Well….it finally happened!
Since 2002 when I snagged the victory at IM Hawaii as a 30-34 year-old
in my 3rd IM Hawaii, I have been trying and trying to get to that
spot again. It has eluded me until now
and I had come “oh so close” on more than one occasion! Well…here is how the day unfolded…
The swim was a somewhat brutal hit-fest with a lot of
aggressive women fighting for feet, but fortunately there was no blood or
wounds involved! I had to readjust
goggles on 3 occasions and exited the water with blurry vision from the
stinging salt water in my eyes the whole way.
All in all, I was happy with the swim and ready to get on to my favorite
discipline, the bike.
I’ll start by
acknowledging the amazing volunteers in the change tents for both T1 and
T2….nothing short of spectacular!
Getting rolling on the bike, I always take it easy those first miles
through town and up the Kuakini Hwy. I
also get the opportunity to see my wonderful hubby, Dean, my daughter Mikayla
and my brother, Vince twice in those first few miles which gives me a real
boost. I watched tons of women fly by me
up the Kuakini Hwy and figured I would see most of them later, which I did! Once getting up onto the Queen K, I
got into my groove and started my race.
On that day, something didn’t feel right in my legs. They felt incredibly flat and I would look at
my power meter and it was reading power values that were way under what I would
expect based on feel. I have been riding
with power for 16 years now, so I have a pretty good feeling about how
many watts I am pushing. I had a goal to
hold 185W for the bike, but the power meter was reading in the low 160’s with
my legs kind of suffering. I figured the
calibration was off, so on the next downhill, I did an on-the-fly calibration
by spinning the crank backwards, but the numbers didn’t change. Oh well, I thought…I am just going to go by
feel, so that’s what I did. My legs felt
a bit better as the ride progressed, but the numbers didn’t ever seem to be
right. Madame Pele was kind to us with
the winds on race day, but not so kind with the scorching sun on the cloudless
day. On the descent from Hawi it was a
little scary for a bit as I was nearing 40 mph and those crosswind gusts would
hit, but I just envisioned Natasha Badmann who always stayed aero in wicked
crosswinds. A nice little bee also
decided to sting me on my left quadriceps as I was descending at high speed
from Hawi. That was fun trying to get
the darn stinger out while flying down the hill! I made it through Kawaihai and on to Waikaloa
where I knew I had to put the hammer down for the final 20 miles. I ramped it up a bit, ignoring the power
meter and got to T2 with some very stiff legs. So just today, my husband discovered what probably caused my low power numbers. He pulled my pedals out of the bag (Speedplay Zeros) and they are literally welded by rust and do not spin AT ALL on the spindle. My guess is the rain the night before the race wreaked havoc with the lubrication of the pedal spindle. I think the pedals are quite old and I am not so certain I have ever had them serviced! Live and learn!! I’m pretty ecstatic that I had a bike split only 40 seconds off the leader with the extra 20 watts of resistance!! It did make for a challenging marathon however! It does crack me up how hard it is to try to run in T2…I always feel
like a little old lady that can barely move.
Somehow though, a marathon comes out of those legs a few minutes
later.
Again….the volunteers
in the tent rock! I said “can I have
some sunscreen?” and the lady with the sunscreen ran over and smeared it over
every exposed part of my skin as fast as she could. How’s that for service? Off I went on the marathon, feeling not so
spry, but getting it done. I was happy to
hold a 9-minute mile pace for a while including some nice lounging stops at
every aid station. I just took the
marathon 1 aid station to the next and tried not to think about what was beyond
that. It was great seeing my support
crew again on the course cheering for me even though I’m sure they couldn’t
tell I was happy to see them (due to the suffering factor!). Now here is the good news….my feet were happy
and my gut was happy. When I have those
two things going for me I just tell myself, “No excuses!!” The other approach I took this year was
ignoring my competition on the course. I
did not want to know what position I was in nor did I want to know where my
competition was. I wanted to just run my own race and do the best that I could. That
tactic was golden. I told my husband,
when I get to 3 miles to go, you can tell me what place I am in! I think it was killing him because he knew I
was in 2nd for the majority of the marathon but he couldn’t tell
me! It turns out the leader (9-time
age-group winner, Lisbeth Kenyon) had an 8:30 lead on me coming out of the
energy lab with 10K left to go. Normally
that would be insurmountable, but Lisbeth was suffering from heat stroke and
was not moving very fast. By the time I
hit the top of Palani I knew I was very close to her and let it rip on the
Palani descent. I passed her right at
the corner at the bottom of the hill and tried to give her some encouragement
to get to the line as she and I have raced together many times and have
tremendous respect for one another. I
cruised in to the finish and enjoyed every minute of the crowds and
encouragement on Ali’i Drive! It was
truly magical! I even attempted a jump
at the line to duplicate my 2002 finish line picture and it’s pretty darn
close!
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| Photo credit: Wagner Arujo |
What a day! I have to
again thank my rock and the love of my life, Dean, for all of his support!
