After my disappointing experience at Waterfront Triathlon earlier this year (my fault, not theirs) it probably seemed crazy for me to even consider attempting the Hawaii Ironman 70.3 in Kona.  But…I really needed to redeem myself and how could I turn down a chance to do it on the fabled Queen K?  Besides…I’d already paid the registration money and told everybody I was going to do it.

The Race:

It’s a 1.2 mile swim, followed by a 56-mile bike, followed by a 13.1 mile run.

My week started off not really as expected.  As you probably know from my previous posts my Grandfather passed away somewhat suddenly the week before and I flew to Indianapolis to attend his memorial service.  While I had absolutely no regrets or hesitation about doing that it also meant that 6 days before my big race I was putting my body through 23 hours of travelling and an out-and-back to the Eastern Time Zone.  Not really an ideal taper.  Still, I was excited to take on the race so after returning to Honolulu from Indianapolis on Wednesday night, I turned around the following morning and headed to Kona as planned.

Pre-Race

Arriving in Kona I got my rented Mercury Milan from Avis and headed off to my hotel, the Paniolo Greens at Waikoloa. 

First let’s talk briefly about the car: The Milan drives o.k. and it’s comfortable enough.  I would say that I generally found it to be a sort of unremarkable domestic sedan with one notable exception…the Microsoft Sync system.  I didn’t bother to connect my iPod to it (didn’t think I had the right cable anyhow) but I *DID* use the built-in Bluetooth capability to connect to my mobile phone.  That meant that I could use the built-in speaker phone when I was driving the car and on the couple of occasions I had to try it I thought it was quite good.  Aside from that the car was just o.k.  As I feared the trunk wasn’t quite large enough to accommodate Keira so I had to take her front wheel off and put her in the back seat.  (if you don’t know that Keira is my bike then you’re probably fairly horrified right now)

Now let’s talk about the hotel.  When I made the reservation it said it was a “One-bedroom Villa.”  I wasn’t quite sure what that meant but it conjured up thoughts of some sort of little cottage.  Not quite.  Actually when I got to the room it turned out to be basically a two-bedroom, two-bathroom, condo.  Full kitchen.  Very nice.  200 feet from the pool/jacuzzi, which I knew would come in handy.  The Paniolo Greens is a great value for the money.

Thursday was spent driving the bike course and checking out the beach.  I had thought I might go for a swim on Thursday on the swim course but…I just didn’t.  More on that later perhaps.  I also stopped on Thursday and picked up Keira from the transport company, put her pedals on and took her back to the hotel and finished off with a light dinner at Romano’s.

Friday morning I got up early and took one more drive up and down the bike course.  Yep, it’s hilly.  Then to the airport to pick up Irene – who was coming in from Italy to do the race.  We went to race registration at the Fairmont, where I got to meet Lolly Rogers, whom you might remember being featured on the 2007 Kona Ironman telecast.  Nice lady; great spirit.  Race registration went fine – and then we were off to a Open Water Swim Clinic that the guys from LifeSport coaching were putting on.

I had sort of hoped they’d get us in the water and show us a few things, but unfortunately this was purely lecture and no lab.  He had a few good tips and reiterated what we already knew: mass swim starts in triathlon are a contact sport.  People are going to hit you and you’re going to hit people.  That's just what happens when you get 1200 people in a small space and have them all start swimming for the same buoy at once.

After the seminar I went down to the water and took a quick swim.  I was hoping to get comfortable in the water before the race but that didn’t really happen.  Soon it was time for Irene and I to head back to the Fairmont for the mandatory athlete’s meeting (see picture)

Lot of triathletes in the room for a briefing by the Run, Bike and Swim course directors, the director of Aid Stations and the head referee.  The Run director tried to scare us all by telling us his setup crew asked if there were any downhills.  The Swim director made light of it by admitting that the swim was mostly uphill and the Bike director figured we already knew the bike was going to be a hilly experience and didn’t bother making any jokes about it.

The head referee explained what a red card was and what a yellow card was, cautioned us not to litter and explained the penalty tent procedure.

One bit of info that caught my ear was the swim director emphasizing that it was o.k. to take a rest on the swim course if we needed to.  We could grab onto one of the lifeguard kayaks or surfboards and catch our breath or empty our goggles – as long as the lifeguard didn’t advance us along the course.  We could, whenever we were ready, then continue on in the race.  Naturally stopping on the swim costs precious time, but at least for those of us who aren’t great swimmers there was that safety net of knowing that if we really had to, we could stop for a moment.

The other thing that caught my eye was the new diagram of the swim course – it was NOT the same as the one in the athlete’s packet.  More on that in a few moments…

After the athlete’s meeting, I took Keira to get her checked in at Hapuna for T1.  We have to check in our bikes and helmets the day before and leave them overnight.  Then I headed to the airport to pick up Carrie who, thankfully, was coming in for the weekend and to support me at the race. 

