Kona 2010 Race Report
Oct 27, 2010 13:32 Filed in: Ironman
What do I say about Kona 2010?
It’s been eighteen days since the race. Eighteen days since I extended my Ironman history beyond the waters of Kailua-Kona Bay, but by only a handful of miles. Eighteen days since my now two-year quest to conquer the Ironman once again ended in disappointment.
Eighteen days is hardly enough time for me to fully process the disappointment of watching months of work end miles from the goal. But I’ve been as in-the-moment honest as I can be throughout this entire process, and I want to continue to be that way through my race report.
Following my near miss with the swim cutoff in 2009, not only did I know immediately that I wanted to head back to Kona for another attempt, the opportunity was offered. I was going to get the second chance that I so desperately wanted, and there was absolutely no way that I would let it slip away.
I left Kona that year feeling very optimistic about the year of training and work that lay ahead. I’d only missed the cutoff by seven seconds and there were thousands of ways for me to make up that time over the course of 2.4 miles. Obviously there were still 138.2 other miles to train for, but as I was boarding my flight to leave the Big Island that year I was feeling extremely upbeat. The positive energy of the place and people of Ironman had replaced the momentary agony of the close call and subsequent early exit from the race.
The Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, is truly a wonderful event put on by some of the best people I’ve had the privilege to meet. Despite how my day ended on October 10, 2009, the weeklong experience was one of the best of my life.
As I entered the water on the morning of October 9, 2010, I didn’t give the previous year a single thought. I was focused on form, on remaining confident, and on swimming with as much as energy as I could create. I honestly did not flash back once to 2009. I’d done more than enough thinking about that day, and that swim, and the seven-second margin that left me defeated on the steps over the year just past. I had a 2.4-mile job to do that was unrelated to what did or didn’t happen twelve months earlier.
The water was pretty rough that morning. Climbing down the stairs I noticed that the 10-foot beach that is usually lying uncovered against the seawall at 6:30 in the morning was instead hidden underneath a series of breaking swells. One large swell came in, broke on the steps and nearly knocked several people over, prompting one of my fellow racers to voice what all of us were thinking: “That’s not good.”
It wasn’t the “good” and calm flat waters that we’d all been hoping for the night before. But there is only so much you can control in an Ironman, and the weather and water conditions have never been one of them. So I noted the waves, mentally added five minutes to my expected time, and then moved on to my warm-up. I still had this.
My plan was to get in a solid 15-20 minute warm-up swim. Swim hard, swim easy, and swim with stroke focus. Then I’d get into position for the start, float for a few minutes, and then the frenzy would start with the crack of the cannon.
But warming up with 1800 of your friends is a lot easier said than done. In each direction I went I couldn’t get more than 10 strokes in before running into a wall of people. To the left and closer to shore was the only place where the crowds were breaking, but for good reason. That’s where the waves were breaking. So I did as much back-and-forth swimming as the growing mass would allow, then settled into a spot about 40 feet behind the floating Ford Edge.
With the cannon shot, we were off. I was in moderate traffic, occasionally getting bumped and grabbed. But one of the advantages of swimming in the clear waters of Hawaii is the full vision that you have. Contact, while fairly constant, is usually slight. You can see where you’re going and who is already there, so you can avoid them. When you’re close to the buoys you can actually follow the cable all the way to the ocean floor. This allows you to navigate around the buoy and the gathering bodies more easily.
On occasion there was someone on my heels, repeatedly hitting my feet with each stroke, and that got annoying. I could easily see the feet in front of me. Couldn’t they see mine?
Thirty minutes in and the crowds were still consistent, which for me was only a positive thing. This race is filled almost entirely with qualifiers, people who are great swimmers. The longer I could go without being dropped by everyone, the more my confidence grew. In fact I was feeling so good that when I would encounter the good swimmer who was passing me I’d actually pick up my pace for 200 yards or so and draft off their wake.
I was feeling strong, and that only made me feel stronger.
I hit the swim turnaround at what I would estimate was around the 52 minute mark. I’d set my watch alarm to go off every 15 minutes so I could keep track of the time in my head without having to kill the stroke to look at my watch. And since I don’t swim with earplugs I was able to hear each alarm. (If anyone is looking for a way to monitor your time in the water I highly recommend this method.)
