For triathletes, March is a month of new beginnings. For most it is the beginning of the triathlon competitive season that begins now and builds through the Kona World Ironman Championship in Kona in early October.
For Liz Lyles, who resides and trains in Reno, NV, it is an opportunity to emerge from cold, often snowy winter and start a new season. She likes to begin with the Oceanside 70.3, a half-ironman that was staged last weekend on a beautiful Saturday morning along the scenic Southern California coast line.
“I felt much better prepared this year,” Lyles said. “I had a complete new apparel strategy, mostly because of my new apparel sponsor, Sugoi. By wearing different training apparel on different days to meet the weather conditions each day, I was able to get in a lot more outdoor training time than during previous winters.”
And the new strategy produced significantly improved results during the race. Her bike time went from 2:35:29 in 2014 to 2:27:43 in 2015 for the 26 mile ride, an improvement of 7 minutes and 36 seconds. Liz’s run time for the 13 mile half marathon went from 1:25:22 in 2014 to 1:23:38 in 2015 for an improvement of just under two minutes. Both times were among the five best times in each category.
Her only disappointment was with her swim time. The fact that there were 35 professional women in the race this year made it a challenge to get in the right group at the start of the race. “I ended up swimming with the second group, which wasn’t ideal. I could either burn a tremendous amount of energy changing groups during the swim, or stay with the group and make it up later.” She stayed with the group and finished the swim a minute and eighteen seconds later than last year. Her time was 29 minutes and 41 seconds for the 1.3 mile swim.
Overall, her time was 6 minutes and 18 seconds better than 2014 at 4:26:18.
Given the way Liz’s career finished in 2014—she was the top American finisher at the World Ironman Championships in Kona—this portends a much stronger year and many exciting months to come as we follow her career through 2015.