Kona

Iconic, magical place, fierce, hot, terrible race. I could give you a blow by blow of Saturday 12th October 2019, but it would just be another ‘long day at the office’ so I thought I’d try to give you a taste of what makes Kona, Kona. And perhaps mention the race in passing. 

Being Invited

Qualify. Nothing else counts. Forget the ‘Legacy Program’, where you do 12 standard Ironman, triumph or disaster, and go to Hawaii. Forget buying a slot on Ebay by paying a king’s ransom to an ill-

administered, sketchy charity. Forget being a ‘celeb’ and selling  your  fame  for  a  cook’s slot. Remember: if you don’t qualify, those that did will look down on you from their high horses and you won’t quite feel that you belong. They can tell; and you will know that they know.

 It’s getting harder. More and more people are getting into our sport and there are only so many bike slots in the wooden boards that fit onto Kailua-Kona Pier on race day. I’ve tried the ‘get older’ strategy, but it’s a flawed plan as all the

good athletes get older with you. And no one gets slower particularly when they are also executing the ‘get older’ strategy. In the 50-54 age group you must race sub 9:15 to have a chance of winning. At 55- 59 it’s still 9:30. The oldest age group qualifier this year was age group 85-89. FFS (Fitter Faster Stronger).

Travel

This I year I was blessed by a fairy godmother in the form of the famous Finn Zwager and therefore enjoyed a subsidised flight ticket. To travel to the Ironman World Championships in Kona you have two choices, or actually, unless you are an Emirates Captain or minted and can fly First/Platinum/Oral via Japan, really only one.  You  are  going  to  have  at  least  one  stop  in  a  continental  American  airport. American airports are a circus of the vagaries of humanity. Large, small, young and old, all hues and types. Firm and infirm, sane and insane, patient and violent, peaceful, flustered, scared, fortunate, less fortunate, happy, sad, brave, timid, tall, short, kempt, scruffy, underweight and overweight. Definitely overweight. Anathema to the IM athlete who is a ’type’. Telephones, real ones from the eighties with bakelite handsets and curlywurly cords, rub shoulders with modern monitors on the American Airlines gate desk. Worn carpets and tired, slightly lumpen staff – and vice versa.

The AA Captain wanders through – slightly geriatric and with a distinct list in his gait – heading for his ‘bird’. Vietnam vet – hanging on. AA. He corners with his head cocked like a motor racing driver. Chin out, “it’ll go where I look!” He’ll be alright, it’s experience that counts. I hope. 

US domestic carriers don’t feel like Emirates Airlines. On my flight across the Pacific the attendants channel their inner Farah Fawcett Major. Think lots of bottle blonde, slap, a bit of magic modern enhancement where suspension has failed, multiple chins and overburdened undergarments. My age, or so. Very much my opposite though. I have no hair, no makeup, few chins and no undergarments. And they apply the law. No variation, flexibility or grey areas. America’s is a formulaic society designed around a constitution that is perfect for integrating a plethora of immigrant cultures under one banner. Imagine a silent, straight road in big sky country, Montana. You drive up to a stop sign with five kilometres of visibility of the road both left and right. It’s two in the morning and the last car passed four hours ago. Nothing is coming. You roll over the line and the Cop lights up and pulls you. No excuse. That’s the law, don’t you know. Shame that I subscribe to the ‘rules are for the blind obedience of fools and the guidance of the wise’ school of thought. Except where it comes to gaining an unfair advantage in sport where I suddenly go very ‘Judge Dredd’ about the cheats.

Time Difference. The science says that chronoadaptation (OK, I made that up: ‘getting over jetlag’) takes a day for every hour of time difference. Hawaii is 14 hours behind Dubai, but annual leave restrictions and the cost of living in Hawaii mean that I can only allow eight days and thus I travel on the Friday a week before the Saturday Big Day.

 Fellow travellers: Qualified ironathletes. I’ve spotted a few on the second flight; Seattle (or insert LA or SF) to Kailiua-Kona. They have been there and done that. They have hats. And shirts that celebrate precious contests from all over the IM world. I don’t conform. I’m wearing Lululemon. Comfort. And  when we land and wander off the small plane and down short steps to the tiny terminal (no walls, just roofs and the island breeze gently disturbing abused luggage tags) I am suddenly immersed in a soup of Mdot tattoos. There’s blind silent panic in one gladiator whose boxed bike has gone absent. Don’t worry I feel like saying, it’ll arrive tomorrow. And it almost always does, but that ‘almost’ is uncertainty and the last thing anyone wants is to be unsure of racing well after nearly a year on ‘the road to Kona’. I keep quiet, he probably knows more about all this than me anyway.

Packing. I take as little as possible. This year I travelled ultralight, wearing my race hat, watch, glasses, calf-guards, socks and On shoes. You can get a Bikeboxalan down to 23kgs (the new Emirates standard) with bike, trisuit, swimskin, goggles (no swimcap; they issue those there), bike shoes and helmet. In a small carryon – 4kgs, although you are allowed 7 – I put a spare Tshirt because I’m older and I might spill in the plane or dribble, electrics, a toothbrush and a razor. I pocket my phone (ApplePay), passport and a backup credit card. That’s it. No cash. One is given lots of swag in Kona, and bringing that back is what the underweight three kgs of the carryon are for. If you ask the kind Emirates check-in person to tag your bike through to Kona (no matter what ticket – mine were separate) you won’t get charged for any baggage on the US internal leg. If not, be ready to pay $30-150 to get the bike in and $200+ to bring it back!

