Lew’s Kona Race Report

4:00 am Saturday 8^th of October 2016. The time has finally arrived. Months of preparation and planning was behind me and it was time to slip into the old familiar race day routine. Race plan ready I was out the door strolling the 1.5 miles down the athlete check-in and body marking.

Body marking was the first thing that was quite different from any other race I’ve done. Athletes were queued outside the body marking area and there we patiently waited for our turn to get the ironman sticker numbers applied to our arms. My turn came and as I was sporting my race suit with sleeves down to the elbows, the number had to go onto my hairy forearms. That was never going to happen, so off to the number repair area to be cleaned up and stamped instead. Tick, tick, tick the time past but eventually I got through at about 6:20am.  It was time to put a rush on. Fortunately, I was well versed in my transition routine and set my bike up pretty swiftly. I hopped into my speed suit and brushed past a few hundred athletes which clearly decided they wanted to have a beach start or something but getting wet was not their priority!

I hit the water at around 6:45, 10 minutes before the age group men's race start and focussed on getting through a swim warmup routine. About two minutes to race start I headed over to the far left side of the swim and placed myself around 4 rows from the front as per my race plan. Knowing that at the world championship there will be a good portion of gun swimmers, I did not see the point of smashing it out in the washing machine and wasting energy. I had a big smile on my face. The big dance was about to commence and I was loving being out there. The last few weeks of continuous nerves finally transformed into adrenaline and I was pumped.

The canon sounded and we were off!

As the washing machine got going I pretty quickly realised the plan was a good one. I had good clear water, swimming off the hip of another swimmer and at no point during the swim did I feel crowded or got bashed. I swam within myself for the first half and at the turn started to gradually move up through swimmers. I hopped onto the feet of a few others and before I knew it we were turning for the swim exit. I accelerated to break free from my group and exited the water around about 10 mins faster than I thought I would – happy days.

T1 was chaos. A nice volunteer handed my bike bag to me but the change tent was small and overcrowded. I eventually found a small clear area and ripped off the speed suit and made way through the maze to my bike. It was time for the time trial.

Thanks to the good advice from Bruce, Chris and Waino at team Energy Link I managed to do essential recon of the bike course in the week prior to the race and had a good idea of what to expect, both from the course and how other athletes may react. I also went through some extensive power modelling for the bike leg, working on various predicted weather patterns. On the day before the race I verified the most likely conditions using Best Bike Split’s advanced weather function and also read through their published report on Kona course conditions. It was predicted that at the time I was going to be out cycling, we were going to spend quite some time cycling into a head wind with a lot of beautiful direct sunlight. Considering the heat and humidity, Chris and I planned for a conservative and patient approach to the bike leg and given that I have a pretty upright position on my bike, the wind was likely to affect me more than most. As per the modelling my predicted bike leg time at my desired intensity of between 0.65 and 0.7 was between 6:20 to 6:30. I was mentally prepared to be patient out there.

As I took off on Palani the predictions turned into truth with young, strong looking athletes powering past me on the latest and greatest technology had to offer. I focussed on being patient, staying within my zones and instead of getting sucked in, spent the time admiring the beautiful speed machines that kept on passing me. It was like being at a bike show – only better!

We finished the little town circuit and I settled in for the journey along the Queen K. As I was riding at a lower intensity than the last few events I did, I was able to consume a slightly higher level of carbohydrates and I focussed on getting into my rhythm for the rolling buffet. Up in the clear blue sky the sun was already doing its thing and I whispered a quick thanks to Waino for suggesting I get a race suit with sleeves. It was a battle. Being cooked from the top and feeling the heat radiating off the volcanic rock from the side. I was racing in Kona. Yes!