When Carrie arrived she told me that a friend of ours from Oahu who was there to do the race, had planned to sleep in his car that night!  Well, wasn’t going to let a friend and fellow triathlete sleep in his car the night before a big race when we had a spare bedroom.  So we called him and he drove up to our hotel and moved into our second bedroom for the evening.

Dinner was Subway that night but I didn’t have much of an appetite and by 9PM we were in bed with multiple alarms set for 4AM to head to the race.

I didn’t sleep much.

Swim – 1.2 miles

4AM came early but I didn’t sleep much anyhow so I was ready to go.  Ate a PowerGel, drank some water, got my gear on and we hopped in the car for the trip down to Hapuna.  Once we arrived there my first task was to find a stand-up bike pump to top off Keira’s tires. Fortunately a friend had one handy I could borrow and that task was accomplished in short order.

Next up – figuring out where to drop off my Swim-Bike bag.  There’s a long path from the water up to T1 and apparently you just drop your bag (in the appropriate place by race number) along that path.  Not many had, yet, but I did.  Worked out fine.

From there it was a stroll to the shore where a couple of dozen volunteers were marking race numbers.  I walk up to a volunteer and much to my surprise it was my friend Susan! (She’s an Ironman herself and was in from Chicago to support the race)  It was great catching up with her but to be honest my gaze kept turning to the swim course.

In the athlete’s packet the swim course is shown to be a big clockwise rectangle, with the start and finish at the lower left-hand corner.  The start is shown to be straight out from the beach, towards the open sea, then a right-turn at the buoy on the top corner, a long stretch across the bay along the top of the rectangle, before another right turn back towards the beach and so on.  However as it turns out the start and finish were NOT at the corner of the rectangle, but rather in the middle.  So the first bit of the swim was to the left, along the beach, for a couple hundred meters, before making a right-hand turn and going towards the open sea.

Let’s be honest…I don’t like open water swimming.  I’m just not that comfortable when I’m a ways away from shore, in water WAY over my head, getting pushed around by swells and currents.  I’m always a little fearful that I’m going to founder, tire out and drown.  It’s especially a problem in deep, murky, water because I can’t see the bottom and have no sense of if I’m making progress.

Finally…to compound all of that, I really don’t like full contact swimming.  As I said above, a triathlon swim start can be a full contact sport.  People hit you, you hit them, people swim over the top of you, grab your feet, kick you…they don’t usually mean to, it’s just that you have 1500 people all swimming in a confined space and so there’s a lot of what you might call “incidental contact”.  For me that’s just one more thing to add to my apprehension.  But after much encouragement I zip up my Blue Seventy suit and I’m in the water waiting for the start.

My strategy in triathlon swim starts is fairly simple.  I want clear water.  I don’t want to play roller derby with 10 other swimmers.  So I start at the back, I tend to start towards the outside (away from the first buoy) and I let the faster, more aggressive, swimmers start in front of me.  When the gun goes off, most of them will charge off, splashing and digging.  They’re all faster than I am anyhow so I might as well let them go first so I don’t have to worry about who is swimming up behind me.  At Kona I took it a step further.  There’s no rule that says you have to start swimming when the gun goes off.  So the gun fired…and I stood there, thigh-deep in the water.

I stood there for a good 90 seconds or so, just watching the masses swim away.  Then I took a good deep breath, waded a few steps further in, adjusted my goggles and set off.  That plan worked very well.  For the most part I had good clean water around me.

Three Things About the Swim

1. Starting the first 300 meters or so parallel to the beach was great.  Helped build my confidence.  I got warmed up, soothed my nerves, got into the rhythm, before I had to steel myself for the deeper water.  By the time I reached the first buoy and made the right-hand turn I felt pretty good.
2. The water at Hapuna is super clear.  They said we’d be able to see the bottom all the way around and they were right.  Even though we were supposedly in 70+ feet of water at some points I could still see the bottom.  And that was reassuring – I could see that I was making progress.  Also it helped with navigation, I didn’t have to sight as often to make sure I was swimming straight because I could just follow the coral or sand ridges at the bottom.
3. It seemed like almost every time I turned my head to breathe I could see a paddleboarder or kayak nearby.  That bolstered my confidence too because I knew that if I got into trouble somebody was close at hand to help.  Lots of support along the course.

Cruisin’

So, much to my surprise I cruised the swim pretty well.  I found myself passing some of the slower swimmers (there are slower swimmers?!) and before I knew it I was making the turn back towards the beach and starting to hear the crowd.  The last stretch along the beach until we got back to the exit seemed to take forever…but I could see from the bottom that I was making decent time.  I didn’t want to wear myself out before the bike so I was just staying patient.

Past the rocks, make a left, the crowd is getting loud now and the exit is directly ahead!  Just a short trip to the beach!  Quickly my finger tips touched sand and I stood up, elated!  Made it!  A short shallow wade to the beach, pulling off my goggles.  There’s Carrie cheering for me!  I glance at the clock: 53 minutes.  Not bad for me.  Well under the cut-off.  Now across the grass towards the path leading to T1.

TO BE CONTINUED….