That was humbling...Kona 2018

Fourteen months ago, Every Man Jack teammate and one of my good friends, Corey Robinson, planted the Ironman seed in my head. Shortly thereafter, I was able to convince Briana to let me play along.  Oh, how fortunate of a first Ironman experience it was. It truly wasn’t until a couple of months later that I was really able to digest what I had accomplished….and realize that it meant I would soon be doing it again, this time surrounded by the best in the world.

So happy to share this day with James.

The summer of 2018 was chaotic to say the least, and living in Boston for the first couple of months meant it really didn’t even begin until the middle of June. After successful races at Quassy and Patriot it wasn’t long before our relocation to Savannah. Bri and I have enjoyed going to the beach and going out to eat without spending $50 a plate, and after a year of being trapped in an apartment Ellie refuses to come inside….even if its 95 degrees outside.

Downtown Savannah

I’d be lying if I said I went into Muncie 70.3 wanting anything less than a victory. You can probably imagine the flame that was ignited after receiving a 5 minute “drafting” penalty and falling 4 minutes short of the overall win. This fresh taste of defeat left me ravenous to begin my Kona training. Unfortunately, two weeks later my training plans were put on the back burner when my father, Gary J Grosicki, finally succumbed to stage four cancer, after fighting for ten years. As much as I wanted nothing more than to destroy myself in training sessions, blackout the pain, for the next few weeks I had difficulty finding any sort of rhythm. As I reflected back on some of the last days with my dad, I’ll never forget how even in the worst of times he would pull himself from his armchair to walk laps around the house. After all he told me, “I read in your dissertation that Exercise is Medicine and I really do believe it.” Sure enough, it wasn’t long after he lost the ability to walk those laps that he left this world for a better place.

This ones for you man.

Of the many positive characteristics of Gary Grosicki, he was, if nothing else, extremely pragmatic. On the drive back to Savannah it became abundantly clear that although it was OK to be sad, this was no time to stop following my dreams. The next week, August 20^th, I began my first real training block for Kona, accumulating ~16h of training for five consecutive weeks. Although truncated, I felt my fitness building with this accumulated volume and was delighted to share quality training weekends with Richard Fineman and Jordan Bailey, both of whom were similarly targeting late-season IM’s. Keeping in mind lessons learned from Louisville, I supplemented long rides with longer brick sessions (2.5-3h rides with 10-16 miles off the bike) that I had largely ignored previously.

Blowing out the candles with Richard before blowing out our legs the next day.

With a desire to be fresh and a season’s worth of training on the legs I started my Kona taper 3 weeks out. Gradually coming down from my 16h average, I put in a 13h week, followed by a 10h week, and a light race week (~4.5h Monday-Friday).  The legs seemed to be responding well and I noted an upward trend in my heart rate variability, defined as variance from one heart beat to the next, another indication that I was ready to race! After serious social media induced FOMO the weekend before the race, Bri and I arrived in Kona late Monday night. For what its worth, if I ever race Kona again I will make a concerted effort to either delete or not check my social media accounts AT ALL two weeks before the race. The Kona hype is bad enough without being constantly inundated with pictures of super-fit people training their asses off. Bri and I were extremely fortunate to secure a spot in the Every Man Jack house where I was able to mollify my angst by following the lead of my Kona veteran teammates.

Lionel makes me look fat

Making the most of our time on the island, Thursday afternoon Briana and I ventured to Captain Cook where we procured delicious Acia bowls (Taylor sent me no less than 5 pictures and they actually lived up to the hype), and paid a visit to the The Kona Coffee Living History Museum, where we discovered the laborious process used to prepare the magical beans we so regularly depend on. I was equally as thrilled to witness a real-life avocado tree as well as a pineapple plant #ShitYouDontSeeInSavannah. That evening we enjoyed a dinner with teammates followed by some guided mediation lead by James 3^rd grade daughter (Georiga). It was really quite impressive. Me- "So what do I think about when meditating?" Georgia- "Meditating...duh."

Never seen one of these before

Georgia and Mrs. Malone showing me how its done.

After a low-key Friday, Saturday (race morning) I woke up at 4am for breakfast: A bagel sandwich featuring 2 eggs, a banana, some coffee, and a bottle of EFS Pro Cucumber (~120 calories). Our early departure was rewarded with a remarkably smooth drive to transition where we were shepherded through body marking, weigh-in, and finally to our bikes. After a night of rain I was quite relieved to realize my bike was shifting properly, and even more thrilled to discover that teammate and Ironman heavyweight Clay Emge’s bike could barely shift at all. Confined to a single speed, his chances of beating me went from 99 to 50%. Unfortunately, my excitement was derailed when we were able to find a mechanic who was able to get Clay’s Felt bicycle shifting smoothly again.

Shortly after the Pro start teammates Rob Mohr, Steve Jackson, Matt Malone, Nick Noone, James Defilippi, Danny Royce and I made our way into Kailua Bay where we would tread water for the next 10 or 15 minutes. I had heard the swim described as “being in a washing machine” but hoped surrounding myself with teammates might be more like a low tumble. As soon as the cannon sounded I immediately realized this was not going to be the case. Arms and legs were flying everywhere. Starting in an up-right position it was nearly impossible to maneuver myself into a horizontal position, let alone do anything with my body that resembled swimming. Deciding to go for it I put my head down and took a few strokes. It wasn’t long before I received a nice hard kick to the side of the head that left my ear ringing for the next 10-15 minutes. While my hesitant start meant that I had failed to get in a fast group, I made the most of my situation slingshotting from person to person. As the swim went on my confidence grew and a time or two I even found myself appreciating the fish below. Coming into the race my goal for the swim was to stay smooth and relaxed and to break an hour. I did exactly that.

