Race Coverage

Magic Kona Coffee Beans...

Friday, 02 August 2024 00:10

By Kenneth Downer

Instead of a typical blow-by-blow race report, this one simply shares a few vignettes from my experience at Ironman Lake Placid 2024 to convey a sense of the race and the atmosphere of an Ironman event. I hope you enjoy it.

Before the Gun.

• 3:15 AM. Coffee. The beans I grind are part of a quarterly delivery I get from Kona, Hawaii. My daughter and I toured the Heavenly Hawaiian Farms coffee plantation after I raced on the Big Island in 2019. I signed up for regular shipments to maybe keep that Kona spirit alive. I hope that perhaps those beans might somehow add a little something special to my race today.

• Standing with our toes in the moist sand on the starting beach of Mirror Lake, we listen as a local singer belts out the National Anthem with commendable skill. Her final words are drowned out as an Apache helicopter gunship roars out of the leaden sky and over our heads.....

• The “Voice of Ironman,” Mike Reilly, has come out of retirement to call this 25th anniversary edition of the race at Lake Placid, New York. As we wait for the starting gun, he wanders among us, microphone in hand, giving high-fives and words of encouragement. The guy behind me holds up a medical bracelet on his wrist and asks Mike to give his hospitalized daughter a shout-out. Without missing a beat, Mike speaks into his microphone and asks the thousands gathered on the beach to join him in wishing her a speedy recovery. Class act.

Into the Drink.

• On cue, we charge into the cool, clear waters of Mirror Lake; my new wet suit has me feeling like a bobbing cork. After months of training, preparation, and anticipation, it just feels so good to finally get underway. Starting wide to the left, as I did here in 2019, is a good choice; there is open water almost immediately; it’s a great beginning.

• The gravitational force emanating from swim buoys should never be underestimated; as each nears, swimmers are inevitably drawn to them and collisions ensue. Despite my plans to do otherwise, I am pulled in, too, and forced to re-learn this lesson for the 14th time. I burn energy and lose speed while fighting to find a wider line again; after that, it is a much better swim.

• Late in our first lap, the pros rip through our line of swimmers as they race to the beach; a flailing of arms and splashing of water, and then they are gone. Crazy speed. I’m not going nearly that fast, but do manage a personal best when I hit the beach. Happy with that!

Onto the Bike.

• Transition 1. Carrying my bike shoes through the long grassy transition area instead of running in them was a good call; I pass dozens of racers waddling in their cleats. The only cost is soggy socks, but in the light rain, they were going to get wet anyway.

• Mile 10. The seven-mile descent to Keene is both exhilarating and terrifying on the wet, winding asphalt. I ride the cow-horns of my tri-bike, with fingers hovering over the brake • levers, yet still hit 43 mph. Too fast to take in the rugged beauty of the scenery. I breathe a sigh of relief when we finally reach the bottom.

• Mile 36-ish. We are zipping down a rough back road when a cute kid by a gravel driveway shouts and waves at me; I take one hand off the aero bars to wave back. That is the moment I discover that he was trying to warn me about a nearly invisible ditch running across the road. I hit it at full speed and the bike careens, but thankfully remains upright.

• Mile 56. Speeding past the Olympic center, about to start the second lap of the bike, I spot my son and his wife waving in the crowd. The global technical glitch turned their quick flight from Nashville into a frustrating 48-hour travel odyssey too long to recount here. I smile to see that they made it. Later I learned that they had parked and hustled to that spot, arriving only moments before I flew by. In 2014 I did Ironman Texas solo and unsupported; it is exponentially better to have people with you for this sort of thing!

• Transition 2. My Garmin says I biked up 8,724 feet of elevation. My watch and I often have spirited disagreements about things like Functional Threshold Pace, fitness condition, and elevation, but I’m inclined to believe it this time. At Lake Placid, you get full value from each and every cog on your freewheel; so glad I changed my largest from 25 to 28 teeth before the race.

The Run.

• Mile 1. My son jumps out of the crowd and runs alongside me for a moment. A highly-skilled Ironman Sherpa, he provides the update from the Tracking App: coming off the bike, I was fifth in my age group, passed two in transition, and was currently running third; in the next miles, I even moved into second. It’s a great start, and the early splits are promising.

• Mile 5. The light, fast feeling doesn’t last long; by the first turn-around at mile 5 it’s starting to feel like work. The prominent ski-jump towers that mark the turn into town are only three miles away, but seem to take forever to arrive. The heat and incessant hills begin to take their toll, my pace slows, and occasionally someone who looks about my age floats by. I don’t stop, but don’t seem to be able to go any faster, either. Realization sets in: it’s not going to be the run I was hoping to have.

• Mile ??? (it gets foggy). Approaching an aid station, an enthusiastic volunteer shouts that he has special water: it’s gluten free! Like a carnival barker, he also trumpets that his special, “all-new formula” is zero fat, non-GMO, sugar free, free range, and has no added coloring or preservatives. His antics are good for a smile, and I tell him I’ll take two, please. One goes down my throat, the other on my head for cooling. The volunteers here are phenomenal and help make this race special; some have volunteered each and every one of the 25 years Lake Placid has hosted the race.

• Mile 22 (ish). My wife runs briefly alongside me with an encouraging smile; she holds up her phone, which is blaring my favorite song from Queen. The lyrics lodge in my brain and play on endless repeat the rest of the way to the finish: “Don’t stop me now. I’m having such a good time. I’m having a ball!” By that time, it was Type-2 fun, to be sure. Yet finally the cement base of the Olympic speed skating oval appears under my Hokas, then the iconic red and black carpet, and finally, one more time, I hear Mike’s famous voice calling me across the finish line.

After.

Seated together under the awards ceremony tent, my grown children and their families have all said that they would come with me to Kona if I qualified for the World Championships. I felt some pressure to perform, but my age-group seventh place isn’t quite high enough for a guaranteed slot. Three finishers ahead of me have to decline the opportunity for a slot to roll down to me. It doesn’t look good.

The emcee begins calling names. The first-place finisher snaps up a slot, but the second-place man passes. Third and fourth both opt in; a single slot remains. Impossibly, the next two men both decline, and suddenly the announcer is calling my name. My family erupts in cheering. I’m watching them and smiling. He has to call my name again over the noise; “Ken, are you here? Do you want to go to Kona?” I run forward and shout to make sure he hears my emphatic “Yes!”

Maybe those coffee beans from Kona really did have some magic in them.

Ken lives in Victoria, Minnesota, and trains on the roads and in the lakes of the south west Minneapolis metro area. Ironman Hawaii, in Kona, will be his 15th Iron-distance race, and his third time racing on the Big Island.