Kona 2009…it is in the books baby!!

Sweet Teresa cheering me home.


Any good navy flying story always starts with “so there I was!”… So there I was, sitting next to my buddy Paul in the bike rack area of Kona and we were just kicking back against the wall taking in the pre-race show. I just love the electricity before these things kick off. All the Vulcans with numbers stamped on their arms, sponsors stick-on tattoos, skinsuits over their tri kits, sunscreen everywhere, its Ironman, baby! Kona is like no other in the pre-race festivities. Polynesian drums, rock music blaring everywhere, Navy skydivers jumping into the water right off the pier, it just goes on and on. It is one heck of a show for sure!

So then 1779 of us get wet and swim easily out to the start at the end of the pier. There were feet and elbows everywhere! We are all bobbing in the swells for the better part of 15 minutes, as we get ready to get going. And then it happens, KABOOM! The cannon goes off and away we go. This year I thought it was quite prophetic that the day before the race, my high school water polo coach friended me on Facebook! Coach Ron Bergmann had a huge influence on me when I was a freshman and sophomore in high school. I was quite small as a freshman. I wrestled as an 89 pounder my freshman year and was only a few pounds heavier my sophomore year. Lets just say, I got the snot pounded out of me in water polo. Coach Bergmann taught me how to rumble with the bigger boys and I learned a lot from him. Funny that 29 years have gone by since I have seen him, and then we connect. So back to my point- having a water polo background helps in the Kona swim because I am able to swim pretty fast with my head out of the water and I am comfortable with the body contact. I don’t like the contact, but it doesn’t freak me out. The ability to swim heads up for the first few minutes can save you a couple of teeth☺ The swim this year was violent. It always is, but this year it was a level or two above what I have experienced in other years. I survived and got out of the water in 1:01. Not great, not terrible.

I got out on the bike and rode conservatively, but purposefully. This year the trades weren’t as pervasive as 2004, but they were constant all day and shifted half way through, so that we rode pretty much the entire day with a quartering headwind. I was pleased with the bike. I held back for the most part and never put myself in difficulty. On the way back on the Queen K, I found myself in a friendly group of dudes. We all stayed legal and rode with integrity, but we also were racing smart and working together. It was good to have friends, Eric Hodska, Kristian Manietta and Albert Boyce in that mix. There was also a young Aussie by the name of Nicksta who was always saying something light and fun all day, which makes it nice when we are all riding hard like that. Good times for sure out there. The volunteers were beyond awesome on the bike course. This race really is world class in every way.

So I had a longer T2 than in years past as I stopped for a nature break and made sure I didn’t forget anything. I had also packed a little present for Teresa, as it was her birthday. I knew that I would see her early in the run, and a gift is a good way to show that even though I am racing, I have her in my thoughts always. As I ran off Kuakini down toward Alii I ran into a sea of friendly screams from T, Mels, Fletch, Paul’ s wife Kaye, his folks Tom and Jo, our friends from DC- Michelle and Marion and probably a few I didn’t know were there (sorry if I left you out. Please forgive me). Teresa cracks me up. I came around the corner and she spotted me and jumped about three feet in the air and just went crazy. My favorite thing about my 51-year-old wife is she is more like 15 years old. Her youthful enthusiasm and fresh approach toward each day just sends a rush of warmth through my entire body. I am a pretty positive guy, but T makes me look at life with even more optimism and pure enjoyment. It has been like waking up and being 25 years younger since she came into my life. When I talk about the main thing being to keep the main thing the main thing? Teresa Denise Rider is the main thing for me. She brings a sunny side to this life of mine, and the freakin’ sun comes out everyday for this guy. How good does it feel to admit that, eh!!! More later on why I used the word freakin’☺

