Ironman 70.3 Hawaii - My First DNF, But Oh What A Feeling

Kona Airport

As I begin my final day in paradise, I decided it was time to reflect back over the last two weeks here in Kona, Hawaii and update this blog with my Ironman 70.3 race report. If you are someone who follows me on Facebook or Twitter then you already know that this race didn’t go exactly as planned and that I suffered my first DNF (Did Not Finish).

Now before I go into details on how this DNF happened, let me first go back two weeks to when I first arrived in Hawaii and start from there.

The trip started with me, my wife, and my bike flying out of Dulles airport. This was the first time I had ever taken my bike on a long-distance non-driving trip. I had originally hoped to ship my bike to Hawaii via Tri-Bike transport, but unfortunately they weren’t offering any pick-up locations on the east coast for this particular race, so that left me with the option of shipping it myself or just taking it on the airplane. I ended up renting a bike box from Bonzai and bringing it on the plane with me. The airline charged an additional $100 for an oversized piece of luggage so it seemed the best route to go.  Lugging a big bike box around the airport was a little challenging but all-in-all it went pretty smoothly checking it in. From there we boarded our first flight from Dulles to Denver and then from Denver to Kona. We left around 7AM ET and got to Hawaii at around 3:30PM Hawaiian time. There is a 6 hour difference between time zones, so it was a long day.

As we arrived in Kona and disembarked off the airplane, I was immediately struck with how different things are here. First of all, it was the first time I had ever been in what was essentially an outdoor airport. Everything was open with sidewalks to get from one section to the next. The different section had roofs but no walls to speak of. The weather was humid but gorgeous. My wife, Kara went over to pick up our rental vehicle (Jeep Wrangler) while I waited for our luggage to be offloaded and brought to the luggage claim area. After some wait all four bags arrived but no sign of my bike. Immediately panic began to set in, but I managed to stay outwardly calm. I went over to the help desk of the baggage claim area where only one person worked the desk, and he was already trying to help someone else find their missing luggage. One of the first things I had to get used to was the laid-back attitude towards “Hawai’i time” which meant patience (not one of my strengths) especially when I’m trying to find out where my $4,000 bike is. After some time waiting, it was finally my turn to be helped. I proceeded to ask the gentleman if he had my bike in the back by chance, which of course it was not. The gentleman told me he had offloaded three bike boxes, two of which I had seen while gathering the rest of my luggage. The third one was nowhere to be seen. The gentleman took my baggage claim number for the bike along with my personal information, told me he would begin the process of finding my bike, assured me that it would be found, then sent me on my way. At this point, all I could do was wait and hope.

As we left the airport and headed to the house we would be staying at for the next two weeks (awesome accommodations provided for us by our friends Tricia Totten and Al Denbleyker), I tried to put aside my worries about the bike and enjoy myself - after all we were in Hawaii. Driving down the Queen K, one of the main roads in Kona and a well known landmark to triathletes, I couldn’t help but notice how different the island looked from what I was expecting. For those not that familiar with the “Big Island”, it is essentially a landmass made up by multiple large volcanoes, and the Kona side of the island contains a large number of lava fields which are essentially areas of large rocky terrains. I know that doesn’t necessarily sound appealing, but when you mix in all the mountains to the one side and the ocean to the other it really does make for some very unique and breathtaking scenery. At times, it almost seems like you are on another planet.

View from the house

After arriving at the house, we unpacked and got settled in. Our hosts wouldn’t be joining us until the following day, so for the first night we explored the island on our own.  We headed for town which was five minutes away looking for a good place to eat. By this time it was 5 p.m. Hawaiian time, but our internal clocks where still on Eastern time which meant for us it was 11 p.m. We soon found a nice little seafood place near the water and enjoyed a great meal while looking out at the Pacific Ocean. After dinner, we headed back to the house and soon to bed. This was probably the first time in a very long time I had gone to bed at 8 p.m. at night but again for us it was really 2 a.m. 