At 52 minutes and 1.2 miles into the race, I knew I was getting out of the water before the cutoff. Because of the currents and wave patterns the second half of the Kona swim is a little longer than the out leg, but not enough to cause me problems. I was still with people – in fact passing a few that were taking a breather by hanging onto the turnaround boat’s anchor – and I was feeling strong.
I have an issue with cramps when I swim long distance. Pool, ocean, fully hydrated, cold, warm, it doesn’t seem to matter. I get cramps in my calves, knees, and even toes. I’d estimate that during my swim I probably spent a good 20 minutes swimming with one muscle or another in a cramped flex. And there were four or five minutes when I was kicking with just nine toes because one of my big toes was in a crazy cramp flex that had pointing in a direction I didn’t even know it could bend in.
These cramps annoyed me and definitely slowed my pace a little. But I know they’re coming, so mentally it didn’t fuss me too much. I just kept pulling water like a metronome. Reach… pull. Reach… pull. And talking to myself about form: elbow high, hand under elbow, rotate body.
When you go for a long swim, or long anything, you spend a lot of time in your head. Even when you’re completely focused on the task at hand, as I was with my swim in Kona, your mind is still open and aware. In between the orders my brain was passing down the chain of command to my hands, arms, and legs, I noticed the fish below me. I took in the color of the surfboard that my main escort paddled on for the final mile of my swim. And as for him, even though I only saw him through the foam of each breath to my right, I could today easily pick him out of a lineup.
And I was having the usual conversations in my head about the swimmers around me, patting myself on the back when I was keeping up with, or even passing others. I was counting the buoys and alarm beeps on my way back to dry land, tossing around the beginnings of my preparation for the bike, and giving myself a pep talk for the rest of the long day ahead.
When my alarm struck 1:45 I glanced up at the pier that acts as the finish line for the swim and the transition area for the race. I could break two hours if I really hustled.
So I did.
I spent the next 15 minutes digging down for as much as I could. I hadn’t stopped to rest at all during the swim. All of my recoveries in the middle of those 2.4 miles were active recoveries. All swims, no treading.
There were several times in the water when my body wanted to take a break. It was asking me to stop and catch my breath. And there were a couple of moments when I nearly gave in, telling myself that just 10 seconds of normal breathing and no swimming would have me back on the comfortable side of the anaerobic wall.
But I kept pushing, determined to break that two-hour mark.
Inside a couple of hundred yards left and I could begin to focus on the crowds cheering. I could hear people up on the pier – on my left side – shouting my name. And I was getting the thumbs up from my surfboard-powered escort. It was a good start to a long day and hopefully a harbinger of things to come.
My watch alarm went off to signal two hours with me still about 25 yards short of the swim finish. Oh well. All was still well. I was getting out of the water 20 minutes earlier than I had the year before, and I was confident. In the two weeks that I had been in Hawaii I’d done a series of rides along the course, and by race day I had ridden the entire thing. I knew what was ahead, I knew the conditions that I would face – I’d done a pretty hairy ride six days earlier in vicious cross-winds – and I knew that my body had been trained to ride 112 miles. And I’d have more than eight hours to get it done.
Out of the water and up the stairs, and a shared high-five with the voice of Ironman, Mike Reilly. A year earlier he’d been on the steps calling the dramatic moment of my swim in against the clock. This year he was there to announce to the crowd my triumph in the swim, and to greet me with a big smile.
Quickly I went over to Andy Anderson, the timing judge that was forced to disqualify me in 2009. I’d seen him at the welcome dinner two nights before and I promised that I wouldn’t be putting him in that position a second time. That Saturday morning we exchanged a brief hug as I kept my promise.
Then on to the fresh water showers to rinse off some of the salt. My body was still shaking, a little from the rocking motion of the ocean, a little from the adrenaline, a lot from the exertion. And with calves that were sore from all of the cramping I wasn’t exactly running through transition with any grace – more like hobbling. But I eventually made it through the maze of swimmers, volunteers, and television cameras.
Into the tent, and two more volunteers immediately came to my aid. They took my bike gear bag and dumped it on the floor, grabbed me a towel, and even stopped to help massage my calves – a little too hard, if I had anything to say about it. But the one guy said, “Let’s get that lactic acid out.” And who was I to argue. He looked like he knew what he was doing… sort of.
With the change complete I ran out of the tent and around the pier. Still running around the pier…. still running. Around… the… pier… still running.