So life is just a little piece of heaven and I am cruising down Alii digging my own chili, sitting on my 7:35ish pace when boom- debilitating cramps in my upper and lower gut that just cinch in as tight as a UFC rear naked choke. I am not exaggerating. They were bad. I just thought, Oh no, this is bad. Really bad. With cramps in ironman, you cannot just continue on doing what you were doing. They will not get better by themselves. I just admitted to myself right there and then that I was going to have to just stop the whole show and deal aggressively with these damn cramps or I was going on a long, hot walk. I walked through aid stations 3, 4 and 5 and just took everything they had except Gatorade. I typically don’t do Gatorade in races for various reasons, but at the 6-mile mark, I just thought, “screw it, it looks really good to me and what do I have to lose”. I felt like I was having the period from hell- cramping, bloating and beginning to have a generally bad disposition. I had been running 9 minute miles or slower through these things, but then as I got about half way between miles 6 and 7 I started to come right and the bad patch I had been in was starting to subside. I peeled the onion pretty fast after that and said, aha! The Gatorade is working, this means I must be on my way to hyponatremia or something close (hyponatremic-look it up☺) and just went huge on salt and electrolytes along with an aggressive stream of gels and anything else they were offering. Mile by mile, I felt better and better and I looked down at my Garmin and I was again running sub 7:40’s and was getting my sense of humor back.

During my bad patch, Navy LT Nick Brown had run with me for a while to cheer me up, but left me because I was running way too slow. Marine Lt. Colonel Greg Price also caught me and dropped me. At that point I thought to myself that the Military title was most likely not going to be mine this year. My friend Greg (callsign Weasel) is a tough customer. He, like me, is a reservist and an airline pilot on the outside and is a tough, smart, fast ironman triathlete. He tends to just get stronger the harder the conditions get, so I didn’t see him going by me as a good thing, other than I was happy for him because he is my bud and it looked like his day was going great. So I ran up out of Alii onto Kuakini and up Palani toward the Queen K highway for the long hard effort toward the Natural Energy Labs. Damn if I didn’t come up on young LT Nick Brown having his own issues. I like this young officer a lot, even though we had just met days earlier at a navyathletes.com thing. You can read his bio on www.navyathletes.com. He is exactly what I picture when I look at the future of the force once older cats like me punch out and do other things. I wanted to motivate him to stop walking and get running, so I kind of bullied him a bit with some shit about navy dudes don’t walk outside aid stations and he is representing his country blah, blah, blah. He bought it and ran with me for a mile or two and started to come right. I continued to feel better and left him on his own in good hands in an aid station and started to build my effort toward the Energy Lab. I next came upon my bud, Eric Hodska who ran with me for about 4 miles. We did well to pace each other and were starting to dial in sub 7:20’s from 14-18. We continued to walk the aid stations and motor as hard as we felt we could in between. The conditions were just barbaric. It was icky and sticky for sure! Tarzan would have DNF’d. There was total carnage out on the highway. Eric and I just picked our way through the dying and dead and headed down into the Energy Lab. Right before the turnaround I spotted my bud Weasel running back the other way. I decided to see if I could catch him. Eric wished me well and I picked it up as much as I could. I was able to catch Greg as we exited out the top of the Energy lab and we ran a few miles together. The pace was picking up and we stayed together within 10-15 feet. Don’t get me wrong- Weasel and I weren’t racing against one another, we were racing with each other. There is a big difference. It was just good clean fun to see who could dig deeper. There is a ton of mutual respect between us, and at the parties after these things, where you find one of us- you usually find the other. That Vulcan is one of them good people! So Greg and I were running together, but not a word was spoken between us. When you hurt that bad, talking is impossible. I just thought to myself that I am going to have to really run if I am going to be the first military guy. Greg isn’t the kind of guy who folds, so I was going to just have to run faster. I turned my legs over as hard as I could between miles 21 and 23. My Garmin showed 6:55’s to 7:05’s during those miles. So during this hard effort, I got religious and started bargaining with God. I said “God, just don’t let me weaken. If I hold up I promise to give up using the F word for a year”! Any of you who know me know I love to use the F word. It is my favorite word for some reason. I use it as a noun, a verb, an adjective, a good morning greeting to my buddy Paul, and a formal name on regular occasion. I also know that God doesn’t work that way, but man, when you are in the pain hole- you will result to back room bargains over profanity with God if you think it will help you continue to run faster! So now I get a whole year of not using my favorite word. Nobody is as curious as me if I can do it, but a deal is a deal and I will make good on it☺ I could no longer hear Weasel’s footsteps behind me, but I was afraid to look back. I ran by one of my buddies, Mark, who was working an aid station and I asked him about the Marine behind me. He just recommended that I run as hard as I could because he was right there, and “keep it rolling”. I appreciated Mark’s advice. I ran through the next three aid stations and was climbing toward Palani when I ran into my friend, Bob Korock- tri coach extraordinaire and former long time pro. I asked Bob about the Marine behind me and he assured me that he wasn’t right behind me. It was then that I thought, holy cow, maybe I really did it. I ran as fast as I could from mile 25 to the finish, but I was thoroughly baked. I had never come up against my pain barrier before and then just pushed through it to where the pain sensation was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I just let it sit there in my body while I ran. I didn’t fight it or try to make it go away. I just accepted it and let it hurt. My mind got really quiet during that piece of the race. I have never been there before in Ironman. I have raced hard and trained hard plenty of times, but I have never done that to myself. I still couldn’t believe Greg wasn’t there and as I ran by Teresa near the finish, I asked her “where is the Marine?” She looked at me like I was crazy.

