RR IM 70.3 Zell am See a.k.a. "The slot is mine" :)
I'm pretty sure all of you who are reading this report now know what was my ultimate goal this season but just as a reminder I'll put it here once again: Goal was to get a slot for 2015s 70.3 World Championship which also takes place in Zell am See.
They increased this years race to a 100-slots (from only 30 last year) so I knew 3 things:
1) There will be about 12 slots in my AG according to the start list
2) There will be a lot of fast peeps out there as a 100-slot race is typically very attractive for slot-chasers 
3) As the WC takes pace right HERE there won't be may rolldown slots because the financial costs are at a minimum and it probably won't happen again in your life to have the chance to race at a World Championship AT HOME
So taking all that into account I knew I must place Top-10 in my AG period.
The weather was like almost at every race I joined in the last 12 month a bit cold (12-14degC) with predicted showers throughout the day. I was in the second start wave right 5' after the PRO went off. My plan was to start smooth with an moderate effort finding into my groove with total focus on holding my technique together. There wasn't a lot of "fights" this time so I was pretty sure that this was one of the best swim splits I've ever done but as I had no watch I'd no idea that it was even slower than last year by a few seconds. Good I didn't know that during the race so I was in a very good mood heading into transition. Right after getting out of water I must have cut my big toe on the left foot when I slipped slightly on one of the steel-stairs. T1 was just perfect execution ... pretty sure that was one of the fastest T1 split overall I was just wondering where all that blood came from but I just didn't care and put my shoes on 
Out on the bike course I just had to execute my power-plan and my nutrition/hydration plan and everything would be fine ... but as we all know sometimes things go wrong and you have to adjust your plan.
My plan was to use 1 BTA bottle for hydration to the bottom of the hill at 20k and then have a second aero-bottle (Specialized Virtue Aero) on the seattube for the climb. Well the plan was perfect but what I didn't plan was that heavy road hole I hit on the final short descent before the climb starts ... this little bastard knocked my bottle out of the bottle holder and was absolutely NO WAY to stop as I was way above 60km/h at that moment!
Luckily I had a little bit of perform left in my BTA bottle so I just kept pushing up the damn hill as the next aid-station was right at the end of the climb only 35' away.
The climb was exactly as planned - moderate to hard effort averaging 313 Watt (IF 0.98) with a VI of 1.00
During the climb I drove over a blue kinesio-tape some other athlete must have lost and this DAMN thing glued to my front tire I just couldn't remove it ... next thing that went wrong was at the next aid station - All my tanks were already totally empty so I wanted to grad 2 bottles (one for refilling my BTA and one for refilling ME). As I approached the aid station I couldn't believe what they offered me ... ALL OF THE PERFORM BOTTLES HAD THEIR CAPS OPEN!!
How the hell should I reload my BTA with that bullshit ... ok deal with it - just take one take a big mouthfull and try to get as much into BTA as possible (maybe it was 50% at most) - rest of the damn thing ran over my armpads.
I was lucky the road was dry on the downhill but I was terribly afraid to slip off on that stupid piece of tape which still was on my front tire so I really rode all the curves very defensive!
At this point the riding time was around 1:20 so a >2:00 overall and I only had maybe 1.5 bottles to drink. At this point I decided to shift all of my "meals" by 5' to compensate the missing calories.
Right at the end of the descend I got passed by one guy that was riding behind me for quiet a bit of time. That wouldn't be a problem but even I totally stopped pedaling the gap to him didn't increase fast enough for the marshal that approached just about 20''.
I couldn't believe my eyes he showed me a Black penalty card for "drafting" 
- I told him what happened but he just didn't listen and dropped back.
Holy cow I was pissed!! I never ever got a penalty and especially in this case it just wasn't fair ... could this race get any worse today?!?
After only 1-2 minutes the same marshal suddenly appeared again beside me and said "Your penalty is canceled! NO Penalty for #632! Just ride on!" 
What had happened?? Well at this point I didn't care but after the race I met some other athletes which were actually riding behind me watching this scene and they called the marshal and said to him that if he someone "deserves" a penalty than it has to be the guy who passed me! Funny thing in the end ...
Well the rest of bike split was more or less just plain Z3 work. I could pick up 2 bottles of perform right at the bottom of the hill so everything was back under control. Around 70km in the race the rain set in heavily but luckily without a lot of wind so it was not a "big" issue even though the temperatures were still only around 12degC.
On the final 10km I really had to reduce power A LOT (IF 0.74) because the course goes zig-zag through the villages and the corners were super slippery!
Back in T2 I noticed that there are almost NO bikes around so I knew I just had to hold my actual place and "the slot is mine" 
After executing an absolutely perfect T2 I headed out into the rainy run. My plan was to just give myself about 2-3k to "roll into" my desired race-pace. Actually I already hit my target pace already on the second kilometer so I just kept that rythm going for as long as possible.
As soon as I noticed sparkling "negative" thoughts I threw in a gel which helps a LOT mentally after about 3-4'. I also took a sip of perform at EVERY aid station which is a LOT more as I did in my last races but it worked absolutely flawlessly in all of my long runs and so did it this day 
Approaching the final 3k I got passed by maybe 1-2 runners and I passed about 5 so I was totally sure I'm still in the "the slot is mine" area. At this point my calfs felt like cramping if I would only go faster by 1-2sec so I decided to just keep the same effort not risking a total stop for a bad cramp. Sometimes slow is the new fast 
In the end I placed 7th in my AG which gave me a guaranteed slot
Here are the logs for deeper analysis - every feedback very welcome!
Bike: http://tpks.ws/74P1
Run: http://tpks.ws/uxEW
Comments
Very happy for you, Stefan! Its great to read a RR where an EN team member not only achieves his goal, but does so while overcoming multiple on-course problems. You da Man.
Love to see it. The smile says it all.
Thx for all the "flowers"
@Matt and all the other "metric-freaks" out there (including myself)
I did a comparison between 2013 and 2014 in terms of absolute metrics (power, pace, time) and relative ones (placing overall and in my division) ...
Especially the time difference to the AG winner shows pretty impressive how much "stronger" the field was this year
I just noticed I forgot the most critical bike metric:
Wow! Great job- especially with all your adjustments!
Great job and congrats on accomplishing your #1 goal