Kona 70.3 Race Report

I'd trained pretty hard for this race and was hoping, expecting and in due course got a strong performance. 

This year is the first time a rolling start has happened which I was sceptical about. How it works is 4 athletes start every 5 seconds grouped by age and predicted swim times within those groups. The result is a much less congested swim, transition and bike. Overall the feedback is very positive but the downside is you don’t know your placing as everyone does not start together. You also loose the mayhem of the mass start which I like - I’d rather see wave starts by age group myself.

PRE RACE

Breakfast of two em’s power cookie bars, X endurance  and an  English muffin with peanut butter was at 4:30am to allow time to digest for the 6:30am start.

My warm up was very limited as I wanted to ensure I was on the front row in the far right position. The reason for that was I breath to my left so I can then keep an eye on those I start with and there was a slight right to left current. My plan was to aim to the right of the first buoy on the clockwise course if I was leading so by starting on the right I would not need to swim over others.

Our 40-44 age group was the first to start of the ~1200 athletes and I was in the front row of our age group. When the gun went off I suspected I would be leading and I was but another guy was going toe to toe with me so rather than waste energy I went straight onto his feet to get a good draft. Around 200m in another guy came storming through so I switched feet until the first turn buoy at which time I made a bit of a rookie error. As we turned the buoy I left the guy who I was originally following onto the feet of my new lead out swimmer trusting that he would stay there as I slotted into position three. Much to my displeasure after a while we drifted off the new leader and by the time I realised it would have taken a big effort to bridge the gap. So instead I conserved my energy and stayed on the draft I had knowing while he might loose 30-60sec I would save energy for later on. So I exited the swim in 3^rd place.

Onto the bike there is a nice climb to T1 then climbing more once on the bike up to the famous Queen K highway. Thankfully my legs felt OK (they were feeling very dead yesterday) and I settled into my work hitting the power I wanted. Patience was the name of the game as I was only very very slowly gaining on the two ahead of me. It probably took me close on 40km to hit the front which is close to the turn point in Hawi at which time I was really starting to hit my straps. Power was coming relatively easy but frustratingly my HR monitor was not working, I suspect I was going a little easy. 

The forecast was for strong winds but disappointingly that was not eventuating, it’s been light winds all week compared to what it can blow. So what that meant was coming down from Hawi, which is a gentle staircase down, required a lot more pedalling than usual. I was a little lazy in this period of the race but part of that was tactical as my stomach was just ever so slightly on edge and I really wanted to get my HR down to help clear that up.

The rest of the ride my just me and my machine with nobody else in sight. I had a moto lead rider and the good guy who was running tech support nicely picked up my spare tubular I dropped and put it on my bike at the end of the ride.

Nutrition was: 2 bottle infinit, 2 serves UCAN, 1 gel and 1 no dose tablet.

Off the bike and I was feeling pretty good about the position I was in. Nutrition status was OK, legs felt good and I was not yet overheating. After racking my bike and grabbing my transition bag I set off to put on my shoes thinking the area would be obvious or someone who yell at me where to go. I managed to run straight past the designated area and was on the run course before I knew it. So I just changed on the spot and someone took my gear back for me.

The course at this race is really challenging and even more so since they changed it to 2 laps of 10.5km. There is only about 3km of road running per lap with the rest being on spongy grass up and down golf fairways, on golf cart paths, through tunnels and generally just twisting and turning, going up and down all day long. I felt comfortable for most of the first lap and pace was about where I wanted it (aiming for average pace ~4:10/km). Towards the end of the lap you get an opportunity to check out who is behind. I had such a big lead I started to switch off, ease off and start thinking about Roth. To completely empty the tank and dig really deep here would take some edge off for Roth even though it is 5 weeks away. I was also getting bloody hot on the 2^nd lap as well. Into the final km’s and I could hear the commentators calling me in. It’s been a long time since I won a sizeable race so I was thinking what to do down the finish chute to not look like a tool. I ended up with a single fist pump before hitting the tape and doing the obligatory interview.

I was certainly in much better shape at the end of today’s race compared to past years. Winning was a nice buzz but more importantly I put in a strong and steady performance which is perfect springboard into Roth.

Some solid performances by all the camp athletes which again highlights that acclimation from heavy training out trumps a heavy taper when dealing with hot Kona conditions.

Kona slots are back next year for the 15^th anniversary so the competition will be a lot hotter.

Swim -  http://tpks.ws/9Zfag
Bike -  http://tpks.ws/LvqUt 
Run - http://tpks.ws/e8Ubb

A short 10km loosen ride to pick up the car and the day was done.

Right now I’m feeling pretty good about Roth.

We’ll be back to Kona next May – will we see you there?