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This was my fourth consecutive participation in the Ironman Hawaii. After my stress fracture in the beginning of the year, it proved difficult to recapture my normal performance level. I finished second in the Half Ironman Antwerp and third in the Ironman Lake Placid, but I was not really satisfied with these results, since in both events I faded away, both at the end of the bike and the run legs of the races. Starting in August, I was back on track though, so I could train without any further problems. My preparation for Hawaii went quite well, with an high-altitude training camp in Font Remeu (France), good test in the half Ironman Monaco (which I probably would have won, without a mechanical failure at the end of the bike portion), a final 10day training in Lanzarote and then the ultimate preparation in Kona. As you already could read in my blog from Hawaii, there have been some non-sport related problems in the week leading to the race (the Marc Saenen story, an earthquake, a little car-accident…). However, I did not let these troubles interfere with my concentration on the race. My objective was to finish on the podium, despite the heavy competition from, amongst others, Stadler, Al -Sultan, Mc Cormack, Brown and maybe also Marino Vanhoenacker. Concerning my tactics, I wanted to get out of the water as close as possible to the leaders, then start cautiously on the bike and try to ride the full 180 km at the same tempo, then finally run a marathon in less than 2hr50min. The weather forecast, at the beginning of the race, was not really what I preferred and thus not really to my advantage: no wind at all during the bike portion and no hot temperatures during the run.

For the Pro athletes, the race started at 6.45 in the morning. My swimming went much better than expected. I had to give it everything I had in me, but that resulted in being able to follow at the back-end of a very large group. Because of strong currents, the group did not break into pieces until 500 meters away from the transition. At that moment an athlete just in front of me had to leave a gap and I was unable to speed up and close the gap. In the end, I left the transition zone in the 40th position, 1min30 behind the leader Luc Van Lierde and 45 seconds behind Marino Vanhoenacker. Soon I realized that all big names, including Stadler, had been swimming faster than I. Nevertheless I was pretty happy with my swim, since in the past I always lost 3 to 4 minutes on the leaders.
I was not satisfied with my biking though. I don’t know why, but in the first hour I was much weaker than what I consider normal. As a result, I missed the little group, with Brown, McCormack, Bell, Marino, Al-Sultan, Llanos, Evans and Lieto, that was formed in the first 20 km behind super biker Norman Stadler. After 60 km I managed to join a group with, amongst others, Luc Van Lierde and Hellriegel. A little later, I drove away from them and continued all alone for the remainder of the bike portion. At the turning point in Hawi, Stadler had been able to take 9 minutes on me, while the first group went back 3 minutes before me. The first 25 km after Hawi are going downhill and are known to be very difficult. Because I was all alone and thus could not develop the same speed as a group, I lost one more minute to the group and 3 additional minutes to Norman Stadler. Even though the race did not go very well for me, I still kept a high morale. I know, from previous experiences, that in an Ironman one never should give up, even when things do not work out very well.  And yes, all of a sudden I started to improve. During the last 60km of the bike portion, I still lost a lot of time on Stadler, but not anymore on all the big names in the group chasing the leader.

I started my marathon in 10th position and some 16 minutes after Stadler, 7 minutes after Lieto and 4min30 behind Al-Sultan, Brown, Mc Cormack, Llanos, Bell, Marino and Tom Evans. I still felt quite good and started to run at a pace of 6min02 per mile. After 10 miles, I arrived at the famous Palani Road, a steep climb of some 500 meters. In the previous years, I always tried to keep my pace, even on this Palani Road. That resulted every time in being exhausted when I finally reached the Queen K highway. So, this year, I wanted to follow another strategy: while running uphill, I kind of relaxed and I only went back to my ‘normal’ pace at the top. This proved to be a good strategy. On the long road towards the ‘Energy Lab’, I saw myself getting closer to the athletes in the group. The first one to pass was Chris Lieto. Coming into the Energy Lab, I was running in 8th position (Tom Evans had stepped out of the race). In the Energy Lab, one first has to run 2km towards a turning point, followed returning to the Queen K highway on exactly the same road. As a result one will always encounter all the people that are running in front of you. This gives an opportunity to see how far behind you are and whether they look ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I quickly realized that, aside from Stadler, Mc Cormack and Al-Sultan, all the others were still in my reach. Once out of the Energy Lab, there are exactly 10 km left in the race. During my previous participations, the only thing I could do at that point was to stop thinking and just try to reach the finish without loosing one or more positions. This year though, things went much better. I still was able to keep running at a good pace (6’20” a mile) and hence I managed to pass Marino, Brown, Bell and Llanos one by one. The latter one was a tough nut to crack. It was difficult to catch him and afterwards he managed to stay with me for a very long time. But in the end he had to let me go. Now I saw myself getting closer to Al-Sultan, but unfortunately his advance was too big, so I could not catch him. I finished the race in 4th position, just like last year, with a marathon time of 2h48minutes and a few seconds. As you could see on TV, this year I fully enjoyed my finish, where Sofie and my little daughter Tille were waiting for me.
I wanted to reach the podium and finished 4th instead. Nevertheless I am quite satisfied with my race. I ended up in the top-5 for the fourth consecutive time! My swim and my run legs were better than ever, but something went wrong during the first hour of the biking. For the first time, I have biked with my SRM in Hawaii this year, so all data on speed, heart rate, cadence en wattage on the bike have been stored. Hopefully this will allow my coach, Pieter Timmermans, to figure out what went wrong in the beginning.

Normally, Hawaii is the last race of my season. This year however, I will participate in the ITU long distance world championship in Australia on November 19. On Wednesday October 25 I will leave Kona for Australia, together with Marino Vanhoenacker and Stijn Demeulemeester. Wee first do another training camp and then… the last race of the year. I hope I will be able to maintain my excellent condition of today long until then.

 

Pictures from Hawaii >>>>>>