This road to Kona began on Tuesday 26th. I flew out of San Diego via Los-Angeles to Kona. Good karma started already at the SD airport when I was only charged a regular baggage fee for my bike case. Must have been my beautiful smile J
The flight went well although it was way too long. I sat next to an ex-Hollywood movie director Victor something, interesting guy…
Getting out of the plane wasn’t as bad as I’d though it might be. The weather though was pretty warm and humid with a lot of fog above the mountains. Fortunately a friend was able to pick me up from the Kona airport and after some grocery shopping I got to my hotel. Very quick change and out for a run. Way too fast in way too warm/humid with way too little energy and the 8km run was hard. Afterwards I hit a nice restaurant for an epic taco salad and then it was time to ZZZ
Flying from Finland to the US west coast (10h time difference) didn’t bring any jet lag for the system. This time with a 3 hour difference I was up at 3AM unable to sleep longer and with a very badly slept night up to that point too. With nothing better to do I hit the town for some sightseeing to experience all the Kona musts. Midmorning it was time to hit the Kailua pier for an open water swim. It was nice to be in the ocean after too many laps following the black line. Big mistake though was to not apply any Vaseline in my neck…ouch!
After the swim I hit a park for some studying and had a snack before going for a ride. One thing I can advice is to not ride deep dish wheels for the first (or 2nd) time on the Queen Kaahumanu Highway! It is windy! Fortunately after a few almost-blown-off-the-roads-by-the-wind/passing truck I got the handling in control and riding became easier. I got a good 50km of tempo riding in and didn’t suffer too much from heat and humidity. After the ride I ran to the pool for some fast swimming and then ran back. Evening was spent just killing time in anticipation of a new day..
The new day started early with a run up and down Alii Drive. I had another very bad nights sleep as there were quite a lot of noisy people out on the roads. After the run I hit some breakfast and it was time to repack the bike and hit the road to Mauna Lani on Kohala Coast. Too bad I had to take a cab for the trip...OUCH!!
At the destination after some sunbathing I met up with James and Beth toenter our pretty awesome condo for the weekend. Then got to rebuild my bike (and sweat some air into tyres with a handpump). Rode to the race site at Firmond Orchild hotel to register for the race and sign a thousand and two papers where I assure to not die or have a heart attack during the race. First star sightseeing was at the grocerie store bumping into Hawaian pro Tim Marr .
Back to the condo and ate some spaghetti with turkey and now it's time to try catch up on some serious ZZZZZs.
No excuses for the lack of posting. I've been training hard and have been quite tired along with that. Nothing very exciting has been happening other than a little earthquake last Sunday. And besides who cares..
So the first race of the season is happening in five days. Actually it's going to be my first triathlon in almost 10 months. That fact alone makes it quite exciting. I'll fly over to Kona on Tuesday and am stoked to be able to visit the triathlon mecca and also spend good times with great friends on the island.
Also the training I've been doing the past few months has been way different than what I've ever been doing before. I feel I am a lot faster but am quite apprehensive of how much fitness I've lost for speed. But I guess I'll figure it out next Saturday.
The race conditions will be like nothing I've ever trained or raced in before. Even in the SoCal temperatures I've come to see that I do have a bit too much of baggage to carry with me. So I'm sweating like crazy when I excercise!
But this race is definitely going to be a good learning experience and I'll take all the lessons there are to learn! All I can do is doing my best for the day and I'll see where that leads...
One thing I have been in need for a long time was a good bike fit. Actually I have never really seen anyone look at my fit so no wonder I have had so many hip and knee issues in the past! So one thing I really needed to take care of on this trip to the land of everything was to get that done.
On Wednesday morning I went to San Diego to see FIST and Retül certified fitter Dean Sprague. I got in his fit-studio at a bit past 8AM and we got down to business. The fit session started off with an interview on racing/riding style, previous injuries, discomforts, sex life… just kidding on the last one :)
After taking some notes on the aforementioned stuff Dean proceeded to do some flexibility tests, leg length measurements, walking style analyzing and the like. It was then time to setup the bike into the Computrainer, take some before photos and start trying some new things with little adjustments. This continued for a while and when things started to look about right I got connected into the Retül system with electroids for some computer captured analyzing. The system measures about 25 different position measurements and angles at different workloads and prints them on a data sheet. Pretty neat stuff and very informative on what’s going on with ones riding. The aftermath for me was a higher and more forward positioned seat, higher bars, wedges under my right cleat and shims on both shoes.
The fit session lasted about 5 hours! A lot of saddle time! But it was not all since I had to put my new position into test by riding back to my homestay in San Marcos. The fit felt really good but unfortunately it didn’t make me better at orienteering :) despite good riding instructions: all it takes is one wrong turn… anyways I made back home safe and got to ride through the beautiful Torrey Pines. I used to watch Tiger crush everyone on that golf course! I did however do a stupid do-it-all-yourself-stoplight-pedal-tibia-accident that still hurts two days later.
I really believe getting the fit saved my joints a lot of unneeded wear and tear so getting it done was a very good investment no tonly for performance but for bodys longevity too! I really recommend you to get fitted before you get hurt on the bike!
