The Road to Kona

I couldn't believe I was here

Even standing on Hawaii, I couldn't believe I was there. A scrap of land three days of travel away — and one of the hardest IRONMAN races happens right on it. The difficulty isn't only the humidity at +35 and hotter, the sharp gusting wind on the bike, the current and the waves on the swim. All of that is amplified by the ambitions and expectations you bring — for yourself, and for your body.

Even fully healthy, this race breaks dreams against ambitions: this year every fifth professional went home without finishing. And I arrived broken. A sciatic nerve injury had stolen my run — after the Moscow race I limped through brick sessions, and sometimes couldn't walk at all. I cried, I raged, I did my rehab exercises, I took pills, I tried to run, and I celebrated every minute without pain — not only running: walking, sitting, sleeping. Mostly, I could stand without pain. Just stand.

We lose the race in our head

I made mistakes. For a long time I was afraid of the start: each leg can end your race — waves and box jellyfish and a mass-start fight on the swim; wind on the bike that doesn't blow steadily but in furious gusts, throwing you across the lane; sun on the run that blinds you through dark glasses. Those fears have to be accepted, named, and let go: nobody is out to kill you, and it can be done.

The bigger mistake was quieter. Because of the injury I had told myself, over and over: “You won't run fast anyway.” That program cost me dearly. Swim and bike build the reserve you spend on the run — and the run is always the main work of a triathlon. Everything before it is preparation. How you ate, how you spread your effort, whether your head still works when your muscles want to quit.

We lose the race in our head.

The island

The island greets you with heat beyond reason. Black lava heats the air until it shimmers blue, like the flame of a gas burner. The weather is a new country every day: wind that rips the bike out of your hands, then none, then cloud, then wind again. We rented a house with Zhenya Nikitin and Varya Zverkova — big rooms hold the ventilation that keeps you alive in the heat; the air conditioning we switched off to let the body adapt. Around the house: co-ki frogs the size of a coin that scream all night like big birds (one is tolerable; a colony is not), partridge mothers reversing like construction cranes, scorpions and centipedes underfoot. You watch where you step — on the road, and everywhere else.

Travel notes, three lines: from Moscow it's three days — Doha, Seattle, Kona; Qatar Airways' two 23 kg bags solve the bike question; customs will open everything, shake it, and possibly bend your wheel axle — pack for that.

Training in the lava

My first open-water swim showed me I could do nothing in that sea: 2:05 per hundred, pushed to the shore, thrown back by waves, sometimes going backwards while stroking. The bike was its own lesson — on a gusty descent a crosswind threw me onto the rumble strips and my bike computer bracket snapped off; days later a shard of volcanic rock cut my tyre in two places at speed. Aleksandr gave me his wheel; on the first steps of the run after it I understood those thirty minutes would be suffering. Hurricane Nolo closed the island's only public pool. Some days I just lay on the floor.

And then, five days before the race, the island let me in. A speed suit changed how the water held me; on the Queen K I finally saw over 35 km/h; I could hold 5:30 per km on the run for forty minutes without pain. Not much — enough to hope.

Why I couldn't step aside

Someone would say: with a leg like that, you withdraw. I couldn't. It was a two-year road: a visa for Italy and a rerouted journey to the qualifier; the win in my age group; a US visa that took a trip to Kazakhstan and saying no to a start in St. Petersburg; three days of travel; money, will, 5 a.m. training days, hope. I wanted to know what it is like — standing on that start line looking into the ocean, riding the lava fields to Hawi, running the Energy Lab where the race asks its last question, and Ali'i Drive's chalk-written asphalt under your feet all the way to the carpet.

The day before the race I was completely calm. Whatever happens, we will see it and live through it.

Swim

The gun, and the washing machine. I know the only answer is to keep swimming. Waves hide the buoys; the turn boat appears two buoys before you reach it; on the way back the swell lifts you and slaps you down until you can't breathe. Faster men from the next wave swam over us rude and unapologetic — and I was glad of them: they swam straighter than we did, and I held their feet one after another like handrails. The bottom came up full of rocks and huge black sea urchins; I swam until my hand caught sand.

1:12 — that's 1:53 per hundred in that water. Nineteenth in my group. Unexpectedly good.

Bike

Out of T1, up Palani, onto the Queen K — and a wall of rain: grey, blind, hold the line and wait. It passed. I held my power; the leg almost didn't argue. I ate on the climbs and passed people in bunches on the descents — the opposite of what most were doing. Past the turn to Hawi the crosswind stood the bike up; seven miles before the village nobody could hold the aero bars, and the road there is carved with rumble strips that shake the bike like a drum solo. After the turn I gave the descent the respect it asked for. Then the Queen K paid me back with headwind and the lava's heat, fewer aid stations, and a thirst that switches muscles off — I drank at every station and it wasn't enough. Still, the last 15 km flew.

Off the bike I was fourth in my group, with the third bike split. My legs, though, were almost gone.

Run

Dehydration fogs the head: nothing to fight for, just get to the line. I put on everything I had — cap, glasses, an ice kerchief — and ran 5:30s that felt like mountains. And in my head, on loop: you won't keep your place, there's no point resisting. That was the real defeat, and it still gnaws at me. Out along the Queen K to the Energy Lab and back; water wouldn't come, and trying to make it was sharp pain — after the race I spent two days learning what dehydration really costs a body. In the heat, hydration is the whole game, planned to the sip.

At kilometre 34 the sun let go a little. At the Palani aid station stood Jan Frodeno — Olympic champion, twice the winner in Kona — handing bottles. I am absurdly happy he waited for me. Then everything tilted downhill, my legs switched on, and I ran. I stopped thinking. I was smiling and crying at once. Here is the carpet. Here is the arch.

I was smiling and crying at once. Here is the carpet, and the finish arch.

10:50:59

I finished in 10:50:59 — my slowest IRONMAN, eighteen seconds on paper behind my Sochi time of 2023, and a whole body behind it in truth. I lost to fourteen women in my group, and to myself. And I crossed that line on my own feet — something not every finisher could say that day. A volunteer walked me through every checkpoint, checking I was still with the world.

Someday I will learn to stop telling myself, mid-race, “you'll lose anyway.” That's probably when I'll start winning — and not only against myself.

What I take with me

The race ends, and then you'll be telling the story of it for years. Do it so that you can say: I couldn't have done it better — otherwise every retelling needs an excuse, and excuses wear out. Smile at the finish, and keep going: this is not the end.

I want to come back. Stronger, healthier, and with an honest answer to what I am really capable of.

One month earlier — Moscow

Five weeks before Kona I stood at the start of Ironstar Moscow 226 — a home race I nearly skipped during the US visa wait and the Kona build. I didn't skip it. A full-distance start at home, on the way to Hawaii: the best dress rehearsal I could have asked for.