Pedro Andújar's chronicle after his historic result at the IRONMAN World Championship

One week after the IronMan World Championship in Kona (Hawaii), I would like to comment on the experience.
For me it has been something special, I have spent a long time wanting to experience this race from the inside, to be part of what I thought was the most important race I could participate in. When you arrive on the island you realise that you are involved in something important, the organisation, the level of the triathletes, the atmosphere, the material... It has been the best and greatest thing I have seen in this sport.

On the sporting side, I think I had a good race, it's not easy to go to the other side of the world and be competitive. There are many factors that negatively affect performance, but I think I managed to adapt to the conditions quite well.
Clean swimming with no bumps. I was lucky to find clean space to swim with no complications, feeling good and able to push myself. I came out of the water around 100th position in the age groups. The good water conditions made the times go fast, I felt like I was doing a fast swim and when I came out I saw 55' on the clock, what a rush to start hitting the bike.
Good bike and as always a mainstay of my triathlon results. What I saw is that the bike sector in Kona is marked by the number of people of similar level and which is difficult to comply with the rules, the first half of the race I spent in tension to respect the distance and gain positions without spending much time out of the line of cyclists, the judges warned me that I could not go open and go progressing at my pace, I had to make changes of pace and go passing triathletes to blows. I'm not used to riding with people on the bike and I had some tense and nervous moments thinking that I couldn't do my race. All this ended in the second half of the sector when the side wind put each of us in our place and I was free to do my race. I did the whole lap alone, picking up corpses that had been killed by the heat and the effort. According to what I had trained I thought I would have 3-4 watts more, but the truth is that I couldn't go faster that day, in the end 239 W average and 243 NP, putting me 15th or 16th in the age groups.
Mental race. As soon as I got off to run I had my parents cheering me on, they are the ones who do it best because they are the ones who want me to do well. A little further ahead I had my "suporter" Mari and Fiwi telling me information, I always want to know how I'm doing and what my race situation is, from there I start to make numbers of paces and positions... The race conditions were not extreme as they said from other years, I had the feeling of running in similar conditions to many training sessions done at home, but the marathon of an IM is always hard. From kilometre 6 or 7 I was having mental crises, negative thoughts like; I'm going to burst, I won't be able to keep up the pace or I'm going to be caught from behind. The truth is that the body was still working and maintained an acceptable performance. At 18 km of the race I was fourth in my category and my mind began to change, at that moment I thought "I'm not going to stop of my own free will, if the pace drops or I have to stop it will be a question of physical incapacity, not something I decide". So I managed to keep going and finish with a time of 3h15' in the marathon and 9h11' for the whole race.
I finished very happy with my race, I feel stronger and stronger mentally and I think that is a key factor to perform in competitions of this type. No doubt you have to train a lot and arrive in the best conditions, but to reach that level you need a strong mind that allows you to endure the suffering and prevents you from giving up.
It is clear to me that my run is not at the level of my bike and swim sectors, but I will work to improve it. This has just started and my real goal is to be better than I am today.