By Samantha Kupiainen
Fishers resident Kyle Gabbard has qualified to compete this fall in the annual Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.
The Ironman World Championship is a Hawaii-based competition that features “the very best male professional and age-group triathletes from around the world,” according to the organization. The competition, which attracts about 2,000 international competitors, is a combined 140.6-mile event that consists of swimming in Kailua Bay, biking along the coast and running through barren lava fields.
“To qualify for Hawaii, it comes down to a bunch of races throughout the year,” Gabbard said. “Each race is based on how many participants there are and the depth of the field. There’s spots allotted for the championship. I qualified in the Chattanooga Ironman last September. There’s select age groups, so I’m in the 18-24 age groups, and there was one slot for our age group for that specific race. I had to win that age group to go to the World Championships.”
Gabbard said he has completed two full Ironman competitions and five half-Ironman events.
According to Ironman, a full competition comprises a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run, which must all be completed in 17 hours. A half-Ironman is a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike ride and a 13.1-mile run.
Gabbard said he expects the caliber of the field to be the main difference in the Ironman World Championship.
Hawaii also presents obstacles that people from the continental United States aren’t used to.
“The conditions are supposed to be pretty tricky because it’s along the coast, which can be super windy, and Hawaii conditions — it’s usually quite hot with super high humidity,” Gabbard said. “Most of the race, at least the bike and the run portion, are done on the Queen K Highway, which is black asphalt and the sun reflects off of that and makes the course extremely hot and hard to do the race in.”
Queen K Highway, otherwise known as Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway, runs 33 miles from Kailua-Kona along the coast and ends south of Kawaihae.
To prepare for the tropical Hawaiian conditions, Gabbard is doing a lot of sauna and heat training. After runs, he typically sits in the sauna for 15 to 20 minutes to become better acclimated to the heat. Additionally, with Indiana summers reaching as high as 95 degrees some days, Gabbard has been completing workouts outside to prepare his body for the Hawaii heat.
“Last week, being highs of 95 degrees all week, has really kicked up my heat training and allowed me to get a lot better acclimated to conditions I’ll be facing in October,” he said.
To anyone training for an Ironman or aspire to race in one, Gabbard suggests staying consistent and working every day.
“I feel like, in all my training and throughout the years I’ve been involved in triathlon, I’ve just had to stay consistent to get better,” he said. “There’s no success that just comes instantly. You have to really be disciplined and stay down on your goals and if you’re not seeing that progression every day, you have to know that it’ll come, and you have to just keep putting in the work. You just have to be in it for the long haul. If you have a goal, you just have to be consistently working at it every day to reach that goal.”
Gabbard, who will be a senior at Indiana University this fall, is studying parks recreation and the outdoors. His career goal is to work at a national park.