In years past, I have enjoyed that turn onto Alii into the crowds and pranced toward the finish. Not this year. I was completely spent and just wanted to finish. I ran straight to the white line, saluted; found my two catchers (the volunteers who meet you and make sure you are ok). I’m fuzzy on what happened next and found myself looking up at the top of the tent with an IV in my arm. I had run myself unconscious.

So that was my ironman. It was by far my favorite effort thus far. I have gone faster on this course, both in 2005 and 2006, but I have never put together an effort to where I had to take myself to another level to reach my goal. I proved to myself I can go to a place I didn’t think existed. And for that, this years’ race is my favorite of the 9 Ironmans I have completed.

My Kona blogs for 2009 have come to a natural end. I have enjoyed this summer’s journey back into the sport. I am so happy and blessed to be back doing what I love to do and can’t remember ever being this happy in the sport.

As I fly home to Boulder now to take up where I left off with my professional life, I will never forget this summer or the 12 days I was in Kona in 2009. It was sweet and was the vacation I have needed for over half a decade. Life can be so rich and full of so many good things. Sometimes we might just have to give ourselves a chance to get un-busy and take a big look around. It is amazing what we can see when we do.

Peace,
Jonser

Them Vulcans in Kona I been talkin’ about….them is some good people!

Well here we are the day before the race. I am sitting here on my lanai over looking the water with the sun coming up behind my back. As I look out over the water I can see the turn around buoys on the racecourse. A few swimmers are actually rounding them right now. I know a couple of guys who were going to swim the whole course the day before the race. If they are in my age group and faster than me…I hope they ride and run the course today as well!

I am starting to get that amped up feeling that I usually get as I get closer to big races. For me, that is good. If I don’t get that feeling it usually means I am not ready for some reason. I am nervous for sure, but I have to say my overarching emotion I have felt all week is just pure joy and relief. Joy that I am back in the sport I love so much and joy that I am back among all the Vulcans in this sport. Relief in that I can still get myself scary fit. When I get out of shape and put on a little weight, I go through this mental circle jerk in my mind where the negative side says “Its over, you’ll never be fit and fast again. You are too old”. I proved that isn’t the case this summer and it just fills me with relief that the door on my athletic career isn’t closed yet☺

It has been great to just wander around Kailua half dressed all week digging the scene. If you have never seen this place during Ironman week, you have to check it out some time. So much good energy to put in your pocket and take home with you.

