Kona 2010 is in the books. The men’s professional race was spectacular and Mirinda Carfrae’s performance in the woman’s field was inspiring and fun to watch. I cannot wait to watch the NBC coverage this December. I am sure it will be riveting.
Teresa’s performance was terrific and I am so happy for her. I think this was her 5th 2nd place age group finish. She went as fast as she could all day and finished behind an extremely impressive performance by Ellen Hart of Denver, CO.
The morning got off to kind of a funny start. I woke up at 3am and waddled out to lay down on the living room couch in our condo. I sat there and listened to the coffee maker hiss as it brewed my favorite coffee. My coach, Kristian, wandered out and sat down at the table and we talked about nothing in particular. We then could hear the water hitting the leaves outside the back porch. My whole body just went limp. Rain. No way. How could it be rain? I hate rain. Fourteen years in Seattle and thousands of miles running and riding in the stuff. I hate it. There are only three things I hate on this planet- beets, sauerkraut, and the bloody rain. Kristian could tell I was really letting it bother me. I had just suffered in the rain in Ironman Canada. I was wondering how I was going to do it again. I got a little negative and chippy for a few minutes (understatement of the month). I went into the bedroom after my cup of coffee to put on my timing chip, swim trunks, etc. I noticed that I could no longer hear the rain out the open window in the bedroom. Maybe it has stopped! I looked out and the road wasn’t wet. How could that be? I quickly jumped out the front door to take a quick look. The road was dry as a bone and I could see stars. What is going on? I couldn’t get my brain around what was happening. I am not known to peel the onion very quickly before a couple cups of joe in the AM. I wandered back out to the back porch and then I figured it out. Sprinklers. The bloody sprinklers were on in the back area of our condos and that is why it was all wet back there. What a dip I can be. I had gotten myself all upset about nothing. Life is harder when you are stupid!
So now that I had climbed back in off the ledge over the “rain” issue, we got ready and Kristian drove us to the swim start and we made our way to body marking. It amazes me how slick the organizers of the Hawaii Ironman have every evolution of this race. There were 1,750 of us athletes and not once all week did I stand in a line. I have to believe the volunteer to athlete ratio is better than one to one. It is one of the really awesome things about this race. You are given the rock star treatment the whole way. It makes the whole experience even that much nicer. After body marking we made our way to our bikes and got everything squared away. We were ready to race about 15 minutes after we arrived at the race, so we proceeded to our friends Robbie and Susie’s hotel room right behind the pier and lay down on their bed and waited for the time to pass. It was a luxury to be able to use a real bathroom and chill before the day began.
It all happened pretty quickly after that. The cannon went off and let the aqua combat begin. I have written in other blogs about the swim here in Kona. It was equally as terrible this year. A critic would probably ask why they don’t widen the start line so we aren’t all forced on top of each other. It is going to take someone getting seriously hurt before they change it and I know it makes for great television to see all the amateurs thrashing the life out of each other for an hour or so. I won’t complain about it. There is a way for me to avoid this contact; and that is to just swim faster. The boys who go 55-56 minutes aren’t getting their goggles resealed by other swimmers feet and elbows. That is a slower swimmer’s problem. So that will be my answer to the beating I take every year. I am just going to get faster.
So coming out of the water I had one of the best volunteers ever in the T1 tent. I had just swum in a Speedo, so I had to don both bike shorts and a tri top and get all my gear to launch on the bike ride. That volunteer had me suited up and on my way in about 20 seconds. It helps so much to have someone dedicated totally to you in the tent. Again, the volunteers here are sent directly from heaven. The bike got off to an uneventful start and I was down the road in no time. I don’t have much to say about the bike ride. The winds were mild with the exception of coming back from Hawi when they got down right sporty and some folks got hurt when they touched the floor after being blown off their bikes by the gusts. For the most part, one of the more mild wind days I have experienced there. I rode solid, but in the last two hours when it was time to start putting in the bigger watts, I was not able to summon the power required to get on with the bigger boys who were starting to reel me in. I was left to just pedal home on my own and I could feel the race going on without me. It was quite disheartening, to be honest. I had hoped to do big things on the bike and set myself up to run tough and into contention with the studs in my age group. I was unable to do that. No excuses, I just wasn’t able to make it happen regardless of how much I wanted it to happen. Someone said to me after the race that if I were to have ridden my normal ride I would have gone in the low 9:30's. Well, by that logic, if my sister had testes she would be my brother! I don't do if's.