Swim: 59:57

Too cheap to buy mediocre finisher pic. But I probably looked something like this coming out of the water, except with a Roka swimskin on.

Running to my bike I was somewhat frustrated to see that Ryan Guiliano, a very strong athlete who regularly kicked my ass in the Midwest, had beaten me in the swim. Deciding to focus on my own race, I was quite pleased to nail my flying mount without perineal damage. The first 5 miles of the bike course proceeded in a crit like fashion, with racers everywhere and water bottles ejecting from competitor’s cages like grenades in WWII (FFS people, did you ever train with these cage set-ups?!?!).  Although the madness was lessened by the time we made our way onto the Queen K, the number of draft packs was absolutely sickening. I have truly never seen more overt cheating in my 8 years in triathlon. The first time I was caught by one I looked down to see that I was rolling along at 29 mph and 170 watts GOING UPHILL. After being tagged with a drafting penalty at Muncie there was no way I was going to let lightning strike twice, so I decided to sit up and hit the brakes. I took pleasure in listening to the foreigner’s curse at me as they sprinted around to rejoin the pack. By the climb to Hawi the race had thinned and I was energized by passing riders who had begun their day too hard. My plan for the day was to ride conservative and even, being sure to save energy for the usual headwind on the trip home. By mile 90 it became apparent there would be no such wind and that I was easily going to satisfy my pre-race goal of a sub-5 bike split.

Nutrition: 2 bottles EFS, 2 bottles Gatorade, 8 GU, 1 GU blocks, 4-5 bottles of H2O (~1850 calories; ~95g/h)

Bike: 4:42:37

Photo cred: Charde-asada

Running out of transition I was happy to be off the bike but could immediately feel the oppressive sun taking its toll. About a mile into the run I came across Bri and Richard and right up the road ran into EMJ teammates Ritch Viola and Todd Buckingham. Their cheering revitalized me although shortly thereafter I felt my energy crashing. For someone coming unwound I was able to hold my shit together pretty well for the first hour, but after the hill at Palani the next 18 miles became a trial of will. I did my best (which wasn’t very good) to focus on running (not walking) from one aid station to the next, where I would reward myself with some combination of Gatorade, Coke, or Redbull. This strategy worked pretty well for 5-6 miles, but by the Energy Lab my heart rate was through the roof, no doubt a product of copious amounts of caffeine. By the grace of god I somehow made it back onto the Queen K, where I promised myself the rest of the race was downhill. It was here I began the ironmath, although instead of my usual default “if I run 8 min/mile I’ll finish at X time” it was “if I walk ILL BE OUT HERE FOR THE NEXT 2.5 FUCK#NG HOURS”. One foot in front of the other, one mile at a time, I reflected back to following my dad as he walked laps around the kitchen with his walker and oxygen. When I made it to mile 24 I promised myself I would not walk again. About a mile from the finish I passed Ritch and Todd who told me Rob Mohr was 15” up the road. Opening my stride I ran the last half mile in pretty close to 6 min/mile pace. Im pretty confident I’ve never hurt worse, and Im entirely sure no experience can compare to crossing that finish line.

Nutrition: 6x GU, ½ pack of blocks, Gatorade/Coke/Redbull (~1175 calories; ~84 g/h)

Run: 3:34:07

Overall: 9:22:23

Forever watching over me.

Without a doubt, one of the most miserable yet epic experiences in my athletic career. While I am proud of my performance, I am somewhat baffled by my fade on the run. At Louisville I faded a bit, but salvaged a respectable 3:13 run split, largely thanks to some GU blocks. Attempting to learn from my mistakes I 1) Practiced my nutrition frequently in training sessions 2) Ate a few more calories on the bike (and included some blocks) and 3) Ate a bit more before the race. While Kona was no doubt a FAR more challenging run (3x the elevation gain and 45 degrees warmer) I possibly foolishly had hoped these changes would result in a similar marathon time. Clearly they didn’t and I have a few ideas as to why:

Note: I started to provide elaborate scientific explanations behind each of these, then realized no one wants to read that. Would love to discuss in greater detail via email or phone with anyone interested.

1) Overconsumption of calories: the gut can only absorb ~90g of carbohydrate per hour, maybe less when its hot.

2) Poor fat burning: having practiced my race-day nutrition in EVERY long training session, I may have shifted substrate oxidation to a greater reliance on carbohydrate, thus more rapidly depleting glycogen.

3) Training error: Never done this much volume, and its possible I overcooked it. On the other side of the coin, I asked my body to race for 9 hours and in the last 20 days my longest session was only 4 hours long. I think its well within reason that I might have tapered too early.

In between bites of chocolate ice cream I’m pretty sure I told John Kelly after the race that I would never be doing an ironman again. I lied. Until next time Kona.

-Greg