my shoes against the bike frame while steering with the other hand.

About 50 yards from my rack, I dropped the bike and the pedal slammed into my big toe.

It hurt so bad I thought I broke my toe. Massive blood blister as a souvenier.

Lesson learned: your brain does not work better during the race than it did before the race. Do not change the plan unless you have to.

Once I got to my spot, everything else was smooth. Socks were ready, hat on, nutrition in the back pockets, sunscreen on. I had a disposable water bottle with electrolytes that I thought I might want for the run, but it was so warm and flimsy that it felt like carrying a plastic bag. I took maybe four sips and threw it out at the first aid station.

Didn’t need it.

Run

The run was the part I was most confident in, and thankfully, it played out that way.

My legs felt great coming off the bike. No heavy-leg panic. No “uh oh” moment. I was told not to go out too hard, so I kept it around 9:00 pace early even though I felt like I could go faster.

The heat was real, but I usually do pretty well in heat. I wrestled in high school, I play tennis, and I’ve always felt like heat bothers other people more than it bothers me. My coach gave me a great cooling plan, and I executed it at every aid station.

My aid station plan was basically:

Two waters to dump on my head and down my tri suit. Drink water. Put ice down the front, down the back, and then saved a few pieces to hold in my hands until the next aid station (an amazing tip by my coach).

It worked. I had no heat issues. No GI issues. No cramping. No point where I felt like I needed to walk.

If I did it again, I’d probably grab drinking water first, then dump water at the end of the aid station, just because I was moving slower through the start of the aid station and then jogging out while trying to drink.

But overall, it worked really well.

Around mile 6 or 7, I wanted to pick it up. I felt good. Really good. But I had been told not to surge too early, so I mostly held back.

By mile 9, I started letting myself go a little more.

And this is where the bike patience paid off. I was passing a lot of people who had passed me earlier. People were struggling. People were throwing up off the bridge. I saw people sitting on the side of the road, massaging quads, walking, just trying to get through it.

The bridge was hot. Pavement and sun. But I felt strong.

At mile 4, I already knew I was going to have a good run. By mile 9, I knew I was going to finish strong.

My final run pace averaged around 8:45, mostly because of aid station walking. When I was actually running, I think I was closer to 8:30 most of the time. I honestly think on a cooler day, with better aid station efficiency, I could run closer to 8:15.

But for my first 70.3, I’ll absolutely take it.

Finish

The course has you do a couple loops, and then eventually instead of going back out, you peel off toward the finish with about three quarters of a mile left.

I picked off a few more people in that last stretch. I had read somewhere not to try to pass people right on the carpet unless you’re racing for a podium because everyone wants their finish line photo, so I made sure any passing happened before that final chute.

Seeing the finish was incredible, but it wasn’t some dramatic “I am reborn” moment.

It was more like, “Oh thank God, I’m done.”

My family was there cheering. I should have mentioned this more throughout, but seeing them during the race was unbelievable. My wife and boys going crazy and yelling for me gave me a shot of adrenaline every time.

Then immediately the volunteers were handing me water, cherry juice, putting the medal around my neck, taking off my timing chip, directing me where to go. I was so cooked that it felt like being wheeled into surgery. Everyone else knew exactly what they were doing and I was just like, “Do whatever you need to do.”

There was a huge line for finish photos, and I just could not bring myself to stand there in the sun for 20 minutes. More power to everyone who did, but I was done standing.

Post-Race

The funniest part is that when I first finished, I felt like I could have run a couple more miles.

Then I went to pack up transition and my body was like, “Actually, no. We are done now.”

Packing up transition felt like the fourth discipline of the race. Squatting down to get everything into the bag, walking the bike back up the hill to the car, using the bike like a crutch, that was when the fatigue really hit.

Also, we did not have late checkout, so there was no shower afterward. Just a two-hour car ride home smelling absolutely terrible. I’m sure my family loved that.

Lessons Learned

A few things I’d absolutely do differently or recommend to another first-timer:

Do open water swims before race day. Being comfortable in open water is not the same as being comfortable racing in open water.

Bring a headlamp for transition setup.

Know how to use whatever pump you may need on race morning.

Do not over-seed your swim. There is very little upside.

Do not change your transition plan mid-race unless you absolutely have to.

Stay close to transition if you can. That made the whole weekend much easier.

Practice nutrition until it’s boring, then stick with it.

Respect the bike. If running is your strength, don’t sell out early trying to prove something on the climbs.

The first time you do something is probably when you’re going to suck the most at the little stuff. That’s okay. You learn by doing.

Final Thoughts

Overall, it was an amazing experience.

There are definitely things I could have done better, but I’m giving myself grace. It was my first 70.3. You don’t know what you don’t know until you’ve done it.

I learned a ton. I finished strong. I didn’t blow up. I had a great run. I got through some beginner mistakes, a sketchy bike moment, a rough first few hundred meters of the swim, and somehow made it to the finish feeling like I raced the way I wanted to race.

Will I do another one?

I mean, I’ve already been looking up races.

So…probably.