As I pedaled into town I promised myself that I wasn’t going to spend the next three and a half hours running the race pissed off at myself and worrying about whatever I had done wrong. I have never said hello back to everyone who cheered for me on the course. I typically just wave a hand at them and keep staring straight ahead. I wasn’t really racing for anything at that point and I just wanted to represent the navy well, as I had NAVY written all over my race kit. I am glad I did that. I enjoyed the run much more than I ever have. I ran as hard as I could and never gave up on the race. I kissed one of the Aussie volunteers, Bev, going into the bike/run transition. Bev is always there on the pier during race week making sure the athletes don’t need anything and she has been there for years. T introduced me to her last year and she and I have a short conversation everyday during the week of Ironman. Seeing her there and taking the time to give her a kiss was a perfect way to switch off the bike and turn on the run. Nice people give me energy and Bev certainly did for me. I moved quickly into T2 and sat down next to my buddy Scott Davis. We traded some perspectives on how the day was going and then boom, I was running the run in Ironman. I didn’t feel good, but my legs felt strong. I got a few miles up the road and my coach, Kristian, was looking at me in a sort of disappointed way. Hey, what can a guy do but his best? That was what I was doing. I stopped, shook his hand, and asked him how his day was going. He seemed perturbed that I had stopped running. I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank him for looking after my training this last year. He is a wonderful coach- for a midget.
At mile three, the Air Force athlete Scott “Kidd” Poteet pulled up next to me. We ran a few miles together. We moved right along at a 7:10-7:20ish pace and chatted, talked shit about the Army and general observations on the day. Kidd is a wonderful dude. He just finished a tour flying as the slot pilot (#4) for the Thunderbirds and is on his way to command an aggressor squadron later in the year. How he gets the time to also be a world class ironman is beyond me. There are just some superb human beings on this planet that are good at everything. Kidd is one of those guys. I still like to send as much abuse his way as I can muster. After he had dropped me and gotten up the road about 100 meters in front of me, some of the folks on the side of the road would shout “go Navy! The Air Force is only 100 meters in front of you!” I would shout back that he was my retarded younger brother in the Air Force and that I was proud of him EVEN with his disability. It was good for some laughs and that is good for morale, mostly mine, on a hard and tough run. That is pretty much how the run went. Solid, strong running with a tired, old body. Mentally I was in a good place, I was just tired and suffering a touch. Coming back down Alii before the run up Palani and out onto the Queen K, Teresa’s immigration attorney and one of our dear friends, Linda, asked me how I felt. “Like a bag of crap sandwiches, you?!” She thought that was pretty descriptive and for me, quite accurate. The run turned out to be a good news story. I was able to get out and back, ran with confidence the whole way; and ran the Hawaii Ironman marathon 6 minutes faster than I ever have in my life. Total time on the day was 9:46:00, my second fastest time ever here in the lava.
One of my early mentors and someone I continue to admire is a former pro triathlete by the name of Tom Price. Tom is a two time champion of Ironman Canada. The day before my first Ironman, Tom gave me some of the best advice I have ever received in this sport. Tom wished me luck on my race and as I was walking out of his bike shop he told me that no matter what time I run in my ironman, not to kill my friends' buzz with the five reasons why I didn’t have my optimum race. He said, and rightly so, that 90 percent of our friends and family don’t know the difference between an 8:30 ironman and a 12:30 ironman, so don’t torture everyone with all the reasons you didn’t go faster. Wear your performance and your finishing time like a Gold medal, regardless of what that time is. Your family just wants you to be happy with your effort. Why would you steal that joy from them by going obsessive compulsive and killing their joy with your woes over your race?! My son offered me his observation after his second or third time watching an ironman. He shared with me this, “Pop, the thing I like about Ironman is that it isn’t like the short races you do, where it is all about a podium or no podium. Here at Ironman, if you finish in less than 17 hours you are in the club!” How true is that, eh?
So my result last Saturday? Gold medal. I’m about results, not excuses. If there are things I need to fix for next year, you can bet I have written them down and they will get fixed. I am so happy I raced this race this year. I learned a lot about a lot. I plan to expound upon some of those lessons this winter in a few blogs.
I just have to add one more thing about Teresa and this race. When I am out there racing, I think about Teresa constantly. I wondered if the swim was as tough for her as it was for me. I worried that maybe the stout winds up at Hawi got her, I wondered if she is running ok and if the neuroma in her foot was killing her, and then there she was! She was running straight at me on Alii while I was going the other way. It is one of the most amazing feelings in the world to see your wife running strong with a smile getting it done down the road after you have been worrying about her all day. The intensity of that feeling might not make it through these words to the reader, but there are few emotions as strong as seeing the one you love, your partner and best friend, barreling down Alii-the most famous road in triathlon next to the Queen K! I was so relieved and happy to see she was having a good day. I am so proud of her and her race. The perfect ending to that piece of the day was to be able to stand there at the finish line and catch her as she came across the finish line. It was absolutely one of the highlights of my triathlon career. It is experiences like these that made this year’s race so rich and full. I will always look back at the 2010 Kona race with this as easily one of my favorite races. Like I always say…just a little piece of heaven!
So now we are flying home to get on with what the autumn and winter have in store for us. For me, it will involve a lot of flying and work. For T, it will be the same with work. We both look forward to healing up and figuring out what we can do better next year. We hope some of you will be able to come out and train with us and tap into the Jonser/Teresa training machine. We plan on hitting it proper all year!
Train with joy or not at all!
Thanks for reading.
Jonser
1 comment:
Brilliant... thanks for posting!
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