2024: the transition year

2024 was a transition year for both of us. We kept doing the running races, fewer of them than in 2023, and put more of the effort into triathlon. Fewer races didn't mean less running. Strava has me at about 720 miles of running in 2023 and about 1,070 in 2024. We just didn't line up for as many of them, and we branched out to try other things. Michelle's first half Ironman was the Hawaii 70.3 on June 1, and from the end of the 2023 marathon until June, everything went toward that race. I wanted to be in much better shape for it than I had been the year before, now that I knew what it was. And I wanted to pass that experience along to Michelle, the difficulty and the challenge of it, so that she'd have a good day out there instead of the very hard one I'd had in the Big Island sun.

We also started looking outside Hawaii. During the winter and spring we signed up for the Augusta 70.3 in Georgia, on Sunday, September 29, to experience a different environment for a race and see what the mainland had to offer.

The bike makes the run

We both trained well that winter and spring. Having the Tacx trainers in the house meant a lot of time on the bike, and that's what improved our bike strength. The great thing about biking, for us, is that it made us stronger runners. On the bike you exhaust your legs before you exhaust your cardio. On the run you exhaust your cardio before you exhaust your legs. So you build stronger legs on the bike and stronger cardio on the run, and the two work together as one endurance sport that happens to have three events.

The volume tells the story. In 2023 I put about 1,700 miles on the bike. In 2024 it was just under 5,000. That's a much larger volume of cycling, and it made a big difference everywhere else.

We went into the Honolulu Triathlon in May, two weeks before Honu, in really good shape, and both of us performed well. I took 26 minutes off my 2023 time on the same course, and Michelle took 25 off hers. Most of it came on the bike.

Honu, in the wind

We stayed at the Fairmont Orchid this time, right there at the event. No 45-minute drive from Kona at three in the morning. We checked in, picked up our bags, and got everything prepped, and it was really nice. I wasn't nervous. I was a little anxious because of the year before, but I felt ready. Michelle was anxious and very excited to compete in the race.

She still had her road bike for this one. We hadn't upgraded her to the triathlon bike she rides now, which we bought that summer after Honu, and she'd always been a little nervous about riding in wind. Race day, as it turned out, was a super gusty, windy day, probably blowing 30 miles an hour steady and gusting to 40 and 50. It was strong enough to blow the swim marker buoys off their moorings, so the race cut the swim from 1,900 meters to 750. With swimmers out there trying to follow markers that were drifting around, it would have been a real problem.

My time, 5:26:37, was vastly better than 2023. Part of that is the short swim. My own guess is that a full swim would have taken me about 30 minutes longer and put me somewhere around 5:56, which still would have been a good day. The bike was a fight the whole way, leaning into the gusts and staying steady so you didn't lose control. It was fairly white-knuckle from start to finish.

Michelle went out there and had a really great race. I could have imagined her saying, "Nope, too windy, not doing it." She did it anyway. She fought through one of her biggest fears, went for it, and crushed it. We both conquered that day, and especially her.

The other things

Branching out looked like the Kaena Point Firecracker in July, ten miles of trail with no shade. It also looked like a Spartan race. In August we did the Spartan Beast at Mokuleia on the North Shore, 20 kilometers with obstacles, and it took us most of a morning, about four hours and forty-three minutes by our watches. I hurt my left shoulder going over an eight-foot wall during that one, and I'm still nursing it today. It hasn't healed all the way, and that's a discussion for a future article.

We also got a little burned out on putting the videos together. We only put a couple out in 2024, and Michelle made one big Year in Review at the end of it. So the weekly record of 2024 is mostly Strava and the timing sheets.

Dick Evans, second lap

A week after the Beast I did the Dick Evans again, and Michelle sat it out again. Let me tell you about that race. The 112 miles around Oahu is an absolute beast. The first 30 miles, from Hawaii Kai out to Ewa Beach, is a neutral start, all hundred or so of us together in one peloton. That part is really enjoyable, even at 19 or 20 miles an hour, because you're in the group. Then they turn you loose on Kunia Road, a five-mile hill, and the actual race starts. Everybody takes off. This is what separates the real cyclists from me, because the real cyclists go up that hill and for the life of me I can't stay with them.

My goal every year on that race is to make it a little further up Kunia Road with the peloton before I get dropped. In 2024 I made it a little further than 2023, and I felt good about that. My overall time was a little better too. I had a fitted bike now and a winter of trainer miles behind me. It's still a super hard race, a lot of elevation, a lot of wind, and if you're not with the peloton, a lot of lonely time on the North Shore.

Augusta, and a hurricane

My parents live in South Carolina, so we stayed with them for a couple of days before Augusta, with Michelle's new tri bike packed in the travel bag for its first race. On Friday, September 27, two days before the race, Hurricane Helene came through and tore up Augusta and a good part of South and North Carolina. It was a mess, and they canceled the race.

We were ready for that race. One hundred percent trained, raring to go, and really looking forward to it: a downriver swim, a bike through Georgia country roads, and a mostly shaded trail half marathon. When IRONMAN offered the options, we could come back and do Augusta the next year, or take a spot at IRONMAN California or IRONMAN Arizona. We deferred to the 2025 Augusta. But the other two choices got us thinking about a full Ironman, which is a thought neither of us had ever had.

Up to that point, neither of us had any intention of doing a full. The marathon was hard enough, and after two laps of the island at Dick Evans I couldn't imagine running a marathon after getting off that bike. It seemed impossible. Michelle had no visions of grandeur about it either. Who would do such a thing? But she'd done her first half now, and I think that's when it started to look possible to her.

We agonized over it for several weeks. In October we found IRONMAN Texas, six months away on April 26, 2025, and decided that if we were ever going to do one it should be while we were in the best shape of our lives, with six months to prepare. We signed up and put the scariest thing imaginable on the calendar.

Since we were already on the East Coast and trained for something, we spent some time in Tennessee and signed up for the Nashville Spartan the first weekend of October: the 10K Super on Saturday and the 5K Sprint on Sunday. With the Beast from August, that gave us both the Trifecta medal, which is all three distances in one calendar year. Then the training changed.

Training for a full

We plugged Texas into HumanGo and ramped up to a level we hadn't experienced. It wasn't a level we couldn't do. We'd heard about people training for a full doing eight-hour Saturdays and six-hour Sundays. Ours was more manageable than that: about 4,000 meters of swimming, 120 miles on the bike, and 25 to 28 miles of running each week. That's roughly one full Ironman a week, in pieces, to get ready for one on a single day. Some weeks the bike and run miles were threshold and VO2 max work, and some weeks they were endurance, zone 2 stuff, depending on the phase. That's a story for the 2025 page.

The marathon, on my birthday

That fall we did the BioAstin readiness series again, leading up to our third marathon. I have to say we were probably in the best shape of our lives. The race fell on my birthday, and it was a great present: 3:41:11. I went out at a good, solid pace from the start and felt great the whole way. I didn't cramp. I pushed through the Kahala Death March and crossed the line still hurting, because I'd just run a marathon, but it really felt good.

Michelle ran 4:39:06, almost an hour under the year before, and had a great race of her own. We finished 2024 feeling good and excited for the next stage: runners, then triathletes, and now, on paper at least, Ironmen.