My bike was at the very front of the transition area near the bike out. But to make it fair, everyone has to run the same path from the tent to his or her bike and then out of transition. And that pier is big. I swear, half my transition time was spent running around the perimeter of the pier.
I left the changing tent no more than 15 yards from my bike. But by the time I got to the far end of the pier I was what seemed like 150 yards from my bike. Then I had to go back again, all in bike shoes.
Finally I got to my bike, stuffed some food into my bento box, and unracked it from slot #157. As I was doing all of this the Emmy award-winning producer of the Ironman broadcast, Peter Henning, came up to me with a camera and asked me how it felt to be out of the water.
I got a chance to spend two days with Peter in September when he and a couple of other members of the television production crew came to do the back story on me. He’s obviously a brilliant storyteller, as evidenced by his multiple awards for the always amazing Ironman broadcast. But he’s also an incredibly nice guy who couldn’t have been more gracious to my family and me when he was here in California. So when Peter asked me a question in the middle of everything that swirling about, I did my best to answer it.
I think I said something about “good to get that monkey off my back,” and “feeling good and ready to tackle the bike.” I honestly don’t remember. The moment was a blur and my head was a little fuzzy.
Pushing past the mount line, I was on the bike and clipped in, riding the carpet that leads out of transition. That stretch up Palani Road, then left on Kuakini Highway is incredible. Throngs of cheering supporters line both sides of the road. And when it’s past the two-hour mark before you make it out of transition in Kona, you’re pretty much alone. There were no other cyclists on the road that I had to share those cheers with. It lasted for only a few seconds, but it was great.
Around the corner on Kuakini there is another P.A. system set up, and once again I heard the re-telling of my story to the crowd: “heart transplant… missed the swim cutoff in 2009… now on the bike course… Go, Kyle!”
The words cool and awesome hardly do it justice.
The rest of Kuakini is pretty deserted, as is the turn north up Makala and onto the Queen K. And I was thankful for that. About halfway up the rise of Makala I became incredibly short of breath. I tried to slow my breathing, telling myself to relax, slow the adrenaline, and stay within myself.
But the breathing issues remained and the swirling clouds in my head were only getting worse. So I pulled over and stopped to catch my breath and take the break that I never really got in transition.
I still felt positive about things. I didn’t feel like there was anything to panic about. And after a moment or two my breathing slowed and I got back on my bike.
But after getting to the top of Makala – a very modest rise – and making the right hand turn onto the Queen K, my head was feeling no better and breathing was once again becoming labored. I passed a couple of volunteers sitting along the side of the road – the rest of the road was nearly deserted – and after about 100 more yards I decided to pull over again.
Now there was panic. Now there was fear. I was only a few miles into a 112-mile bike ride. And these were some of the easiest miles on the course. Something was clearly happening to me, and for the first time that morning I thought about the possibility of not being able to finish.
I was by no means going to give in to that fear. I still was fairly confident that all I needed was another moment or two to rest and recover. Once things equalized I’d be set and ready to roll.
I sat down, and that got the attention of the nearby volunteers. They came over and held my bike for me while I lay down and tried to get blood to my head.
A moment later I got back up, grabbed my bike, and thought about getting back on. But my head was still swirling and I was just not feeling right. I sat back down.
Next to join me along the side of the road was a roving medical team. The volunteers had called them and they’d been fairly quick to respond.
After getting a brief explanation of my not so brief medical history, they took my blood pressure. It was 80 over 60, which for me is incredibly low. I typically run around 135 over 80, and that’s with medication to bring my blood pressure down. I don’t naturally have high blood pressure, but it goes up as a side effect of the anti-rejection medications I take.
Because of my history, because of my bp, and because my heart was racing, the medical team wanted to take me down to the main medical tent and get an EKG. Knowing that a trip in their van to the medical tent would end my day in disqualification, I politely declined. I asked for a few more minutes of feet up-time to see if that would solve the problem.
But as I lay there, looking up at a magnificent blue sky, I felt the Ironman slipping away. I was out of the water, but the clock was still ticking. My margin for error on a course as difficult as Kona is small. Time on my back was time lost. And a significant loss of time would be enough to steal my day.
I got up, but stumbled as I did. My head was still fuzzy and light. I begged for five more minutes.
