The executive summary:

This was a 5-minute PR for the Ironman distance and my ninth Ironman overall, but what I’m most stoked about is a 14-minute PR for the bike.  I also won the “46 and over” category in the Ironman Executive Challenge, which got me a Kona slot for 2011 – hoping Lance Armstrong shows up for that race.  🙂

Like every race of this distance, there are a thousand stories, most of them boring.  It’s a long day, so lots of little things go right and wrong.  You are guaranteed to have high points and low points.  But most of the story, actually, is in the training leading up to the race – that’s where the hard workouts are done, many of which no one else sees but you – the 3+ hours on the bike trainer in a hot garage, the hours on the dryland swim trainer to build shoulder strength, the hard solo runs after the group bike ride where everyone had hammered the hills, the endless sets of planks and lunges to build core strength.  Those sessions are where your race is made or broken.

Anyway, I had done the work, so the plan on race day was to put it to the test.  This was only my second race of 2010; in the spring, I had a persistent hamstring strain, which kept me out of the Big Sur Marathon, and a planned appearance at the brand-new Ironman Regensburg in August was canceled due to some work stuff.  So other than a sprint tri back in May, IMAZ was my only showcase for the entire year.  I wanted to make it count.

I almost blew it in the swim; I lined up on the far right on the “wall,” which would have been ok if I had gotten myself closer to the front.  But the wall area was crowded, so I thought I’d let the pack go and then swim through it later once it had spread out – that worked well in IM Austria a couple of years ago.  Big mistake.  All it meant here was that I had a bunch of slower swimmers in front of me once I set off (two minutes after the gun), and it took a while to get past them.  Not a good strategy.

My other rookie mistake was wearing the wetsuit I got a great bargain on at the Ironman shop the day before – a beautiful 2XU creation that I got for half price.  It fit perfectly and all, but I hadn’t noticed that there was strip of cloth over the Velcro closure to prevent its snagging on anything else, and that meant that my wetsuit didn’t really close.  About 2/3rds of the way into the swim, I felt some water coming in the top, and I had no idea why – I thought the zipper was coming down.  Fortunately, it stayed up, but it was on my mind the rest of the swim.

Once out on the bike, I settled down and found myself cruising the “out” portion of the out and back pretty fast – as fast as 28 mph.  That could only mean that we had a tailwind, so there would be a pretty good headwind coming back.  Sure enough, that was true, and it seemed to get stronger on each of the three loops.

I was going by power anyway, so I just kept myself down in the aerobars and cranked away.  I noticed after the first loop that I was holding close to a 21 mph average, which is about 1 mph better than I had ever ridden in an Ironman.  What’s more, I felt great and well within myself.

On the second loop came my first dilemma – pee while on the bike or stop?  Warning:  possible TMI coming.  I had never tried the “peeing while moving” thing before, but since I was on a good ride, I didn’t want to lose time.  The problem was that you’re normally supposed to do this on a downhill when you can coast; the downhill in the race was into a headwind, so there wasn’t much coasting to be had, so I took the opportunity to try it on a false flat on the uphill with the tailwind.  Get off the saddle, stop pedaling, move to one side, and relax.  Ahhhhh!  Douse yourself with water, and Bob’s your uncle.  That was so successful I did it four more times during the ride.  🙂

That business aside, I was still holding my pace and even surprisingly caught a teammate of mine who’s a really strong swimmer and cyclist about 5 miles from the end of the bike.  I almost flubbed my good day, though, while getting ready for the bike-to-run transition – I started pulling my feet out of the shoes and putting them on top so that I could do a quick dismount, and when I got my left foot out, my leg started cramping and I couldn’t get my foot on top of the shoe.  This started a comical series of attempts, where the shoe was hitting the ground and almost either coming out of the pedal or causing me to crash, but I finally got it right.  Not my shining moment.

Coming off the bike, I was happy with my time – I was getting onto the run course about 15 minutes faster than I ever had, so I knew a PR was possible – but I wasn’t happy with how my legs felt.  There was no oomph.  I settled into a manageable 7:40-8:00 pace, and was running along with my teammate Jeff (the one I had caught on the bike) for probably 5 miles or so, during which point we were both passed by the 2^nd-place woman Linsey Corbin, who was a loop ahead of us.  The one long uphill of the loop came, and I fell back while the 3^rd and 4^th female pros went by me (3^rd I didn’t recognize, but 4^th was Leanda Cave).

