Well that comes down to the person. I remember reading an article about some research that showed that people got a much larger quantity of happiness (time) from anticipation of a vacation than from the vacation itself. I think that applies here.

If you enjoy the training and the laser focus of trying to do good a kona year after year then by all means keep doing it. But if it turns into a drag and you don't get happiness from preparing for kona then stop going.

Don’t get it? I think everyone gets it. Kona is a fabricated NA centric world championship location for a private company.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I haven't even been there and this is just about as good a summation as to why I don't want to go.

Other than if you consider this a week of "adult christmas", minus having to actually do the race.

Just to be clear, the drafting is not a result or relation of it being Kona, correct? rather a result of the start format and the fact that 90% of participants swim fast and finish within 10-15 minutes of each-other. Even if this were situated in Nice, the drafting wouldn't be broken up until 20 miles in when the col de l'ecre climb gets tough.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

That's a metaphor I can wrap my head around

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Racing Kona is pointless. Too expensive. Too hot. A form of self-harm. Strains relationships.

And I love it.

Clearing the front path of snow in winter is really useful. Brings economic benefit. Not too hot. A form of self-preservation. Popular with those I love.

And I hate it.

Humans, go figure

Way too much drama going on up in this place...

You could make the same argument against the Ironman distance in general. The time and money required to participate in a 140.6 is insane for most age groupers, is it not? Granted, many participants just want to finish and aren't necessarily racing for a PR, but their suffering is certainly on par, if not worse.

Personally, I'm a short to middle distance athlete at best, and even an Olympic distance race is too long for me to be on the rivet, but because these races just don't have the cachet of a full Ironman, or even a 70.3 with Ironman in the title, I keep thinking I should do one.

well, there was for me. the first year it was held in kona. in 1981. i was just thinking about this yesterday. really, for the first time in my life i thought about this. that race changed the entire trajectory of my life, when i was 23 years old and i'm 60 now.

but it also must be noted that this was the only year i raced it. that race is great because of all the reasons you listed that you shouldn't do it. it's also a race that (in my opinion) you shouldn't annually chase, for all the reasons you listed.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

What a fantastic rant

Completely agree with you on this. And perhaps that’s what Kiley is really trying to say. If he is, he could of worded it better or specifically stated this is the target group of his post. I took it as a shot at anyone that wants to go to Kona which I don’t think is fair (I’m an engineer, I do math/numbers, not so good with reading comprehension). Kona is a dream for many, including myself. I hope to someday be there and hopefully be one of the few that has a good race.

I tracked a shit ton of people at kona, including yourself (great race btw!). Having never been to Kona or never done an IM (which is soon to change, I hope), I was really confused why so many people had bad races. It really made me wonder what’s so special about this race that this many people perform so badly? Obviously the conditions and other things but I started thinking about their specific preparations in the lead up to the race. What are they doing wrong? What are they not doing? Every year I see excuses about throwing up, getting sick on the bike, stopped sweating, or not being able to hold down any nutrition. And these are people that have won the amateur title at IM’s or in the top 5. How can somekne who has had so much success at the IM distance screw up nutrition so badly and crumble this badly? I get stuff happens (drop a bottle) but it seems there are just wayyyy more blowups at kona than any other race. Why is this? I have a few ideas but I obviously don’t know for sure without knowing many more details. I think this would make for a better discussion than ridiculing folks for putting Kona up on the pedestal.

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blog

Bravo! I agree 100% and have told many athletes something similar, (albeit nowhere near as well as you put it). I may have to save this for some of my athletes.

*The Gerlach comment literally had me laughing out loud!

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Jim Vance
http://TodaysPlan.com.au (Disclosure: I am contracted with Today's Plan)
http://www.CoachVance.com/
Twitter @jimvance

Now I know the name Chip (aka RecordCarbon) came back under! Brilliant Kiley....

Just stopped by to say, I agree 100%. +1. Hundo-p. Nailed it.

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Group Eleven – Websites for Athletes / mikael.racing / @mstaer

That's really the big question on the performance side. But my theory has a couple pieces.

First, IM is hard. There are great athletes that blow up at all sorts of IMs in all sorts of race conditions, simply because to go fast and be at the front of the AG you are likely going to need to get more things right than wrong. And 9 hours is a lot of time to get things wrong.

Second, pretty much everyone is fast at Kona. You have guys and girls that wiped the floor with the competition at their qualifying race, but then get to Kona to find out that there are 40 other people in the same AG who did the same thing to get there. Mentally, that can be hard for some, especially when the gun goes off and an hour, two hours, three, etc. and that person who is used to pulling away hasn't pulled away at all.

Along those same lines, because everyone is fast, people push themselves harder than they ever should for god knows whatever reasons, but primarily because everyone else is going fast. Look at all of the AG men who rode sub-5 to then just wither away on the run. Was it really in their interest to ride sub-5 hours in Kona? Quite apparently not. But that ego does strange things.

Third, the course in Kona is hard and the weather can be brutal. After your tritats melt off in the saltwater washing machine out there (literally, mine were 100% gone out of the water), you head out to a 5 hour ride in a lava oven, trying not to sweat so much that you can't continue. Then the run...my god the run...you see our teammate John Kelly had the fastest amateur run split with a 3:00? And that dude won Barkley. And second fastest amateur run split at 3:0 I believe was the dude that ran a 2:45 at IM Texas. What does that mean? That the run is damn hard.