Back down in the grass with my feet up, staring at the empty sky, I felt helpless. I remembered back to the many ceilings that I’ve stared at with that same feeling of complete loss of power. The ceiling in the bone marrow transplant ward at City of Hope. I would be sick, exhausted from vomiting what little food I’d felt like eating, and certain that I was dying. I would lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling, counting the tiles, then the holes in each tile, waiting for the next nurse’s visit, which would provide, if even for a moment, enough human interaction to get me until the next nurse’s visit.
I remembered laying on the table in the operating room at UCLA for almost an hour before they finally put me to sleep for my heart transplant. There were three or four people in the room – I couldn’t be sure of the exact number, I’d already been strapped in and all I could see were the lights hanging above me.
They added an IV line to this arm. Then to the other. Machines were moved into place. Trays of tools were opened and prepared. A few phone calls were taken. And all the while all I could do was lay there on my back, staring up at the lights, powerless to effect the next several, and most important, hours of my life.
And that’s how it felt in the grass along the Queen K Highway. The next several hours were supposed to be some of the most monumental in my life. In terms of shaping the perception of what a heart transplant patient can do, they were some of the most important. Yet I felt absolutely powerless to affect them.
We stood up one final time, but with no improvement. My day was done. To be safe the only option was to head to the medical tent and get an EKG.
As I sat in the back on the medical team’s van, hooked up to an oxygen tank and looking completely dejected and defeated, the television cameras arrived. For the second year in row one of my life’s biggest disappointments would be captured on film.
As you know by now, everything checked out as normal in the medical tent. In fact the doctor commented on just how normal my EKG looked. I got a bag of fluid, stayed on the oxygen for another hour, and after proving that I could sit up without passing out, I was released from medical.
Everyone there was so kind. And since many of them knew who I was – I’d spoken at the medical conference in Kona two days earlier – they were genuinely sad to see me in the tent. And not that they wouldn’t be this way for anyone that needed their help, but they were also genuinely very pleased to see that there was nothing seriously wrong.
I, on the other hand, was angry. I was ready for this. I had trained hard for this. And yet here I was again having lunch along Ali’I Drive on the afternoon of Ironman when I should instead be eating out of my bento box somewhere along the 112-mile bike course.
But there was no one for me to be angry with. The medical team made the right call. They encountered an athlete with extremely low blood pressure and light-headedness who wasn’t getting any better. Even if I hadn’t been a heart transplant, I would totally understand their decision to take me to the medical tent.
So was I angry with myself? Had I not put up enough of a fight? Was I at fault for what happened? Could I have done anything different?
Actually, yes, I think I could have done things differently. On long training and race days I don’t typically take my morning medications until after I’m done. They tend not to mix well with Gatorade and the like, so I save them for later. But on this morning, because I was planning on going without my meds until late into the night, I did take my blood pressure medication. So I didn’t take the medications that drive my bp up, but I did take the meds that bring my bp down.
This probably isn’t the lone reason for what happened. I had also just been laying flat in the ocean for over two hours, exerting myself quite extensively. I then hopped out of the water, ran up some steps, and never really took a moment to allow myself to recover. Throw in an unnerved heart (the nerves connecting my brain to my heart and cut during transplant) and my full dose of blood pressure lowering medication when most likely none was called for, and you get a bp that bottoms out.
The good news, it’s fixable. Or at least manageable. But the very bad news, in which I felt increasingly the rest of what was to be one of the most incredible days of my life, was that my chance of fixing it at Kona was gone. There are other Ironman races. There will be, for me, other opportunities to get to that finish line. Maybe even opportunities in the near future. But the dream of that magical moment at finish line in Kona had been lost for a second time.
I haven’t been able to put a truly definable finger on the reason for this, but my miss at Kona in 2010 has been much harder than it was in 2009. Perhaps it’s the fatigue from another year of training, yet one without a finish line at the end. Maybe it’s because I was far more confident in myself heading into this year’s race, so I was less prepared for failure. Perhaps it’s because last year I simply didn’t swim fast enough. It was completely within my control. While the nature of this year’s issues made me feel like a patient again, vulnerable to the whims of a body beyond my control.
Regardless of the why, the feeling is one of pain and disappointment. But a feeling that will not deter me from the ultimate goal. It took four tries before I finally kicked cancer out of my life. The reality is that for me, it’s going to take at least three tries to get across that Ironman finish line. I’m not happy about it, but I can live with it. Because for me, “live” remains the operative word.
