KONA DREAMIN

This year is turning out to be one of the most incredible years of my life - it seems like all my dreams are coming true. As I type this, I'm sitting in our Air BnB apartment in Kona, Hawaii.

Better still to top off the perfect year, in a little over 3 weeks I get to marry the most incredible person in the world, my fiancée Jenny. She is laying on the sofa by the open door leading out to the pacific shoreline, checking her insta and I'm pinching myself every couple of minutes thinking this has to be a dream…. We just got in from the athlete briefing for the IRONMAN World Champs - and I am racing!

A quick run though the year so far to get you guys up to speed.

Roll back to the start of this year Jenny and I had just moved house and we were busy planning our wedding for November. We had a couple of sporting events in the diary too: Jenny had booked to race Ironman Zurich in July and I’d decided to race this too - but as a B race as I wanted to focus on the London Marathon as my A race. It was set to be an amazing year.

After 5 years of trying to get a place, I was about to have my first go at a standalone marathon. I decided to set myself a big goal of going sub-3 hours. Now for those who are not familiar with marathon times there are plenty of sub 3 marathon runners out there but, a bit like a sub-20min 5km, it is still quite a milestone for a runner - let alone on the first attempt at the standalone marathon. But I had a plan, which was driven by my Paceplan model. In December I was predicting around a 3 hour 15min finish time for London. I used this prediction to set training zones and then I got to work. Over the following weeks and months, I ran more than I ever have with the mileage for some weeks getting up to around 100km (60miles) - but a large majority of it was at quite a slow pace (5:00/km up to 5:30/km). I was using a book ‘Advanced Marathoning’ by Pete Pfitzinger & Scott Douglas to guide my training schedule and Paceplan to dictate my running pace. It worked out pretty well and along the way I set PBs in 5km, 10km and half marathon races. I predicted before the race that I could run anything from 3hr 5mins down to 2hr 55mins. On race day I stuck to my numbers and my time was 2:59:25. What surprised me the most was how easy it felt. It was only in the last couple of kilometres that I started to struggle and by then I was almost finished. It seemed my approach had been sound, and my Paceplan predictions were on the money too.

Back in February, while in full-on marathon training, I received an unusual email from Ironman. It was unlike the other marketing emails I'm used to receiving from them. This one had a much more personal message. It started with ‘Aloha Graham, congratulations!’ and then went on to explain that I had been randomly selected as 1 of 40 Ironman participants who will receive the right to compete in the iconic IRONMAN World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, as part of the “Kona Dreamin” 40th anniversary celebration. Anyone who had entered any Ironman race by 20th January 2019 was automatically entered into the draw. Out of around 95,000 eligible athletes, my name was one of the 40 drawn. Now my year looked a little more hectic: London Marathon, Ironman Zurich, and realising every triathletes dream of going to Kona!

To validate my slot for Kona, I still had to complete Ironman Zurich. It made the whole race a little more stressful - what if something went wrong and I didn't finish? But it also made crossing that finish line all the more enjoyable. I completed it in just under 11 and a half hours with a very conservative race plan. I only had 12 weeks or so of Ironman-specific training after London, so I had just focused on building my endurance for the event, and it went well. Jenny was amazing - in her second Ironman she ran a 4 hour 3 minute marathon split (2nd fastest in her category) and finished 11th in her age group. I have no doubt soon we will be returning to the Big island for her debut in Kona, if her progression continues the way it has. We had Jenny’s parents along with my mum and my sister out in Zurich to support us. It was the first time my mum had seen me race and it made it extra special for me.

Fast forward to the here and now.11th October 2019.

Tomorrow I’ll be racing at the Ironman World Championships, Kona. For the last 12 weeks I worked with a coach, Campbell Noon from Re-leaf MK, a friend who I've trained with in the past and who coaches Jenny too. He is great at ensuring I get the best from myself. It’s worked, because I feel ready to go. I've run the numbers a few times through Paceplan to get myself a race prediction: it’s a tough one to predict, because the conditions are notorious here. Kona is often said to be a different type of Ironman and I have received messages from Kona experienced athletes confirming how much the Big island will beat you up if you go for a time over racing “with the Island”. So with that in mind my Paceplan model/method is really going to be tested and I don’t know if it is going to be wise to set out these predictions. But here it goes anyway.

Swim: 1:11:35

Bike: 05:39:58 (Average power 160W/Normalised power 166W, Target heart rate 135 to 140 BPM)

Run: 03:53:24 (Average pace 5:32/km, Target heart rate 143BPM to 147BPM)

To give you an idea of how the conditions can impact times here - if the forecasted wind and heat weren't a factor, then my Paceplan predicts I could go 30mins quicker on the bike and 10mins quicker on the run.

My plan is the race to the target power and heart rate, and try to enjoy the race. Then, if conditions tomorrow favour me, I might be able to gain some of the time back. I have been warned not to fight the island, so I will go with the flow: if I can’t hold the numbers, I won’t. Once out of the Energy Lab (notorious for being the hottest, toughest part of the run course that breaks many an athlete) and I'm on that last 12km stretch back to the finish line, then I will stop watching numbers and race the last hour on feel. Hopefully this will work out!

My total time, including 10 mins for both swim-bike and bike-run transitions, puts me at 10:54:24 and if conditions favour me, maybe as quick as 10:24:24. Lets see tomorrow. Anything is possible in an Ironman and anything can happen - even more so here on the Big Island.

Tomorrow morning, I start in the last wave - the KUKUI division, with other Kona Dreamin' slot recipients and legacy slot athletes, at 7:30am Island time (6:30pm UK time). You can follow me on the Ironman Tracker app - my number is 418.