You’re getting this as part of our Kona Week daily newsletters. We’ll go back to your nice simple 1x/week emails after the race.
Almost the last chance to enter our podium predictions contest 🥇
Do you come for the race or do you come for the gossip and then a race breaks out?
The general consensus this year seems to be that because there are so many brand activations, so many schedules, so many shakeouts and popups and podcasts, no one theme or thing is emerging as the thing everyone is talking about.
I was sitting having a beer last night before heading to the Hall of Fame dinner (and watching my Valkyries stress us all out) and Gustav Iden jogged by on some brand’s shakeout run with just seven other people. It’s not that Gustav can’t attract a crowd — he absolutely does and can — it’s more likely that probably no one even knew the run was happening.
Yes, the ProTriNews boys are getting big crowds and big guests. Yes, the TTL donut run had 100 people (more?). Yes, the retro merch from Precision & Zoot & Ironman is cute —apparently everyone was inspired to go retro this year (get it, get it?) — and booths are selling good numbers. But I’m not the only one who’s been like: Where’s all the gossip, all the industry drama, all the big announcements and new gear reveals.
The biggest gossip outside of who is sleeping with who (and I can’t tell you that) is still that Chelsea Sodaro is being snubbed in the Ironman press conference and I already told you that on Tuesday.
🚲 Not that there’s not fast gear here — demo some new Salomon shoes at their community run at 7am today from Kona Heaven, or a Roka swimskin from the pier until ~9am — but there hasn’t been a ton of new gear. (There is a brand new Pinarello bike that I’m going to check out tomorrow and a new Ekoi helmet, but.) Even Triathlete decided not to shoot pro bike photo galleries because there just wasn’t the appetite. So if you need a gear fix, Slowtwitch has a few bike pics: Jamie Riddle’s, Hannah Berry’s, Jonas Schomburg’s.
🍺 No one can decide if there’s an appetite for the traditional beer mile on Friday at the old airport either. One person said yeah yeah it’s happening ask this other guy, and then that guy said I don’t know I’m not organizing it ask this other guy, and then that guy said I haven’t heard anything. It’s almost as if ever since the year the boys tried to get an official permit from the city it killed the event.
👑 Karen Smyers and Craig Alexander were inducted into the Hall of Fame last night and both gave lovely speeches thanking their families, who had come out for the event. (Also Karen, apparently, set off the “fall detection/call 9-1-1” on her Apple Watch during the Feisty podcast show because she was waving her arms around too much.)
📺 And you can watch the Ironman pro press conference at 11 a.m. Hawaii time/5 p.m. ET on Youtube. All four of the former men’s world champs will be there — so I guess we’ll get to see Kristian and Sam Laidlow poke at each other in person.
A fun fact
I’m not sure if this is a useful stat or not from TrainerRoad, it seems mostly not, but they tried to compare the average W/kg to the Kona-qualifying W/kg. The men who qualified were in the 79th percentile, and the women were in the 88th.
Thanks to our sponsors
Salomon - Come to Kona Heaven today to test their new supershoe, which I know you’re curious about.
Roka - And don’t forget to demo a new Viper X.3 Ghost swimskin down at the pier.