It’s been eighteen days since the race. Eighteen days since I extended my Ironman history beyond the waters of Kailua-Kona Bay, but by only a handful of miles. Eighteen days since my now two-year quest to conquer the Ironman once again ended in disappointment.
Eighteen days is hardly enough time for me to fully process the disappointment of watching months of work end miles from the goal. But I’ve been as in-the-moment honest as I can be throughout this entire process, and I want to continue to be that way through my race report.
Following my near miss with the swim cutoff in 2009, not only did I know immediately that I wanted to head back to Kona for another attempt, the opportunity was offered. I was going to get the second chance that I so desperately wanted, and there was absolutely no way that I would let it slip away.
I left Kona that year feeling very optimistic about the year of training and work that lay ahead. I’d only missed the cutoff by seven seconds and there were thousands of ways for me to make up that time over the course of 2.4 miles. Obviously there were still 138.2 other miles to train for, but as I was boarding my flight to leave the Big Island that year I was feeling extremely upbeat. The positive energy of the place and people of Ironman had replaced the momentary agony of the close call and subsequent early exit from the race.
The Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, is truly a wonderful event put on by some of the best people I’ve had the privilege to meet. Despite how my day ended on October 10, 2009, the weeklong experience was one of the best of my life.
As I entered the water on the morning of October 9, 2010, I didn’t give the previous year a single thought. I was focused on form, on remaining confident, and on swimming with as much as energy as I could create. I honestly did not flash back once to 2009. I’d done more than enough thinking about that day, and that swim, and the seven-second margin that left me defeated on the steps over the year just past. I had a 2.4-mile job to do that was unrelated to what did or didn’t happen twelve months earlier.
The water was pretty rough that morning. Climbing down the stairs I noticed that the 10-foot beach that is usually lying uncovered against the seawall at 6:30 in the morning was instead hidden underneath a series of breaking swells. One large swell came in, broke on the steps and nearly knocked several people over, prompting one of my fellow racers to voice what all of us were thinking: “That’s not good.”
It wasn’t the “good” and calm flat waters that we’d all been hoping for the night before. But there is only so much you can control in an Ironman, and the weather and water conditions have never been one of them. So I noted the waves, mentally added five minutes to my expected time, and then moved on to my warm-up. I still had this.
My plan was to get in a solid 15-20 minute warm-up swim. Swim hard, swim easy, and swim with stroke focus. Then I’d get into position for the start, float for a few minutes, and then the frenzy would start with the crack of the cannon.
But warming up with 1800 of your friends is a lot easier said than done. In each direction I went I couldn’t get more than 10 strokes in before running into a wall of people. To the left and closer to shore was the only place where the crowds were breaking, but for good reason. That’s where the waves were breaking. So I did as much back-and-forth swimming as the growing mass would allow, then settled into a spot about 40 feet behind the floating Ford Edge.
With the cannon shot, we were off. I was in moderate traffic, occasionally getting bumped and grabbed. But one of the advantages of swimming in the clear waters of Hawaii is the full vision that you have. Contact, while fairly constant, is usually slight. You can see where you’re going and who is already there, so you can avoid them. When you’re close to the buoys you can actually follow the cable all the way to the ocean floor. This allows you to navigate around the buoy and the gathering bodies more easily.
On occasion there was someone on my heels, repeatedly hitting my feet with each stroke, and that got annoying. I could easily see the feet in front of me. Couldn’t they see mine?
Thirty minutes in and the crowds were still consistent, which for me was only a positive thing. This race is filled almost entirely with qualifiers, people who are great swimmers. The longer I could go without being dropped by everyone, the more my confidence grew. In fact I was feeling so good that when I would encounter the good swimmer who was passing me I’d actually pick up my pace for 200 yards or so and draft off their wake.
I was feeling strong, and that only made me feel stronger.
I hit the swim turnaround at what I would estimate was around the 52 minute mark. I’d set my watch alarm to go off every 15 minutes so I could keep track of the time in my head without having to kill the stroke to look at my watch. And since I don’t swim with earplugs I was able to hear each alarm. (If anyone is looking for a way to monitor your time in the water I highly recommend this method.)
