While its still fresh I thought to write down some things that may be helpful to others.
First off, in the lead up to
the race I was ready to accept an injury that would set back the
training and possibly the race, but it never happened. This was the
first time I had ever come through the build up and gotten
to the race without having to truncate the training or adapt to an
injury. It may never happen again. Adapting to injury is just part of
the game and I was ready to accept it, adapt and still have a great race
if possible.
On race week I was ready to get
sick. I did have a bit of a stuffy head, but nothing that sapped my
energy or required more rest. Another blessing. But I was ready for
sickness and would have been OK had it happened.
It often does for me. I did get a chance to meet up with the tower 26 guys for a couple swims in Kona, thats the first picture below.
On race morning, as I was
putting on my swimskin, my zipper broke. I had gotten there early and
had time to trouble shoot it before I needed to start my swim warm up.
Some volunteers tried to help zip it up, and no
way. So, we safety pinned the back together so that it was "pretty
good". As I bent over to pick up my goggles, some of the safety pins
bent and broke. "OK, I cant bend over until after the swim" I thought.
We replaced a couple of the safety pins, and
I thought to myself, "what if I cant rip off the safety pins after the
swim, and Im sitting there stuck in my swim skin?" "Well, what other
option do I have? I can swim in my race suit, or just cross that bridge
when it comes" I chose the later and got
in to warm up. I had to truncate my swim warm up, but again "no big
deal, we do what we can, doesnt need to be perfect"
Swim went well enough. Early
on, there were a couple places in the swim when I knew I could have
bridged up to another swim group a few meters ahead, but knew that to do
that I would spike my heart rate up and the current
group I was in was moving well enough. On the way back after the
turnaround, I could feel the pace in my swim group dropping and my
effort was getting too easy. That was when I turned on the jets and did
bridge up to the next group. I did that three times
on the return leg and soon found a good group that was still moving
well to finish with.
Swimskin came right off. So glad I didnt waste time or mental energy worrying about it.
Onto the bike. At the
turnaround on the Kuakini Hwy, some random dude came to my inside,
pushed me way out to where I almost hit some spectators and had to
almost come to a complete halt to avoid a crash. I mentioned
to him what I thought of that, but he responded in some other language
(probably with the same sorts of words). "Oh well, Im still on two
wheels, let it go" I eventually found a nice pace line to work with and
we cruised. We had two officials next to us
for most of the queen K so staying legal and being very vigilant on our
spacing was sapping a bit of my mental energy, but worth it. The
spacing on the aid stations was super frequent, so I was skipping some
early on and hopping up toward the front of the
paceline (which was probably 50+ people strong). Heart rate was
predictable for the watts I was seeing, which was nice. I was prepared
for a mismatch and was going to follow HR if needed, but again, things
were clicking. Nutrition was going as I had done
in so many training sessions. When we turned up the road to Hawi things
spread out a bit and some of the people were dropping off. I remember a
few times, when the group would push up a hill and in order to stay
with them I needed to respond. I had prepared
myself for this and decided to stay with them. I had trained for these
and felt like it was worth the tradeoff at this point so that I had
strong people to stay with on the descent.
No crosswinds coming down
Hawi. Would have been fine it there would have been. I was prepared to
be blown across the road and not be able to drink or take my hands off
the handlebars for the entire descent.
Turning back onto the queen K I
was ready for a stiff headwind to smack me in the face. There was a
bit of one, but it wasnt crazy, another nicety. This was the point at
which I wanted to raise my HR by 5 beats and
hold it until we finished. So, I dropped my head and found that HR.
In doing so I dropped my paceline group (except for one guy) and I lead
the paceline for about 30 minutes. Another group caught me and passed
me and I joined them. My HR came down a bit,
but we were moving pretty good, so I stayed with them. Then a couple
guys came through and I jumped on with them and HR came back up. I had
to be very aware to stay with these guys. At aid stations I sometimes
had to push hard to catch them if they took
off and sometimes they would drop me on a descent, but if I was patient
I knew I would catch them on a hill. Again I felt prepared for this
having done lots of training and racing on Zwift. Officials were also
hanging out, so I had to be right on with my
spacing. There were several times I asked myself if I was pushing too
hard on the bike, and I could feel that my legs were getting fatigued.
