My full Kona race report is super long, so I've broken this detail out...
KONA BIKE FILE (Training Peaks Link)
I was really comfortable throughout the ride. Watts looked good, right at the bottom of the 190-210 target, and I never felt like I was fading. (Typically in an Ironman I'll get to mile 95 or so and start to hit a wall. When that comes, I'll either be barely hanging on to the bottom end of my target watts or will be 10 watts lower.)
I might be stating the obvious here, but one thing to keep in mind on the below is that W/kg is calculated from average power. The W/kg shown, 2.86, is accurate. I held an average power of 183 watts over the 5hrs and 15min and was weighing 63.9kg (141 lb) -- 183/63.9 = 2.86.
TAKE A LOOK AT THE PROS FOR A SECOND...
If you want to put my W/kg in perspective, check out what BestBikeSplit.com put out... I'm well aware that my watts on the bike are pretty pedestrian, especially among those at the World Champs; just wanted to make sure you knew that as well :)
KONA RUN FILE (TRAINING PEAKS LINK)
I came into this race in really strong run shape. If it all came together, I thought I could potentially go under 3 hours in the marathon. Given my conservative ride, I came into T2 thinking I had a great shot at making that happen. The miles never came easily though and at the top of Palani, around mile 10.5, I knew that sub-3 hours wasn't in the cards. From there, I just pushed as best as I could.
IRONMAN COZUMEL COMPARISON
My ride has come a long way over the past year. At Cozumel, my FTP was about 240 watts and my goal was to ride a NP somewhere between 175-190. I finished the race with a NP of 177. This netted out to an IF of .74, so it was a bit harder of ride. I definitely experienced a fade there too. My NP for the last 30 minutes was just 167.
Even with the harder ride (comparatively) in Cozumel, I still was able to have a great run off the bike. I felt really solid for the first 13 miles and didn't fade all that much on the back half.
I'm not totally sure why I struggled so much more on the run in Kona. The temperature wasn't all that much different and both have a similar elevation gain across the 26.2 miles. If I were to guess, I'd say that I found the Kona run so hard because of its concentrated climbs (Palani, Energy Lab, final climb on Queen K) and the mind-f*$k that is the Queen K — no spectators or anything visually stimulating made things brutal up there. If I want to knock out a strong run, I'll look for more gradual climbs and looped run course (easy to break up mentally) like Cozumel.
COZUMEL BIKE (TRAINING PEAKS LINK)
COZUMEL RUN (TRAINING PEAKS LINK)
