Hi STers:
Hawaii 70.3 was a great race. I’ve only been at this sport with any seriousness since November ’06 or so, and only more recently discovered ST, so while I saw the earlier thread about the great ST results in Hawaii this past Saturday, I’m sorry to say I didn’t know any of those folks personally. A big congrats to all though.
As many of you know from my pesky questions over the last few months, Hawaii was my first HIM. In training this year I ended up doing 3 sprints and an Oly, all in Houston/Galveston. Firmly MOP (I finished 26, 34, and 44% of my AG in the sprints, and 52% in the Oly – not surprising that my best and worst finish were on the back-to-back Sat. Galveston sprint and Sunday Oly). Twice I’d eked into the top 10% for my AG on the bike split. Do the math and it’s telling – you may have seen my posts about my swim freak-outs, my awesome breaststroke to keep my head above water etc – I needed all 4 of those lead-up races to (hopefully) kick that habit.
I arrived in Hawaii with the family 6 days ahead of time. We stayed at the race hotel, the Mauna Lani. It’s next to the Orchid hotel, where we had stayed on our honeymoon 10 years ago, which is in part why we decided to make a week-long trip out of the race. (I still owe my wife a true anniversary trip – she says this one doesn’t count.)
Seemed like nobody was there Monday or Tuesday. My first and second ocean swims those days were daunting – I went out to the Mauna Lani beach each day about 2 p.m. (while the kids, ages 4 and 1.5, were napping), and drank more salt water than I thought possible in the surf. That plus thinking about my first mass start had me thinking hard about the swim.
By Tuesday night my friends (2 others who’d trained with me for the race) and bike (Bikeworks received, unpacked, and set up my bike perfectly—they were awesome.) had arrived, and a drive north to dinner up the coast switched my concern to the bike. You see, based on my available training time, prior results, limited knowledge of the course and combing relentlessly through past Hawaii 70.3 results, I decided I needed to finish in under 6 hours to declare personal victory. That broke down to a 48 minute swim, 19.5mph bike, and 9:45 miles, with 6-minute transitions. (I taped a large print-out of this “triathlon math” next to my PC at work some time ago.) I knew it was going to be close, because it seems these races often never go as they’re planned. I also built in some cushion because I’d trained exclusively in Houston, where it’s pancake flat. Sure, my Computrainer has hills, but it’s hard to judge output on the road against what I’d cranked out watching all the “Alias” and “24” and 4-5 Ironman DVDs, inside. And, although there’s also, it turns out, a course elevation map for the run, that was far from my mind. Anyway, as I drove up the Queen K highway Tuesday night, I knew instantly I’d not given the bike course the proper respect, and that the on-line elevation map, while I’m sure it’s accurate, doesn’t do it justice. That night, and the following morning when we biked from the hotel to the Hwy 270 “T” intersection at Kawaihae and back, I stated out loud (and in an email) that I didn’t need to go under 6 hours to declare victory. I said it out loud, but I didn’t really believe it.
Wednesday morning we went to Hapuna Beach to check out the swim. What a beach! This pic doesn’t do it justice (it’s really a post card from any angle):
On Wednesday, the buoys weren’t up of course, but the water was – gulp – calm at 7 a.m.! We swam around, trying to imagine where the course would be given the web-site map and Will’s and others’ helpful comments about the diagonal start line both in and out of the water. It felt great being out there early and having a good swim. The diver in me (alas, to be on the Big Island and NOT be diving) noticed that you never have to sight above water to swim straight along the beach, as the contours in the sand at the bottom ran almost perfectly parallel to the beach, and the water was so clear you could see them 40-50 feet below. It was, literally, just like snorkeling. And, the sun was an easy reference point—it basically split the beach in two, rising overland at west-facing Hapuna. More calming influences for the swim! Yea! We went back to Hapuna Thursday morning at 7 a.m. as well, for good measure, and met the Gatorade guys at their tent (tomziebart, I think) – they had some helpful hints about what to expect on several fronts. There were a few more folks out swimming then, but not many.
Most of the rest of the week was spent “tapering,” mostly playing in the water and watching the kids’ hair get blonder by the day:
I registered Thursday, and set off for the pre-race meeting at 3 p.m. Friday. This was the only pre-race meeting I’ve been to that has ever been worth a darn. Good explanations of the course, rules, etc., and plenty of wit from Jurgen, the German-turned-Texan head referee. The swim director promised a loud cannon so all us jokers could hear it, and suggested to us newbies, ominously, that we ought to wear our goggles strapped under our caps, just in case they get kicked. That’s exactly what I needed to hear before my first mass start. He also suggested swinging wide around the first buoy, as it often got backed up. The run director was also a hoot, explaining that because the run course wound around the hotel’s golf course, folks tried their best to get lost. He ended by saying, “I’m sorry about what happens between mile 8 and 9.” The whole room chuckled, and I thought he was making a joke. Little did I know….