At 52 minutes and 1.2 miles into the race, I knew I was getting out of the water before the cutoff. Because of the currents and wave patterns the second half of the Kona swim is a little longer than the out leg, but not enough to cause me problems. I was still with people – in fact passing a few that were taking a breather by hanging onto the turnaround boat’s anchor – and I was feeling strong.
I have an issue with cramps when I swim long distance. Pool, ocean, fully hydrated, cold, warm, it doesn’t seem to matter. I get cramps in my calves, knees, and even toes. I’d estimate that during my swim I probably spent a good 20 minutes swimming with one muscle or another in a cramped flex. And there were four or five minutes when I was kicking with just nine toes because one of my big toes was in a crazy cramp flex that had pointing in a direction I didn’t even know it could bend in.
These cramps annoyed me and definitely slowed my pace a little. But I know they’re coming, so mentally it didn’t fuss me too much. I just kept pulling water like a metronome. Reach… pull. Reach… pull. And talking to myself about form: elbow high, hand under elbow, rotate body.
When you go for a long swim, or long anything, you spend a lot of time in your head. Even when you’re completely focused on the task at hand, as I was with my swim in Kona, your mind is still open and aware. In between the orders my brain was passing down the chain of command to my hands, arms, and legs, I noticed the fish below me. I took in the color of the surfboard that my main escort paddled on for the final mile of my swim. And as for him, even though I only saw him through the foam of each breath to my right, I could today easily pick him out of a lineup.
And I was having the usual conversations in my head about the swimmers around me, patting myself on the back when I was keeping up with, or even passing others. I was counting the buoys and alarm beeps on my way back to dry land, tossing around the beginnings of my preparation for the bike, and giving myself a pep talk for the rest of the long day ahead.
When my alarm struck 1:45 I glanced up at the pier that acts as the finish line for the swim and the transition area for the race. I could break two hours if I really hustled.
So I did.
I spent the next 15 minutes digging down for as much as I could. I hadn’t stopped to rest at all during the swim. All of my recoveries in the middle of those 2.4 miles were active recoveries. All swims, no treading.
There were several times in the water when my body wanted to take a break. It was asking me to stop and catch my breath. And there were a couple of moments when I nearly gave in, telling myself that just 10 seconds of normal breathing and no swimming would have me back on the comfortable side of the anaerobic wall.
But I kept pushing, determined to break that two-hour mark.
Inside a couple of hundred yards left and I could begin to focus on the crowds cheering. I could hear people up on the pier – on my left side – shouting my name. And I was getting the thumbs up from my surfboard-powered escort. It was a good start to a long day and hopefully a harbinger of things to come.
My watch alarm went off to signal two hours with me still about 25 yards short of the swim finish. Oh well. All was still well. I was getting out of the water 20 minutes earlier than I had the year before, and I was confident. In the two weeks that I had been in Hawaii I’d done a series of rides along the course, and by race day I had ridden the entire thing. I knew what was ahead, I knew the conditions that I would face – I’d done a pretty hairy ride six days earlier in vicious cross-winds – and I knew that my body had been trained to ride 112 miles. And I’d have more than eight hours to get it done.
Out of the water and up the stairs, and a shared high-five with the voice of Ironman, Mike Reilly. A year earlier he’d been on the steps calling the dramatic moment of my swim in against the clock. This year he was there to announce to the crowd my triumph in the swim, and to greet me with a big smile.
Quickly I went over to Andy Anderson, the timing judge that was forced to disqualify me in 2009. I’d seen him at the welcome dinner two nights before and I promised that I wouldn’t be putting him in that position a second time. That Saturday morning we exchanged a brief hug as I kept my promise.
Then on to the fresh water showers to rinse off some of the salt. My body was still shaking, a little from the rocking motion of the ocean, a little from the adrenaline, a lot from the exertion. And with calves that were sore from all of the cramping I wasn’t exactly running through transition with any grace – more like hobbling. But I eventually made it through the maze of swimmers, volunteers, and television cameras.
Into the tent, and two more volunteers immediately came to my aid. They took my bike gear bag and dumped it on the floor, grabbed me a towel, and even stopped to help massage my calves – a little too hard, if I had anything to say about it. But the one guy said, “Let’s get that lactic acid out.” And who was I to argue. He looked like he knew what he was doing… sort of.
With the change complete I ran out of the tent and around the pier. Still running around the pier…. still running. Around… the… pier… still running.
