Chasing Kona

by Rob Cummins

  Ultras are also measured in time. Twelve, twenty-four and even forty-eight hour races while not exactly mainstream are considered quite ‘normal’ in ultra-running. They are often raced on a 400m athletics track. The athletes all start together and whoever covers the most distance in the time wins.

  If I was to get all mystical and hippyish I might take the view that we might never have met and I most likely wouldn't have taken this Ironman and Kona journey if it was not for those two separate events over fifteen years ago. It's funny how a tiny event, decision or change of direction can lead one to a completely different reality. That is something that I've learned, again and again. Seemingly small changes in direction can open up new worlds.

  On the subject of ultras, one of the funny things I've come across since taking up Ironman distance racing is that ultra-runners often think we're mad and maybe a bit superhuman – what with all that swimming, cycling and then running a whole marathon at the end. However, Ironman triathletes think ultra-runners are just as crazy. Maybe there is a touch of craziness in what we do, pushing our bodies up to and beyond what we and others think our limits are, but I don't think so. I think we are the sane ones. I think maybe everyone else is crazy!

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  Chapter 3

  Discovering cycling – April 1999

  I didn't know it in April 1999, but my life was about to take a new direction. I'd started my own business the previous August when I opened a small bicycle shop and had rewarded myself with a mountain bike after about a month, as a prize for staying off cigarettes. My first proper ride took place one evening along with the guy who worked for me at that time. He had been asking me for ages to come mountain biking, telling me I'd love the buzz and the adrenaline rush. I eventually gave in very reluctantly, thinking I wasn't fit enough for it and we drove up to the trails one evening after work. The plan was to ride up the hard packed gravel road to the top where the real fun bit would start when we turned and headed back down the ‘single track’, whatever that the hell that was.

  I lasted less than five minutes of climbing before having to stop. My breathing was ragged and I was coughing hard, one of the consequences of being a long-time heavy smoker. I stopped and caught my breath and went again. The exertion started a racking cough, which brought up dark brown lumps of phlegm. I only managed a couple of hundred metres at a time before having to stop and recover. About half way to the top I had had enough and said I was going back down. I was disgusted and ashamed of myself and wanted to quit. This wasn't fun and I couldn't do it. ‘This mountain biking lark is a load of shite’, I said. It was easier to stop if it was for a reason other than that I was a failure . . . it was easier to blame something else.

  ‘It's just a couple of hundred metres more and we can join the single track trail back down where it crosses the fire road. You'll love it’, he said again.

  I was far from convinced but gave in and pedalled on very slowly, finally getting to the gap in the trees. I was then given some brief instruction about not being over zealous in my use of the front brake, hanging my backside off the back of the saddle on the steeper bits so as not to go tipping over the handlebars, not fighting the bike and told to just enjoy it. We then turned left and dropped into the forest. He let go of the brakes and flicked the bike around trees, over rocks and roots and disappeared into the distance as if by magic. I tried to keep up, pushing harder and harder. My eyes were streaming, my hands and arms aching, and my pounding legs were like jelly. Adrenaline dumped itself into my system, causing a rush unlike anything I'd ever experienced. At the same time muscles that I'd never used before and certainly had never abused in such a way were letting it be known in no uncertain fashion that they had a very short tolerance for this sort of messing about.

  Despite or probably because of the pain, fatigue and terror, I rode down on the biggest buzz I'd ever experienced. My friend waited patiently at every junction and led the way again and again. What was eyeballs out, terrifying and suicidally fast for me was obviously very pedestrian for anyone with any basic level of mountain biking competence, never mind someone who was a very experienced and fairly successful cross country racer. He not only had skill, strength and fitness by the bucket load, but was also incredibly patient and brought me back in one piece to where we had started the trail.

  After the tortuously slow journey to the top of the trail we arrived back down far too quickly and I think he was surprised with my reaction, considering fifteen minutes before I'd wanted to fire the bike into the nearest ditch. ‘Let's go again! Now! That was savage!’ I sounded like an over-excited six-year-old. And just like that I'd turned onto a new path. I didn't know it at the time but as a result of that first mountain bike ride my life would become so completely different as to be unrecognisable. I would become a different person with a very different life.

  Over the next couple of months I drifted in and out of mountain biking. I was a very typical beginner, not only to cycling but also to sport. I quite enjoyed it while I was actually doing it but often lacked the motivation to drag myself away from the television or play station. I always had at my disposal any number of the usual excuses we give ourselves to avoid going out the door. It's cold, wet, I can't find my bike shoes, and look now I've spent so much time faffing around I don't have time to drive to the mountain, ride and drive back. I was still a long way from being fit enough to cycle the six or seven kilometres to and from the trails, as well as doing a spin up there.