So, you put all of that together, plus a million other little (or big) things I didn't address, and you get the recipe for disaster. As I said in another thread, it takes a lot of luck to do well in Kona, and not a lot of bad luck, if any at all, to do poorly.

I think you are going to find it hard to have that race anywhere. When I did Whistler in 2013, they had just moved it to Whistler and added 50 slots to Kona. I was pumped...better chance for me. Except...100 fringe guys like me thought the same thing. To this day, I haven't seen 3 packs of riders riding like that (including Kona 2015) in my life. Wasn't able to even be close despite a huge PR.

It will take a huge push by race management to ensure a proper bike ride for a world championship. Chattanooga worlds was freaking brutal...just a big old team time trial. More spread out because of waves and whatnot, but groups of 5-7-9 just about a bike length apart. It seemed to me like if you want to compete with that, you need to be a freaking monster on the bike and bike away from the packs, or "play the game" and "do your best". I'm not at the level to think about age group podiums at WC events, but as a not super strong biker, jumping on those trains would be the only way I could see competing. Unfortunately, to follow the rules you just end up going backwards in that level of racing. (Except downhills, where I guess I am a world champion - the last short downhill I passed the group of 6 that passed me prior - and it took them 2 miles to catch back up. Suck it drafters! lol)

I just feel that if you moved the world championships to, say Mont Tremblant, you would find the same thing having that many high level age groupers starting at the same time - unless race management started pushing for rules to be enforced.

Brent

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

See underlined text. Exactly that. Of course there are other variables, but that's the killer. While I'm speculating, I feel confident in guessing the vast majority of participants are in Kona to compete to the best of their ability. If anything, participants' Kona prep is even more OCD than the typical type A triathlete training regime. Problem is no matter how you train in a lead-up to Kona, performance in oppressive heat / humidity is largely genetic. Sure, there's some minor amount of potential physiological adaptation (e.g. sweat rate can decline over time if you move from an arid climate to an oppressively humid one), but by-and-far this can't be "trained." So you end up large number with super fit athletes in Kona who are destined to be mired in disappointment before the starting gun even goes off.

I very much enjoyed your post.

Having said that, you claim that the WTC loses money on Kona. I am curious how you know that. I suspect that race and their exclusive right to use the term "Ironman" (in conjunction with triathlons) are two of their most valuable assets. Saying they lose money on the race is like saying a company loses money on advertising.

You also talk about "the 15 hour finisher trying to do ten IRONMAN races just to do one awful one. The legacy deal requires you complete 12 races, not ten, and due to the backlog, I believe it is now at least 13. Having finished 10 and doing my 11th in 10 days, I try to keep abreast of this.

But again, I enjoyed your post..

Yeah.
Agreed.

Maybe a time trial format or AG waves would work better.
But I can see that being hugely controversial also.

John had the 2nd fastest amateur run split. I don’t want to take anything away from the guy who had the fastest split.

Ok so I don’t really get #1. Yes IM is hard (so I have been told). But it’s hard for everyone. Some just may be better at it than others. I see this point as just another excuse to throw out there when one has a bad race without actually diving into the real reason of a poor performance.

#2. Agree completely. Definitely was thinking about this and this applies to just about any “big” race.

#3. This is what everyone says. The course is hard. Yes we have all heard it. And I feel it’s just another excuse similar to number 1 and doesn’t get to the root cause of a bad performance. Everyone has to race the same course. There are some that can handle the course/conditions and some can’t. What are those who can’t handle the course doing wrong (other than number 2)?


IMO it comes down to these things:

- pacing (this includes the conditions part)
- nutrition leading up to and during race
- mental
- preparation

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blog

I know what you are saying but that’s what so many say after a bad performance. It’s just an excuse if you ask me. What’s the root cause though? Saying your body just can’t handle the conditions and there is nothing you can do about it is not root cause.

If one struggles in the Kona conditions, I would think the first thing to do would be to SLOW DOWN. Isn’t this like IM 101 when it gets hot/humid at any IM race? Yes I know ego’s get in the way of this. But everyone needs to be honest with themself and look at every race performance with a non-biased view in order to find ways to improve.

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blog

Speaking of dreams....haha.

 
An observation.....

I have raced USAT nationals, Olympic Distance worlds and Kona.

The AG wave format (at USAT and Olympic worlds) seemed to change the drafting component greatly.
In these races, it seemed that there are deliberate, conscientious cheatersq, and everyone else.
And the drafters were a small contingent.

At Kona almost everyone is a drafter.
Some people feel that they are trying to avoid drafting.
Some people are ignoring it (but probably drafting)
And some people are embracing it.

I think the point is there's nothing one can do about it to have a desired race performance.


I guess, in the context of a good Kona race. But that's a much higher hurdle for most, as defined by genetics. Type A triathletes don't want to "race" Kona to a 'perfect scenario' 11 hour finish when they're capable sub-10 at Mont Tremblant. Again, just setting up mass failure. But we're pretty far off topic now.

You got me there, but I think there is also just a large Reason #4 I would add: Sometimes you just are on and sometimes you aren't, regardless of preparation or execution. And when you are not on in Kona, that may put you back 50+ spots in your AG while in your qualifying race it may drop you back less than 5.

Kona just has a way of exposing weaknesses and mistakes much better than (any?) other race, and that's one of the reasons I enjoy the challenge...at least for now.