James Harrington's Kona Experience Reprint

James is one of Las Vegas's premier athletes, and club member. I believe he is a sponsored athlelte and I will post the names of his sponsors when I get them ( I think Hammer Nutrition and Red Rock Runinng). This year the conditions on Kona were very difficult, even for Kona as I understand it. That makes James's performance even that more impressive. Congratulations. Here is his race account which which appeared in the "Lab Report"

"The field here is absolutely amazing! I cannot believe all of the strong athletes from all of the world here to compete. I feel very privileged to be a part of this and experience it. The day started out beautifully with the clearest skies we have had all week. The winds were kicking up a little bit which added some chop and swells to the swim…not good for someone who is a poor swimmer. With all of the strong swimmers in the field it stayed very packed in which made it difficult to get into a rhythm. Unfortunately my swim time was a couple of minutes slower than I wanted, but in all it was a good swim.

The bike starts out with a couple of loops through town which were very congested! Once out on the Queen K highway though that all changed. We had a little bit of a tailwind on the way out to Hawi, but this quickly changed right after the turnaround. What was a slight tailwind turned into the nastiest crosswinds I have ever experienced. To top that off it was a downhill sections so as you reached speeds in the mid-20s to low-30s you were getting blown from side to side. After we made the turn back onto the Queen K for the final 30 miles back into Kona the crosswinds turned into headwinds! This stretch of road was rough since we were now 80 miles into the bike. I did have the marathon to look forward too...I always enjoy the run!

After getting into a nice rhythm on the run I was able to run my best Ironman marathon with a 3:15! I finished 273rd overall with a time of 9 hours 56 minutes and 37 seconds."