Then we biked over from the hotel to Hapuna to drop off our bikes at T1. (T1 and T2 are in different locations, T2 at the hotel). I could have wandered up and down the racks for an hour looking at the bikes. An impressive sight, including Macca’s Specialized sitting atop the hill sporting #1. (T1 lanes ran up a parking lot from just above the sand to the top of a hill and, although I was bib #665, I was within 10 or so bikes from the top of the hill. Others were not so lucky, and had to push their bikes up the hill.) One last look at the beach, which was rough at 5 p.m., and it was back to the hotel for dinner. After the kids went to bed, I did a final check of the weather while unwrapping and cutting up Powerbars: it was going to be HOT!
Race day dawned early of course, and we caught the shuttle at 5 a.m. from the hotel to the beach. I putzed with my bike for a while, (stupidly and needlessly) stuffing a third tube into my saddle sack and a 4th Powerbar into my Bento Box. I actually thought I was going to eat 4 Powerbars on the bike. Probably should have, it turns out. Anyway, then we headed down to the beach for a warm-up swim.
Meanwhile, my wife had roused the kids, and they hustled down to the beach just in time for the 7 a.m. start. Unknown to me, she’d made shirts for the whole crew for the occasion with “Go Daddy Go” and a pic from the Galveston Oly!!
I shared a few moments with her, the kids, and my buddies, until it was just before 7 a.m. I got capped, goggled (under my cap), and was ready to go.
It was a good thing, because all of a sudden, without any cannon I ever heard, everyone surged forward. I forgot all the things I’d recommended to folks on ST about not freaking out on the swim, and charged into the water, straight at the first buoy! (Anyone know what happened to the cannon?) After all, although I’d budgeted 48 minutes for the swim, my ex-accountant buddy had parsed the prior Hawaii 70.3 results and discerned that there were exactly 3 people in 2006 whose swim was 48+ minutes who also finished in under 6 hours. And, in the back of my mind, I knew my 4th HIM training buddy (who couldn’t make Hawaii and peeled off to do Oceanside, well I might add) had swum a 42:30, and if there was any hope of chipping some off that, well, that’d be a good thing.
I’d been caught a little off guard by the start, and so I think I was behind the main crew, but the mass start was not nearly as bumpy as some 50 to 100-person AG starts I’d done. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a number of folks in caps sprinting down the beach (presumably to enter the water for a swim to the first buoy that would be exactly perpendicular to the beach). I thought briefly: damn, that’s not exactly against the rules I read, it has to make for a shorter swim, and why didn’t I think of that? (Anyone else see that or can comment on it?)
Anyway, about 3 seconds later, I realized I was swimming along, strong for me, with no sense of panic at all: a moment of beauty! I just really enjoyed the swim, which I guess means I should have been swimming harder, but it was such a spectacle, it was difficult not to just take it all in!
My support crew watched as the leaders approached the beach.
After a while, son Jackson, age 4 and patient like his dad, wanted his dad to get out of the water. But a cautious word from mom assured him I wasn’t supposed to get out for another 10 minutes or so.
When I did stumble out of the surf, the first thing I heard was the announcer telling the assembled crowd that “600 swimmers have exited the water!” Crap, there’s only 950 here. Then I looked at my watch, and it said 40 minutes and change! Time in the bank! I jubilantly ran toward the funnel to the timing mat. Alongside the rope was the crew, and I had to practically shout at them to get them to acknowledge me – they weren’t expecting me so soon! After a quick High 5 to Jackson, I charged up the hill to my bike. (My 625X didn’t record HR in the salt water for some reason – it’s always worked flawlessly in the pool – but it hadn’t in the practices, so I wasn’t concerned.) It quickly registered that I was hopping too fast up the steep T1, but I didn’t care, I was ecstatic! Swim time: 41:04, which put me out of the water 610th – a 2:04 pace the preliminary results say – a better pace than any prior race I’d done! Whoopee!
A quick hose shower, towel-off, a dab of sunscreen and a gulp of Gatorade, and I was on the bike after a 4:46 T1.
