Race reports · 2026 · by Michelle
IRONMAN 70.3 Tri-Cities 2026: the Versailles that never happened
Jay went 5:11:41, his fastest 70.3 anywhere. I went slow on the bike for three hours and forty-seven minutes and didn't find out why until after I'd finished.
Versailles was supposed to be our July race, and when the French authorities cancelled it over the heat, to say that was heart-breaking is an understatement. We came home and went looking for something to put in its place, which turned out to be Tri-Cities in September, and signing up for it almost made the cancellation acceptable. Then the race itself was fun, which isn't a word I use about every 70.3. The swim went down river and it was chilly, the bike course was a challenging one, and the run was an out and back that I enjoyed the whole way.
Jay had the good day of the two of us. He finished in 5:11:41, which is his fastest 70.3 anywhere and about four and a half minutes quicker than the 5:16:17 he did at Augusta last September, and he ran 1:41:39 off the bike, the fastest 70.3 run he has on this site.
Mine went differently, and I finished in 6:47:51. The part I'll remember is the bike, which was gruelingly slow: 3:47:29 for 56 miles, close to twenty minutes off what I rode at Honu in May and at Redding in August. I spent a lot of those miles asking myself what was wrong with me. It wasn't until after the race that I found my brakes rubbing on the wheel, so the answer was that I'd been riding against my own brakes the whole way, and I'll be adding that one to the Lessons Learned tab.