This week, the duration of my training sessions came way down as any natural race taper would dictate, mixed in with a small touch of intensity to continue to sharpen the knife for Saturday. One of the guys I coached this year is a Marine Colonel by the name of Hunter “Hamster” Hobson. Hamster and I met at the Jim Thorpe Sports Days at the Army War College last year while I was in school at National. Hamster was at the “rival” school there at NDU, the Industrial College of Armed Forces (ICAF). There is really no rival in there, but we artificially hate them during the school year as a place to put our competitive energy as we compete against ICAF in intramural sports all year. I met Hamster on the 8k XC run at the sports days competition, which included all the services War Colleges. Hamster ran me down at the finish (in front of my wife!). I use the excuse that it was the week after Boston, but he could beat me running any day of the week. He is one of those freaks who are good at everything. Hamster is the rock star of military pilots in my book. He is a former Blue Angel (#2 on the right side in the diamond formation), and the former Commanding Officer of a Marine Fighter Squadron who has seen multiple tours in combat. He is as humble as he is studly. Were it not for the unfortunate moniker of Hamster, he would max out on stud points. Anyway, Hamster got a lottery slot this year for Kona and asked me to coach him. He is off the chart talented and we have trained together all week.

On Monday, Hamster and I rode 90 minutes easy and later that day we swam some hard sets in the pool with Paul and Teresa. Tuesday we swam the entire course with my buddy Scotty Davis, who just finished the LA Triathlon (first amateur at 44 years old), who as an awesome swimmer and was nice enough to pace me through some short hard sets out to the buoy. We stopped at the Coffees of Hawaii boat/espresso bar on the way back. My buddy and fellow ironman competitor Albert Boyce is the owner of COH and runs an espresso bar out on the swim course where you just swim up and grab an espresso and the chat with all of those on the boat. Kevin Purcell, the former Chippendale and ever-present tri coach is always aboard as is my friend from Boulder and pro triathlete Mark Van Akkeren. Marky V crashed while training here a couple of weeks ago and unfortunately cannot race. After the espresso, we swam back toward the pier when we ran into a school of dolphins (at least over 50 were in this school). Hamster grabbed my leg and pointed underwater, as I looked down a mom and baby dolphin came cruising right beneath me less than two feet away. As she cruised by, she turned her belly toward me and let out the little sonar squeal they make. TOO FREAKIN’ COOL! It was one of the most wonderful things I have experienced in the water. All my fellow Vulcans stopped swimming as well. We just all enjoyed the oneness with these terrific creatures. I will never forget that experience. Later that afternoon, Scotty Davis and I went for a quick 8 miler to shake things loose for me. He is a hugely generous person who gave away his Tuesday to train with me and catch up. Scotty and I are coaching a camp together along with pro triathlete, Tim O’Donnell in April down in Southern California. I look forward to that.

The rest of the week I have been just chilling out on the sofa, soaking up my training and resting for the big day. Race week is probably one of the only times I allow myself to just be a lazy slug. For those of you who know me personally, I have been told I can be a touch intense and tend to live kind of an aggressive schedule. I’m just not good at lying around. It doesn’t suit me. I’m always hyped up on coffee and suffer from mild ADD. My former flight surgeon, who as a civilian is an occupational osteopath, tried to make it sound better one time over beers in Ecuador when he broke it to me that he was officially diagnosing me with ADD, or whatever the cone head quacks call it these days. He said, “Jonser, you are a very highly developed ADD guy”. What the hell is tha…oh’ look, shiny keys☺. If the worst affliction I end up with in this life is a head full of cowlicks, my stupid laugh, and a little ADD mixed in there, I will be just fine! So anyway, I have just lounged around on the couch. I have actually watched an entire football game and two baseball games. That exceeds the number of games I have watched cumulatively since 2004.