Ah, the bike. As one of my buddies opined, there are advantages to being a terrible swimmer. (He came out of the water 844th, got on the bike, then got passed by one person the rest of the day. In the meantime, he literally passed 300 people on the bike, and another 100 on the run to finish 442nd at the median of his AG). That is, you get to PASS people! The bike felt great. The Gatorade tasted good, even the Powerbar Gel went down easy. We turned south out of Hapuna, and raced back to the Mauna Lani, before turning North for the trek to Hawi. The wind seemed calm. Shortly after the turn-around, I saw one of my buddies (the self-styled “terrible” swimmer) headed south and yelled at him. He didn’t hear me – he was putting the hammer down.
I was drinking plenty (or so I thought) and, believe it or not, actually singing at times. Once past the Kawaihae “T” intersection, I was in uncharted and uphill territory, and the 19.5 mph average pace goal was, as I knew it would be, useless. I just settled in at the highest HR I thought I could sustain, and kept passing people. One ST post had mentioned his out time to Hawi was 20-25 minutes slower than his time back, so there was hope, but it was not quantifiable at that point.
Oh the bike was fun, and the coastline scenery, at the few times I did notice it, was awesome! About half-way up to Hawi, the leaders came streaking down the hills, inspiring to watch (for the few seconds I saw them). Then, a few miles from the turnaround, I noticed it was hot. I’m sure it was hot before that, but that’s when it sank in. I noticed my forearms were starting to turn red. I drank as much as I could, slowing to get a new Gatorade bottle at every aid station. Up, up.
For some reason, one thing that out of the blue kept me going hard on the bike was a scene from “Searching for Bobby Fischer” that randomly popped into my head and wouldn’t leave. The young, carefree chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin is sitting at the national finals against his hardline automaton nemesis, who has just made a mistake. Outside the room, Josh’s coach (played by Ben Kingsley), sees it’s mate in 12, if Josh only figures it out. Josh stares at the board, and flashes back to a training game with Kingsley, where Kingsley says solemnly, “Don’t move until you see it.” Kingsley throws his arm across the board, scattering the pieces to the floor, “There, I’ll make it easier for you.” Back to the finals, where Josh knows something’s up, and recalls, “Don’t move until you see it,” letting his clock run. Of course, he sees it, and wins. I think Jurgen’s (the head ref’s) talk, had included in his scary explanation of the drafting penalties something like, “don’t try to pass unless you’re going all the way,” or something like that—maybe that’s what prompted it. Anyway, it was inspiring, and I probably muttered “Don’t move until you see it” fifty times on the bike as I passed folks. One day I’ll pay a good psychologist to explain all this to me.
Anyway, the turn-around was liberating! After it, there must have been at least 6 miles or so down at 25-27+mph. More singing. I looked for my buddies after the turn-around, but there were lots of folks bunched on the uphill and I was going too fast (for me) not to keep my eyes on the road. As I got close to Kawaihae, I started to do some more triathlon math. I’d ridden from there to the Mauna Lani (T2) earlier that week, and knew how long it had taken. I was ecstatic to realize I was due in T2 at 3:35 or so! Back on schedule! Bike time: 2:55:44, at 19.1 mph. I’d passed 206 people on the bike (that’s the net passes, but I think I only got passed by 5-6 or so), up to 404th after the bike!
At T2, my dear crew was once again awaiting my arrival. Here’s me fumbling around with the Cervelo, running back to give Jackson another high 5, and then departing, with telltale salt stains across the back of my shirt.
As I left T2, the clock said 3:44 and change, so I had 2hr15min left to get 13.1 miles in under 6 hrs. Quickly, I determined that every mile under 10 minutes put more time in the bank. I had planned 9:45s—I was on the glide slope! Or so I thought. It was now blazing hot. (Macca is reported to have said the course conditions were great, but he was off the course before 11 a.m., right about the time I started the run!). I had never run in a hat before, and, against the conventional wisdom, made a night-before decision to do so. I’m sure it was the right call (except when I foolishly tried to stuff 2 sponges under my hat and spent precious time trying to put the hat back on with them underneath, about mile 11).
Right outside T2, my quads cramped. Other than the odd toe cramp while swimming, I literally couldn’t tell you if I’ve ever had leg cramps before—I’ve just had no experience with them. These were weird cramps though (or so it seemed at the time). They were limited to the muscles just inside my knees (which I now know to be the vastus medialis that, according to Wikipedia, have the main function of extending my legs the last 10%), and each just twitched/cramped briefly only when I planted that foot – I could run through them, so I did, although it sucked. I did then make the decision to walk the first few aid stations (which I had not planned to do) and drink a ton (I had planned that). The run started with what seemed like a tough hill, which, in retrospect, I should have walked. At the top, after a 9:59 first mile, my legs stopped cramping, and life was (relatively) good again. I cranked out some good miles (9:17, 10:14 (2 aid stations), 9:26, 9:31) while still walking the aid stations. Time in the bank! By the time I ran back past T2 and saw the crew again, I was feeling pretty good, all things considered.