The next morning I woke up very early. I actually first woke up at 3 a.m. which for me was really 9 a.m., but managed to go back to sleep until around 5:30 a.m. After getting up, I decided the first thing I would do was go for a run. The house we were staying at was up on a mountain. You could see the ocean from the front of the house which made for an awesome view, but to get down to the water and the town you had to go downhill. Not being the familiar with my location, I decided to just start running towards the ocean which meant downhill. I ran for about five miles, two of which was downhill with the remaining three on Ali'i Drive, the main oceanfront road that goes through town. The morning often starts out a bit overcast which was good because it meant I could run without having to deal with the full brunt of the sun bearing down on me. As I ran I couldn’t help but notice all the different flowers growing everywhere. My nose was immediately bombarded with all different scents, it was literally like running through a florist. I also was greeted by some of the island’s wildlife, like a family of turkeys walking down the road (there is something you don’t see everyday back home). After running out five miles, I decided it was time to turn around and head back. Of course, this meant I would now have to run uphill. If you ever thought of Hawaii as flat, you are wrong.  There are some stretches of flatness, mainly along the Queen K highway, but for the most part the terrain here is very hilly.

Once I got back to the house, I decided it was time to call the airport and find out what the status of my bike was. I ended up calling a main number for the airline opposed to a local one and they were finally able to tell me that my bike for some reason got diverted to San Francisco but was now on its way to Kona and should arrive later in the day. Hearing this was a tremendous relief. After a nice Brunch at a place called Lava Java and some more exploring, we picked up my bike and proceeded to the local bike shop called Bike Works to have the bike reassembled. We also rented a bike for Kara so she could ride during the next two weeks. She has signed up to do a small triathlon in July with her sister and has begun training for it, so we wanted to make sure she had some wheels to ride while here.

Now that I had my bike, I was anxious to get out and ride. That next morning, I headed out on the Queen K towards Hapuna Beach which is where the swim portion of the 70.3 race would take place. The distance from the house to Hapuna is about 35 miles and the plan was for me to ride out and have Kara meet me there in the Jeep where we would spend the day at the beach relaxing and also getting a feel for the swim course.

Energy Lab Center

Riding the Queen K was an awesome experience. After all this was the road where the Ironman Championship takes place, and I was riding along the same course as many great Ironman Champs like MACCA and Chrissie Wellington had rode. I rode past the Natural Energy Lab, another well known Ironman landmark and continued on through the lava fields past the airport. At this point in the ride, I first got to experience the legendary Kona headwinds. The road is fairly flat but the headwinds were like nothing I had ever experienced before. We are talking about gusts of wind up to 35-40 mph hitting you head on or even worse from the side. I can tell you that when this happens just staying upright on the bike becomes a real challenge. It took me about an hour and 50 minutes to get out to Hapuna with the last five miles of the ride being a huge challenge. I was really hoping that come race day the wind would not be as bad. Once at the beach, I waited for Kara to arrive and watched as the wind whipped the water around. It would seem the wind would not only present a challenge on the bike but on the swim as well.

Going into this race, I was somewhat nervous about the swim portion. I hadn’t thought about the wind, but this was going to be my first ocean swim race and with no wetsuit allowed I was concerned about whether I would be able to complete the race within the allotted 1 hour and 15 minute cut off time. After swimming for a bit, I quickly realized that it was true what people had told me - the salt water makes you really buoyant and makes up for a lack of wetsuit. This made me feel a bit more confident about the swim, but still I would have to deal with the waves and this swim would also be a mass start, as opposed to a wave start, so I would be starting out with 1600 competitors all at the same time.

On Thursday, I did another 20 mile bike ride with Tricia and Al who were also racing on Saturday, this time starting out from Hapuna and doing about 10 miles out and back of the 70.3 course. It was still windy but not quite as bad as when I had biked on Monday. I also did another swim of around 900 yards. Swimming out was fine but coming back in, we were hit with some really choppy waves. I can tell you this was not particularly fun, however I felt if this was the worst I would have to deal with in the race, I was feeling much more confident about completing the swim in time.

Greg Welch Swim Clinic

On Friday morning, we attended a swim clinic out at Hapuna put on by Ironman Champion Greg Welch. The buoys for the race had been put out in the water and we had a chance to swim some of the course. I also had a chance to try on a TYR skinsuit. These are suits that look very much like a basic tri-suit but are said to help you swim a little faster. They don’t have Neoprene in them like a wetsuit, but they are made with a material that is said to help trap air between yourself and the suit that I guess gives you that little extra float. I figured I needed all the help I could get so I got one for the race, and they do seem to work.

