Honu 70.3 2024: my first, and Jay 81 minutes faster

A year after Jay's first Honu, we went back to the Big Island, and this time it was both of us racing.

I want to be honest about that decision, because I'd been there in 2023, on the side of it, watching that road to Hawi take Jay apart, and I signed up for the same race anyway. Was that smart? I still don't know, because it was the one I wanted, and once I'd decided that, the smart part didn't get much of a vote. The decision itself happened in August, two months after Jay's first Honu, when I told him that if he got us a room at the Fairmont Orchid, right next to the start, I'd be willing to do it. He'd already forgotten the pain by then, so he said let's get crazy, and we signed up. Michael signed up too, and then our friend Jake, so it was four of us going.

I finished in 6:40:28, 19th in the 40-44s, and it was my first 70.3! It happened on the course that had spent the previous June humbling Jay, which I'd watched happen the year before, and this time Jay went 5:26:37 on the same road, an hour and twenty-one minutes faster than his 2023. It was the same island, the same lava, and the same wind, and it was a very different year for him.

The swim needs some explaining, because the card says 16 minutes for both of us, and 16 minutes isn't a 1.2-mile swim. The wind that morning was strong enough to drag the marker buoys around, so the race cut the swim to 750 meters, and since I'd trained for 1.2 miles and got 750, I'm not going to pretend I was upset about it. The wind didn't go anywhere though. It was blowing about 30 miles an hour steady and gusting to 40 and 50, and it was waiting for us on the road to Hawi. I was still on my road bike, and riding in wind had always been the thing I was most nervous about, so Jay says he could picture me saying nope, too windy, not doing it, and I'll admit I thought about it. The whole bike was leaning into gusts and staying steady so I didn't lose control, white-knuckle from Waikoloa to Hawi and back, and I did it anyway. The bike and the run were the full distance and the full heat, 3:44:25 on the bike and 2:26:45 on the run for me, and I earned every minute of both, as much as I'd have liked a few of them back.

We stayed at the Fairmont Orchid, right at the start, which was my condition for signing up, and it meant there was no 45-minute drive from Kona at three in the morning, and I'd do it that way every time. That made two trips to the Big Island for this race, and it was starting to feel like the thing the year gets built around, which is what it turned into, because we came back in 2025 and 2026.