I was now running 8:30s, and really starting to hit a low patch.  A few pit stops ensued, thanks to my good hydration strategy (plus a two-minute stop to read the Wall Street Journal in the port-a-potty :-)), but otherwise I kept motoring along as best I could, knowing that it probably wouldn’t get any worse and might get better.  At the end of the second of the three loops (17 miles in), I did some quick math and saw that I could still break my PR as long as I could hold it under 9-minute pace.  That became my mission for the rest of the race.

Two miles later, I caught up to Jeff, who was now walking.  Not good – once you start walking in an Ironman, you’re done.  I was starting to feel better and was able to pick it up a little – I figured every 30-45 seconds per mile under 9:00 I could put in the bank would give me a buffer if something bad, like a cramp, happened.

With two miles to go, I was really working it but also running a lot faster than I had done the rest of the race – I always do that when I’ve got something left and “smell the barn.”  The 8:30+ pace had become sub 7:30, and I was passing a lot of people.  At about mile 25.5, I caught up to another Executive Challenge guy, Adrian, who was in a younger age group.  As I went by and said “way to go,” he asked me which loop I was on.  “The last,” I grunted out.  All of a sudden, I could sense there was someone on my heels.  Damn, I thought – I’m going to have a sprint finish in an Ironman.

I led through the series of turns that took us to the finish line, and I was running sub 6:30 pace at this point, at least according to my Garmin watch.  I didn’t know exactly where Adrian was, but that became clear when he rocketed past me in the final 50m to gap me by two seconds.  But that’s cool – I still got my Kona slot, since he wasn’t in my age group, and I got my PR.  Adrian didn’t look so good when I went up to congratulate him – they carted him off in a wheelchair to the med tent.  Lesson:  you can outsprint the old man, but it’ll cost you.  😉  Seriously, though, it was fun to have a little testosterone-fueled contest at the end of a long day, even if I was on the losing end.

So I got my PR and my Kona slot for next year, which means I can build my season around the event already being in the bag.  What’s more, I’m finally happy with my bike – my bike time ranked higher in the age group than my run time, which is a first.  That means my transition from runner to triathlete is almost complete.  Still gotta work on that swim.  But for now I’ll celebrate – once I recover, that is!  🙂

This was a race that almost wasn’t — it was going to be my Boston qualifier for the upcoming Boston 2 Big Sur Challenge, but we all know how that story ends.  In that sense, I had lost a big reason to run it, and I don’t do marathons willy nilly — when I enter a race, I *race*, so that means one thing:  “pain” (as “Clubber Lang” said). But I did have two other reasons to run it, one being my running club needing me to score some Pacific USATF Grand Prix points, and the other being The Big Question.

What’s The Big Question?  Whether age and too much multisport meant that I would never break 3:00 again.  It dawned on me all of a sudden that I hadn’t gone sub 3:00 since 2003, odd for a guy who thinks of himself as a sub 3:00 marathoner.  🙂  Sure, that’s partly because the one marathon I run every year is Big Sur, which is not a particularly fast course, and sure, with all this Ironman stuff it’s not like I’m focused on a fast straight marathon time, but at some point you have to stop living off of past glory and call a spade a spade.

I publicly downplayed any expectations I had for this going in, saying all I needed was a BQ, which at my advanced age means a 3:30 (it’s still a goal of mine to run faster than that in an Ironman), but secretly I thought that maybe — just maybe — I had a sub 3:00 in me.  Not that I had had the kind of training program that gave me any right to expect one:  basically, I had a 3:56 “long run” at Kona (aka, my Ironman marathon), a bunch of recovery from that race, then 3 weeks after that my only other long run on the Huddart-Wunderlich loop.  This ~20-mile run, what my tri team calls “the Ultimate Run,” is mostly trails in the Santa Cruz Mountains and climbs and descends about 2500 ft.  When I’ve been in good marathon shape in the past, I would typically run it in around 2:35-2:40; this time I had to add some distance due to some trail closures, so my 2:43 told me my fitness was better than expected and right in the range of when I’ve run sub 3:00 ‘thons in the past.  Other than that, I had no reason for optimism — my weekly mileage rarely added up to the marathon distance, so this one was going to be run on guts and muscle memory.

