T63 - I'm in Kona, Bitch - Swim/Run Brick

Kona

I’ve been in Hawaii for a day now, and since my first day I couldn’t find an open pool that fit my swim schedule in Kailua, I instead opted to go out with Cousin Jill and Eric and their friend Rich and get completely hammered at the bar Jill works at. Which might not have been so rough on training had I known that Hawaiians are not at A/C addicted as Floridians. Cousin Jill and her husband included. So instead of downing some water and being fully recovered when I woke up, I instead continued to sweat and lose water until I woke up at 7 feeling like a jackhammer had been taken to my head while I was roasting in a fire. I took some Advil as a cure. It helped a little as Jill and I flew to Kona arriving early afternoon.

Swim: 500, 5x100, 400, 4x100, 300, 3x100, 2oo, 2x100, 100

2 Lipodrene
The Kona aquatics center is a lovely municipal facility located right next to the old Kona airport in Kailua-Kona. Basically, it’s the city pool for Kona locals, and best of all it’s free. Gave me a little local feel and provided a pretty empty swimming course.
The hangover was readily apparent as the first ten laps felt like they took forever. This isn’t terribly uncommon when I don’t do a warmup, but the lackadaisical swimming continued into the 100s, which all felt really labored. It was about the third 100 where I decided to just go at the pace where I felt comfortable to get through them. The one saving grace of this swim was that I limited my intervals to ten seconds between 100s (really, because I wasn’t going that hard), but I was still doing 100s in lke 1:50. Which is faster than I had done in previous cycles, but is definitely too slow for me now.

So cool as it was swimming past a sign that read “Kona Aquatics Center) and seeing the fog-veiled mountains behind the far side of my lane, most of this swim pretty much sucked. I was not pleased, but was glad to at least get in some extra training in Kona.

Run – 1 Hour

1 Lipodrene
I took an extra gel, changed over in the Aquatic Center locker room, and ran out to the old airport for my run. The airport looks like it should serve as the Ironamn transistion area, as it’s about ¾ of a mile of black asphalt right on the shoreline. The view was amazing, and motivated me a lot to run well. I later learned that the airport neither serves as the transition area, nor is it even on the Ironman run course, but whatever. Running on the shoreline, and then through the town of Kailua-Kona was cool enough as it is. The iPod didn’t hurt either. Shitty as the swim had been, this run went very well.

Although whoever the asshole was who told me I’d love Hawaii because it was like Florida without the humidity was full of shit. I do love Hawaii, but its is humid as fuck here. It’s like Miami in the Spring and early Summer. So I was pretty dehydrated at the end. But all in all a very solid run.