  I stuck with it however, even though my outings were infrequent. Over time I gradually became fitter, pushing myself further, doing longer and longer spins and even had a go at cross country racing. I came last at my first race and wasn't so excited by it. I believe my thoughts were along the lines of ‘this is the stupidest idea and the stupidest sport and what a complete load of shite and I'm never doing this again’ as I was lapped several times. The fast guys at the front seemed like they were from a different planet and we were only racing in the entry-level ‘Sports’ category. I never believed I would be at the front of a race, never mind moving up to the ‘Expert’ or ‘Elite’ categories. Despite my mid-race tantrum I did go back and did move up to the top third of the field over the next season or two. The guys at the very front were still very much on another level and it was so far away from where I was as to be something I believed I could never achieve, and they still lapped me every time.

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  Chapter 4

  Falling in love with the bike

  After a while I had decided to give road cycling a go and bought an entry level racing bike. As much as I enjoyed the mountain biking it just took too much time out of your day. An hour’s riding on the trails either required a 20-40 minute drive both ways or close to an hour each way if I chose to ride there. The initial attraction to a road bike was that I was ‘there’ the minute I walked out my front door and sat on the bike. In the beginning it was only meant to be as a way of training for mountain biking but gradually I got sucked in and became a roadie.

  One of my first memories and I think one of the things that made me stick with cycling was going out and learning how to ‘ride on a wheel’. You ride really close behind the rider in front, staying in their slipstream so you aren't working as hard. I went out for a spin one day with a much stronger rider and he had been explaining it to me but could see it wasn't really hitting home, so he decided to show me what exactly it was and how much of a buzz it could be. We had been out for an hour or so, which back then was a fairly standard spin for me. Anything over ninety minutes would be a long ride. It's funny how your perspective on things shifts completely when you change your routine. I wouldn't even consider an hour’s ride training now – it's just too short to have any real benefit.

  Anyway, back to the ‘ride on a wheel’ spin. We were close to where we would split up and head off in different directions to go home, but the last stretch of road before the turn was almost flat. Almost, it had just the tiniest drop in elevation the whole way, the s
urface was good, plus we had a light tailwind. We normally rode two abreast so we could chat but he said to me that he was going to go on the front and pick up the pace. I was to get right behind him and stay as close to his wheel as possible.

  ‘Like inches close, not feet and don’t fall back. And push hard all the way’, he said. ‘Ok’, I said, not really knowing what was coming but I trusted him and he said it would be fun. He accelerated slowly and pulled in front of me letting his pace settle a bit as I speeded up to get onto his wheel. Then he steadily but constantly picked up the pace, looking over his shoulder every ten to fifteen seconds to make sure I was still there. The speed crept up and up. I was glued to his wheel and getting sucked along much faster than I could have gone alone. My breathing very quickly became harsh and my legs were burning, but I was also getting a big blast of adrenaline from the speed. He had us up over 45kph and closing in on 50kph. I was rapidly approaching my limit but didn’t want to get dropped so I pushed harder and my breathing became more and more ragged. My legs got heavier and heavier and I started to drift off the wheel. Just one foot, then two, then as I came out of the slipstream the wind hit me and almost like someone hit the brakes I went from flying to freewheeling and almost to a stop in seconds. I was gasping, lungs and legs burning and my heart was hammering. Tears were streaming from my eyes because of the force of the wind. But overriding all of that was the fact that I couldn’t stop grinning. The adrenaline and endorphins were coursing through me like a drug. Just like the first time I'd gone mountain biking and discovered an adrenaline high. I'd found it again and I was hooked this time.

  I have a tendency to overdo things a little sometimes. At the start, something becomes all- consuming and I can get what Dad would call a ‘fire in my belly’ for it. Cycling was very like that. I didn't just have a fire in my belly, but rather I sort of fell in love with it. I'm guessing you'll only understand that if you're a cyclist. How can you fall in love with an inanimate object like a bicycle? I suppose people might understand this phenomenon in relation to a particular sport. Having fallen in love with the bike it became so much more than an object. It very quickly became part of my identity.

  Quite quickly I saw myself as a cyclist, which made me a bit odd in the eyes of most of the general population – being the guy who goes out in public in multi-coloured, skintight Lycra. All of a sudden I found this whole world with its own history, epic races, suffering, heroism and glory and I felt very much part of it. It didn't matter that I only rode a couple of times a week or that I wasn't very fit. I still felt I fitted in to the cycling world.

  Out on the road other cyclists would nod or flick a tiny wave as they passed in the opposite direction. I still to this day get a kick from that. So I started reading books and watching the races on television. I bought all the magazines and of course I owned a bicycle shop, so I met other cyclists every day. Most of them had way more knowledge and experience of cycling than I had, so I was like a sponge, taking in all their stories. I simply couldn't get enough talk about bicycles and the wonderful sport of cycling. Because the business was still fairly new and small and not too busy, there was always time to talk and drink coffee.

  As I followed my new path into the world of road cycling, so too did the shop. What had started out as a local bike shop with kids’ bikes, tricycles and cheap basic adult mountain bikes, very slowly started to change. Gradually as I learnt about the sport and the bikes I added higher priced and more specialist stock. Of course in the beginning I knew very little about this side of the business and made lots of mistakes, but gradually as the local cyclists saw better bikes, clothing and components appearing, they started dropping in and because the shop was small and the ‘workshop’ was right there out on the floor – actually down the back – I would often find myself working on a bike and when they realised that I was a fellow cyclist conversations would start and often friendships would follow.

