(atmospheric music)
- [Narrator] This race is like no other.
It's not just physical, it's mental.
(loud breathing)
The heat, the humidity,
and the wind just whittle you down.
It takes a very special athlete to excel here.
- Now year upon year at this race,
the Ironman World Championships,
it attracts the very best long-distance triathletes
in the sport.
Now despite changes to the qualification system this year,
we still have the main contenders
ready and raring for another incredible showdown.
But we are asking the question, "What does it take
"to win here at the Ironman World Championships?"
(electronic ambient music)
- What makes Kona really different
is it's a world championship.
So it's a day where it really counts.
So it means, like, you only got a chance once a year
to really show what you're capable of.
And that of course brings a little bit of pressure.
But then, yeah, I mean the conditions here
are very different to many other races.
Especially the humidity is hard on the body.
The heat itself is not really the problem
but the humidity is what really kind of drags you down.
Yeah, you just need that other level of fitness to be able
to feel like running is fun
because most of the time running is not so fun
in the humidity.
Then of course the elements like wind
can be really against you.
But I try to kind of not use it against me.
I try to see it as like everyone has the same conditions
and also you kind of embrace it and you kind of just hope
that it will help you to also push.
It's definitely hard but that's what makes it special.
(intense atmospheric music)
- Well Fraser, those conditions
are a frightening thought really.
And let's be honest, they do not suit everyone.
- No Mark, and you're absolutely right,
and I guess that's why we see so many athletes
spending such an amount of time preparing for race day
here on the island.
But before we get onto that, I think it's about time we
spent a little bit of time thinking
about the paces required to win last year's race.
- Yeah, and let's take a look at the winners from last year
and their individual times.
So Patrick,
he swam a 0:50:37
for the 3.8 kilometers swim.
That equates to 1:19s per hundred.
Daniela on the other hand,
well she maybe didn't have her finest swim.
She still swam her 0:57:27
and that equates to 1:30s per hundred.
But let's be honest, that's not bad
by most people's standards.
- No, not at all.
And then once we get on to the bike,
Patrick rode four hours and 16 on this course
which gave him an average speed of 42.2 kilometers an hour.
And Daniela on the other hand, she rode a quite staggering
four hours and 26 minutes on this course
which, let's not forget,
beat a lot of the pro men on race day last year.
That gave her an average time of 40.6 kilometers an hour,
which really is quite mind-blowing, isn't it?
But it is actually the run speeds where we really
get a bit ridiculous.
So I guess on that note, Mark,
it's time to get this car fired up.
(electronic music)
- Right, so let's start off with Daniela
because she ran about this pace
for her two hours and 57 marathon.
Which is 14.3 kilometers an hour,
or six minutes 45 per mile
which after five and a half hours of racing in this heat
is pretty impressive.
But Mark, it's time to bump the pace up a little bit
because Patrick, he ran a two 41
which is 15.7km an hour
or six minutes and 10 per mile.
Phew!
It's a bit too fast, Mark, slow down please.
So, yeah, that is the kind of paces that are required
to win this Ironman World Championship.
But Kona is an entirely unique race and the demands
on the athletes are unlike any other at all the other races
around the world.
- There's a lot of ingredients that go into it.
You need to be in amazing physical condition.
I think every athlete on the start line is.
Hopefully you've got some good pedigree
and maybe some natural genes.
But I think the physical work you do
in the lead up overrides that.
You need to have the confidence that you belong here
and that when it gets hard
you have the tools to get through.
But you also need to have the smarts, the experience,
and the composure to reign yourself in at certain times
during the race.
(intense drum music)
- So understandably, all the athletes
are doing absolutely everything they can to arrive
as prepared as possible.
For most athletes this will mean building their whole year
around Hawaii and the Ironman World Champs.
And that means both for their training
and their racing schedules.
Now in the lead up to the event
pretty much all the athletes
will be focusing their attention on the elements
and the conditions of Hawaii.
And for some that may mean going to altitude
or doing some form of altitude adaptation
to improve their fitness.
But for most, it definitely will mean
some form of heat adaptation.
That may mean going abroad and finding conditions
similar, or somewhat similar, to that of Hawaii.
- I think the specific training we did
in the desert with Faris,
we went to Abu Dhabi and trained in February
in the desert with really hot temperatures
and then I did the preparations in the race in Texas
as my first Ironman.
And then we race also in the Philippines in 2016
saying when I first got here.
So leading up into that race I had also a lot
of heat and humidity.
- And we saw a number of athletes heading
to another Hawaiian island, Maui, to start experiencing
similar levels of heat and humidity.
Whereas other athletes decided to go to places
like Texas or Arizona to really start to adapt
to the heat that they're going to feel here.
And then of course athletes can start arriving
here on the island of Kona
weeks before the event, just to start locking in
their final prep.
But one thing for certain that we get
reminded of time and time again here
at the Ironman World Championships is that this race
takes no prisoners.
- I'd watched so many of the races here and I'd seen
so many meltdowns.
I'd seen Paula Newby-Fraser meltdown after winning
the title seven times.
You know, that was etched in my memory.
I thought if someone who's a seven-time champ can meltdown,
anyone can meltdown.
- Yep, this race can take experience, but we are still
at the mercy of this island.
It takes patience to win the Ironman World Championships
and it also takes an incredible amount of mental strength
and it certainly has less margin for error.
- Are there races as hot as this race?
Yes, I've raced hotter.
But maybe not as long.
Saint Croix I felt was a hotter race.
Some of the races I did in Mexico.
But they weren't Ironman distance.
I've raced races that are more humid
in Thailand, in Phuket.
But again, not an Ironman distance.
The unique thing about this race is it does have the heat,
the humidity, and the wind.
It's not a flat course.
I think it's got 2,000 vertical meters
of elevation on the bike.
- [Interviewer] It's a lot, isn't it?
- It's a lot of climbing and the run's not flat.
But then the X factor is, it's the World Championship,
so it brings together a depth of field that you don't see
any other time of the year.
Here it's once a, you know, Ironman racing
it's just, it's an eight-hour race.
It's a long build-up.
You only race one or two a year.
And this is the one that everybody's at.
So I think that level of competition
adds to all those ingredients that you're talking about
to make it just a more demanding race,
less margin for error.
Makes the aid stations and those things more critical.
- But hearing all of this
really does put things into perspective.
Winning here at the Ironman World Championships in Kona
is an incredible feat.
- Yeah, we have talked a lot about experience
and in fact there's rarely anybody ever won this race
on debut and rarely has somebody done that
without having been on the podium the year before.
So hopefully you've enjoyed our videos.
Please hit that, "Thumb up/Like" button if that's the case.
Find the globe on screen to get all the other videos
on the channel.
And if you want to see a video that we did last year
about Kona in numbers, you can find that here.
- And also, thank you ever so much to the pros
that got involved in this video,
because they shared some valuable information.
And if you'd like to see our Kona Tech Tour from this year,
you can see that by clicking just down here.