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