In the next three blog post I will recount my race starting with the day before and swim, then the bike ride and the last post will be the run and post week recovery etc. The posts will be factual with a little commentary and a bit of coaching advice. I do not only want this to this be a record of the race but also a reference for my athletes that ask what to do the day before, during and after the race. I hope you enjoy it.
The day before that race I was rather calm. I only worked a little bit at the MarkAllenOnline booth and stayed off my feet. The big thing to do for me was to do my final bike check. Mathew, a good friend that I met at a bike fitting certification earlier in the year offered me a tune up as he was going to be working in Kona during the race. So I met him early in the morning and he checked my bike. We looked at my tires and although they seemed fine they had these tiny little superficial holes. Mathew said, 'you know what Luis, for a big race like this, I like new tires'. Me too I said. I had brought a brand new set of tubular Continental Sprinters (bought them on eBay). So I went back to the condo to get them and Mathew glued them for me. We made sure we left a small section without glue in case of a flat. This section allows you to get the tire off the rim and change it. Ask Norman Stadler about this trick. I am sure he knows all about it now :-). I went for a 15 minute spin to check all my gears and the bike felt great. I went back to the condo and changed for my 15 minute run. All this time I was drinking water to insure I stayed hydrated. I was supposed to also swim but I was hungry so I skipped it. In the end I ended up not swimming I just had to make sure I got a good warm up on race morning
I went back to the condo and finished getting all my gear together. One of the things I do, is insure I have thermo-tabs salt tablets everywhere. This way if I lose some I can get more somewhere. I put them on my bike, on my fuel belt that I carry on the run and in the small pocket of my run shorts. The one thing I forgot to get was little zip locks. You need these to make sure the tablets do not get wet. I called my friend Charles Johnson as he was here watching the race and offered to help me in any way. I called him and ask him if he could go to a jewelry store and see if they would sell him some little zip lock bags. An hour later Charles was at my condo with the little zip lock bags. Thanks Charles!
Later in the afternoon I went to the transition area and checked my bike along with the bags for my run and bike. Unlike many other races, in Kona you have to have all this stuff checked in at the transition area the day before the race. I brought along some garbage bags to cover my bike as the forecast was for heavy rain. In fact there was a flash flood warning for the island. I took some photos and went back to the condo. Mark Allen called to see what we were going to do for dinner. We decided to stay in and cook as Mark said that is what he used to do.
My buddy Rick who was staying with us volunteered to cook so I decided it was time to go have a talk with the island and Madam Pele. Kona is a very spiritual place and the local Hawaiians have a goddess of the lava. Her name is Madam Pele. So I went by the lava near the ocean and asked Madam Pele for safe passage across her lava fields. This was a tradition I learned from Hawaii Ironman veterans in the early 90’s. I have always had fairly good luck here so I wanted to keep that going. I also light a small candle at the condo for Madam Pele and wrapped a piece of Lava with a long leaf and placed it at a secret place. This last one is a traditional Hawaiian offering to the gods. You will see many of these offerings on hiking and run trails in Hawaii.
Many people ask me what to eat the night before an Ironman. I eat a regular and balanced meal. I do not like overloading with carbohydrates as that can upset the stomach. For that same reason I stay away from anything spicy, too rich or that can be potentially bad. So fish and salad is usually out. I had some steak and pasta. The one thing to do is to load up on salt. I sweat a ton and salt is a big issue so all week I was adding lots of salt to my diet. In Kona you can buy Hawaiian sea salt so that is what I used. Using this salt is also a good idea here because you will most likely be drinking some salt water during the swim portion of the race. Better get the body acquainted with it before the race. The whole evening Mark Allen was on my case about where my bottle of water was. He wanted to make sure I was drinking and drinking. Ok, ok I said. But frankly, I am glad he did because I was getting caught up on other things sometimes and was forgetting to keep drinking.
Before I went to bed I prepared some pancakes for breakfast. My routine is to wake up ay 3:00 AM and have breakfast right away. So I pre-prepared them for fast service. By eating them at 3:00 AM they will be digested by the time the cannon goes off at 7:00 AM. I headed to bed at about 11:00 AM after a shower; we do not use air conditioning as part of the acclimatization process. The quick shower cools me off so I can fall asleep.