Laying around on Holiday (as the wife calls it) has been really great for me. I have been pretty freakin’ busy the last few years. I went straight from commanding my navy squadron to grad school and then straight back to United Airlines with literally no break at all. This last month of just training and this week of just resting have been beyond wonderful. When I freshen up from fatigue, I get the opportunity to be introspective and put the pieces together in my life, both past and present. I often come away with a completely different perspective on things than I formerly had. I will save the deep life stuff for some other time and keep this triathlon specific. With regard to me and being in this sport, I just have to acknowledge that this little journey of running, biking and swimming over the last 8 years has completely changed my life. Back in 2000, I was a United Captain, an upwardly mobile LCDR in the reserves, a husband and a father; and while most thought I had the world by the balls- I was the most lost guy on this planet. I had never set any goals beyond sitting in the left seat of commercial jets and flying grey airplanes for the government. My eldest was through with high school and was killing college and my youngest was doing all the good things a 13 year old was supposed to. I would get so frustrated that I couldn’t visualize what was next. Nine years later, the clarity is in HD. Most likely, that comes from just living longer and maturing, but there is something about this Vulcan Ironman lifestyle that just clears up ambiguity for me. I haven’t quite nailed down what that is, but I will keep rolling it around in my grape until that answer comes from within, eh? For now, I know this: The main thing, is to keep the main thing- the main thing.

Yesterday I got to hang out at the navyathletes.com tent at the expo. Because navy is a major sponsor for this event, we not only have the dudes racing for navy like myself, we have other navy ironman dudes who get to come race and represent. These young navy studs are so impressive to me. You can read their bios on www.navyathletes.com under 2009 athletes. I got to hang out with them a bit yesterday. I have nothing but respect and admiration for these guys. I am so proud to be a member of today’s military. I quit high school and enlisted back in 1982 and it wasn’t the case back then. Most young sailors did everything they could to not look like sailors when they were out in town. That post Vietnam funk was still alive and well. I am glad I have stayed in these 27 years to see and live in a different United States Navy. My prayer is that this country really realizes how special these young kids are and how devoted to their service they really are. I get chills up my spine when I think about it. Hooyah!

So, tomorrows race- I have stated in former blogs that if one places a time goal on this race, he is either a novice and is going to have a rude awakening, or is more highly evolved than me and just knows these things☺ Me, I honesty have no time goal. A navy buddy texted me last night and wished me luck on achieving my goals tomorrow. I responded that I already have. I am here to race my fourth Kona and I am more fit than I have ever been in my life. How good it feels to say that and mean it! Tomorrow, I will be happy with whatever the day delivers because I am truly back in the sport and just to go play with the big boys is enough for this year. Having said that, I, like anyone else, have some rough parameters I would like to stay close to through the day to gauge my progress. I have never broken an hour in this swim for whatever reason, so the closer I am to 1:00 the better. On the bike, I am going to cap my watts at 230 out of respect for the course and would be happy if I could ride in the 5:20 or so range. I have broken 5:15 in 5 of my 8 Ironmans and have gone sub 4:54 here, but I have been away for a while, so am going to be conservative. My pr on the run on this course is 3:32 and I would be ecstatic if I could get in under 3:30. The rest I will just leave out there for the lava gods. If you are tracking me on ironman.com and you see me missing the above times, don’t feel bad for me. Just know I am having a total blast, loving life with the other sick and twisted Vulcans and am happy to be out there giving it my all. I will leave it all on the course, I promise.

Train with joy or not at all!

Jonser

Livin’ in Kona... the Vulcan’s have arrived!