CIM is another of those point-to-point courses, so that means a predawn 26.2-mile ride out to Folsom from downtown Sacramento.  The day was unusually cold — I believe it was 26F at the start, and believe me, it felt that cold as I waited in the portapotty line before heading back to a warm bus (CIM keeps the buses around at the start — nice touch).  The race had pace groups, including a 3:00 one led by elite ultrarunner Kevin Sawchuk, so I figured I’d at least have some company in my quest.

Off we went, and I settled into a relaxed but quick pace; I used my Garmin to display average lap pace so that I could run as evenly as possible, trying to stay around 6:50 per mile.  I was a little slow in the beginning, but still right there with the 3:00 group, which was larger than I had imagined it would be — there must have been 40 or 50 runners in the pack.  This turned out to be trouble at the aid stations, as 40 guys all going for water or sports drink at the same time tend to get in one another’s way.  I figure I lost 1 or 2 seconds each time since I didn’t want to risk missing my fluid intake, and after mile 6 or so, the 3:00 group had gapped me a little — they were just 5 seconds ahead, but I didn’t want to go to the well to hitch myself back on.  The mile splits were mostly in the 6:40s; I believe I was averaging just above 6:45 through the half, which I hit in 1:29 and change.  So far, so good.

I took a little stock.  I didn’t feel bad at all or under pressure, but on the other hand I didn’t feel great either.  Mostly my legs were complaining about the pounding — that’s what lack of mileage will do to you, I guess.  The other issue was that we were now facing quite a cold headwind, and I no longer found running 5 seconds behind the big pace group to my liking — I needed to get out of the wind, and what better way to do that than to tuck myself into the peloton?  The good news was that I didn’t have to surge to catch them; I just came up on them naturally at around the 14-mile mark.  The bad news was that that’s because they were slowing — I saw my lap pace reading in the 6:55-7:00 range, which is not sub 3:00 pace (sub 3 requires an average pace of 6:52), but we did have a time cushion thanks to some quicker early miles.  I figured I would sit in for a few miles and stay out of the wind; this had the added benefit of not having to think too hard for awhile — just focus on the guys in front of you and don’t let a gap develop.

I stayed with this through mile 20, which we hit in about 2:17, and I heard Kevin say that he had been sick the week before so he wasn’t feeling great, but we had a 25-second cushion, and if anyone felt great, they should run on ahead.  I didn’t feel great, but I took that as my cue to lift my pace, and I started running around 6:45s and went ahead of the group.  I could hear a couple of guys sitting on my wheel, so to speak, but at that point it didn’t bother me.  The headwind had diminished somewhat, and from 20 on you’re just running on a combination of fitness and guts anyway.  Mile 23 was the turning point; only about 5K from the finish, and whatever math I could do in my head told me that it was going to be very, very close.  I was hurting pretty badly at this point, and more worrisome than that were the constant twitches I was getting in my calves and hamstrings; if not for the compression sleeves I was wearing on my calves, I’m pretty sure they would have cramped sooner.  I was in a hurry to finish, but also mindful that I couldn’t press too hard — one cramp and my sub 3:00 would be done.

At mile 24, I did some quick math:  I was at 2:44:25 or so, which meant I needed to run slightly better than 7:00 pace for the last 2.2 miles in order to get under 3:00.  Seeing as mile 24 had been 7:01 — my slowest mile of the day thus far — the odds were good but not great.  Those negative thoughts started creeping in.  “Oh no, cramps again.”  “So what if you’re a few seconds over 3:00 — it’s just a number.”  I had to banish those thoughts quickly.  I told myself “You didn’t do all this pushing with pace group at sub 3:00 pace not to seal the deal.  You’ve done harder stuff than this — you’ve done two Ironmans this year, for chrissakes!  Suck it up!”  Some tri-geeks I know call it HTFU — Harden the F*** Up.  Whatever.  Legs-a-twitchin’ I soldiered through an interminable mile 25 in 7:03, so now it was really time to push.

