Race reports · 2025 · by Jay
Ironman Texas 2025: the full distance
A lake swim, 112 flat and windy miles on closed roads, and a marathon that loops past the same spectators several times.
This is the race we never planned on. For three years a full Ironman was the thing we were most intimidated by, and every race before it was its own next step rather than a step toward this one. We did them in order anyway, and that turned out to matter more than anything we did on purpose.
How we got here
We raced the Honolulu Triathlon for real in May 2023, then came a 70.3 in the lava that June, 112 miles around Oahu in August, 2.4 miles off Waikiki in September, and a marathon with a whole readiness series behind it in December. Neither of us ever intended to do a full. The decision came out of a canceled race: when Hurricane Helene took out Augusta in September 2024, IRONMAN offered us California or Arizona instead, and the thought stuck. We agonized over it for several weeks. In October 2024 we finally signed up for Texas, six months out, while we were in the best shape we'd ever been in. After that came six months of the kind of training a full distance takes, with a bedtime attached, most of it starting at 5 a.m. on the trainer or on a road before the sun came up.
The race
IRONMAN Texas is in The Woodlands, north of Houston, in late April. The swim is 2.4 miles in a lake, the bike is 112 miles on closed roads that are flat and fast and windy, and the run is a marathon that loops through town past the same spectators several times, which is either encouraging or humbling depending on which loop you're on. It's a long way from Honolulu, which meant a bike box, a long flight, and every lesson in Race week is a logistics problem.
The one thing Texas had in common with home was the heat. April in The Woodlands can be warm and humid, and the run starts in the afternoon, so the fourth sport was part of the race there the same as it is at home.
The day
The video is the account of the day. It's the second most-watched thing the channel's posted, behind only the Honolulu Marathon, and it should be, because it's the day every other video was building toward.
Both of us raced it and both of us finished. For me, it was 11:52:41: a 1:31 swim, 5:50 on the bike, and a 4:07 marathon, with the two transitions adding up to more than twenty minutes I'd like to have back. Michelle finished in 14:37:09: a 1:30 swim, 6:44 on the bike, and a 6:02 run. The swim was an hour and a half for each of us, and hers was a minute faster than mine, which she has brought up more times than the race itself. The bike was most of the afternoon, and then there was a marathon. The week around 140.6 was every bit the heat problem, marriage problem, and calendar problem we'd said it would be in Going the full distance.
What it was like
We went out a week early, flew into Austin, drove down to The Woodlands on the Monday, and spent the week learning the courses and getting used to Houston humidity, which is a step up from ours in April. The longest day in the whole six-month build had been about five hours, so neither of us knew what twelve or fifteen hours of straight activity was going to do to us.
The swim is a man-made lake, shallow, dirty, mucky fresh water, and 2.4 miles of mosh pit from the start to the exit. Wetsuits gave us back some of the buoyancy the fresh water took away. At the exit there are wetsuit strippers who rip the suit off you, and then it's the tent and the bike. The bike goes out through the neighborhoods to the Hardy Toll Road, closed for the day, where you do a couple of 20-mile loops for about 80 of the 112 miles, then back into The Woodlands. I held a steady pace, stopped twice for water and bananas, and at special needs around mile 65 I had pure maple syrup waiting. It went down easy and it was a game changer.
Off the bike my feet hurt terribly. I have high arches and I hadn't discovered insoles yet, so I'd spent six hours on the flat ones that came with the shoes, and putting on running shoes felt great. The run is three loops of a little over eight miles, with spectators along most of it, including a spot called Hippie Hollow where people in sixties costumes bang drums every time you come through. I walked each aid station, about a mile apart, and ran in between: a gel at one, orange slices at the next, water over my head at every one. Late afternoon it starts to cool off, which is the one gift an Ironman gives you. A bathroom stop at mile 19 is the difference between 4:07 and maybe breaking four hours on the run, and I've made my peace with it.
Crossing that finish line was one of the most rewarding feelings of my life. After some food and a short massage I went back out to cheer Michelle in. She hadn't listened to her body enough on the bike, and the run was hard for her, and she pushed through it and finished her first Ironman.
Six months later we did it again at IRONMAN California.