In fact, I’d just calculated that now, for the 8 miles left, every mile below 10:30 put time in the bank to get under 6 hours. That was a good thing, because I was teetering and slowing. Miles 6-8 were 10:25, 9:50, 10:10. Then came mile 9. The run director had not been joking at all. The whole mile was constantly up and down, never flat, on grass, over what must have been 2 par-5 fairways. It was just awful. I’d never done any such running in my life. I cranked it out in 10:41, but it was my undoing. At the end of it, before I got off the grass, I was plodding (OK I may have been plodding before, but now I was really plodding). As I passed the mile 9 marker, I did the math again: 45 minutes to finish 4.1 miles—I now needed four 11-minute miles to beat 6 hours. Surely I could do that? Right?
Let me pause and say that while I was musing aloud one day about the race about a week in advance, Jackson said, “Daddy, will you win your race if you finish in less than 6 hours?” I thought about that for a moment, and, for better or worse, said, “I think so.” There was no turning back from there, really.
Mile 10 got back on pavement, downhill, straight, a blessing, at 10:13. But Mile 9 came back to haunt me, and I quickly realized every step on Mile 10 was downhill, outbound on an out-and back 3 1/2 miles to the finish stretch. As I ran downhill away from the finish line, I was watching the runners slog back uphill on miles 11-12, on the hot black asphalt, lava rocks radiating heat from beyond the road. Not happy thoughts. Now I needed 3 11-minute miles.
A quarter of the way through mile 11, my legs started to lose it. My quads cramped first, and this time I could not run through it. I stopped to stretch, then took off again for a minute or so. The cramps were excruciating and were getting progressively worse in a hurry. Stop, stretch, run for a minute, repeat. Mile 11 went by at 11:32. Oh no.
At the beginning of the 12th mile, I lost another battle—when I would stop and stretch my quads, my hamstrings and calves would cramp. I was miserable and the clock was ticking. It was awful. For half a mile I hobbled on this way – run, stop, stretch quickly, scream and yell, repeat – the Polar file shows what a damn mess it was. It wasn’t getting any better – the stops were getting longer. I wasn’t going to make it.
Then, somewhere during mile 12, as I posted yesterday, a runner came by me, stopped, turned around, got in my face, and said 8 words: “Don’t try to run. Walk. With long strides.” And then he took off. It worked. I set off at what my watch now tells me is a 13:20/mile walk, sans cramps. I now know Mile 12 went by in 12:45.
I know I hit the lap counter when I passed the mile 12 marker, but I was no longer thinking very clearly, and lost track of what time I passed it. Early in the last mile, when I next looked at my stopwatch, it said five fifty something, but I had no real idea how far I was from the finish, except that it was less than a mile. Early on in that last mile I tried to speed up, and the cramps came roaring back. So I kept walking, agonizing that I had come this far and was going to blow it in the last 2 miles.
I finally got off that horrific out and back stretch and onto Mauna Lani Drive. I walked up a short hill and could hear the finish line. A cop working traffic said, “Just a half mile to go!” My watch said 5:55 and change, and I knew how far I had to go. Someday a physiologist can explain to me why I didn’t cramp any more (does adrenaline do that?), but I managed 3 short spurts at an 8:00 or so pace with a few seconds walk between them until I saw the finish line and the clock, which said 5:58 something. At that point I took off, at what my watch now says briefly was a 5:15 pace (didn’t know I could do that!):
Visible relief and satisfaction as I crossed under the banner at 5:58:52!
Then I collapsed in the green grass with Team Humphries!
Stacy, Jackson and Sam were heroes that day. Despite the heat, they traipsed all over the place just to catch a quick glimpse of me run by and snap a pic or two. Jackson’s asked me every day for months, “Daddy, how was your swim practice today?” “Daddy, how was your run practice today?” That’ll keep you going. I couldn’t have finished without Stacy’s awesome support during training, either, it goes without saying.
My friends finished just a few minutes behind me, one higher in his AG (51%) than I was in 35-39 (56%). They have their stories too. One, Shane, did the ride without aerobars and, more importantly, with an MRI-diagnosed torn calf muscle that prevented him from doing any running the 3 weeks before the race and could have given out at any moment. The other, Jeff, the “terrible” swimmer, had the bright idea to come to Hawaii for this in the first place, and has been a constant companion in this endeavor. He’s actually a faster biker and runner than I am, and these were his final words on the 2007 Hawaii 70.3: “The damn thing just wasn’t long enough for me to catch Humphries. I wonder if they have one that’s longer.” Turns out, they do.