The last mile hits the downtown and capitol area — all I remember is a younger guy going past me and trying to stay with him, passing some other guys that were roadkill, and seeing a big line of tall palm trees on my left.  We made a sharp left, which means you’re almost done, and then there were signs pointing to the left for women and then a separate men’s final 100m a little beyond where the women turned in.  I made the sprint and looked ahead at the finish clock:  2:59:51, 2, 3…sprint…5, 6…sprint..8, 9.  I saw the clock hit 3:00:00 just before I went under it, and sure enough, the finishing photo shows 3:00:01.  SO CLOSE!

But luckily the story has a happy ending — that was *gun* time.  It turns out it took me 7 seconds to cross the start line, so my chip time was 2:59:54.  SUB 3:00, BABY!!!

I can’t tell you how cool it felt…mainly because I was in pain and freezing my ass off.  🙂  My friend Greg was the other end of the finishers’ area waiting for me, and he patiently led my hobbling butt to the car about a half mile away.

The less-fun part was driving home to the Bay Area, repacking, and getting on an 11-hour overnight flight to Munich.  Not something I recommend…

Anyone interested in the course, splits, heart-rate data and even my average cadence every mile can click here.

A part of the Big Island scenery unique to Ironman time are the warning signs along the Queen K highway.  “Caution:  Athletes in Training,” a warning to drivers to watch out for the myriad cyclists out getting their final training days in on the often-brutal Ironman bike course.  About 11 miles of the run course are also out on that same desolate, lava-lined highway, and some jokester had modified one of the signs to read “Athletes in Pain” around the 14-mile mark of the marathon.  After a ridiculously hot, hard day, with some tough work remaining, you need some comic relief.

I alternated between asking myself what the hell I was doing in the Ironman with all these great athletes and pinching myself, reminding myself to enjoy the moment that might never come again.   Some people do Kona year after year – the top pros, the former winners, the consistent top-of-the-age-group amateurs – but for most of us, the hardest part was getting here.  I had punched my ticket in Lake Placid after 4 years of trying, but only by virtue of participating in the Ironman Executive Challenge (XC), a great new program that pits corporate officers against one another for bragging rights and Kona slots.  Basically, XC levels the playing field somewhat – at least you’re competing against guys who have demanding day jobs instead of former pros and what I call “professional age groupers.”  I still had to race my butt off in Lake Placid to get a slot (and have more than a little luck to boot), but I got it, so there was no way I was coming to Kona and not finishing.

Ironman week is crazy – a bunch of the fittest-looking athletes you’ll ever find congregated in one place, each with a kind of glassy-eyed “what have I gotten myself into?” look on their faces.  There’s a great temptation to get in that one last hard session – that 90-minute run in the heat, that 3- or 4-hour ride, that last swim of the full 2.4 course from Dig Me Beach – but you have to remember to leave as much as you can for race day.  The one thing I did was a couple of key workouts in the heat early in the week – a mid-afternoon 10K run when I got in on Sunday and a 2-hour ride on Tuesday with some of the guys from Epic Camp.  I also tried not to run the a/c in my hotel room too much, though I did use it at night in order to sleep.

I knew a number of athletes in attendance at Kona this year:  a few from Team Sheeper in Menlo Park, two of whom like me were first timers; my fellow XC athletes from the Lake Placid race (as well as the ones from the other races that I would get to know over the course of the week), and a few athletes from Epic Camp, all of whom are faster and much more talented than I am.  Then there are the pros – Craig Alexander and Chris Lieto were both staying at the same hotel that we were, which was pretty cool.  I also got to see all of the multisports.com folks – Paula Newby-Fraser, Heather Fuhr, Roch Frey and Paul Huddle.   Those guys are fun – triathletes are some of the nicest people.

Race day finally dawned – the anticipation was almost harder than the race itself.  I kept telling myself it was “just a long training day,” that the hard part was getting here.  We got herded into the body marking lines; a perk of being in the XC program was that we were in the same line as the pros and the “NBC athletes” – the ones chosen to be profiled on the TV broadcast.  I’m not sure who they were this year, but I did see last year’s second-place female, Yvonne van Vlerken of the Netherlands, a couple of people ahead of me.  A male pro, number 69 (turns out to be Austria’s Michael Weiss) was right behind me.