  I've made a lot of friends through not only the shop but also through my increasing involvement with cycling. In my experience most, if not all cyclists, love bike shops. I love the way they smell, being mostly the smell of rubber from the tyres. It was that smell that greeted me every day that I owned that first shop and to this day whenever I walk into any bike shop and get that smell it feels like I’m coming home. Cyclists love looking at, touching, feeling and picking up the bikes, marvelling at how light and gorgeous they are. They love all the ‘kit’ the technical clothing, all with their own story of what they do and why they are the best. Carbon fibre bottle cages that weigh only grams and elicit ‘oohhs’ and’ aahhhs’ when they're picked up. Expensive carbon fibre wheels that cost thousands of euro a pair are probably the most coveted upgrade you could buy. I loved all the toys and was surrounded by them all day. I was also constantly meeting people with exactly the same passion and love for bikes and the sport of cycling.

  So with a ‘fire in my belly’ I had access to great bikes and cyclists and now I was discovering a love of training. But on the other hand I had two young kids and my own business to run, not to mention the damage caused to my body by ten years of smoking. So I was never going to turn professional but I still wanted to give road racing a go.

  I had no idea what to do other than ride. Of course I read the magazines and some books but I didn't really know anything about how to train properly. I needed to find ways of getting the miles in without it either causing friction at home or causing problems in work, so I started commuting on the bike. I didn't live very far from the shop so I would extend my ride as often as possible, trying to get an hour in for at least one of the spins if I could. I started doing a longer two or three-hour ride on Sunday before opening the shop at noon. I kept it up and I trained hard through the autumn and into winter. As this was the first time I'd ever trained properly I saw gains very quickly. You always do if you're starting from as low a base as I was and you just train consistently. Most of my riding was done alone but I'd occasionally meet a couple of friends to share the Sunday spin.

  One Sunday I was out with a group with which I didn't usually train. One of the guys was a customer and had been asking me for a while to go out with this group on some of their training rides. Up to now I'd been afraid of not being able to keep up and had always refused, making various excuses. But by now I'd been training well for a while and was feeling fitter so I finally gave in. There was a group of maybe ten of us who showed up, all of us training to race the following season.

  Some of the lads had a season or two under their belts, some had been at it for years and were with this group for an easy spin I guessed, while a couple of us were just starting. We rolled out and I sat into the group. If you haven't been on a club ride you've probably seen them while you’ve been out driving, usually riding in a double line in at the side of the road.

  While you’re in the group with other riders in front you're in the draft. You get sucked along by the riders in front who are ‘in the wind’. They are usually working at least 20-30 per cent harder than someone in the middle of the group which is sheltered. The group rotates constantly so that no one or two riders have to do all the work.

  Sometimes being on the front is called pulling. The length of your pull depends on the group and how strong you are. Often strong riders stay at the front for longer turns to get a better or harder spin while the weaker ones although they are in the draft still have to work hard to keep up. It evens out differences in ability and means a mixed group can still ride together at a similar effort. So the stronger riders doing the hard work are at the front, while the weaker ones are having to work just as hard to stay on their wheels. Every so often the rider on the outside line rolls through. He accelerates slightly until he is past the rider on the inside then he pulls over. The rider who was behind him rolls through and up onto the front beside him. I started near the back of the group and was getting plenty of shelter from the wind. We were going a lot faster than I would on a solo ride but because everyone is sharing the work the pace on
group rides is usually faster than when you ride alone. Due to the fact that you're in the draft for long periods you can sustain the higher speeds.

  So we're rolling along and like I said I started near the back, but as the lines rotate I'm moving closer to the front and closer to having to take my ‘pull’. I'm getting more and more nervous the closer I get to the front because I'm already working hard just to keep up and I know that the effort level will spike as soon as I have to ride in the wind. Suddenly I'm at the front and the effort does jump very quickly. I start to panic a little bit. There’s no way I'm going to be able to sustain this and I'm going to look weak and slow the group down and I'm going to look stupid for trying to ride with these guys. But while I'm busy panicking a strange thing happens. Now I call it ‘settling’, but then I didn't know how to describe what was happening. The speed stays the same and the effort is much higher than when I was in the group. It’s higher than I thought I could sustain, but my body starts to adjust to the new workload. I realise that it's alright – I can do this, so I stop panicking. I'm certainly not able to hold a conversation with the rider beside me. My answers to his conversation aren't much more than grunts because I'm breathing too hard to string any words together but I'm amazed to discover that although it is hard and it hurts it also feels good. My breathing is fast, my legs are buzzing with the effort and my heart is thumping in my chest but it feels really good. I start to feel strong and confident. I'm sitting up here in the wind riding hard and getting this big buzz from the endorphins or adrenaline or whatever . . . and I'm loving it.