Well, that was a pretty crazy weekend! It all started with waking up at 330am on Saturday morning to get a 520am flight from Honolulu to Hilo on the Big Island. Everything went smoothly, and I was in Hilo and at Ken's House of Pancakes by about 7am!
Mauna Kea (I think)
After getting stuffed by pancakes, I drove around to get some supplies then headed over to the race start. I threw the R3SL together, stuffed some ice-filled zip-loc bags down my skinsuit, and waited around for the start. It was roasting hot and I was already melting before the race even started. The magic-bullet that I was hoping to get on Friday didn't arrive but would have come in very handy for this exact situation. Oh well.
After having zero warmup, the race started at 10am with a neutral ride out of Hilo. Neutral, still somewhat hard as I was seeing power in 350-450w range which probably had some people hurting before the serious racing started. After the lead vehicle pulled off I went to the front and upped the pace a bit, putting in a soft attack to see who wanted to play.
The fast pace didn't take long to whittle the group down to Tony Lang, Ray Brust, Rick Beach, Cody Bergfalk, Luis Da La Torre, and myself... a few more miles later and we were down to just me, Tony, and Luis.
Photo: Leonard Bisel.
At about mile 9 or 10 I was sitting in third wheel, noticed that Luis was opening up a bit of a gap so I went to the front putting in an acceleration... That was Luis gone.
Tony and I worked together taking some good pulls making a good sized gap on everyone else, then at about mile 12, I parted ways with Tony and pressed on solo.
Photo: Leonard Bisel.
The rest of the race was a fairly lonely ride consiting of riding hard, dousing myself with ice cold water, and trying to maintain my advantage on Tony. I could see him behind me for most of the race so there was no time to relax... His wife was driving between us and a few times the car seemed to be closing in on me, which got me a little worried that Tony was closing in.
At the turn to saddle road about 28-30 miles into the race, I got a much needed ice cold bottle of coke.
The last 6 miles (average 8% with a few sections at 20%) were a case of emptying whatever was left in the tank. In previous years I had ridden a 38t inner chainring, with a 32t on the rear. This year I'm riding Shimano and only had the option of 38 x 27 gearing. Not ideal and damn it hurt, but it worked! I crossed the line to take the win with Tony Lang coming in about 3mins back, and Ray Brust at about another 3mins behind Tony. I swear that throwing down (think 6-8mph on 20% grade) in 38 x 27, close to 9000ft destroys braincells - Two other guys that raced, both said that this event is harder than doing Ironman!
Winning!
SRM File.
Results
1. Mike Zagorski 2:40:50
2. Tony Lang 2:44:15
3. Ray Brust 2:46:20
4. Rich Beach 2:50:00
5. Luis De La Torre 2:52:55
6. Michael Williams 2:55.55
7. Cody Bergfalk 3:12:09
8. Steve Lundblad 3:19:11
9. Grant Miller 3:26:24
10. Tanya Bettis 3:31:33
11. Richard Chamberlin 3:38:24
12. David Lum 3:40:15
13. Barry Masuda 3:41:50
14. Roberta Hickman 3:48:32
15. Michelle Foster 3:53:15
16. Harry Yoshida 4:15:12
17. Calvin Asaeda 4:19:05
18. James Morikawa 4:21:15
19. Matthew Acosta 4:25 33
20. Neil Erikson 4:28:20
21. Gerd Webber 4:34:27
22. Matt Church 4:55:00
