Ironman 70.3 Maine (Relay) Race Report

Race: July 26, 2026

Post-facto note: this is the post I wrote shortly after the race. It turned out that my assumption that I hadn't charged my shifters wasn't quite right—see "Update" below.

Disaster Strikes

The unthinkable happened—I forgot to charge my shifters and they ran out of juice after two half-hearted shifts.

In other news, how often do you get the excuse to ride a 70.3 bike on a single-speed?

Long version:

Friday: Went out for a brief ride on the race course and charged my shifters briefly beforehand. Usually this would be enough for at least a few hundred miles of riding (ominous foreshadowing).

Saturday: Dropped off bike in the transition zone and scoped out the race course with the whole crew. Our major discussion points were the steep half-mile T1 for Dad from the Kennebec River to the transition zone + spectating points along the bike and run. Zach was totally calm and ready for his half-marathon run. Blissfully ignorant of shifter charge level.

Sunday: 3:50am wakeup, 4:30am departure to Augusta. Most of the crew went to watch my dad start the swim, while I hung back at the transition zone and got dressed + got the bike organized (STILL blissfully ignorant of shifter charge level). I was feeling great at this point—more awake than expected, pretty energized, legs felt good after a few warm-up squats and high knees. Dad rolled in after a 22-minute swim (mostly backstroke (!) after his tight wetsuit collar messed with his breathing), and after a smooth handoff of the timing chip baton, I was on my way (to disaster).

The first hint of calamity came immediately after I mounted the bike and took a few pedal strokes. I hit my shifter for the first time and received only a small “bzzt” in response. The second attempted shift received an even smaller “bzzt”, and the third was met with silence. I held out hope for about half a mile that there might be some wire crossed or that the shifters might just be warming up (during which time I buzzed the delightful support crew of Eileen, Zach, and Olivia while going about 7mph across a flat bridge), but shortly I was forced to accept that this race was going to happen in one gear or not all. A roving mechanic helped me tune the high-low limit screws of the rear derailleur to gear 8/11, and thank goodness I was already in the small ring on the front for the hilly course to come.

In retrospect, I think this was exactly the right gear, but it was still hellish. My quickly-adopted strategy was: coast every downhill in as aero a position as I could manage (aspiring to Dufourian pose @taylor dufour), then hit every climb like my life depended on it. I got not a hint of pedal power on any downhill, and even on flats I was struggling to get purchase unless I upped my cadence to 110+. I’m sure the rest of the racers loved my massive yo-yoing as I free-wheeled down -1% grades, then cranked up the climbs, spending a lot of time standing because staying seated was near impossible with the gear I was in. At one point an older woman said “Well, good for you!” as I came by on a climb. Thank goodness I was able to stay ahead of her for the rest of the race—that would have been embarrassing.

After all of that, 18.5mph moving average felt like a real achievement! I think I lost ~25 minutes to the initial mechanicals (I did some fruitless debugging of the issue in the vain hope that it was something I couldn’t have prevented), then maybe could have gone closer to 23-24mph if I could have done any pedaling on the flats, but we’ll never know. Garmin did have me under 3 hours, which was the round-number goal I set once I was about halfway into the ride and had a sense of what I could get out of the gearing. We’ll take that!

Zach’s run was great, right on target at 1:46:55, and our total elapsed time was 5:48, middle of the pack for men’s relays, which feels pretty good given the circumstances. Dad has some notes for next time too. His old wetsuit just has too tight of a collar. My biggest regret is that the first and second place teams were at 4:48 and 5:15: I think we definitely would have been under 5:15 if I’d just charged the damn shifters!

Retrospective: Obviously the first thing you want to do if you have electric shifters is to remember to keep them charged. I still think the charge I put in on Friday should have been enough, so maybe it’s time for a new di2 battery (no idea how old this one is, but anecdotally it has been holding a little less charge recently), but the big theme of the day is to have a better race-day checklist. I think I was anchoring too hard on the “fun family race” vibe and didn’t have my usual wits about me, so better to offload that part of the brain to the checklist instead. Next time.

Update

After writing this post, I plugged in my shifters to charge. A few hours later I came back and was surprised to find that not only did I still have borked shifters, there wasn't even a charging light on on the control box. Turns out what actually happened was that somehow during the journey from Waldoboro to Augusta, my bike bounced around enough that one of the cables connecting the internal di2 battery (inside the down tube) to its control box disconnected, so I had no juice whatsoever. I feel a little vindicated that it wasn't all a result of my failing to charge the thing, but also confused how that could have happened. The bike had already been on a plane, two buses, and several different cars over the week before the race, and I rode it three separate times with no issues! I have a vague memory of hearing something rattle around in the bike frame once while riding in New Hampshire, but it went away quickly. I don't think there was any way I could have known, but that's the nature of these races. After getting home, I took my bike to the shop and had them pull the cranks, pull out the battery, and reconnect everything. Works like a charm.