My Kona Theory

Got a bit of a controversial post tonight. Controversial because it on a topic that I have no direct experience in and am, therefore, not exactly qualified to comment on. That isn't going to stop me commenting on it obviously, but I will admit that what I am writing is more speculation than fact. The topic on which I am writing is Kona.

I will be honest, as good as Kona was to watch, I am a little bit over all the post race social media posts from my friends. Great achievement and all that, but I think I have seen enough posts containing seriously in the box run photos and/or pictures of idyllic beaches surrounded by palm trees. Possibly a little bit spiteful of me, but there you go.

However, my post has nothing to do with Social Media saturation and is instead a bit of commentary about racing in the heat.

Every year, like clockwork, in the days following Kona Social Media is flooded with posts from people saying something like:

Wow, really tough day, Kona really smashed me today, such a hard day out. While the day didn't go to plan really happy to have got to the finish line and finished this iconic race. 

Or words to that effect.

You know the posts, you probably have them in your feed right now.

Now, the point of this post isn't to disparage those people who have completed the amazing challenge that is Kona. Rather it is to address the question of why, on the whole, people find Kona much harder than they expect and why, for the majority of the field, they don't seem to have the day they had planned.

This is a question that no doubt has numerous answers, plus, as I said at the start, I don't actually know the answer to this as I haven't been to Kona. However, I have raced in the tropics a lot and so I know how much of an art racing in heat and humidity is. Such is the difficulty of racing in the heat and humidity that my theory is that it contributes to why so many people don't achieve the results they are hoping for.

When I was racing a lot in Asia, it was fairly common to see people come up and do their first tropical race. When you raced these folks you could almost predict the point at which they would really start to suffer on the run. It was usually just before the 10km mark in a Half Ironman. After that the pace would really drop and they would normally make it to the finish line in survival mode.

You could then watch that same person in their second tropical race go out and dominate as they took on board their lessons from their first experience.

These lessons would be things like:

• sweat doesn't work in the tropics, sweat doesn't evaporate when the humidity is 100% and so it doesn't cool you down, therefore, when you get hot you simply keep sweating.
• Since the sweat mechanism doesn't work you need to 'keep yourself as cool as possible with alternative means, ie water, ice etc.
• You need to slow down and not try and run at the same pace you do at home, perhaps try and judge your pace by effort rather than speed. 

Once people learnt these lessons they could usually do well in tropical races, but before they did, the suffering was pretty predictable. My point is that it usually took people a race or two to really dial these lessons in.

So, how does the above relate to people suffering in Kona?

Well, there is a common perception that people don't do well in their first trip to Kona. Why could this be? Could it be that the first trip to Kona is the one where people learn the above lessons (hopefully).

I can't help but wonder how experienced most people are with racing in the tropics when they head to Kona. Some people are very experienced in Kona and also practice racing in the tropics, are these the guys that generally have better days out? I honestly don't know, but I can't help but wonder.

Really, my whole point comes back to this. Racing in the tropics is really hard. You need to learn how to pace yourself properly as well as learn about keeping yourself cool etc. If the only time you race in the tropics is at Kona, then chances are you aren't going to learn those lessons until race day. In my experience if you aren't learning about tropical racing until race day, then you are unlikely to have a good race day. I think this is a factor on why so many experienced Ironpeople suffer more than they expect.

So what do you do about it? Well the obvious thing would be to do a preparation race or two in the tropics. That isn't going to be viable for everyone and so for others it may simply be enough to go into race day being aware of the above issues and having plans in place to address the heat and humidity. Doing so won't necessary give you a good race day, but it certainly isn't going to make it any worse.

Speculation over.