At those times I would remember my hard training days, when I would get
off my long bike ride, thinking, "there is
no way I can run on these legs" and yet I would feel OK after a mile
or two. So, I took confidence in that I was following my race plan and I
knew that my legs could take it.
Out onto the run course I
focused on getting cool and following my race plan. I was supposed to
go out at a 7:30 pace for the first two miles and see where the HR
landed. Honestly it was hard to go that slow, but I
knew that later on these early miles would sabotage the last 10 miles
if I let my ego dictate the pace. The shortened portion of Ali'i drive
was easy. Super easy. I was in 4th place in my age group and I was
getting passed. "Is that guy in my age group?"
"What about this guy?" "Doesn't matter, Go slow, keep heat off, get in
nutrition" I shuffled up Palani. "Follow the Doug plan-Hold back, hold
back, attack" Once my watch clicked off mile 9 I let my HR come up 5
more beats. Things were heating up and I
could tell that I needed to take a touch more time in the aid
stations. By mile 15 it was getting harder to hold that higher HR. I
had prepared for this and knew that while my perceived effort was going
to be getting harder and harder, my HR would likely
stay around the same or even drop and so would my pace. So, when my
watch would click off the mile lap, I had prepared myself ahead of time
to know that the pace and HR would be slower and lower, but I would
"feel" like I was pushing high Z2 effort (high
Z2 effort for me is just below threshold). This helped me not to lose
confidence in the plan nor in the need to keep pushing. In my early
Ironman marathons I had experienced this reality and let it get me down,
"why push this hard if I just getting slower?"
Not today!!
Another game I play in my head
on the run is thinking that the race is only half over at mile 18. This
was the point I had "planned" on executing the "attack" Doug had put in
the plan. Mile 18 came and my legs had
no "attack" in them. The real "attack" was the mental one saying, Im
sticking with the nutrition plan, and Im going to increase my effort to
low Z3 until the next aid station. At the next aid station Ill
re-assess. Amazingly enough, each time I hit an aid
station I found a new way to keep pushing at that effort level. My HR
wanted to drop. My pace wanted to drop. I was pushing harder and going
slower. I had no idea where I was in my age group. I figured I may be
in the top ten. I would just be happy to
finish at this point, who cares about placing. I did pass a few
people, and I got passed by a few people. I would say this was the
"dark" part of my race. During this time I found my mind reflecting on
those long runs when Doug would give the "70 min at
Z1, 20 min at Z2" run and my mindset during the beginning of the Z2
part. "I cant go Z2 at this point." Yet, somehow I would get that
friggen HR up into Z2 for 20 min. I knew I could mentally hold Z2 or
even Z3 when everything else seems to be falling apart.
At mile 22 I saw a buddy on his
mountain bike, giving people splits. "Jim, can you tell me where I am
in my age group?" This was a touch dangerous, could go either way.
"Your in 4th place, but
5th place is 40 seconds behind you." Ok, that was motivating. I pushed
on. I passed some people and got passed by some. Coming down onto
Ali'i some dude said that I was in 5th and that
4th place was the guy in the yellow sock ahead of me. Yellow sock? I
cant see colors at this point. Im barely able to not fall over. I had
no idea where 6th place was. I pushed on. Ali'i drive seemed strangely
long this year. I saw my family, gave them
a quick high five, my wife says, "go finish!" Ok, OK (see the video https://youtu.be/QVMWMgPUkuM).
4th place finished 40 seconds
ahead of me, 6th place 40 seconds behind. Afterwards I realized that a
podium spot (or for another race, kona slot) was mine to take or mine to
lose the
entire duration of the race. Staying mentally present was the single most important factor in my success that day.
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