I picked up a new bottle of water at every aid station to either drink or pour over my body in an attempt to keep my core temperature down. At probably about 60 km into the ride I noticed the first signs of a bit of a head wind and was steadily being passed, now by female competitors who started 15 mins after the male age groupers. I noticed my average speed was way down to what I’m used to but stayed in my zones. I knew this would be the case so there was no point forcing it. At Kawaihae we made the turn for Hawi and having ridden the piece of road with Turia and Michael the previous Sunday, I knew what was lying ahead. I was feeling good and ready for the climb into the town.

If you're going to have a flat in the race, 2 km from the top of a 10 km climb is probably the best spot to have it. Anyway that’s what I thought as I felt my rear wheel hit rim on tarmac. The tech support van was in around my vicinity all the way along the Queen K so I hopefully looked around to see if they could lend a hand. They were nowhere to be found so I calmly dismounted and went about the routine of fixing the flat. I always wondered what I would do if I get a flat in a race and this being my 15^th Ironman event I was probably due one. Anyway, it was disappointingly boring. It’s kind of the same as getting one on a long ride, accept your riding buddies don't hang around to give you a hand.

As I turned in Hawi, which was around the 95 km mark, I reassessed the race. I still felt strong and was ready for the journey home. The section down the hill from Hawi is probably the most enjoyable part of the course and I flew down the hill with a big smile on my face. As we went around the bend of the island the wind smacked into us from the side, but fortunately wasn't as bad as the week before. Then we turned back onto the Queen K, into a headwind. My smile might have changed to a grimace...

In endurance events you can always expect some kind of mental challenge – mine has arrived. Since coming down the hill at Hawi a few things happened. Firstly, I passed a female athlete whose race suit left part of her back exposed and she had two huge blisters. That really mentally emphasised the heat and direct sunlight. Secondly, the weather prediction was right, the wind has turned and it was going to be a headwind all the way home. Any hope of me gaining some time on the way back was out of the window. Then I went through the third aid station in a row that had no water left and I was running dry.

So we’re racing in Kona. It’s windy and hot – no surprises there – but no water! Are you for real! C’mon! I know I’m slow but do you have to rub it in!

Given that I had no water to take with my gels it was time to adjust. Fortunately, in my prep I checked out the on-course nutrition and hydration fairly closely and knew how much carbs were in a bottle of Gatorade. In place of the water I took on two bottles of Gatorade and went about adjusting my nutrition plan until I was able to pick up some water at the next aid station.

 At this point I also made the decision to start dialling up the intensity. I felt good and knew I was losing too much time with my upright position in the wind for me to reap the benefit of a faster run. I pushed my intensity up to 0.85 for the remainder of the bike and arrived at T2 around about 8 hours into the race. This was on target as per my race plan and for the first time for as long as I can remember - no cramps!

I made a quick pit stop in T2, picked up my run bag from another friendly volunteer and I went through the change tent which was significantly emptier than it was for T1…

I received some much needed encouragement from Niki and the kids as I left T2 and saw Derek as I was running down towards Ali’i drive – and of course, just to rub it in, he appeared from nowhere ahead of me in Ali’i drive again. Never mind, I loved the support.

Prior to the race I expected to finish between 12 and 13 hours and thought that a 12-hour result would be amazing for me and sub 13 hours very satisfying. I had 4 hours left to finish the run. It was time to get on with it.

As I turned onto Ali’I, focussing on my form and rhythm, I started to do some mental arithmetic. I just had to do the marathon. 24 miles, 4 hours, that's 24 miles in 240 min. I got it – 10 min miles and I’m home – it was time to catch a dream!

As per my pre-race plan I walked the aid stations, apart from a few which was on a descend, to ensure I keep my core temperature down. Although the temperature by Kona’s standard was mild by the time I got to the run, it was still hotter and more humid than a winter day in Sydney.

Ali’i drive was great to run along with heaps of people encouraging the athletes and a number of shady spots to run through. I manage to keep a steady pace but noticed I was dropping off the 10 mins per mile pace. I focused on running with good form and had plenty of chalk pictures on the road to remind me to blossom!

