Boulder, CO based amateur Doug MacLean was the top age grouper at Ironman Coeur D’Alene and managed to break into the top 10 overall. Moving forward though he’ll be starting with a Pro card and facing much tougher competition. He talked to slowtwitch about his goals and aspirations.
Slowtwitch: Congrats on a nice performance at Coeur D’Alene.
Doug: Thanks! Coach Tim Snow (of QT2 Systems) and I came up with a realistic race plan based on what I was doing in my long workouts, and Cait Snow gave me a great fueling plan. All I had to do was go out there and execute. This was my 7th IM, and it was the first time I was ever able to race “tactically” in an Ironman. For the first 6, I didn’t care where anyone else was on the course – I just put the blinders on and tried to get to the finish line in one piece. But now that I have more miles in my legs and more experience with the full 140.6 miles, I was able to actually “race” this time. I picked up the pace at key moments, and made moves based on what was going on in the race. It was certainly a huge step in my education as a triathlete.
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