Once marked, we were allowed into the transition area to complete our bike setup.  I filled my drink bottles, turned on the bike computer, adjusted the helmet, pumped up the tires, and I was basically done, so I went over to the VIP lounge to hang with my entourage, which included my wife Jeanne, both my parents, and my friends Amelie and Greg.  My friend and “Run to the Sun” teammate Michael had flown over from Maui for the event as well, and I would see him a bunch of times during the day.  I couldn’t have asked for a better support crew, even though I would have liked to share this experience with even more people if I could have.

The swim start was a little congested at the beach until the pros were sent off separately at 6:45; the age groupers went off at 7.  The start area was very wide, and since I don’t like the melee of the swim very much, I got over to the far left (the course buoys were on the right, which is in theory the shortest line).  I’ll trade some extra distance for not getting kicked in the face or pulled under any day – the swim and bike are events where I wish I were a bigger guy (say, 6’3” and 185 lbs).  No one messes with you.  My relatively skinny frame is only an advantage on the run.

The cannon sounded, and we were off – this was it!  I was starting the Hawaii Ironman, the race I had been actively trying to get into since 2005.  Scary, exhilarating, and fantastic all at once.

I collected myself, though, because the big task at hand was to finish each event and let my race build.  My positioning to the left worked out well – I didn’t get punched or kicked all day.  I did feel the occasional hand on my feet, but a brief increase in my kick did the trick in warding off further contact.  The swells in Kailua Bay were bigger than I remembered even from my practice swim earlier in the week, so I began to suspect that this wouldn’t be a fast swim.  I was swimming easily, not working particularly hard – just trying to keep the stroke long and efficient.  The water was warm and pleasant.

It seemed like forever until I reached the turnaround buoy, and I took a brief glance at my watch – 43 minutes and something!  That, folks, is slow – I would normally hit that in about 35 or so – but I told myself not to worry, that today was not about the time.  I continued my return to Kailua Pier focused on swimming steady but controlled, experienced in the knowledge that the swim is the appetizer, not the main course, and it would only get tougher from here.

I finally reached the pier and exited the water in 1:24, not my worst swim time ever but 13-14 minutes slower than my last 4 Ironman swims.  I went through the showers and washed as much salt water off as possible, grabbed my bike bag and then entered the changing tent.  Bike shorts on, white long sleeve top and XC tri top on, sunglasses and race belt with number and GPS tracking device.  (The astute reader will note that this is a fair amount of stuff to put on.  That explains my slow T1 time.)  With such a slow swim, finding my bike was easy.

Off on the bike – the longest part of the day was beginning.  The advice I was given was to take the initial out-and-back in town along Kuakini Hwy very easy and focus on re-hydrating and getting some calories in.  It already felt pretty warm at 8:30 in the morning, but this was just a teaser for what was to come.  Off of Kuakini, up the short steep climb of Palani and then left on the Queen K.  So far so good.

One effect of the heat is that your heart rate spikes much higher than it normally would at a given level of effort.  I am normally comfortably aerobic (less than 130 bpm) at around 200 watts, but on race day once I hit 200 watts or above, my heart rate was a good 10-15 bpm higher.  I decided to back off and let my heart rate rather than my power meter rule.  There are lots of little things to think about as you’re riding along – obeying the no-drafting rules, passing groups of riders while someone else may be coming up on you, taking some sips of fluid, popping an electrolyte caplet every 20 or so minutes – so the time passed quickly.  I finally got into some familiar territory as I passed the Mauna Lani resort at around mile 33 – now I was on the part of the course that we do in the Honu half-IM race in May.  That was both good news and bad news – good news because I knew what to expect; bad news because I knew what to expect:  uphills and wind.

On the downhill into Kawaihae, I got my first reality check in the form of race leader Chris Lieto coming the other way.  At that point, he was probably 90 minutes in front of me, even though he only had a 15-minute headstart at the beginning of the day.  I’m used to the pros being way in front, but I’d never experienced this far in front.  A little depressing.

