It’s been 2 weeks since Kona and I have finally gotten around to sorting the 1400+ photos that were taken during the trip. In the gallery above are 20 pictures from mostly before the Ironman.
In my previous post, the Ironman Kona race report, I summed up my race day as concisely as possible. What I refrained from saying earlier was the mix of emotions that occurred not only as the race unfolded, but the reflections on my performance that occupied (but not necessarily overwhelmed) my mind.
Going into Ironman Kona, I had a very strong season, with improvements in all three disciplines – off of not one, not two, but three second place finishes in the three half ironmans that I raced. I set personal bests all season long, and I wanted to keep the trend going with a strong performance on the Big Island. Aside from a personal best (non-wetsuit) 2.4-mile swim of 1 hour and 11 minutes, the 10 hour and 47 minute overall finish at Kona was no where near what I am capable of achieving. After the race, I tried my very best to learn from the experiences from the race and to not dwell on the result. (As an accountant and ‘numbers guy’, that is easier said than done)
Given the race-day conditions and knowing that I did my best definitely helped me move forward.
But what did I learn?
there is a lot of room for improvement in my nutrition plan
wet socks on the run exponentially catalyzed my foot blisters; I’ll be packing an extra pair of socks from now on!
my cycling power output could have been paced more evenly
Those are just a few ways that can potentially help me improve in my next Ironman, which will be IRONMAN Cozumel on November 27th, 2016. It’s a fairly short turn around, but I intend to tweak my training and race-day strategies in order to execute a strong finish!
However, before I can set my sights on Ironman Cozumel, be sure to mark your calendars for the TCS New York City Marathon on November 6th – I will be pacing the 3:10 finishers group (7:14 min/mile).
A total of 11 days have passed since racing the IRONMAN World Championships in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii and I’m finally ready to reflect how my race-day unfolded.
This was my second time to the island and I really wanted to do much better than my 2014 result. But more importantly, I was looking to have a strong performance – something that I have been building up to for almost a year. Unfortunately, just a couple days before the race, I came down with a fever and chills that lasted nearly 24 hours. I knew something was wrong when the water in Dig Me beach felt cold…not even the delicious coffee from the coffee boat helped warm me up. This sudden turn of events left me with one option – to rest as much as I can and to head into race day knowing that I will try my best.
And so I did just that. It wasn’t pretty but in the end, I got myself to the finish line in 10 hours and 47 minutes.
Swim – 1:11:34
If you have been following my progression throughout the year, you might already know that my weakest part of a triathlon is the swim. With half ironman swims ranging from 34 minutes to 39 minutes this season, I had predicted that I would swim close to 1:16 in Kona. So imagine the surprise when I exited the water nearly 5 minutes under my expected goal! I drafted off the swimmers in front of me for the majority of the swim and exited the water feeling good; pumped that I had taken 11 minutes off my 2014 Kona swim. I took my time in transition to put on sunscreen before heading off to grab my bike.
Bike – 5:19:06 (21.06 mph avg)
Anything can happen on the Kona bike course. The first two hours were fine; power was a little lower than expected and I was passing lots of faster swimmers along the way. It wasn’t until about 50 miles into the ride that I realized that the nutrition was not going down (or staying down) so I made the switch to try and take in more liquid nutrition at the subsequent aid stations. The approach to Hawi and the climb to the turnaround was met with a cross-wind coming over the right shoulder so I sat up during the climb to gain some more power.
I hit the turnaround, ditched my bottles and grabbed two new ones before the descent. Things were heating up and my nutrition plan had been compromised, either by the heat or the residual effects of my fever earlier in the week (or a combination of both).
Nonetheless, I hammered away as best as I could, knowing that I can still overcome a bad day by playing it smart. After descending from Hawi, I made sure that I would fuel up at each aid station since none of the solid foods were going down. At one of the last aid stations, I saw a volunteer hold up a bottle of Coke and I couldn’t resist. Coke never tasted so good after four and a half hours of drinking orange flavored Gatorade and water. With about 15 miles left, it was all headwind, a pretty steady one that forced me to stay tucked into aero-position in an effort to minimize drag.
