Ironman Kona Race Report by Hans Porten

Nov 10, 2011

Hello everyone,

It was an exciting year 2011. First Ironman ever in Austria and already qualified for Kona. Yeh, Kona, it is a different race. It may take 4-6 attempts to understand the course, the weather, the wind, the heat, the hills, the water, the waves, the run course, and many other details. For example the bottleneck at the turn around during the swim, not wider than 5-6m; artificially created by boats to make sure something ironmanlike happens during the swim.

Probably out of the 3.8km swim most of it I swam 2.0km head up. Swallowing seawater was normal at least I had enough salt in my body for the following bike ride.

The first stretch (of the bike course) goes through the town of Kona and is approx. 8miles long before it goes into the lava fields on Queen Kaahumanu Hwy, and the prevailing cross wind ho'omumuku for the next 100miles. The first 30 miles are easy with a good tailwind but than it goes. One left turn, downhill with 65km/h, right turn to the town of Hawi. Here we faced a head wind of approx. 40mph and windgust up to 60mph. That goes on for approx. 10miles. The way back, tailwind, downhill, back onto the hwy. From here on the crosswind blast with full force until back to Kona. It simply fries the running legs.

It took me around 2 miles of running before I found the legs for approx. another 8 miles. Back on the hwy to Energy Lab. (It is a research facility for deep water energy production). I felt every single muscles in my legs and my conscious told me to give up. Here is where the mental battle starts. On the run, hill after hill brought me a bit closer to the finish line ignoring the pain in my kees and quads. It was a first time I stopped at the aid stations for more than once to get water a food.

Yes, this course is a challenge. In my opinion as a first timer on this course and quite impressed what an ironman course could look like, any other Ironman in the world compared to Kona is probably a 70.3, just by looking at the Kona placement of other Ironman winner in my age group around the world and they won the age group in these races.

On the other hand the week before the main event was followed by many other little events during the week. KOS (kids of steel) events, underpants run (to mock the Europeans 15 years ago when they came to Kona with their Speedo swim pants), autograph hours with famous Ironman winners, every morning the coffee boat was out on the swim course (around 400-600m swim to the boat) and of course some trips around the island. South point, captain Cook landing, the huge astronomic observatory on Mauna Kea (13,000ft high), etc. The island offers a lot more such as the famous Kona Coffee Belt (finest coffee I ever drank, but expensive, 2pound of 100% Kona Coffee goes for .) Kona offers a high quality beer with many awards from beer companies around the world specially from Germany, it called Longboard beer, to hounor the Longboard surfer from Hawaii.


That is for now

Hans