After all the months of waiting and planning….it was finally here: Kona Race Week! Here is a run down of my days leading up to the 2011 Ironman World Championships. This is my first trip to Kona and Hawaii, so I knew this would be an amazing experience both as a triathlete and a tourist.
My bike was shipped out earlier in the week before I left, thanks to the Specialized “You Tri, We Fly” program (they paid for roundtrip shipping via FedEx….huge thanks to them!), and I received a call from Bike Works (local Kona bike shop where my bike was shipped) on Thursday; so my bike is there….now time for me to go too!
Saturday, October 1:
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| Flying in over the lava fields |
Sunday, October 2:
I was feeling good when I woke up, and given the 6 hour time change, I was wide awake at 4 AM.....so might as well to get going. My first workout to check the conditions was a 45-minute run around 8:45 AM. All I can say is: Wow! It was hot. It was humid. My pace was normal, but HR was consistently 5-8 bpm higher than I was used to at home in Michigan. I was glad I still had nearly 6 days to acclimate to the conditions. I would need every minute to adjust.
After that I picked up my bike from Bike Works, and gave it a good once over. Everything was in good working order and was ready to go. That was a big relief to know it’s ready to go. The afternoon was spent driving the bike course to see the terrain and conditions first-hand. It was everything I had expected: hot, windy and lots of lava. The first 35 miles heading north of Kona is basically a lava desert. No plants or any real signs of life; just small, brown tufts of scrub grass and black lava. Pretty tough conditions. After the turn at Kaiwahee, the rolling hills begin to climb to Hawi, plant life returns, but the wind direction becomes a steady headwind all the way to the turnaround. After seeing this I was excited at the challenge it provides, but also realized that the winds can play a huge role in the difficulty in the course. Regardless of the winds, there is no doubt it will be hot, and the temperature alone will have a huge effect of my race day performance.
Monday, October 3:
Again, up early thanks to the time change, except this time I “slept in” to about 4:15. I was excited for today, since I will be going for my first swim on the course. My plan was to swim about 20-25 minutes out, then return to the pier. I will admit I was a bit tentative at the thought of swimming so far out into the ocean for my first swim. As I arrived at the pier, the nervousness went away (for the most part) since there were so many people there, both watching and in the water.
My first thought as I got into the water was how warm and perfectly blue the water was. Then I started swimming and once I started looking around under water I was just amazed at the sights! The water was calm and perfectly clear, and there was fish and coral all around. Way better than staring at the black line in the pool! As I swam further out the water got deeper, but the sights were still just as cool! The time flew by and before I knew it, I was turning around heading back. It was unlike any swim I have ever done. Typically in lake swims the water is anything but clear, and here was absolutely picture perfect! I could not wait to get back in tomorrow!
Around mid-day, I drove out to the Scenic Overlook point about 15 miles North of Kona and rode part of the bike course. As expected, it was hot and windy. The temperature on my Garmin started at 90F and reached 100F before it finally leveled off. Similar to my run I noticed an elevated HR for a given power level, which was given me more to think about as I finalized my pacing plan.
Tuesday, October 4:
As I woke up, I was so blown away by the swim yesterday; I had to do another, even though it was not called for in my plan. Unfortunately, the conditions were not as good as yesterday. A large swell was coming in, and there was a dangerous surf warning with 8' to 12' waves. This made the water quite a bit more choppy, much larger swells on the course and the water was much more cloudy. Even with this, it was still a nice swim. I kept it short and ended up at the Coffees of Hawaii floating coffee bar for a mid-swim coffee. Thanks guys, it was awesome! After the swim, I went to registration picked up my race packet. After the packet pick-up, I headed over to the SLS3 Concept Store off Alii Drive and finally met Sebastian Linke in person. After all the emails between us, it was nice to have a chance to meet up and get an in depth review of all their current and upcoming products.
I was easy to tell the race was getting closer as the number of people walking around Kona seemed to double every day I was here. Today was no exception. There were people everywhere, and it was easy to feel the energy and excitement of this race. The hardest part was to NOT get caught up in it and remain focused on the race and what needed to happen to be prepared.
My other workout for the day was another run. Similar to last time, it went well, but it was hot and humid….and again noticed an elevated HR for a given pace. So after 2 days, not much heat acclimatization had occurred, but again, nearly 4 days until race day, so there was still time.