My bike was at the very front of the transition area near the bike out. But to make it fair, everyone has to run the same path from the tent to his or her bike and then out of transition. And that pier is big. I swear, half my transition time was spent running around the perimeter of the pier.
I left the changing tent no more than 15 yards from my bike. But by the time I got to the far end of the pier I was what seemed like 150 yards from my bike. Then I had to go back again, all in bike shoes.
Finally I got to my bike, stuffed some food into my bento box, and unracked it from slot #157. As I was doing all of this the Emmy award-winning producer of the Ironman broadcast, Peter Henning, came up to me with a camera and asked me how it felt to be out of the water.
I got a chance to spend two days with Peter in September when he and a couple of other members of the television production crew came to do the back story on me. He’s obviously a brilliant storyteller, as evidenced by his multiple awards for the always amazing Ironman broadcast. But he’s also an incredibly nice guy who couldn’t have been more gracious to my family and me when he was here in California. So when Peter asked me a question in the middle of everything that swirling about, I did my best to answer it.
I think I said something about “good to get that monkey off my back,” and “feeling good and ready to tackle the bike.” I honestly don’t remember. The moment was a blur and my head was a little fuzzy.
Pushing past the mount line, I was on the bike and clipped in, riding the carpet that leads out of transition. That stretch up Palani Road, then left on Kuakini Highway is incredible. Throngs of cheering supporters line both sides of the road. And when it’s past the two-hour mark before you make it out of transition in Kona, you’re pretty much alone. There were no other cyclists on the road that I had to share those cheers with. It lasted for only a few seconds, but it was great.
Around the corner on Kuakini there is another P.A. system set up, and once again I heard the re-telling of my story to the crowd: “heart transplant… missed the swim cutoff in 2009… now on the bike course… Go, Kyle!”
The words cool and awesome hardly do it justice.
The rest of Kuakini is pretty deserted, as is the turn north up Makala and onto the Queen K. And I was thankful for that. About halfway up the rise of Makala I became incredibly short of breath. I tried to slow my breathing, telling myself to relax, slow the adrenaline, and stay within myself.
But the breathing issues remained and the swirling clouds in my head were only getting worse. So I pulled over and stopped to catch my breath and take the break that I never really got in transition.
I still felt positive about things. I didn’t feel like there was anything to panic about. And after a moment or two my breathing slowed and I got back on my bike.
But after getting to the top of Makala – a very modest rise – and making the right hand turn onto the Queen K, my head was feeling no better and breathing was once again becoming labored. I passed a couple of volunteers sitting along the side of the road – the rest of the road was nearly deserted – and after about 100 more yards I decided to pull over again.
Now there was panic. Now there was fear. I was only a few miles into a 112-mile bike ride. And these were some of the easiest miles on the course. Something was clearly happening to me, and for the first time that morning I thought about the possibility of not being able to finish.
I was by no means going to give in to that fear. I still was fairly confident that all I needed was another moment or two to rest and recover. Once things equalized I’d be set and ready to roll.
I sat down, and that got the attention of the nearby volunteers. They came over and held my bike for me while I lay down and tried to get blood to my head.
A moment later I got back up, grabbed my bike, and thought about getting back on. But my head was still swirling and I was just not feeling right. I sat back down.
Next to join me along the side of the road was a roving medical team. The volunteers had called them and they’d been fairly quick to respond.
After getting a brief explanation of my not so brief medical history, they took my blood pressure. It was 80 over 60, which for me is incredibly low. I typically run around 135 over 80, and that’s with medication to bring my blood pressure down. I don’t naturally have high blood pressure, but it goes up as a side effect of the anti-rejection medications I take.
Because of my history, because of my bp, and because my heart was racing, the medical team wanted to take me down to the main medical tent and get an EKG. Knowing that a trip in their van to the medical tent would end my day in disqualification, I politely declined. I asked for a few more minutes of feet up-time to see if that would solve the problem.
But as I lay there, looking up at a magnificent blue sky, I felt the Ironman slipping away. I was out of the water, but the clock was still ticking. My margin for error on a course as difficult as Kona is small. Time on my back was time lost. And a significant loss of time would be enough to steal my day.
I got up, but stumbled as I did. My head was still fuzzy and light. I begged for five more minutes.
