Race reports · 2025 · by Michelle
IRONMAN 70.3 Augusta 2025: the river swim
29:16 for 1.2 miles, and the Savannah River did most of the work. 70.3 bests for both of us, and I beat Jay out of the water by 49 seconds.
I'd love to tell you I swam 1.2 miles in twenty-nine minutes, but the Savannah River did most of the work. Augusta is famous for its swim, which goes downriver with the current, and if you put my 29:16 next to any of my Honu swims, the difference is the current and not me. Jay's was 30:05 in the same river, so I beat him out of the water by 49 seconds, and since I beat him out of the water at Texas too, I'm not planning to let go of either one.
Both of us set 70.3 bests here, Jay at 5:16:17 and me at 6:26:20! Some of that is the river, and some of it is a flat, fast bike in cool late-September air after a whole summer of training in Honolulu. Heat is the fourth sport for us, and this was the first race in a long time where it didn't show up at all, so I didn't quite know what to do with myself, in a good way.
This was supposed to be our 2024 race. We were trained and staying at Jay's parents' place in South Carolina when Hurricane Helene came through on Friday, September 27, two days before the race, and tore up Augusta, and IRONMAN canceled it. We deferred a year, and the other options they offered us, California and Arizona, are how a full Ironman first got into our heads, which is how we ended up doing a full Ironman before we ever got to do this half.
This time we flew out just for the race, with no two weeks on the East Coast first, and Jay's parents came to watch. Our friend Ed, who'd done a couple of Honus with us, raced it too, and I passed him on the run and finished about ten minutes ahead of him. He has a demanding job and doesn't get to train the way we do, and he gave everything he had to hold me off, and I'm mentioning it because it's true and because I can.
It was also a rehearsal, as IRONMAN California was three weeks later, which made it two long-course races, two trips to the mainland, and two bike boxes in one month. For someone who likes her routine (predictable, boring, and happy that way), that month was a lot, and if race week is a logistics problem, then two bike boxes in thirty days was the proof.