All along the way up to Hawi, I saw a steady stream of riders on their way back – first the male pro chasers, then Chrissie Wellington and all other female pros competing for second place, all intermingled with second-tier male pros and top age groupers.  The journey to Hawi doesn’t get difficult until about 7 miles to go, when it turns into a steady uphill.  There was a steady headwind on the climb, but it wasn’t ridiculously strong as it has been in some years, most recently in 2004.  I thought I was going to luck out with a relatively benign day, and I was on pace to ride a conservative 5:45.

The turnaround in Hawi Town came, and now I was on the downhill slope – about 50 miles to go.  The descent initially felt great; I was moving at 30+ mph, was tucked in my aerobars and was not feeling any of the dreaded crosswinds that can blow you across the road.  Thing was going to be fun, I thought.

Then came the curve at Mahukona, and BOOM, the wind hit.  Strong gusts occasionally, but mostly a steady headwind, one that I would combat all the way back to Kawaihae.  I was otherwise doing pretty well, though my left foot was beginning to hurt, so I loosened the strap on my shoe, which gave me some relief.  Nutrition-wise, I was doing pretty well, though I felt a distinct lack of power in the legs.  Perhaps the inability to ingest calories early in the ride was catching up with me.  There’s a pretty steep uphill out of Kawaihae that is actually one of the toughest on the entire bike course, and then we turned onto the Queen K for the ~30 miles home.

Tailwind?  Not a chance – I was greeted with the worst headwind of the day, one that I would battle against for the next 30 miles.  I was going 12-13 mph on the uphills and only 17-18 on the downhills!  I started feeling a little sorry for myself, but made myself get a grip.  “This is the Ironman,” I told myself, “it’s supposed to be hard.  But just remember:  it always gets better.”  I started counting down the landmarks:  Hapuna Beach, Puako, the Mauna Lani, Waikoloa, the Hualalai resort, the airport, at which point I knew I would be at least getting an interesting sight – the lead runners coming out of the Natural Energy Lab.  Interesting, but depressing.

I’m a realist, after all – I’m not a pro.  I’m not even a particularly good amateur.  But I had been improving steadily at the Ironman, and yet this would be the one in which I came the closest to not being off the bike yet before the winner finished the run.  I could see a number of the lead pros on their way back, and was trying to spot who was who even as I was getting prepared to get off the bike.  I came up on Lieto, who  seemed to be running pretty fast, so I thought he might still be in the lead, but a minute or so later I passed Craig Alexander.  It looked as though history was going to repeat itself.

Fortunately for my ego, they still had a couple of miles to go, so I easily made it into T2, notching an all-time personal worst in the Ironman bike of 6:22 (PW by a lot), with time to get changed and out on the run course before the winner came in.  As I turned on Hualalai to get down to the first out and back on Ali’i Drive, I heard the crowd cheering loudly all of a sudden, so I figured the lead runner was somewhere back behind me but closing quickly.  I believe I narrowly avoided being passed by Craig Alexander as I turned onto Ali’i.  I probably missed some good NBC camera time – d’oh!

Now it was time to settle into a steady pace and deal with my own race, which first meant addressing my overheated body.  My plan was to walk the aid stations, taking in as much fluids and ice as I could – a kind of Gallowalking, I guess, but one that 8-time champion Paula Newby-Fraser used to use.  Mile 1 was a surprisingly quick 7:51, so I definitely needed to simmer down.  There was no way I was going to run a sub 3:30 under these conditions.

One thing I had never tried before in an Ironman was a tip I got from Roch Frey:  dumping ice down my shorts.  That sounds weird and potentially painful as well, but I can attest to its effectiveness – the part of the course on Ali’i (the first 10 miles, basically) was an absolute sauna, and as soon as I put the ice down there, my heart rate dropped by a few beats and my pace picked up.  Things kind of jiggled, but what the heck.  I was hitting my miles right around 9:00 each, give or take depending on how long I lingered at each aid station, and while I knew that 3:30 was out, I thought I might be able to break 4:00, which would be an accomplishment under these conditions.  A quick bit of math told me that would also bring me in under 12 hours, and that would mean that I would continue my Ironman streak of never going over 12 hours.  That settled it – I made that my new goal.