I survived Palani hill with a short walk through the middle section and loved the pumping music as we headed out on the Queen K for the meaty part of the run. Life was a ball!

During the run leg there is a mile distance marker at every mile, and then for those of us use to the metric system there is a km marker at every 5 km. I was coming up to the 12-mile marker, halfway! Hang on, I haven't seen the 20 km marker yet. Huh? Yeah – it was a great time to remember that Ironman starts halfway through the run and halfway through the run is 13.1 miles, you peanut! 26.2 miles not 24 miles! So I carried on blossoming.

Running along the Queen K I had to really force myself to focus on just the next mile. Let's face it – it’s a long boring road and all you want to see on the horizon is the Energy lab. One mile at a time I eventually got there. I turned into the Energy lab, the sun was setting on the horizon and I was running straight into it. It was a good feeling. It was a mild evening in Kona and a cool breeze came off the water so I didn't have to deal with the heat in the lab. I just ran and enjoyed the experiences being in an iconic environment. I made the run turn and headed back to town. I was pretty stuffed by then but knew at this stage that I’m good. As I headed back out onto the Queen K I started to lengthen my stride a bit and settled into a rhythm I could hold.

The last 5 miles seemed to last forever but I managed to keep going and I eventually turned the corner and ran up to the finish chute. Then I walked. Experiencing the ultimate Ironman finish. The finish chute of the Ironman World Championships – Anything is possible!

To Live, To Love, To Learn, To Leave a Legacy

Many, many books have been written on the subject of prioritisation, planning and time management. Many of them are actually quite good. One of my favourites is “First Things First” by Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill. I was first introduced to it on a management course which I did as part of my day time job and the title of this blog is from this book – the four basic human needs: to live, to love, to learn and to leave a legacy.

No, no, I haven’t completely lost it. This is still a blog dealing with all things triathlon. As mentioned in my last blog we’ll look at addressing planning and including sleep into our planning and you’ll recall I ended with the below quote from the article “Sleep-Deprived Triathletes Face an Uphill Battle” by Dr. Krishna R. Polu.

“Unfortunately, sleeping has become equated with laziness and fails to find its way onto our list of priorities. This perception is skewed in a society that is preoccupied with doing too many things at once. Adequate sleep is part of that balance, and in triathlon it may be the most important choice in our preparation for the next race.”

Whilst I’ve never really thought of sleeping as laziness, I have to agree that sleep probably doesn’t feature high enough on my priority list and I see the same issue with many of my fellow athletes. Given that we now have a better understanding of the importance of adequate sleep, it seems only reasonable that we include it into our planning and if adequate sleep equates to somewhere between 7 and 10 hours per day, we’re going to need some serious help. This is why I’ve turned to the corporate world for some help. Time management is something most successful executives have a black belt in.

The planning principles

The book “First Things First” suggests an entire way of life and very eloquently provides guidance and suggestions on how to live a more balanced and principle centred life. I’m not going to deal with all the aspects of the book as I probably wouldn’t do it any justice and the real value would be for you to read it. What I am going to do is take two concepts mentioned in the book which focuses on planning and use it to assist us to get to an adequate amount of sleep.

Firstly we need to understand the difference between importance and urgency and focus on importance first. Many of us get caught up in doing the urgent things first and then don’t get to do the important things.

“Urgency itself is not the problem. The problem is that when urgency is the dominant factor in our lives, importance isn’t” – First Things First.

Secondly we need to identify our roles in life and place them in priority order. Each of us will play different roles: i.e. Husband/Wife, Father/Mother, Coach, Athlete, Manager, Brother/Sister, Son/Daughter. With seven probably the maximum we should be focussing on at any one time. Understanding the importance of our roles in life allows us to understand the importance of the activities we’ll plan for.

Where does your training fit?

