You Don’t Know Kona Until You Meet Her

Everyone thinks they understand Kona until they go to Kona. It’s just hot and humid, right? People who live in Arizona and ride in 110° assume it’s the same as if you’re on the Queen K. If you’re  riding on the east coast in Northern New York, that;s really hot and humid, I got this, its the same. But then you get to Kona and that’s the day you learn that it’s not the same. It’s just different. You don’t know her until you meet her.

Professional American triathlete Ben Kanute is no different. He’s never raced in Kona; he’s only done two Ironman distance races, and so when he told me at the beginning of this year that his sole focus was to win Kona, I kind of rolled my eyes and chuckled inside a little bit. Then, as a good friend and person in the industry who is American and wants to see an American win again, I said, “OK.” I then pulled up my big boy pants and asked how I could help? I didnt hear much from Ben about it. He was probably a little pissed at the eye roll. But hey this is sport, and what doesn’t fuel the fire lets the fire go out.

When he told me he was doing a camp, I assumed he would at least have a chance to realize that Kona is not just hot, humid, and windy — it’s Kona. Ben’s 2024 hasn’t exactly gone to plan (yet). He went to some early season races and, to be honest, he got his butt kicked. His plans for winning the best of the best was not looking good. He was jumping into the T100 series and just getting left in the dust, coming out in the top swim spots but losing time on the bike and getting passed on runs, finishing 14th in Miami, DNF at Singapore, 12th in San Francisco, 2nd in Mont Tremblant, and then DNF in London.

Around that time Zipp reached to us and asked us to come to the ARC wind tunnel to do a feature on Ben.

To recap that story, Ben went to Indy as a short-course athlete and left as a man who was ready, in my opinion, to compete in an Ironman. The wind tunnel trip taught Ben and his team exactly what we hoped it would teach him. It taught him he could, positionally, move up and out without adding drag. This also allowed him to open his hips and decrease the strain on his lower back. It taught him that TT helmets are way more aero than road bike helmets and that even a specific type of calf sleeves were a little faster than his skin.

But what it didn’t teach him was whether or not those things were going to be 100% translatable for him personally in Hawaii. And the only thing that was going to teach him that was personal experience there. So Ben and his coach Jim Vance did just that. They went over and spent eight days putting together the largest training block that Ben had ever done. And ultimately figure out whether the things they learned in the tunnel were transferable into the big day in Kona.

They wanted to look at his position, particularly with the new aero bar system, and making sure that it was not only comfortable, but actually worked at all. When you go from 5° tilt to a 15° tilt on the aero bar, a common sense practical question comes up: are your arms going to slide down the bars when it’s 100° out and you’re tired, sweaty, and pouring water all over yourself at every ad station on the bike? Would those little rubber pieces on the bottom act like they’re supposed to?

Public Service announcement. Ben will have a white TT Helmet for Kona

• Are you going to be able to handle the crosswinds after the turnaround of Hawi, where you have the ability to go 50MPH into a 30-mile-an-hour crosswind?
• Can you handle a front 858NSW wheel all the time?
• Does the new TT helmet work for you? Does it give you the ventilation you need? Does it allow you to get water inside without risking the front cover coming off?
• Do you take the time to put on calf sleeves in T1? Do you want to wear them in the swim?

Ben ended up doing a 30+ hour training week in the unique conditions of Kona and ended it with an Ironman simulated race day adventure.

That day included:

Swim: 2.5 miles, 48:49 time, 1:06/100 yards

3.5 hour bike
86.5 miles, 24.8 MPH average
276 average watts, 203 TSS, .76 IF, 1.07 VI

Run stats are secret 🙂

Then a 90-minute run (3 x 10 mins @ race pace, then cruise).

As we all know, that isn’t the full distance, but they calculated it as if it was equal to it from a training perspective based on the level of load Ben was under.

They started the day about an hour and a half after what would be the race start so that Ben could be doing the bulk of the session in the hottest parts of the day, It did exactly what it was supposed to simulate both mental or physical pain and fatigue.

The only thing that I felt like we failed at was the number of pit stop rests Ben took. At the same time, we also didn’t want to put Ben at risk, or mess with the locals on the Queen K as we simulated handing bottles off to somebody that was going 20 – 30 MPH on a bike. So we did our best to find situations where we could pull way over to the side to make sure traffic was never impeded. However, we failed a little at the end when we just ran out of parking spots while Ben was in the final stretch of his run. We still, however, pulled way over and gave people enough space and hopefully a little bit of laughter while some 5’10 white kid stood on a scale, half-dressed in spandex, waiting to eat his salt and vinegar chips.

You don’t know Kona until you meet her, and Ben took the time to introduce himself to her and ask her for help in his quest for glory in two weeks.

Grab your popcorn and enjoy the Kona Movie 🙂 We follow Ben on a run before the big day, the big day, and end with a bit of FPV run the following morning.