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Heather Wurtele post-70.3 world champs: “By far the hardest world champs course”

The 7th place finisher's thoughts on the Ironman 70.3 World Championship course this year.

 

KM: You didn’t get the podium you were after.

HW: Yeah, my podium stream ended. But I am proud of how I raced. I swam hard, biked hard to catch that lead group… Daniela was in her own postal code today… but, I caught the group and tried to make a move to break it up. It didn’t quite work, but hey, I gave it all I had, I was trying to be bold and thought we’ll see how it goes on the run. Everyone took off like bullets! I was running as storng as I could. The course is incredibly hard, by far the hardest world champs course, I’d say even harder than [Ironman 70.3 St. George]. Really steep climbs and descents, the flats are twisty, so it’s hard to get in a rhythm. It’s a proper championship course, the top girls really came out on top today.

KM: Yes. So, no Kona for you this year, but it has been an awesome year.

HW: Yeah, I was happy with getting on the podium at ITU World Champs, of course I was gunning for the podium here but all you can do is give it your all on the day and I absolutely dug deep like always. So, happy to be in the top 10, I’ve actually never been out of the top 10 at 70.3 worlds. I still have one streak going anyway!

KM: What’s next for you, are you and [husband] Trevor heading back to Europe?

HW: Yeah, we are both in the running in the Challenge European points series so we’re both going to do Challenge Sardina and Mallorca and see what happens late season — if we’ll focus on full Ironman and maybe think about Kona next year or what. That’s all sort of up in the air for now.

KM: Great job today.

HW: Thanks, Kevin.