The purpose of a triathlon coach is to help you achieve your triathlon goals. Your goals determined by you. For your coach to be able to help you achieve your triathlon goals, you should:

·         Know what it is you wish to achieve

·         Know where it fits on your life priority scale

The better understanding a coach have of how triathlon fits into your life, the better equip that coach would be to help you to have an enjoyable and successful journey.

For a professional athlete training to win a gold medal at the Olympics, the importance of training time would be quite different from the 40+ year old dad training for his next Ironman finish. Both of them wish to do the best they possibly can. For both it would be highly unlikely that they will achieve their goals and be happy if the importance placed on their goals does not value the interdependency of that goal on the other roles of their life.

“Values will not bring quality of life results… Unless we value principles.” – First Things First.

In other words, when you determine where your triathlon goal fits on your priority scale, be realistic, don’t forgo good principles and allow the people close to you to be part of this prioritisation process. For both the Olympian and the dad, the people around them are the ones that’ll get them to the start line.

Food for thought

Armed with a good understanding of where your training fits in, we can now look at how much training  time you have available each week. Understanding this, a coach can adapt the volume and intensity of your training appropriately – and this should include sleep and recovery time.

You may not think you have a lot of time available to train but remember you’re more likely to have success following an achievable training plan with the support of your family than following a plan which leaves you sleep deprived and stressed for months on end.

Live, Love, Learn and make Triathlon part of your Legacy…

Sleep? Are you kidding me!

 

During the past month I was listening to some of my fellow athletes mentioning how they battle to sleep during the hot summer nights. I thought I may do a bit of research about sleep, how much we need, why it’s important and if we struggle with it what we can do about sleeping better. As expected I found quite a bit of material on this subject, however the more I learned the more I realised sleeping might be a bigger challenge than I initially thought.

In this and the next few blogs I’d like to chat about:
• The fundamentals of sleep – how much we should sleep etc.
• The practicalities of fitting the right amount of sleep into our daily lives
• How we can plan and build our schedule to meet our sleep requirements.

Hush my little baby…

Before we get brave I thought let’s have a look at what the experts say about sleep for an athlete. Probably the most appropriate article I found was one on the Australian Sports Commission’s website:   Strategies for quality sleep by Michelle Austin, Psychologist, ACT Academy of Sport.
Before you do anything else I’d urge you to read this article.

What this article will teach you is
• What sleep deprivation is, the symptoms and consequences
• What you can do before bed and in bed to get more sleep
• Strategies that will help you get better quality sleep
• And that an athlete probably needs about 10 hours of sleep a night.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!  

On what planet does One Day, less Family time, less work time and less training time leave 10 hours for sleep? Clearly the target market for that amount of sleep must be full time athletes! Or is it?

Which way do you sleep?

Not being satisfied with the 10 hour a night recommendation I looked at different forms of sleep to see if there’s a way out. Naturally when I saw an article titled “Alternative Sleep Cycles: 7-10 Hours Are Not Needed” I was curious, very curious. Enter the Polyphasic Society.

I don’t believe there’s all that much value in reading this article by Joe Martino but if you wish you can do that here.

In summary it describes different sleep cycles namely:
• Monophasic - This is our normal 7 to 10 hours of sleep.

• Byphasic - More commonly known as siesta sleep i.e. 6 hours at night with 20 to 90 min naps around midday.

• Everyman - I’m not sure what is so “everyman” about it. It consists of 3.5 hour core sleep and 3 x 20 min naps.

• Dymaxion - Only for those of us who are genetically modified with the DEC2 gene and consist of 4 x 30 mins sleeps.

• Uberman - The name says it all! 6 to 8 x 20 min naps per day.

Practically I believe we mainly use Monophasic and Byphasic sleep and a combination of these should be adequate for us to remain healthy. According to the article "Brain Basics: Understanding sleep” published by National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (I’m assuming in the USA)

“Getting too little sleep creates a "sleep debt," which is much like being overdrawn at a bank. Eventually, your body will demand that the debt be repaid.”