In the afternoon, a good friend arrived, Bryan Sieber. Since it was also his first time in Kona we took in all the sights and events that we could. It started with the Parade of Nations up Alii Drive to the expo area. While it was fun to be a part of, I’m not sure if I would do it again. Not really my type of thing. However, the expo was another story….
When we arrived in the expo, we couldn’t believe our eyes. The place was rocking! There were DJs playing music from several of the tents and free beer was flowing! Not at all what was expected at the expo with a bunch of triathletes! We hung around there for a while (until it closed at 8 PM) and had the opportunity to meet many of the pros. The highlights include Chris McCormack, Craig Alexander, Jordan Rapp, Faris Al-Sultan, Terenzo Bozzone, Miranda Carfrae and Tony Kanaan. It was a really cool experience, and all the professionals were very kind and patient with all of our picture requests. I can imagine it has to be a crazy time, but they all took the time to wait for us to take pictures with all of them. Very cool of all of them.
Wednesday, October 5:
Now race day was getting closer, it was time to get everything finalized, before the rest of my family arrives. Yet again, the day started early, this time at 5:30 AM, and my first order was go for my final “real” swim before the race. Similar to yesterday, the conditions were tougher than the first day, with larger swells and cloudy water. Also, my swim ended with a coffee on the floating coffee bar. It’s just too cool to pass up!
After that, I met up with Bryan and we headed out for a bike ride from town and then out on the Queen K to the airport. I think I was finally getting adjusted to the heat. It still felt warm, but I did not notice the elevated HR that I had as recently as yesterday. I also noticed that my RPE seemed to fall back in-line (or closer) to what my power output was. This was a good sign, and a big relief that maybe I have turned to the corner on my heat acclimatization.
The rest of the day was spent going over my bike for another set of race day adjustments to make it perfect for race ready. Then at 4 PM was the Slowtwitch Party. This was an awesome event, where I was finally able to put some “real names” and faces to the Slowtwitch posters. It was fun to meet many of the frequent posters on the forum, including John Cobb and Mark Cote from Specialized.
Thursday, October 6
The Underwear Run. What else can be said. It’s a Kona tradition and was a must-do on my race week list. I think the story is that it started many years ago as a way for American’s to poke a little fun at all the Europeans running around all over town in their Speedos all week. Now it’s a charity run that donates all proceed to local groups, and it’s less of a run and more of a 5 min jog around the block to a parking lot with group stretching. All I can say is it was interesting…..
Besides that, this was a rest day and time to finally start to focus on the race day. As I mentioned earlier it was hard to stay out of the energy that has been building all week, but it was important to try to get the focus back.
Most importantly, today is the day when my wife (Erica) and 3-year old son (Nolan) finally arrive. Up until now they have been at home, and I was looking forward to them finally being here. I picked the up from the airport, and then we immediately went to the Welcome Dinner. I won’t go into all the details of the Welcome Dinner, but it is definitely worth it. Much better than the circus tent style that I had at Lake Placid and Coeur d’Alene. Unfortunately, about 2 hours into dinner, a monsoon style downpour started and shortened the dinner and led to a very abbreviated Athlete Meeting. In the end we were out of there by 8:15, which was also kind of nice to be done so early.
Friday, October 7:
It’s finally here: The Day before Race Day. The final countdown for all my preparations and planning. The heavy rain continued periodically throughout the night, and I heard that it was not advised to go swimming in the ocean today. I’m not sure how true it was, but it didn’t seem worth the (small) risk of getting sick from all the runoff from the heavy rains. So my pre-race session was primarily a run, which went perfectly. HR and pace correlated exactly as they did in my training. After that, I went back to the condo to do the final bike and run transition bag check and time to drop off my bike. The bike drop off was pretty cool. You are first guided through the bike count corrals, with lots of spectators, and then to you are given a personal escort to rack your bike and drop off your bags. As I dropped off my run bag, to my surprise, I found out there is no access to these bags on race day morning. This was a bit problem for me since I (wrongly) assumed I could place my run gel flask in my bag in the morning. It wasn’t a huge problem since I had plenty of time to go back to the condo and make my flask, but it was an inconvenience and a wasted hour of my day. Oh well, now I know….
After my bike and bags were done, then it was time for my pre-race dinner and time to relax. All went according to schedule and by 9:00 PM, I had the lights out, ready to go….
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