Not that it really mattered in the grand scheme of things, but at that moment it became my all-consuming focus, and let’s face it:  when it’s broiling hot, you’re tired, your feet hurt and your shorts are full of ice, you need a reason – any reason – to keep running.  So my motto became “Sub 4 Or Bust!”

Back in town at mile 10, I caught up with my entourage, and they claim I was smiling.  That might have been a grimace, but if people thought it was a smile, all the better.  I walked up the steep uphill of Palani in order to keep my heart rate low, and then we turned onto the Queen K.  One more out and back (16 miles’ worth), and I would be done!

All the miles were though at this point, though mentally the ones from 11 to 16 before the turn into the Energy Lab were probably the hardest mentally, just because I had so far to go and was seeing runner after runner on their return journey home.  The key to retaining focus during the tough times was to take the race one mile at a time – just run aid station to aid station.  My miles were still in the 9:00-9:30 range, which meant I was still on track.  Just keep grabbing what I needed at each aid station, I told myself, and I would be able to maintain the pace.

The Energy Lab was magic – as I descended into it, the big Pacific Ocean was in front of me, and the sky was setting up for a beautiful sunset.  With 7 miles to go, an impending sunset meant I was going to be finishing in the dark for the first time ever, but it was kind of cool to get the glow stick a volunteer handed me.  At mile 20, I calculated I needed to run about an hour for the last 10K in order to break 12 hours.  My pace was still steady, but I was working.

I felt a cramp starting to form, but being in between aid stations, I didn’t have any liquids so I tried to swallow a Succeed cap dry.  It wouldn’t go down my throat – it just sat there in the esophagus, and I was starting to get the dry heaves as my throat tried to force it out.  I kept my breathing controlled and tried not to swallow, and then I got a brilliant idea – I had put some ice down my shirt, so I grabbed a few cubes and put them in my mouth.  Soon enough the cubes had become cold water, and voila, I was able swallow the cap.  Crisis averted!

Now it was make or break time.  Starting after mile 22, I decided not to walk any more of the aid stations and just make a steady push for the finish.  It was dark, but I was coming up on the occasional runner or group of runners and going by pretty quickly.  With about 5K to go, a guy running a strong steady pace went by me, and I think he was the only guy to pass me all day long (not that that was a huge deal given that I was in the bottom half of the field, but I’ll take anything I can get).  The miles counted down quickly, and pretty soon I was making the steep descent down Palani in the last mile of the race.  I tore down Hualalai and this time got to make the right turn onto Ali’i, at which point I had to remind myself not to just sprint home but to enjoy this final stretch, the final parade to the finish line.  Coming into the fenced-off chute in the final few yards, I saw my friend Michael and gave him a high-five, then high-fived every spectator whose outstretched hand I could see.

Over the finish line I did the biggest vertical leap I could muster and pumped my fist.  11:52:44 – “Ian Hersey….you…are…an IRONMAN!”  I was quickly surrounded by volunteers, my wife Jeanne and my parents and friends.  The next few minutes are still a blur, because I felt both exhilarated and also somewhat ill.  It was still very hot out, so I collected my finisher’s medal and shirt, and then headed for the comfort of the air-conditioned race hotel.  After some couch time, food and drink, I started to feel better.  As some evidence of the effort I had put out, though, I should mention that I peed blood for the next 3 days.

There are some memorable lines from some of the recent NBC broadcasts of the Ironman – I particularly like Al Trautwig’s dramatic delivery:  “You can learn a lot about life…on the Big Island of Hawaii.”  Perhaps that’s more than just good television – I certainly learned a lot about myself.  Despite subpar times in the swim and bike and some very challenging conditions, I never gave up and in fact put in the most evenly-paced run I’ve ever done in the Ironman.  And I accomplished a goal I had been pursuing for over 4 years, one that took blood, sweat and tears to accomplish.

So at the next social gathering where I tell someone I do Ironman triathlons and they ask, “oh, have you done the Ironman in Hawaii,” my answer will be, “why yes…yes I have!”

