Big kahuna ½ ironman race report, which took place on September 12th 2004 in Santa Cruz California.
Here’s the race website: http://www.bigkahunatri.com/kahuna/
Here’s the timimng site: http://www.eternaltiming.com/results04/bk/bkov1-250.cfm
TAPER WEEKS LEADING TO RACE
I was in great shape at this point and have done a ton of work to get at this point in my racing triathlons. Since 24 hours of Adrenaline in May I averaged close to 24 hours a week in training. I focused a lot on everything, trying to get it all dialed in. I started my taper two week out from race day to get my body back to a not so tired state. I felt very tired the first week and started to question all of my fitness and if I shouldn’t have started sooner. It’s really amazing what goes through my mined during this week. I would have to keep telling myself what that I’ve done a great job so far and I will to good on race day. I had to keep repeating that a lot. But by Thursday of the first week I felt really good and noticed my watts were way up there and didn’t fill very hard to maintain steady watts. By the second week I felt great. I was doing some 6-10 minutes intervals with steady watts @ 300 to 350 and didn’t seem hard to hold. My heart, I thought was a little high for the watts but I noticed that my perceived effort was very low. I kept my swimming at 9000 to 11000 meters for the week though. I always feel it doesn’t tax my body like running or biking. I kept the swimming to longer sets with a lot of 50’s and 100 sprints. The second week I cut it by half and still with a few 50’s and 100 sets. My running was cut back a lot. I Started to taper 3 weeks out from race day. I went from 35 and then 20 and 10 miles for race week. I always incorporated intervals and some steady tempo pace in my workouts. I’m not to sure about the pace because I did most of my running by perceived effort and heart rate.
RACE DAY
This was my last big race for the year. I got up at 3am to eat breakfast. I ate 3 pancakes with chocolate chip and a smoothie witch had 2 bananas, a few strawberries and raspberries. Pack up and headed to Santa Cruz witch is 1 hour away. I got there at 5 am and started to set everything up. I felt very good for this and new I was going to do real good.I put a lot of time and effort in this year and have secraficed a lot to get where Im at today. About half way through setting up my stuff I bent over and grabbed something and lifted up and my lower back started to heart really bad. I tried for the next hour to stretch and work it out. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. At 6 am I started to warm up and hoping my back would ease up a little. It never did, although at times it would starte to feel better but would tense up again. I contiplated not racing but decided to go ahead and if it started to hurt to bad I would stop. That thought about killed me though. I could think of was all this time I spent to get here. After a while I decide not to wast anymore energy on it and just play it out.
I was in the second wave 30-34. The first wave was elite 29 and under. They said go and there I went. My plan was just to be as steady as possible and hold it through the race. I panted my self up front and got out to a good start and got on to the first group of people. I drafted of them first half. After that everbody started to fad so I decided to keep going and finish hard. I came out of the water in the top ten.
Swim was 30:26.
42nd overall
The bike is my best so I knew I was going make some time and caught my competitors. I got on the bike and was going to stick to my plan and race my own race. I see to many people go out for hard and drop on the second half of the course. And I’ve done it myself a few timesJ. For the first ten minute my watts were 320-350, that’s a lot and I better slow down a little, that’s what I kept telling myself. I felt really good and the evert seem okay. My heart rate was 160 –165, a lot higher than normal. The next twenty minutes I worked on slowing dowm and getting a grove going and hammer along. After 20 minutes my heart rate settlerd in to about 155-160 and felt great so I started to get some calories in. I had a two bottles, 1 with 1000 calories spiz and the other with 2 scoops of Powerbar endurance drink (140 calories). Finally my heart and watts settled about mile 30 to 300-325 for my watts and 145-155 for my heart rate. I still fely very good. I always tried to conserve some energy and tell myself to keep it steady. There was a strong head wind that came up around mile 20 and got stronger by the turn around point. I finished my spiz drink about 10 miles to go, I didn’t want to get to the running part full of fluid but also didn’t want to go into the run hungary. This workd very well for me. I end up passing almost everybody who started the swim 5 minutes ahead of me. I think at the halfway point on the bike I was in 15 place. And by the end of the bike I knew I was in the top 10.
Bike – 2:17
Ave. Speed – 24.5 mph J
Ave. Watts – 297 J
I was the second fastest bike splitJ (very proud of this)
At this point I have forgotten all about the back pain, but once I got of the bike OUCH!, that hurt, I was reminded. So I put on my sheo’s and chose to run intell I could notrun any more. I ran the first 30 minutes kind of conservative, just trying to get my pace and feeling back in my legs. My feet are always numb for the first 20 minutes or so. I started to feel really good and decided to pick up the pace and see what I could manage. I held a blistering pace (literally) for the next hour.I wanted to finish under 1:30 for the half marathon. I started to cramp a few times so I had to slow down some. No one has passed me as of the half way point and nobody in site. I noticed I wasn’t to far behind the guy in front of me and he didn’t look very good. I picked up the when ever I could. At mile 9 I had the runner in my site and was looking like I could catch him, so again I put the hammer down. I figured if I could pass him about mile 11 and get somewhat of a good lead I would have to sprint him to the finish (those really hurt). Theres was no one in site by mile twelve but I wasn’t about to slow down and gave it my all to the end.
Run – 1:28:48
Ave. pace – 6:46 J
Run rank 14th
Total time – 4:20:08
6th overall
2nd age group (30-34).
I’m very happy with this. My new plan for next year is to get under 4:10.But for now some time to rest, a week of well deserved.
Brian Sevall