The Ironman World Championships Kona 2010 (Doug Woods aka Bluey)

Kona is a very odd and unusual place. Beautiful on the one hand and desolate on the other.

My Ironman experience got off to a good start as I positioned myself conservatively on the left hand side of the line. There was some bumping and I swam head first into a canoe but otherwise the start was much less panicked than it looks on TV.

I swam evenly if slowly and reached the turn around point in 40 minutes I slightly negatively split the swim and popped out of the water in 1 hour 19 minutes (2.4 miles of swimming). This is very slow by age grouper standards. I ranked 1337th out of some 1800 competitors.

Then it was onto the bike where I was hoping for better things. It was hot on the way out to Havi but no real surprises. My pace seemed fine although I started to have trouble digesting my special concoction of carb’s and my legs felt weak. The winds at Havi were serious enough to blow several "small people" off the road and there was a 10 mph head wind for the last 50K of the ride which drained the life out of me. My bike thermometer got up to 100F so it was cooking by the time we finished. I averaged 20.5 mph for 112 miles at a normalized power of 205W's.

I sat in transition for a few minutes cooling off and taking a bathroom break before heading out on the run. I was hoping to run a marathon under 4 hours and was pleasantly surprised to find I could run (sort of) after about 3 miles. My stomach also started to work and this gave me a little energy. I decided to run conservatively to the energy lab which has a fierce reputation for leaving people at the side of the road in the lava fields crying for Mummy. I ran to the energy lab feeling good and started to press a little as I came out. The pressing had my pace down to 8 min/mile pace and so I switched to coke to keep the wall at bay. I ran hard from mile 17 until mile 23 when the wheels came off. From there I stumbled into town. In town the crowd support was great and I gave it everything I had (9 min/mile pace at that point) up to the finish line.

Post finish I was escorted by two volunteers to a chair where I sat incoherently for several minutes. Apparently the Tarmac temperature had gotten above 105F on the way back into town and I had overheated. My body had enthusiastically sent my cooling system into overdrive so as soon as my muscles stopped producing heat I became Hypothermic (weird huh). I sat shivering and shaking for 20 minutes. After a couple of cups of warm soup and a Mylar space blanket (at 87F) I started to feel chipper again and was released. My marathon time was 3:43 for a pace of 8:31 minutes per mile. This was a really good run given the conditions.

So there you have it Kona in 10 hours 39 minutes. I had a wonderful experience racing with the Worlds’ best and I'm in awe of how great they are from the first pro through the last finisher.

Lessons learned

1)      Long slow distance training is a waste of time

2)      Specificity is key to racing well

3)      Don’t try to eat more than 1.5 g carbs per kilogram body weight per hour. My upper limit is around 90 grams of carbs per hour.

4)      Train fast to go fast………………..Happy Training all