Kona Week

Wall to wall super-triathletes infest the Big Island for a week or ten days in early October every year. Kona becomes the fittest town on the planet, probably, for that brief period. Ultra-low body fat evinced by drawn cheeks and slightly haunted, sunken eye sockets; by veins wrapped like ivy around limbs of oak; by sharp bony protrusions. Obscene conditioning removes the camouflage with which normal people hide their abdominal muscles, but it also straightens shoulders and improves posture giving the impression that everyone in town is not only physically ready but also hyper-confident. They are not. At least, one of us wasn’t.

 I know when I’m race ready as I get very lean and my eyesight deteriorates (temporarily) and I know post- race that I am recovered when I can see again. Well, no one said this level of extreme sport was good for you! The lifestyle that supports it is certainly better than brunches and drunken late-night meandering following a Kebab compass home, but the race itself? Almost certainly damaging. I arrived cardio fit, but lame since February with a sore foot so I hadn’t done as much run training as I should. You do what you enjoy and being slightly injured, uncomfortable run training had taken fourth place behind the relative happy places of optimalFITNESS, Brett Hallam’s pool and the Al Qudra track.

A taxi takes me from airport to condo. Airbnb has revolutionised the accommodation set-up in Kona, but introduces another level of uncertainty. On arrival Facebook was awash with disappointment and multiple last-minute requests for somewhere habitable to stay. Kona has some nice rooms and flats, a few hotels (which might earn two stars in Dubai) and huge quantities of run-down clapperboard dives that are put up on the platform for race week hire. In-window air conditioners rattle while fraying, ‘black and nasty’ sticky tape holds them in place and noisy ceiling fans circulate moist air. Many faunae and micro bugs are specific to the Island. There are no snakes so rats rule and predatory insects proliferate in less clean digs. The tropical moisture encourages all sorts of bacterial bloom and food borne illness is a shoestringer’s enemy. I spend a little more; sickness in race week spoils the fun. Been there.

I’m in the same apartment that I’ve used for four previous visits. Close enough to the pier to be (just) affordable but separated enough to be away from the madness. It is clean and chilled. And each year I book it before I leave. Not over confidence, heaven knows I understand how tricky it can be to qualify, but the investment adds a financial fillip to my efforts and I could always sublet it if I fail. There is space to unpack the green 2012 P5 and a kitchen to cook in, equipped with everything one could possibly need. In Kona there are plenty of standard US fare eateries and you could eat out for every meal but it would cost you per day what Ironman South Africa costs you for a week. The standard US diet is heavy on cooked vegetable oil and is highly inflammaging (sic) so I ‘Uber’ to the grocery store and spend $200 on real food. Island life is not cheap. Like Dubai most things are imported so expect to budget $250 a day for living costs.

Kona week is about energy. You can breathe it in or you can nervously give it away. Every morning before seven I walk 1100 metres on Ali’i Drive – a Name to Conjure With (NtCW) – to Digme Beach (a NtCW). The daily abshow. Here triathletes gather soon after dawn to preen and strut, and wave to imaginary friends sitting on the wall as the 28degC Pacific Ocean laps around their knees. There’s press everywhere. Patrick says ‘Hi David!’ and I return the greeting growing two feet taller with pride. He was  a journeyman young pro when Brad Manser introduced me to him. Sam Westhead and I shared a stick and loop with him in 2014. Now as a double World Champion, he is still human. Five paces later The man with the Halo is chatting with an old acquaintance of mine from the UK. We become mates. These are very cool people.

 Digme is a tiny patch of sand, completely covered at high tide, right next to the famous Kona Pier.

On race day I will enter the water here and then swim 200m to the invisible swim start line, and 68 minutes later I hope to transition from prone to upright here too. And it is great fun. Daily in race week, having strutted a little and preened a bit, peed silently and waded for about five metres, I  set  off  up  the  course. The water is clear and for most of the route you have a full view of coral and sand patches far below. If you are lucky you swim with bigger fish, and turtles, and if not, you have to make do with about 350 different species of sea dwellers, all different, mostly

brightly coloured and all completely tame. They can all outswim you. They stay just out of reach but provide a wonderful endless aquarium as the daily back drop to the most fabulous swim course of all.

I spend my Sunday afternoon in an old friend’s pool. Karlyn Pipes is a huge character and very famous Hawaiian. She has set 233 FINA world records and sits in the International Hall of Fame alongside Mark Spitz and Johnny Weissmuller. Her back story is also worth a stalk. And she gives me a swimming lesson. Amazing.

 Many people continue to train in Kona week. Some swim too hard. Others get carried away on their bikes and leave their best race in the lava fields on the Queen K (NtCW) Highway in the few days leading up to the event. All of us run a little too hard on Ali’i Drive.