The good thing about that is that it implies the debt can be repaid and therefore if our busy lives doesn’t allow us 10 hours of sleep a night, working in a good nap, especially after a training session on the weekend, is still a really, really good thing.

Not everyone requires the same amount of sleep. As with all things triathlon, know and listen to your body – if it needs sleep, sleep, it’s really important.

Food for thought

In the article “Sleep-Deprived Triathletes Face an Uphill Battle”  by Dr. Krishna R. Polu he says the following:

“Unfortunately, sleeping has become equated with laziness and fails to find its way onto our list of priorities. This perception is skewed in a society that is preoccupied with doing too many things at once. Adequate sleep is part of that balance, and in triathlon it may be the most important choice in our preparation for the next race.”

Now that we understand the importance of sleep, let’s prioritise and plan our sleep as much as we do the swim, cycle and run. More on this in the next blog.

Let’s talk Triathlon and Range of Motion.

No, the intent is not to go into the age old “to stretch or not to stretch” debate. I put that subject in the “Believe what you want” category – “Some will believe, Some won’t, some will prove and some will disprove it”.  What I do wish to do is to discuss some articles I’ve read.

A few months ago a good friend and training partner of mine sent out a link to an article, ‘Stretching to prevent or reduce muscle soreness after exercise’,  a study done by Robert D Herbert, Marcus de Noronha and Steven J Kamper¹. 

The aim of the study was to determine the effects of stretching before or after exercise on the development of delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS).

So the first question is why? I’m reading this article and I’m thinking, interesting but why would you do a study to see if stretching reduces DOMS when, in my experience, stretching can actually cause DOMS? I mean, as recently as last week I felt the effects of my yoga class while doing my brick session the following day. Perhaps a study should rather be done on the effects of stretching on DOMS after DOMS has already set in, but then experience tell us that just about any movement helps to alleviate that tight sore feeling.

Naturally this had me thinking a bit more about the whole subject and about what should be important for endurance athletes. What is it we’re trying to do when we go for a massage, or do Yoga, Pilates, Thai Chi or Gyrotonic™ or whatever new derivative is launched next week? The answer, for me at least, is to restore Range of Motion.

I’ve read two very good descriptions dealing with endurance sports and range of motion. The first description I took from an article on TrainingPeaks.com:  

“Year-Round Strength Training for Triathletes, Part 1: The Off-Season” by Shane Niemeyer²

 

“It's important to remember that endurance training is repetitive and mechanical by nature.  Throughout the course of an athlete’s season there’s an accumulation of thousands upon thousands of individual repetitions in a limited range of motion occurring in one plane. A great example of this is cycling, where the athlete performs thousands of pedal strokes in a fixed plane (hips in the saddle and feet clipped into the pedals with force directed in a very linear way). Since tissue remodels along lines of stress, the affected joints and tissues become very strong in a limited segment of the continuum, thereby destabilizing the joints which are designed to move through multiple planes and ranges of motion. All of this increases the risk of injury for the athlete as they are unable to effectively reduce, stabilize, and produce forces dynamically in all planes and ranges of motion as the joints are designed to do.”

 

The second one is from an article I found on sportsmedicine.about.com: 

“Stretching and Flexibility for Athletes” By Elizabeth Quinn³
 

“We adapt to what we do. If we consistently play one sport, or perform the same (limited) movement patterns over years, we will adapt to those patterns.”

 

Guess which one I prefer…

 

Given that there is a reasonable amount of consensus that the repetitive nature of our sport can affect our range of motion, it seems only sensible that we place some focus in our training to reduce any negative effects on our range of motion. Elizabeth Quin’s article articulates this quite well and is well worth reading but in summery - including and doing strength workouts in your training program may be more important than you thought, so do them and post exercise stretching could be very important, even if it doesn’t reduce DOMS.

¹Stretching to prevent or reduce muscle soreness after exercise

²Year-Round Strength Training for Triathletes, Part 1: The Off-Season

³Stretching and Flexibility for Athletes