After the clinic, it was time to go pick up our packets and drop off our bikes to be racked. The race had two different transition areas. T1 was located at Hapuna Beach and T2 was located about five miles down the road at a hotel resort. You had to go to the resort to pick up your packet and attend the pre-race briefings and then take your bike over to Hapuna to be racked. The only thing that sucked about this was that the parking at the resort was a mile away from the actual building, and you had to either walk or take a shuttle from your car to the resort area then do the same to get back to your car. In other words, it took most of the afternoon to get the race packet then rack the bike.  Another strange thing with this race was that you had to bring your T2 stuff with you because they wanted you to drop off your T2 bag that day opposed to bringing it with you on race day.

70.3 Hawaii Event Center

After spending the afternoon doing all of this, we returned home for a nice spaghetti pasta dinner and soon got ready for bed. Because my body’s internal clock was still used to eastern time, I actually was able to go to bed fairly early and got a really good night sleep. We went to bed around 9 p.m. and woke up at 3 a.m.

After having some eggs for breakfast, we headed out to transition which opened at 5 a.m. Once again, we parked at the resort and took a shuttle over to Hapuna. We got to T1 around 5:30 a.m. After checking my bike, making sure my tires where inflated, and finding Tricia and Al who had arrived a little sooner than me and Kara, we proceeded down to the area where they were doing body markings. This was the first race I had done where they did the stamp markings opposed to just writing your number on you with a marker. The girl who did my markings must of thought I was an idiot because I kept messing up my number. You see my number was 969 which is the number I first told her to put on me, however I looked at the wristband I had been given the day before just to verify the number I had given her was correct and saw it as 696. Not fully thinking, I said, “Oh wait, I am sorry my number is 696 not 969”. So she wiped off the numbers and started again, until I realized I had in fact been correct the first time and that my number was 969. So for second time, she had to clean the numbers off my arm and start again. I felt like an idiot, but she was completely cool about it.

Getting Ready To Swim

After getting body marked, I headed back up to where my bike was to finish getting ready for the race. I decided I needed to hit the port-a-john before the race started so I went over and started standing in the long line. Finally, I was only four people back in line when I heard the loud speaker, “Athlete 969, your back tire has blown out on your bike. Jay Cochran, you have a blown out back tire, please report to your bike.” My first thought was, “Are you kidding me?” I bailed out of line and ran over to my bike where a volunteer was standing to tell me I had a flat. When I was riding the course earlier in the week, I had gotten a cava seed stuck in my tire which gave me a flat, and I am guessing when I changed the tube I might have pinched it, so when I inflated my tire it caused a blowout. Anyway, I didn’t want to risk messing up another tire changing it myself so I ran over to a bike tech (which was a nice thing about this race, there were plenty of bike techs around) and had them change the tire for me. About 15 minutes later, I was back in action with my bike remounted, and I proceeded to once again try to use the bathroom. Fortunately, the line was shorter now and I didn’t have to wait long.

After making sure everything was completely set up for T1, I headed down to the beach to get ready to begin my swim. As I mentioned before, this would be a mass start swim. The pros would begin first with a foghorn followed by a cannon shot to start the 1,600 age groupers from an in-the-water start. You could stay closer to shore and stand in the water, or swim out and tread water if you preferred. My plan had been to hang out towards the back of the back and stand until the cannon sounded. The course was basically a triangle shape with the first leg along the left side of the triangle for about 900 yards followed by a turn to swim left to right along the back side and a turn to come into to the swim out from the right side. The first leg of the swim went very smoothly. Hanging out towards the back of the pack seemed to have worked as I didn’t have to waste a lot of energy fighting off other swimmers or getting hit by them. I made pretty good time as I turned the first buoy. It wasn’t until I made the turn around the second buoy to begin the swim along the back stretch of the triangle that I began to run into problems. By this time, the sun had come up enough and was hitting off the water at an angle that essentially blinded the swimmers. I had planned to use a hotel building on land as a sight point for this stretch of the course, but the sun nullified that plan. Another problem was that the wind had begun to pick up to 15 mph gusts which started churning the water.