Back down in the grass with my feet up, staring at the empty sky, I felt helpless. I remembered back to the many ceilings that I’ve stared at with that same feeling of complete loss of power. The ceiling in the bone marrow transplant ward at City of Hope. I would be sick, exhausted from vomiting what little food I’d felt like eating, and certain that I was dying. I would lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling, counting the tiles, then the holes in each tile, waiting for the next nurse’s visit, which would provide, if even for a moment, enough human interaction to get me until the next nurse’s visit.
I remembered laying on the table in the operating room at UCLA for almost an hour before they finally put me to sleep for my heart transplant. There were three or four people in the room – I couldn’t be sure of the exact number, I’d already been strapped in and all I could see were the lights hanging above me.
They added an IV line to this arm. Then to the other. Machines were moved into place. Trays of tools were opened and prepared. A few phone calls were taken. And all the while all I could do was lay there on my back, staring up at the lights, powerless to effect the next several, and most important, hours of my life.
And that’s how it felt in the grass along the Queen K Highway. The next several hours were supposed to be some of the most monumental in my life. In terms of shaping the perception of what a heart transplant patient can do, they were some of the most important. Yet I felt absolutely powerless to affect them.
We stood up one final time, but with no improvement. My day was done. To be safe the only option was to head to the medical tent and get an EKG.
As I sat in the back on the medical team’s van, hooked up to an oxygen tank and looking completely dejected and defeated, the television cameras arrived. For the second year in row one of my life’s biggest disappointments would be captured on film.
As you know by now, everything checked out as normal in the medical tent. In fact the doctor commented on just how normal my EKG looked. I got a bag of fluid, stayed on the oxygen for another hour, and after proving that I could sit up without passing out, I was released from medical.
Everyone there was so kind. And since many of them knew who I was – I’d spoken at the medical conference in Kona two days earlier – they were genuinely sad to see me in the tent. And not that they wouldn’t be this way for anyone that needed their help, but they were also genuinely very pleased to see that there was nothing seriously wrong.
I, on the other hand, was angry. I was ready for this. I had trained hard for this. And yet here I was again having lunch along Ali’I Drive on the afternoon of Ironman when I should instead be eating out of my bento box somewhere along the 112-mile bike course.
But there was no one for me to be angry with. The medical team made the right call. They encountered an athlete with extremely low blood pressure and light-headedness who wasn’t getting any better. Even if I hadn’t been a heart transplant, I would totally understand their decision to take me to the medical tent.
So was I angry with myself? Had I not put up enough of a fight? Was I at fault for what happened? Could I have done anything different?
Actually, yes, I think I could have done things differently. On long training and race days I don’t typically take my morning medications until after I’m done. They tend not to mix well with Gatorade and the like, so I save them for later. But on this morning, because I was planning on going without my meds until late into the night, I did take my blood pressure medication. So I didn’t take the medications that drive my bp up, but I did take the meds that bring my bp down.
This probably isn’t the lone reason for what happened. I had also just been laying flat in the ocean for over two hours, exerting myself quite extensively. I then hopped out of the water, ran up some steps, and never really took a moment to allow myself to recover. Throw in an unnerved heart (the nerves connecting my brain to my heart and cut during transplant) and my full dose of blood pressure lowering medication when most likely none was called for, and you get a bp that bottoms out.
The good news, it’s fixable. Or at least manageable. But the very bad news, in which I felt increasingly the rest of what was to be one of the most incredible days of my life, was that my chance of fixing it at Kona was gone. There are other Ironman races. There will be, for me, other opportunities to get to that finish line. Maybe even opportunities in the near future. But the dream of that magical moment at finish line in Kona had been lost for a second time.
I haven’t been able to put a truly definable finger on the reason for this, but my miss at Kona in 2010 has been much harder than it was in 2009. Perhaps it’s the fatigue from another year of training, yet one without a finish line at the end. Maybe it’s because I was far more confident in myself heading into this year’s race, so I was less prepared for failure. Perhaps it’s because last year I simply didn’t swim fast enough. It was completely within my control. While the nature of this year’s issues made me feel like a patient again, vulnerable to the whims of a body beyond my control.
Regardless of the why, the feeling is one of pain and disappointment. But a feeling that will not deter me from the ultimate goal. It took four tries before I finally kicked cancer out of my life. The reality is that for me, it’s going to take at least three tries to get across that Ironman finish line. I’m not happy about it, but I can live with it. Because for me, “live” remains the operative word.
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