So Teresa and I got here on Thursday and island life got started off with a bang 7am Friday morning with a group swim of the entire course. Kristian Manietta invited us both out to the pier to swim with the usual suspects you would see in Kona this early. It was basically a who’s who of triathlon. I dislike namedroppers and stargazers, so I won’t rattle them all off, I’ll just say that everyone you see in the Triathlon magazines were there on the pier. We all suited up and got wet in a mass start that closely represented the race start we will experience next Saturday. I was looking forward to swimming the entire course and I was especially excited to swim it with a crowd just to practice sitting in a pack and drafting while test-driving my new Xterra skin suit. It started off brisk and I just sat in with a pack that didn’t put me in difficulty, yet still required me to swim like I really knew how. The water was not terribly choppy, but choppy enough to drink a little salt water now and then and the swells were of a good size. We swam out solid, everyone regrouped and then we swam back. I was feeling especially fresh, coming down from 5500’ to sea level, so I opened it up for about 15 minutes to see what was there. It feels awesome to come down from altitude. I felt like I was taking in twice as much air as I am used to…because I was. After swimming hard for a while, I dialed it back, slipped back into the pack and swam the rest of the course comfortably. What a great way to start off our vacation here in Kona!

Kona is neat during Ironman week because if you get here early enough you basically get to watch a small little village grow each day by about a thousand people- literally. The energy is just a touch more alive each time we come into the center of town. I really dig that part about being here during this event. Serious ironman folks are such an interesting crowd; they really do look like a group from another planet. The first time I ever raced an ironman, I noted to my son that it was like showing up and all the other Vulcan’s are there. In our own separate communities, we are the odd man out, but in Kona we are all re-united☺. You walk through a town of people who all have shaved legs with veins bulging from places I didn’t realize we were even supposed to have veins. Folks are scary lean from being primed for this event. I have heard it described as being so lean you can see their spine from the front! I personally dig it. All of these folks are on hyper drive for sure…good stuff.

Saturday morning we mounted up with a crew of about 15-20 and headed down the Queen K in a friendly, easy bike ride. After a couple of hours, we turned around and five of us (Kristian, his wife, Charlotte Paul, my long time training partner Paul, and Teresa) headed back into town. It was nice to get in a little under 4 hours saddle time in the sun and wind and start acclimating to the conditions. We ended the ride with a Jamba Juice. One of my favorite things about ironman training is the after ride social stuff like just grabbing a juice or a coffee and sitting around visiting with other athletes. It is definitely one of the things I like most about the sport. I used to coach with a guy and we used to like to do crazy crap like swim 8500 yards and then go straight to Krispy Kreme, order a dozen donuts, two large cups of coffee, sit down and see how fast we could eat donuts. It was always a race to see if you could get to the seventh donut out of a dozen, but it was always 6 and 6.

Friday afternoon while swimming easy in the ocean with Paul, we were bobbing in the swells, taking the big look around and just digging the fact we were both racing Kona together after 8 years of training together and we got to talking about how great it is to be in the sport. We both agreed that one of the bennies of being in Ironman is there is an element of just being a kid. While in professional life we have to act like grownups and make good calls and be professional, in our tri life we can basically just act like kids. Ride our bikes, eat ice cream, and swim with the dolphins-just basic fun kid stuff. Of course when you are 7 hours into your ironman race, the fun aspect is overshadowed by some suffering and bearing down and calling forth a ton of courage, but in a lot of the training, there is still plenty of room for good old fashioned kid fun. I love that part.

This morning we headed out to the energy lab in the lava fields and dialed in a 90 minute run. We cruised it with some sets of race pace stuff in there, but it was mostly just cruising along, digging the scenery, chatting about life stuff. It was great to go out there and run easy. I have never done that. I have run in and out of the energy lab 3 times, but always during a race. I am usually deep into the pain hole at that point and running out of the energy lab always seemed like such a long, hard climb. This morning while running casually, I could see that it isn’t the vicious hill I portray it to be and I will remember that on race day.

This week is shaping up to be a ton of fun with revisiting old friends and meeting new folks each day. It would be the understatement of a lifetime to say I am happy to be here!

More later…

Jonser