A Mass Start

At this point, finding anything substantial to sight was not going to happen since you had waves hitting you in the face and the glare of the sun blinding you. I was still seeing some swimmers off to the right side of me so I tried to follow them. It was at this point when one of the volunteers on a paddle board came up to me and indicated I was swimming too far in and needed to head out some, so taking her word for it I started heading out. At this point, I was blind as a bat and just swimming hoping I was going the right way. After some time had passed, I couldn’t help but notice I didn’t seem to be passing any more buoys, and another volunteer on a paddle board came up beside me to tell me I was swimming too far out. I looked to where he was pointing but still could not see anything. I continued to swim in but was getting really frustrated. I stopped several times to try to see where I was but could not see any buoys in front of me. I could see some behind me and saw how far out I had gone but still had nothing in front of me to really sight. Finally, I just started to aim for the central point of glare from the sun and used that to sight. Finally, I got back to the last turn buoy but looking at my watch I now had less than 10 minutes to finish the last stretch of the race and get to the swim out before the 1 hour and 15 minute cutoff. Refusing to give up, I headed for the finish and just hoped I could eke it out. As I made it to the shore, I realized I had missed the cutoff. The last stretch of the race was the shortest, but it was also against the current and it just took a little longer than I had to do it. I was out of the water at about the 1:19 mark so I had missed the cutoff time by about 4 minutes. According to my Garmin I swam 2653 yards. What was surprising was there was still a fair amount of people on the beach cheering me on and congratulating me on completing the swim. Part of me appreciated the sentiment but part of me wanted to yell why are you congratulating me, I just DNF’d. I’m a goddamn Ironman and I wasn’t able to finish this 70.3 race. I managed to bury that frustrated side of me and thanked people as I walked by who were congratulating me. Then the race director came up and collected my chip and swim cap, again I thanked him but at the same time was trying very hard to control my disappointment mainly in myself. Even then I knew this had not been a easy swim and in fact should be proud I never gave up and finished the whole thing including the extra 600+ yards I swam, but part of me also knew I failed in the overall goal of finishing the entire race. I then went up to T1 to see if Kara was there because I didn’t see her at the beach. Turns out, she didn’t know if or when I had come out of the water and was up at T1 looking for me there.  At this point, the volunteers had begun the process of closing down T1. They had to gather up all the T1 bags and take them over to T2 for when people finished the race. There were several other athletes there who had also not finished the swim in time gathering their bike and things. By the time, I go to my bike the volunteers had already grabbed my T1 bag and thrown it in a truck with all the other bags. This bag of course had my bike shoes in it so without the bag I wasn’t going to be able to ride my bike over to the T2 area. The volunteers where nice though and we ended up putting my bike in the back of the truck and I rode over with the driver to the T2 area. Kara took a shuttle over because there wasn’t enough room in the truck for both of us.

Lance Armstrong

Once over at T2, I met back up with Kara at the car and we loaded the bike in then headed back to the race area to cheer our friends Tricia and Al on who were still in the race. I got to see Lance Armstrong who won the race in a record breaking time of 3:50:58. My friends Tricia and Al also finished the race. Tricia came in 5th place for her age group and got cool Kona bowl as a trophy.

I found out later that the swim had caused problems for lots of people. Apparently the winds had gotten so strong that some of the volunteers on the paddle boards got carried out to sea and had to be rescued by the Coast Guard.  A possibility of why it took so long for a volunteer to come tell me I had swum out too far. The wind also caused one of the buoys to break loose during the race although I don’t know which one, and I also learned the lead pack of age groupers got confused and ended up turning in towards the finish line too early and once they got to the finish they were told they had to turn around and swim the entire course.

For those who made it out of the water in time, they had to face quite a few challenges on the bike and run. Wind guests by this point had gotten up to 35 mph on the bike course, and I heard there where a number of accidents. My friend Al saw one lady do a face plant on the pavement, and for the run the sun was out in full force on a course with no shade. Part of me would have liked to face those challenges because that is in fact what part of doing these races is all about, but I will be honest there was also a part of me that wasn’t too upset that I missed out on that.

Trish & Al

Though disappointed I got a DNF for this race, I have had an awesome time here on the Big Island both with fun and leisure stuff and with training on the same course that the Ironman Championships use. I have already decided that I am coming back next year to redeem myself on this race, and I also know I come away with some great experiences here that will help me on my races to come. I now know first hand why the Kona course is so challenging, it’s not the course itself but the elements and uncertainty they can throw at you. Racing here really is like racing no other place I’ve been to. It wows you with its beauty and can crush you with its temperament.

A big thanks to Trish and Al for letting us crash with them for 2 weeks.