Pardon me Joe, is that the ‘IRONMAN’ Chattanooga choo choo?
The reputation given to the city of Chattanooga by the Glen Miller song now also lends itself to making Tennessee’s fourth-largest city the home to DHB triathlete Joe Skipper the winner of IRONMAN Chattanooga, after breaking the overall course record and also setting the course record for the fastest marathon run.
Chattanooga nicknamed ‘The Scenic City’ due to its beautiful foliage in the surrounding mountains and gorges, during the autumn fall was the setting for IRONMAN Chattanooga where Joe Skipper was going to implement his mantra ‘‘Hammer it, go hard or go home!’
Whist all eyes were fixed on IRONMAN’s promotion on the battle of the North Atlantic Titians, USA’s Sam Long and Canadian Lionel Sanders they foolhardily overlooked a Brit who goes by the alias of @Noaveragejoe88 who is no stranger to breaking course records having done so at 2019 Ironman Florida, then again in 2020 at Ironman New Zealand.
The race started with a down-river swim in the mighty Tennessee river where American Ben Hoffman exited the water first followed by Cody Beal who powered out onto the bike course first followed by Hoffman to an early lead. But Skipper is not bad at swimming himself and only down 90 seconds coming out of the water in 8th place. It was not long before he found himself in the chase group with Sanders and Long.
It was Skipper and Long who dropped the watt bombs to pull away from the others with Skipper hitting T2 with a lead of over a minute on Long and over 6 minutes on Sanders with Beals and Hoffman the swim leaders a further minute behind.
Onto to run and Skipper was proving the point that he happens to be rather good at running marathons with Long rapidly dropping off the pace then appearing to ‘bonk’ and eventually dropped out of the race all together allowing Sanders to move into second place.
And that’s how it stayed as Skipper crossed the winning line with a new course marathon time in 2:44:06 to take the win overhaul in a new course record of 7:46:18 beating the old course record by 21 minutes. Sanders was to finish second over 8 minutes behind Skipper with Hoffman taking third spot in 07:57:50 and first out of the water Cody Beals having to settle for fourth place.
Full Results can be viewed here:
