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I did pretty well in that race all things considered, and I loved it. We told ourselves it would be a one off, and that there was no way we wanted to go all the way to Hawaii to race in this “Kona thing” that everyone talked of.

Six years on and that has all changed. Now racing as a professional on the Ironman and 70.3 circuit, my focus this season is to try and qualify for the race that founded our sport and continues to inspire thousands and create legends year after year. I qualified as an age grouper in 2014 and raced to an AG third place finish on the Big Island; the experience of racing there was incredible.

When I turned professional at the start of last year my eyes were not turned towards Kona at all, as qualifying as a professional is a whole different story, however I came very close, and it is that which I want to give an insight into now.

How professionals qualify for the Ironman World Championships

The World Triathlon Corporation (WTC) who organise the Ironman World Championships allocate 50 places on the start line at Kona for the professional men each year, and 35 for the professional women. 

I find this inequality totally disgusting and it is sometimes hard to believe that it is actually true. Much has been written about why the WTC believe it is fair to discriminate and I don’t want to get into the arguments for and against- that would be one hell of a rant!

50 Women to Kona tackles ‘a very visible show of inequality’

Instead I want to give a flavour of what that number 35 actually means to me, and how a newbie PRO goes about trying to qualify.

To qualify to race as a professional at Kona you currently have to score points on the Kona Pro Ranking system – or KPR. This KPR is constantly updated as races are completed throughout the year and all athletes are ranked continuously depending on the points they have gathered. Athletes have up to five races to count but can race as many times as they like.

The tally of five can be up to three 70.3 races and up to three full Ironman races but athletes have to complete at least one full distance Ironman (outside of Kona). Races are allocated different points, but the majority of full Ironman races have 2000 points for the winner. The exception to this is the regional championships, of which there are five, which are 4000 points for the winner. Kona is an 8000 point race and points gathered there count towards the following year. 70.3 races carry much lower points, typically 500 or 750 for the winner. Sound complicated? That’s not even half of it. Previous winners of Kona from the past 5 years can qualify automatically by completing one full distance race, and those who win a regional championship also get an automatic slot.

Ok that’s enough of the confusion. Here are some facts about the PRO ladies which might help paint a picture:

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In 2015 19 of the women who lined up had scored points at Kona the year before – and 12 of the top 15  from 2014 returned to race again. That means about 180 PRO ladies were competing for the other 15-20 slots (some of the above get an automatic place). So qualifying as a PRO rookie is really not easy. Kona is the “Olympics” of long distance triathlon so everyone wants to be there.

The ladies who are new to racing Kona are finishing an average of three full distance races in the qualifying year. Things go wrong during racing– so to get three good finishes probably requires lining up to start far more often.

This year the number of points needed to qualify as a female PRO will sit at about 4,500 for the July cut off where most of the places are allocated. Two Ironman podiums would give you about 3,000 points if you are lucky. So to qualify a female athlete would still need a third Ironman race and a couple of good 70.3 finishes. By contrast the July male PRO cut off was 3600 in 2015 and is likely to be 3500 in 2016.

In 2015 I actually came very close without realising until the last minute. I know now that qualifying for Kona requires a strategy. In 2015 I didn’t have one, mainly because I considered it to be out of my league. It is safe to say that my results last year were beyond my expectations.

Despite hard training and big improvements I had not in my wildest dreams thought that two full distance podium spots were possible. So after Ironman UK (where I gained my second podium spot) it was with mild incredulity that I realised I was in with a shout for Kona qualification. I “just” had to complete one final race. 

Unfortunately my body (and mind) had other ideas. Despite going to Wiesbaden European 70.3 Championships with the very best of intentions, looking back I was masking a strong desire to just call it a day and hit off season with gusto. The race was a struggle from start to finish, and I didn’t get the top seven finish I hoped for. I was labelled one of the “missing 15” – ladies who would have qualified in 2015 had the number of places for men and women been equal. In fact I was only four places away from a slot in the rankings. I suspect there were many other ladies in similar positions when the final count was done – great results all year – just not great enough.

I enter the 2016 qualifying year with a plan. I will have to race four full distance Ironman races at the very least to be in with a shout. In 2015 I raced a total of eight 70.3 and Ironman races in just over eight months. As anyone will tell you – that number of races in one year is not good for the body and long term health.  I hear people saying that “the PRO’s are used to racing a lot”.

Maybe these people believe we are superhuman recovery machines. The fact is I work full time, I squeeze racing into long weekends of unpaid leave, and I “recover” while eating porridge at my desk after an early-morning training session before a full day at work followed by another training session in the evening.

Recovering from an Ironman race does not get easier just because you buy a PRO licence. Yes – I know some PROs are full time athletes – but many are not. Most have second jobs to make ends meet or are studying/training for another profession so they have an income when they retire from sport.

Racing a lot is hard, it’s painful, and it’s riddled with periods of injury and exhaustion. By limiting our spots to just 35 the WTC are forcing the PRO ladies to race more, take more risks and compromise our bodies in the process.

I have already started my campaign for 2016 (the qualifying year started in September 2015) and have about 1100 points racked up having started three races.

So I face having to complete another three full Ironman races in the next few months. I will start with Lanzarote and make plans for the rest of the season after that. I have Ironman Nice in the calendar and Frankfurt too, but I am also not going to risk everything just for a spot in Kona.

However I also know that I am making demands of my body, which are not sustainable and probably not sane and I realise how truly difficult qualification is. I will have to have, for me anyway, exceptional races.

However this year finishes I know I won’t regret trying. If I hadn’t been so desperate to enjoy a holiday/honeymoon while I was baking in dusty Afghanistan I may have never completed one of these extreme races. But fear of failure is never a good excuse. Hell – we only get one chance at life what’s the point in playing it safe.

You can follow Caroline on Twitter and find out more about her plans for 2016 at her website

Caroline on the podium at Ironman UK Bolton in 2015 where she was 2nd.

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Photos courtesy of Finisher Pix

Announced in March 2015, the inaugural European Sport Championships have been created by the continental governing bodies of athletics, cycling, rowing and swimming, plus the European Triathlon Union.

The aim of the new four-yearly event (not to be confused with the rival European Games) is to ‘bring together the existing individual European Championships into one co-ordinated multisport concept’, with Berlin (athletics) and Glasgow (triathlon, cycling, rowing, gymnastics, aquatics and golf) announced as the co-hosts for the
1-12 August 2018 showcase.

“This is a really exciting step forwards for our sport,” said ETU President Renato Bertrandi. “We can anticipate having not only a domestic European audience but viewers from around the world. Our European athletes will have the chance to compete on a challenging course and to be seen globally. Instead of a standalone event, we’ll be part of an engaging programme of sports, which will enable greater media coverage than ever before.”

The Commonwealth Games triathlon received a significantly larger worldwide TV audience than that year’s ITU World Champs, even though major triathlon nations such as Spain, the USA and Germany were absent from Glasgow.

Where triathlon differs from the other elite European Championships is that age-group athletes race over the same weekend and on the same course as the elites. So the 2018 Glasgow games could represent a break between the pro and age-group triathletes for one of the rare occasions in the European Championship’s 30-year history… or it could offer the tantalising prospect of the finest age-group triathletes being the only amateurs racing at the Games.

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A decision on any age-group involvement in Glasgow is due to be made imminently. If the amateurs are not to be included, the ETU will need to find a host for its age-grouper Euros in 2018. This year’s Euros are in Lisbon, with Austria hosting the 2017 edition.

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 About 3,000 genes have been found to be responsible for aiding recovery, by boosting muscles and blood vessels, but in the presence of high doses of antihistamines almost 27 percent of the gene response is blunted, scientists from University of Oregon have found. However quite how these 795 affected genes could affect competitive athletes, however, is not known, said co-author John R. Halliwill, professor of human physiology.

Histamine is a substance in the body that responds to pollens, moulds, animal dander, insect bites and other allergens, however some people’s body goes in overdrive and fuels uncomfortable allergic reactions, prompting the use of antihistamines.

In the research, 10 men and six women, all 23-25 years old, physically fit and active, performed an hour of knee-extension exercise at 60 percent of their peak power, about 45 kicks per minute. Biopsies were done before and three hours after exercise to obtain samples of the quadriceps.

Eight participants took 540 milligrams of fexofenadine and 300 milligrams of ranitidine — levels nearly three times the recommended dosages of the over-the-counter antihistamines. Each target one of the two known histamine receptors involved in recovery responses. During exercise, blood flow, blood pressure and heart rate were monitored.

The antihistamines had no effect prior to exercise and little influence on gene expression at the conclusion of the workout. Three hours after exercise 88 percent of the 795 genes affected by the antihistamines mostly responded with lower levels of expression.

“Histamine, a substance that we typically think of negatively and is most often associated with seasonal allergies, is an important substance contributing to the normal day-to-day response to exercise in humans,” said Romero, In their conclusion, the authors noted that the research highlighted only a small fraction of genes likely involved in signalling pathways influenced by histamine receptors activation during recovery.

However it is to early in the research to suggest people should avoid taking antihistamines when they exercise, Halliwill said.

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“We’ve got more work that we have to do,” he said. “We need to do a training study in which we put people on histamine blockers and see if their adaptations to exercise training are as robust or diminished. There are a lot of redundancies in physiological systems. I wouldn’t be surprised if blocking histamine receptors ends up being overcome by something else, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if we can demonstrate that some responses to exercise training do become blunted if you take high doses of histamine blockers.”

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Morell also said that U.S. allies were somewhat skeptical about American intelligence conclusions on the tankers, in part because they still remember the faulty U.S. intelligence that assessed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, leading to the conflict in Iraq in 2003. Iraq was later shown not to have weapons of mass destruction.”It’s going to be a long time before that gets out of people’s memory,” Morell said.Mr. Trump, who promised to scale down American presence in the Middle East throughout his presidential campaign, has also said that he is not eager to enter into a conflict with Iran. In an interview with Time Magazine this week, Mr. Trump said that the attacks on the tankers were “very minor.”However, Mr. Trump said that he would go to war “over nuclear weapons,” and that he would keep other motivations “a question mark.”

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The Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year is Jan Frodeno! #LWSA16 #janfrodeno #ironman #laureus #laureus #berlin

A photo posted by Laureus Sport (@laureussport) on Apr 18, 2016 at 2:16pm PDT

 

Larger than life for a brief moment on the sport worlds biggest stage. What an amazing journey our sport has sent me on and what an amazing time to be in the game of triathlon. Grateful to share this truly happy, nerve wrecking, grateful and breath taking night with my best friend and wife @emmafrodeno . Off for a run to celebrate a way only an endurance freak might appreciate… @laureussport #LWSA16 #WorldActionSportsmanOfTheYear

A photo posted by Jan Frodeno (@janfrodeno) on Apr 19, 2016 at 12:20am PDT

In 2015 Jan Frodeno became the first Olympic champion to win the Ironman World Championship with a dominating triumph in Hawaii. In July Jan Frodeno has announced he will go for the long distance world record at Challenge Roth.

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The Laureus World Sports Awards, were held in Berlin on April 18, 2016. This was the event’s first return  to Europe since London in 2012, after taking place in leading sports cities around the world in recent years, including Rio de Janeiro and Shanghai.

Among the sporting greats who have been named as winners of Laureus Awards since 2000 are Usain Bolt, Novak Djokovic, Michael Schumacher, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Alex Ferguson, Lewis Hamilton, Rafael Nadal, Pelé, Steve Redgrave, Ronaldo, Kelly Slater, Shaun White, Yelena Isenbayeva and Zinedine Zidane.

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You can find a list of the Laureus World Sports Awards 2016 winners here  

“Despite our best efforts to identify a solution, in the end we were unsuccessful. Therefore, we believe that it is in the best interest of all to cancel this year’s World Cup race as soon as possible to allow for Federations and athletes to change their race and travel plans. We do apologize for any inconvenience this causes, and hope to return as a host of ITU races in the future,” said Event Director Herwig Grabner. 

“We are disappointed we will not be able to contest the World Cup race in Kitzbuehel this year, a city that has a storied history of hosting successful of ITU events. However, we remain committed to debuting new formats and will therefore introduce the time-trial format in the junior race so that we can explore how this format could be incorporated in future events,” said ITU President and IOC Member Marisol Casado. 

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To date, the Kitzbuehel World Cup will not be replaced on the 2016 schedule.

Known as ‘The Championship’, the event will take place at the incredible x-bionic® sphere in Samorin, Slovakia. Jan Masek, CEO of x-bionic® sphere said: “ We are thrilled to host The Championship and are committed to providing triathletes from across the globe with a truly unforgettable experience at x-bionic® sphere.”

 For professional athletes the event will carry a minimum €150,000 professional prize purse, and professional athletes will be able to qualify for The Championship via Challenge Family events worldwide.

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Professional athletes who finish in the top five at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, or a top three finish in the 2016 World Triathlon Series end of season rankings, 2016 ITU Long Distance Championship, 2016 Ironman World Championship or 2016 Ironman 70.3 World Championship will also receive an invite. Challenge Samorin 2016 will carry double the qualifying slots for the event.

 Professional athlete’s qualifying at non-Challenge Family events will be required to validate at a Challenge Family event within the qualifying period, which commences at Challenge Fuerteventura 2016 and concludes at Challenge Rimimi  2017.

Age group athletes will have the opportunity to qualify with a top five age group finish at any Challenge Family event worldwide during the qualification period. Top 3 teams in the male, female and mixed categories in relay events will also qualify at Challenge Family events.s

Three hundred loyalty slots are available to any age group athlete who participates in at least four Challenge Family events within the qualification period. Loyalty spots are awarded on a first-come-first-served basis for athletes who meet the minimum participation criteria. Loyalty slots are not dependent on an athlete’s race time or finish position.

“At Challenge Family we’re driven by the same thing that drives our athletes: the passion to push limits, to perform at our best and to enjoy what we do in style. The Championship embodies this and it is our goal to set the new standard in triathlon,” said Zibi Szlufcik, CEO of the Challenge Family.

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The Championship comprises of a 1.9km swim, 90km bike and 21.1km run and is to be an annual event.

“Beetroot juice is rich in nitrates, which are converted to nitric oxide in the body. This dilates blood vessels and reduces oxygen consumption – allowing athletes to go further for longer,” explained postgraduate research student Rishikesh Kankesh Patel

The Kingston University team wanted to find out whether dark chocolate could provide a similar boost, as it contains a substance called epicatechin – a type of flavanol found in the cacao bean, that also increases nitric oxide production in the body.

After undergoing initial fitness tests to establish a baseline for comparison, a group of nine amateur cyclists were then split into two groups. The first group was asked to replace one of its normal daily snacks with 40g of a dark chocolate known to be rich in flavanols for a fortnight, while the other participants substituted 40g of white chocolate for one of their daily snacks as a control.

The effects of the athletes’ daily chocolate consumption were then measured in a series of cycling exercise tests in the sports performance laboratory. The cyclists’ heart rates and oxygen consumption levels were measured during moderate exercise and in time trials. After a seven-day interval, the groups then switched chocolate types and the two-week trial and subsequent exercise tests were repeated.

The study, which has now been published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, found that after eating dark chocolate, the riders used less oxygen when cycling at a moderate pace and also covered more distance in a two-minute flat-out time trial.

Mr Patel said the results opened the door for more research which could eventually lead to dark chocolate becoming a staple part of endurance athletes’ diets.

“Both dark chocolate and beetroot juice are known to increase nitric oxide, which is the major mechanism we believe is behind these results,” Patel said. “We found that people could effectively exercise for longer after eating dark chocolate –something that’s not been established before in this way.”

“We want to see whether the boost in performance is a short term effect – you eat a bar and within a day it works – or whether it takes slightly longer, which is what the initial research is showing,” Mr Patel said. “We are also investigating the optimal level of flavanols. At the moment there is not a lot of consistency in flavanol levels in commercially-available chocolate. Once we’ve found the optimal chocolate dose and duration, we’ll compare its effects to those of beetroot juice, and also test the influence of combining consumption of both, as they produce an increase in nitric oxide in slightly different ways.”

Sport analysis lecturer James Brouner, who is an ultra-distance runner in his spare time, said that the research suggested dark chocolate could offer particular benefits to endurance athletes.

“From a performance perspective, making an athlete more efficient can have major advantages in long duration steady-state exercise,” he said. “With so many athletes consuming beetroot juice to achieve this gain but complaining of the palatability, dark chocolate could have a similar effect but with the additional benefit of tasting good too.

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“When performing endurance-based activity, being as economical as possible in energy provision is key to enhancing your performance. From our results, the consumption of dark chocolate has altered the participants’ response to the activity and therefore could enhance their endurance performance.”

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Related: Sports nutrition news: omega-3, beetroot, caffeine & nitrates