I slept fine that night and the alarm woke me up at 3:00 AM. I only got about 4 hours of sleep but that is fine. The key night of sleep is the night before and I got in 9 hours then.
Ideally I like to go back to bed and sleep one more hour but that did not happen. I just rested and drank more water. Mark and Rick got up and we decided that Mark would drive me to the start. I can not remember what he said honestly but he did say a few things. Maybe it was nothing new, so it was not memorable. I got to the transition area and it was mayhem already. They made us go around the whole place to get numbered but it was not clear where to go. I figured it out eventually. As part of getting registered they also weight us. I weight over 190 which was not a great mental boost before the start. I had to remind myself this was water weight which will be handy all day. The idea behind the weight in during check in is in case you end up at the medical tent, the docs can tell if you lost too much weight or in some cases gained weight during the race.
I finally got to my transition spot where my bike was already. Good thing for my garbage bags. It rained like crazy but my bike was nice and dry. I oiled my chain, pumped my tires, loaded my bottles and made sure I was in a nice easy gear. I was now ready to go to the swim but first I had to dump my back pack and shoes in a pre-swim bag that I will get at the end of the day. Where do I do that? You would think it was near the water but that would be too obvious. I finally found the place. I dumped all but the necessary swim stuff and headed for my swim warm up. I got in and swam a little however I forgot to zip the back of my TYR speed suit. So I had to go back to shore and get someone to help me. At that time the professional race started. That meant I had 15 minutes to warm up and get mentally ready. I swan around and felt good. I did a few sprints to get ready for the start. Bumped into a few of our athletes out there and we wished each other good luck.
So where do I line up to start. I lined up to the outside of the start line. It is not the shortest distance but as you will see you want to be as far to the outside as possible. I would say I was about three quarters to the outside but near the front. I really should have been on the front but some really aggressive guys virtually pushed me out. I thought fine, I am not 25 anymore. The gun went off and I was keeping up with the group fine. Not a big problem yet. A little later we got bunched up and some guy almost kicked my goggles off my face. Stay calm, stay calm was my thought. I had water inside my left goggle. About a minute later I slowed down and pull my head out of the water to fix the goggle. No problem and no loss of place in the pack. I could see clear and was fine now. Not too much later we bunched up again and I had to stop. I had a guy in front of me so I could not even stroke, a guy on my right, a guy on my left and a guy on my feet. I stopped looked up and felt like a sardine. Geez! Then I figured what the problem was. Every time we approached a buoy the guys on the right side had to pinch in to get pass the buoy on the correct side and not get disqualified. But between buoys the packed spread and we had more room. I now started my navigation to the far side of the pack to avoid the mayhem. I would look back and see if I could move over behind a guy and kept on doing this over and over. By the turnaround I was now at a good place. I stayed far to the outside and gave up on trying to pass anyone. Sometimes I was just gliding, I even looked at my HR monitor as I was swimming. I was in the 140’s which was actually a little higher that I would have liked but I was really cruising.
Here is a wild story for you. Here I am swimming along feeling good yet wondering how I am doing. Well, on my way to the outside before the turn-around I see this one guy in front of me. I try to pass him and he sort of bumps me so I go behind to get to the outside, right? As I get behind him I notice something different. He is totally covered and looks to be wearing a wetsuit or something. But wait, where are his legs? This guy has no legs. Oh my! The reason he can not quite keep a straight line is because he has no legs. What a stud! I noticed people were giving him room so that was nice.
I got out of the water and had no idea of my time. I did not care. Luckily I did not see any clocks. After the race I found out my time was 1:02 which is about 3 minutes slower than any of my Ironman races. However, this day the professional men went 53, 54 which is 4 to 5 minutes slower. If I consider that, then my swim was a 57 or so which is good for my fitness. I had the fourth fastest swim in the age group and the fastest age group swim was only 1:01. I could have easily had the fastest swim if I really wanted. But who cares. This is not a swimming race. Oh yeah the guy with no legs swam a 1:03 in case you were wondering, simply amazing. My swim to bike transition took 4 to 5 minutes but I wanted to be comfortable. The first leg of my Ironman was over. On to the bike course. My next post will give you that story.