The tale of the tape:

Ian Hersey

BIB	AGE	STATE/COUNTRY	PROFESSION
649	47	Menlo Park CA USA / USA	Business Executive

SWIM	BIKE	RUN	OVERALL	RANK	DIV.POS.
1:24:24	6:22:14	3:56:25	11:52:41	1094	116

I got talked into doing this race as part of a 3-person relay by my teammates, Rita and Michael.  Sure, the race is pretty much all uphill.  Sure, it starts at sea level at 4:30 a.m. and ends at 10,000 ft at the summit of Haleakala.  Sure, uphill running’s not my strength.

But who can resist a challenge?

I agreed to come to Maui for this thing (twist my arm), and somehow talked my way into doing the last 12 or so miles.  The miles at the highest altitude (I live at sea level).  To be fair, Rita and MIchael live at sea level too, so someone had to do it.  Besides, when I rode a bike up the crater back in October, I didn’t have too much difficulty in the thin air, so I figured what the hey.

It was a weird weather week in Maui — cool, windy and rainy — and race day was no different.  Forecast was for the low 30s F at the summit, with 40 mph winds to make it that much more pleasant.  Since Crater Road has a bunch of switchbacks at the top, I was probably looking at a tailwind in one direction and a headwind in the other.

I arranged to meet the team at the very latest at the handoff point less than a mile before the pay gate at Haleakala National Park, altitude about 6700 ft.  Before we got up there, though, we found the rest of the team on the lower section of switchbacks that started just after Kula.  Rita was on leg 3, and was a few minutes from handing off to Michael, who would then hand off to me for my legs 5 and 6.  Rita’s husband George was driving the support vehicle, so I transferred my gear to that car and bade farewell to my wife Jeanne, sending her back down to the relative warmth of Ka’anapali.

Rita got done and handed off to Michael, and she, George and I headed up about 6 miles further to my starting point.  I could feel the altitude as I walked up a little hill to take a covert bio break — yep, 6700 ft. is kinda high!  Got all fueled up, and Michael came around the last bend within 10 minutes of his predicted time for this point in the race, so we were on track for a sub 6:30 finish as long as I didn’t crumble.

I actually had no idea what kind of pace I could run; I think Michael’s stats sheet put me at around 8:30 pace, which seemed a little ambitious for high altitude and steady uphill, but in the end I would have to go by heart rate and perceived effort level anyway.  My one experience in an uphill race, the 2004 Pikes Peak Ascent, had shown a dropoff in heart rate as the elevation got higher.  That race was not among my finest moments, but I was hoping this would be different, since it didn’t go nearly as high (PP is over 14,000 ft.) and since the pitch wasn’t nearly as steep (I believe Haleakala averages 6%).

Anyway, I was off and feeling ok, letting my heart rate settle in at about 150 bpm.  I started reeling in folks pretty quickly, but a lot of them were solo runners, so it was understandable that I was going by them — they were going for the full 36 miles and were already 24 miles in when I started my leg.  The wind wasn’t bad in the beginning, but once I was well into the park and on the switchbacks, the wind came with a fury.  Lower down, you go a pretty long way in one direction before hitting a turn and going the other direction, but as you ascend the straight stretches get progressively shorter.  At some points, the winds were absolutely howling, and I felt pretty sorry for the poor aid station volunteers that were standing out in the elements.  It was getting fairly cold, too.

I passed the sign for 8000 ft less than an hour into the run and was figuring on a time of about 1:40 for my leg, give or take, which would still get us under 6:30.  The headwind sections were tough, though, but the tailwind sections were great — I felt like someone was pushing me up the hill.  I took full advantage of those moments and let my legs fly.  I was still reeling people in.

I passed 9000 ft., and I could start to smell the barn.  It came sooner than I thought:  the race director made the call to end the race before the top, which was icy and hazardous, so when I saw my teammates at the next aid station, they told me I only had a mile to go instead of 3 miles.  The reader might assume I would be disappointed with that news, disappointed with not being able to do “the whole thing,” but actually the reader would be wrong.  I was cold and ready to be done, so I picked up the pace and finished with a surge.   I crossed the line, and was greeted with a maile, some medals and a blanket.

My time was 1:28:37 for about 10 miles; our team finished in something like 6:18 and won the mixed relay division.  Here we are back down near the starting line afterwards:

Here’s what the weather was like at the summit:

As always happens, the day after the event had the most gorgeous weather, at least in the afternoon.  All the better to enjoy Maui by!