I rolled into T2 feeling very hot, a little overcooked and ready to tackle the marathon run.
Marathon – 4:06:13
The original plan for the run was to negative split it by running the first half very easy. That plan went out the door at the very first aid station on the run when I felt light-headed and out of energy. My stomach was not having it today and I tried to nibble on some pretzels and bananas. At that point, I was hoping that this feeling would pass and that I would feel better. I decided to run between aid stations and walk through aid stations to grab enough water and nutrition.
Around mile 4, a guy ran up to me and told me to run with him. He introduced himself as Craig, wearing a Team Timex kit. We ran together for a couple of miles before he had to stop to take care of nature’s calling. But before we split up, he reassured me that “We will get to the finish line”. I used his words to motivate me at times when I wanted to just quit.
After walking up Palani Road towards Mile 11, lots of clouds rolled in providing some relief from the sun and heat. By this point of the marathon, some pretty nasty blisters had formed in under the balls of my feet. To remedy it, I took off my socks – which worked briefly but the pain from the blisters came back every time I ran longer than a couple of minutes.
There wasn’t much I could do to get rid of the blister pain and there was no medical tent along the Queen K. Along the highway, I saw some familiar faces…first Hugh and then Talbot, both of whom where not racing and were out cheering and taking photos.
photo credit: Hugh W.
After passing the point where spectators were not allowed on the Queen K, I made my best effort to not stop running until the aid stations. I hit the energy lab and grabbed an entire can of Red Bull, chugged it and maintained a slow but steady shuffle. For the first time during the marathon, I did not stop to walk at an aid station. Exiting the energy lab meant I had about an hour left on the run (at my current pace). The blisters were killing my feet and I tried to focus on the runners ahead of me to take my mind off the pain. Eventually, I got to Palani Road and it was all downhill to the finishing line.
With all I had left, I ran as fast as I could down Alii Drive and across the finish.
celebrating with Kristin on her 4th place Age group!
Ironman Kona was yet another humbling experience that heavily tested my mental ability to keep going forward when all seems to go wrong. I certainly did not materialize my training on race day, but was able to dig deep mentally and not give up.
Thank you to my family and friends that helped make this endeavor possible.
Thank you…
CEEPO Bikes, Marc-Andre, Gilles, Steve, and Joe for the bike support. The CEEPO Viper held up to those crazy crosswinds!
Team Chocolate Milk for the post-race recovery
ISM Seat, Brickwell Cycling, Headsweats, Honey Stinger and Rudy Project
The next blog post will include more about Kona, some more take-aways, and what is up next.
First and foremost, I want to thank Richard and his team at TOUGHMAN for consistently putting on such an excellent race experience. New for 2016 was a complete change of venue, from Croton Park at Croton-on-the-Hudson to Harriman State Park in Stony Point, New York. The entirety of the race now takes place in Harriman State Park, which makes logistics (i.e. parking) a lot more family, spectator & racer friendly.
Second, with the emergence of more and more races, it is important to choose races that will provide the greatest amount of joy – ask yourself, which race will I likely remember 5, 10, 15 years from now? For the past 5-consecutive years, I have raced TOUGHMAN races primarily because of its commitment to quality and the race experience and there’s no ‘M Dot’ involved, but you cannot beat the fun from watching the kids races, the post-race BBQ…and of course, the tough but rewarding race course.
On Saturday, I watched the TOUGHKids and TOUGHTEEN races while providing some bicycle support with Brickwell Cycling. Watching the little ones run through the finish line was really cool but the cutest part of the kids races would be the carnage of bikes in transition. Good thing some bikes had kickstands!
cute kiddie bikes in transition
Race Day – Sunday, September 18, 2016
I left the house at 5am and arrived at Lake Welch at 6am. Transition was right next to the enormous parking lot so prepping my transition area was a breeze. For the day, I was seeded race number 5…I was 5th overall last year so maybe it was a lucky coincidence? Nevertheless, I was sandwiched between eventual race winners: 2015 Ironman Lake Placid Women’s Champ Amy Farrell (#4) and Argentinian Professional Andres Darricau (#6). Lucky me!