And one note on my really über cool homestays. Other than they are awesomely nice people they have hosted some pretty fast people too: Faris, Torbjorn, Sam McGlone, Timo Bracht and the list goes on… I hope that’s good karma and one day I could be on the list of notable athletes too LOL
Anyways the weather and people here are awesome, training is going well and I’m ready to race! Too bad I still have to wait two more weeks…
Attached are some pictures from the fit session. Thanks Dean! See you in Kona mate!
I am very happy to say that I’ve partnered with SRM to help me get my training and racing to a completely new level. I will finally be able to train accurately with power and I’m very sure this will have a big impact on my fitness in the future.
I’ve been dreaming of getting an SRM for a couple years, basically since I first started reading of training with power. I was super excited when I had the system waiting for me at the door yesterday when I got back from a swim. I had to get it installed immediately on my bike so today morning I rode my bike to the B&L Bikes and Gordon got the job done while I hung around in the Solana Beach area in search for some good “views” ;) There were a few good sights running (not pictured) (LOL)
Anyways I have to thank Larry from SRM USA for giving me this opportunity to have their awesome product helping me get better!
Going to love this view ;Ptake it easy and be in control :D
JH
P.S. Running HARD on trails is HARD! My legs are still feeling it!
Travel from Hämeenlinna to Los-Angeles was very very long but went well. I even got to witness something really strange while changing planes in London: a piece of clear sky!
When I arrived at LAX I was surprised how smooth everything with customs and baggage went. They didn’t even do a doping control nor a Vo2 test on me :)
Fortunately I didn’t have to hang out at the airport as James was there to pick me up. We then drove over to his sisters place in LA and went for a good dinner. My body had adapted well to the timezone and I slept well like a baby.
However we were up at 4AM as James had a 22K trail running race to do in the morning. We got to the race venue of the Xterra Malibu creek challenge at 6AM. I was just supposed to watch the race but I got a crazy idea to talk myself in to the 6K trail run. Well the awesome race people let me in to the race and suddenly I had to get my legs working. So off I went for an easy warm-up run thinking this must be the most stupid mistake I’ve ever done (I talked myself into the race saying I was a good athlete so didn’t want to get humiliated by walking a 6K race J
It was my first ever running race and the first time I have ever run on a single-track trail. When the gun went off I ran as hard as I could to get to the front of the pack. After 500m my legs said to me they were completely done. At this point I was running in front with 3 or 4 other guys. The first mile of the race was into a small downhill after which the course went up and got into a single track. Fortunately I got back into the lead just before the single track. Running on it was quite nice but challenging. Unfortunately what goes up must go down and the downhill portion was HARD! It totally killed my legs and I had no technique in the quick turns and stuff. The 2nd place guy caught up to me but fortunately only just before the single track downhill ended and from that on I was able to get back a comfortable 30s lead on the last mile and get the overall victory in the 6K. Running down the finish chute I was just not believing I was doing this let alone how well I ran. I was told that my time was a new course record too! The race was very cool!
After the awards James and I headed over to Carlsbad where we then went to an easy ride to shake out the legs. After the ride James drove me to my homestay. And what a nice family I got to stay with!
Sunday morning I went for another easy ride but didn’t find any good roads and got to stoplights every 200m! Have to map out some rides to get better riding in!
I'm now on my way to SoCal and eventually Kona! First stop though was already at Hämeenlinna for a shindo session and to lessen one-day travel stress. I'll be on the road and in the air tomorrow for more that 24 hours!
The last few days haven't been easy! My cars battery died yesterday and a lot of organizing and correcting issues has been the name of the game but from now it should be a smoother road. I have to stop worrying about things I CAN'T control as my coach and friends often tell me.
I put in quite a lot of effort into my bachelors thesis in the winter/spring and I am glad hard work at school payed off for once. I got a 5 out of 5 for the work!
I'll try to post regular updates on the blog from my trip as well as good pics and videos with my Olympus. You can also follow me on twitter!
ciao! I'm off to the land of hope and opportunity!
I'm so totally getting stoked! Next week around this time I will get to Los-Angeles and will head over to San Diego on Saturday 5/9 after watching/cheering James rip it off on his trail-run race.
Very good news is also that my knee is getting better and my recovery from workouts has improved also. Today was a day on which maybe 90% of Finnish people are terribly hangover :-P but I got work to do as always! I have a half-ironman confidence booster workout I like to do before races and today was time for that. A great way to test my fitness and also my knee. And I was very positively surprised of how I did on it, especially comparing to last years efforts when I was in season peak shape.
I thought it'd be good to post a food recipie also. This one is a very simple but oh so tasty and healthy for killer mincemeat steaks and carrot-onion mix (this one is simply my favourite side-dish as I make it almost with everything but oatmeal :)
Ingredients:
-700g lean minced meat (for 6 servings of steaks) -2 large onions (for 3 servings) -6 large carrots (for 3 servings) -different hot spice
First I formed the meat into small steaks and put them on a frying pan. Frying was about 5mins for both sides and the steaks were ready! Then it was time to just slice the carrots and onions and give them a quick dip on the pan along with a lot of spicing!
