Story from another forum. I use to swim (train) with this lady on occasion. She's still at it at 61.
Railton (one time Ironman, now Marshmellowman)
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HAWAII RACE REPORT
This was my fourth Ironman and by far the most brutal that I have done. It was hot and windy and Hard :-(
Warning! This race report may not inspire you!
The Swim:
After getting hammered in the swim in Texas (qualifying race), I was really not up to getting hammered again. The plan was to start near the back and swim on the outside or the people .As a result, I can say that it is quite possible to swim at Hawaii with hardly a tap (I think that in the entire race I got touched lightly on the toes maybe twice). However, the result was probably 5-10 mins slower than a more aggressive position would have given? Oh well, sometimes you make choices and as far as enjoying the swim, this was way better then the Texas beating that I took. (Texas was a mixed non-wetsuit/wetsuit swim in a pretty narrow lake and canal, not good if you are a skinny 61 year old lady! Are you listening WTC?).
The Bike:
The bike goes kind of around the town followed by a short out and back and then through the lava fields of the famous Queen K Highway before climbing to the turnaround at Hawi. Everything was going great (or so I thought) until the start of the climb to Hawi. This is when things started to go uphill (or should I say downhill) and into the wind. There is a long gradual climb to Hawi and the wind was a combination of headwind and side wind. Together they made this section extremely tough. Tough going forward and tough staying upright when the gusts came. It was not the absolute worse wind that I have ever biked in, I have biked in worse, just not in a race. Suffice to say that it was not quite “white knuckles” all the way, but absolutely for someone as light as me,” pay attention”.
I’m not sure what race the pros did, but sometimes I think that they did a different race to me! Either that or the 2 plus hours time difference makes a substantial difference in the wind conditions, which could well be true, given that Chrissie Wellington would have arrived in Hawi somewhere around 9:30 and Lynda Hickman somewhere around 11:45. (Bummer, need to be faster, I guess).
Arriving at the top of Hawi, I sure was happy to be done with that climb. But, if the gusts seemed bad on the uphill, they were a tad trickier on the descent, the good news being that they were not quite bad enough to actually blow me or anybody else off their bike,(as I know that they can be and have been in at least a couple of previous years).
Got to the bottom of Hawi, and then back to the Queen K. Highway still in good spirits, looking forward to what I thought was going to be a relatively easy return ride to Kona and T2. Oops! Not so fast - literally. There was now a fair head wind to go with the side wind along the lave fields of the Queen K. and I was not making the progress that I had hoped for. I was also discovering what it feels like to be a “back of the pack” athlete. Even at my age, I am normally mid-pack in an Ironman race, but not in Kona. Here I was “back of the pack” and it gets lonely. Lonely and dispiriting. (I have a new found respect for all “back of the pack” athletes and their perseverance) . As I watched my bike time growing ever longer. I now wanted only to quit and be done with this race. With approximately 2 hours left on the bike, all I really wanted to do was quit, If it hadn’t been Kona, I think that I probably would have quit. But if I quit I would not get my Hawaii finishers medal,
so I kept going for another two lonely dispirited hours :-(
T2:
Into the change tent feeling somewhat “wobbly”. At one point a volunteer put out a hand to steady me( In hindsight this should have been a clue). Anyway, out onto the run I go, hoping that things are going to improve now that the bike is over.
The Run:
Things did get better on the run - for all of 500m, then I started to walk, even before the first aid station, I was walking, I wanted to quit again. At this point, I am thinking about how long it is going to be to walk the WHOLE of the marathon. 7 hours? 7+ hours? I want to quit, But, it is Hawaii, so I keep going. I manage to shuffle a bit. I think about how long it will take to walk it, so I try to run some more. I drink some coke. This seems to help a bit for a while. Then I am walking more again. Somehow, I keep shuffling and walking and wanting to quit for the 5 hours and 3 minutes that it takes me to finish the run. I arrive at the finish line and announce to the volunteer that “I am cured”. Meaning that I am cured of Ironman racing! That’s it. Never again, never again do I want to spend 7 hours wishing I could just stop! If it was not Hawaii, I would have quit. Truly, I would have quit.
The medical tent:
Is where I wound up after the race. They weighed me and announced that I had done a good job on hydration. But, when I was still feeling dizzy about ½ hour after the finishing into the medical tent I went. They took my blood pressure which was low, put my feet up and started to feed me chicken soup, but my body now seemed to know what the problem was and I started asking for potato chips. Nice salty potato chips. I lay there and ate as many potato chips as I could and when finally I wanted to pee (a sign that my body is operating ok according to the very nice doctor from Tasmania) and my blood pressure was at least part way back to normal, I left the medical tent and collected my finisher’s medal.
Lesson learned:
I meant to take in salt during what was a very hot day, but somehow I never did take any of the salt tablets that I carefully packed into my Bento bag on the bike and my fuel belt on the run. (Sometimes I wonder exactly where my brain goes!) I have learnt the hard way. From being told by the very nice doctor in the medical tent that our muscles “need salt to operate’. From craving potato chips in the medical tent and from, subsequently, reading up on salt loss and sodium depletion (Joe Friel’s blog and Tim Noake’s “The Lore of Running”). Two things that I did wrong, that in all probability led to slight case of hyponetremia, too much water intake, especially on the bike, coupled with too little sodium intake. So, be warned, it may be a long hot day, but it is still possible to overhydrate!
Conclusion:
In the end a time of 13hours 45mins and 7th out of 19 in my age group, but for now, no more Ironmen. Next year, body willing, I will do something shorter, A distance that I can actually run (albeit slower now that I am older) and not shuffle! (Although there is that temptation. Now that I think I know how to do it better next time, to have another go at it :-)
