Epic Camp Lite Kona 2017 - day 1

SATURDAY – DAY 1 Epic Camp Lite in Kona

BIKE Captain Cook figure 8 loop.

SWIM (Postponed) – 3.5km to Captain Cooks monument and back

RUN – 10km to the Pier

It’s always great to be back in Kona showing others around what the nutters have to deal with in October. We often start the camp with the Ironman ride which usually ends up in complete carnage so I changed things up this year with a softening day first up.

Todays ride was a great ride to open up the camp. After a ~7km warm up we hit the incredibly tough climb up Haleki’i St – I sent the majority of the crew along the new bypass with just myself, Jimmi Young, Andrew Lawrenson & Matt Young as I knew from past experience that they simply would not get up. As it turned out the 4 of us only just made it ourselves. This is seriously steep with pitches of 15-20% which my 42:23 resulted in my having to muscle my way up with plenty of time ~40rpm and I suspect lower! I also forgot my gloves so getting out of the seat with sweat pouring down my arms was a real challenge. That being said. I enjoyed the challenge of the climb but I was pretty smoked at the top – 11mins30 @ 324w despite some flat recovery sections (I forgot my HRM but the other guys said they were at their limit).

From the top of that climb it took forever to recover. The plan was to stop and swim mid ride across Kealakekua Bay to Captain Cooks monument (where Captain Cook was allegedly killed). Unluckily for us the island was experiencing some massive waves so swimming was not an option today. So we continued out ride with  a 7km handicap KOM. It’s fair to say I got some of the handicapping accurate, some was pitiful. John Fredrickson took the prime with a good surge at the line meanwhile Margaret Wood took the QOM. I was 3^rd over the line sitting ~300w most of the way up without too much difficulty despite sweating buckets.

Off the bikes we ran an easy 10km down to the pier to introduce the team to the Ali’I Drive section of the ironman course. It was bloody hot but actually felt manageable despite being the first run over here. A bit of nipple rash but thankfully no blood drawn on the new camp t-shirt.

We made another attempt to swim at the pier later in the day but were thwarted again partly because of the huge waves rolling in but also the canoe boat racing.

One big challenge over here it staying on top of hydration post training. I feel like I am forever playing catch up and will need to look for some fluid variation over the coming days.

I threw down a massive salad at Lava Java for dinner along with everything else in sight in preparation for the big ride tomorrow on the ironman course.

Bike file http://tpks.ws/sl0xg

Run file http://tpks.ws/DHrNi

Here is the ride we did (click on the image to see the clip):