Swim: By 6:15, I had finished my preparations and went straight to the swim start area to check out the swim course and water conditions. At the start line, I saw that my former Perfect Fuel teammate, Jeremy Howard was racing. I knew he would be first out of the water, so I told him that I’ll see him out on the bike course. The Elite wave started at 6:45am. There was plenty of room to spread out in Lake Welch so I never got elbowed during the swim. Within a few minutes, I found myself swimming alone and that would be the case until I reached the shore 34 to 35 minutes later.
When I got to my bike in transition, I noticed that most of the other bikes were gone, meaning I probably had one of the slowest swim splits compared to the other Elite athletes.
Bike: The game plan on the bike was to ride as conservatively as possible to produce a low normalized power to average power ratio. Since Harriman Park features a good amount of climbing, there weren’t many sections of the bike course that were flat – you were either climbing or descending. Within the first few miles of the bike, I was able to pass a handful of athletes. Then, for the remainder of the ride, I focused on front loading enough nutrition so that I wouldn’t get hungry on the run. After 2 hours and 33 minutes, I dismounted my CEEPO Viper and left T2 in 6th place.
i wanted to climb faster so shallow training wheels for the day
Run: A few minutes into the run, as I was going downhill, I spotted two guys ahead of me, with Jeremy in 5th position. They were at least 4-5 minutes ahead of me because they had just passed the 1-mile marker going back up the hill as I was going down. It wasn’t until the turnaround at 3-4 miles later that I would see them, so for most of the run, I kept telling myself that I would be content with a 6th place finish.
After the turnaround, I kept the pace going (around 6:50 min/mile) and calculated my run deficit to 3rd, 4th, and 5th place. I realized that I had bridged the gap by over 2 minutes in 3 to 4 miles, so I decided that I would focus on catching one guy.
At mile 8.5, I saw Jeremy and he had moved up to 3rd position, with two guys on his heels. This was the same uphill/downhill section in the first mile of the run, so I was able to calculate how far back I was – which was less than two minutes!
Shortly passing the mile 9 marker, we ran pass the transition area and did a quick out and back before heading out on a 5km out and back section. The guy that was in 2nd position the entire race had failed to make the turn around and went from 2nd to 5th. At mile 10, I passed him and the two guys that were behind Jeremy were only 10-15 seconds up the road. My leg turnover increased with each mile and shortly after passing the mile 11 marker, I overtook for 4th place. There was a slight incline towards the final turnaround of the run and that is where I passed for 3rd place.
By then, 1st place had probably already finished the race. The only guy left up the road was Jeremy. At the turn around with 1.5 miles to go, Jeremy was about 30 seconds ahead of me but as I creeped up for the pass, he stopped to stretch out his leg cramp. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Within the last 3 miles of the race, I went from 6th place to 2nd place. With SO MUCH EXCITEMENT in my head, I cruised the last net-downhill mile in 5:45 and finished in 2nd place overall!
Photo Credit: R.Barkan
Go Team Brickwell!
So what are the important take-aways of this race?
PATIENCE – from swimming alone, to biking alone, to running alone for the majority of the race, I was biding my time and staying consistent. My power output faded slightly during a short lull, but I managed to pick up the effort in the last 10 miles to set myself up for a strong run. And as for the run, the decision to not go hunting early on saved my legs from burning up, and with enough gas left in the tank, it gave me the extra boost the last 5 kilometers of the run.
NUTRITION – With only a couple of weeks until IRONMAN World Championships, the TOUGHMAN race was a keen opportunity to dial in my race nutrition. Throughout this season, I have learned that intaking just slightly more calories on the bike (and slightly less on the run) is what works best for me.
CADENCE – Yes, leg turnover has proven to be one of the key factors to sets me up for a strong run. (Thanks Derek!)
Thank you Brickwell Cycling for the best bike support in NYC & Long Island. And kudos to all my sponsors.
![IRONMAN World Championship Race Report [October 8, 2016]](https://chanthony.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/2016-10-10-09.36.48.jpg)
![TOUGHMAN Triathlon Race Report [Sept. 18, 2016]](https://chanthony.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016-09-17-09.59.58.jpg)