From over a week out you see the stars, and the age-group opposition, and it is hard not to flex a bit. Tapering makes you fresh but it is too easy to become caught up in the energy and to overdo training runs and rides. The sensible alternative is to accept the overwhelming doubt that comes

with increasing freshness. You must embrace the feeling of fatness, fullness and lethargy that niggles at you. It is, counterintuitively, a good sign. Form, as my long-time coach and mentor Nick Tipper would have it, is Fitness and Freshness.

There are parties all week; the WTC frequent fliers (AWA) party, the Training Peaks party, the On party, etc. Some of the big brands like On, Cervelo, Zipp, Ventum, Garmin, Gu etc. send out invitations and then provide small eats and coupons for drinks. You’ve never been to such boring events! Pre-race World Championship hopefuls are not predisposed to let their hair down, but the food and drink is free and in this dollar-fed black hole, freebies are attractive. Parties start at about five in the afternoon and are dead before eight. You hobnob with NtCW at every one: I queue up with Jan, barge in front of Daniela in the queue for a stiff water, nod at the Grip, trip over Ali, wonder what advantage Zack still enjoys, and generally try not to be star struck. They are all really nice people. No, ‘nice’, like ‘moist’ and ‘crevice’ is a poor word; they are all normal!

Then there are the staple events of the Parade of Nations on Tuesday, done alphabetically so we precede the good ol’ US of A. UK have third place in numbers (@170) behind the Huns (250) and of course ‘Merika (>600) this year. It’s a long slow wander at dusk from the King Kamehameha Hotel (NtCW) up Ali’i Drive that miraculously delivers athletes and their wallets to the expo site. The Underpants Run is on Thursday morning. You are encouraged to run in your underwear. I’m banned.

The ‘banquet’ and compulsory race briefing on Thursday night is now more of a big outdoor WTC company party. It is the Corporation’s chosen opportunity to recognise their most favoured employees, induct people into an Ironman Hall of Fame, and to tell emotional stories about the loyal servant who was so full of life but has sadly passed away, taken too soon, etc. There is a huge cordoned-off area with enhanced service levels about the size of a football pitch in front of the stage for VIPs and company people. We, the rank and file of the Age Group hoi polloi, sit outside the fence. Some of us press our faces against the wire to see the chosen ones. We sit on long trestle-tables, drinking

water (other brands may be available) while watching the distant tiny figures on stage on two big screens. I saw Kylie at Wembley Arena once from a similar distance. I’m told she had a great bum. The food is ordinary at best, but ‘free’. Our $1000+ entry fee is quickly eaten up both by this event and, inter alia, the logistical cost of getting over five thousand volunteers to the island to administer the race. The ensuing compulsory Brief concentrates on cheating by drafting and explaining the mechanics of the new wave start system. Coincidentally, this year another 200 paying competitors have somehow been shoehorned onto the small holy ground of Kona Pier by removing all the loos and making the new age group waves line up on Ali’i Drive. No rubbing shoulders with the pros just before the start now. Sad. The changes have been introduced to reduce the prevalence of cheating by staggering the release of athletes onto the bike course, but it has diluted a little bit of the start line magic too

The Race

Despite the wave starts the swim is  still  a  contact  sport. The sea was a bit lumpier than usual and the currents were strong. The winds blew adversely on the bike course and many, including some professionals suffered. The run was particularly hot and humid, but it clouded over late in the day to help the aged, the sick, the lame and the lazy to get home. The environmental

unpredictability of the Kona course is what makes this the World Championship. On a bad day it can be as tough as Lanzarote or Wales. And the wide swing of atmospheric possibilities means that you have to be very well-prepared and a little lucky to have a ‘good’ race. Notable underperformers this year included Alistair Brownlee, Patrick Lange and Daniela Ryf. That says a lot. 

I swam my average pace, biked a strong but conservative leg, ran close to race pace for a while… but then pulled up with a minor injury that quickly caused me to change the goal from ’top five in age’ to ‘finish’. I achieved the modified aim. On reflection, despite a middle of the age-group time, this was probably my best ever performance as I had to overcome a new level of challenge.

Endnote

 I have been a tiny bit cynical about IM/WTC as a commercial enterprise, but our significant financial investment gives us a growing choice of races all over the world. They are, generally, beautifully organised and give the paying customer a first-class experience. The IMWC or ‘Kona’ (NtCW) is still undoubtedly the Blue-Ribbon event, no matter who owns the brand, or what their motivation. The 2:1 ratio between volunteers and athletes mean that with only a few exceptions the race week and race experience is a first class offering. And the investment helps keep a beautiful if fading small island town alive and in the forefront of a growing audience of possible holidaymakers. It also brings a week or two of much needed investment to the local businesses on possibly the least popular of the Hawaiian Islands.

 Should I be lucky enough to qualify again in 2020, I shall go. And I urge everyone to always attend the slot allocation meeting post your next IM race. You really never know. Finally; if you qualify then go. You will never regret it.

David Labouchere OBE

Instagram: @davidlabouchere