I’ll start with a little bit of history......
2005
I run the ASICS London 10k in a fashion – my only ever sporting event up to that point – I immediately retire back to the pub to bask in my glory and spend the next three years telling anybody that will listen that ‘ yeah, I done a 10K and could do another, but don’t want to !’
Early 2009
My attitude has changed, all of a sudden I’m getting towards my late thirties and thinking I can’t go on like this – I’ve also met proper runners and all of a sudden my half assed 10k seems very cheap ! I enter the Lincoln 10k and train for it properly, I enjoy the experience and enter Derby for the following month , whilst searching for Derby race reports I stumble across a triathletes blog – Hugh Barnett from Mansfield Tri – and decide to go to Woodhall Spa to go and watch an event.
May 2009
I’m inspired and decide to have a go – I enter a sprint in Leeds in August and join Lincoln Tri – they don’t care that I used to live in the pub, or lack athletic talent...or rock up to swim sessions in baggy beach shorts !
August 2009
The Xpress Leeds triathlon – I finish in the bottom five of a 300 strong field – my performance is not helped by getting off the bike and pushing it up two very slights hills – I do, on the positive side, post PBs in all three disciplines and vow never to take over two hours to finish a sprint again.
For the rest of the year I do three more sprints progressively getting better. I measure my performance by how far off the bottom I am. Firstly 11, then 30, then at the last tri of the year a nosebleed like 65 – which is a whole results page from the bottom !
I read about Ironman events on the TriTalk web forum and enter Antwerp 70.3 for 2010 – I have family there and it is as flat as you can get – so a nice starter race into the world of Ironman.
2010
I enjoy the training so much that I enter IM Austria before completing Antwerp. I eventually complete Antwerp in a few seconds over 6 hours and love every second of it. Whilst recovering I marshall at the Outlaw and watch my fellow Lincoln Tri-ers and TT-ers finish the Iron distance. I’m in awe of their performances and regret not doing the event instead of Antwerp. It’s nearly a whole year of keeping busy before my turn comes around.
2011
I’ve lost 12kg, and my running times have started to tumble over a busy winter period. I buy Don Fink’s ‘Be Ironfit’ book and follow the just get round programme with a bit of intermediate biking thrown in some weeks. I don’t do swim drills – I just swim up and down the pool at the gym for how ever long the book says my session is supposed to last – it is very boring ! However, OW swimming soon starts to breaks up the monotiny. After 30 weeks I am as ready as I am ever going to be. I have rented a bike box from the club, and on 28th June I nervously wave goodbye to it at Stansted Airport and hope that the baggage handlers are all in a good mood.
Once we have landed in Austria, I am one of the lucky ones to see my bike arrive at the same time and all appears well. There is a panic moment when I don’t attach the rear mech properly and have to take my seized bike to the Iron Village for repais just 2 days prior to the event, but a very very nice man sorts me out and the bike is repaired – hoorah !
The night before I struggle to sleep and I am thankful to get an hour before my alarm call at stupid o clock gets me up. We make our way down to Klagenfurt for my very first Ironman : a 2.4m swim, 112 mile bike ride and then topped off with a Marathon.
This is how the day went :
Swim
6.55am, and I am stood on the small beach at Klagenfurt. The Austrian national anthem is playing and I am having a last minute pee in my wetsuit. I look around and can tell that I am not the only one doing this. There are 2500 of us on the beach, each of us trying to work out where exactly we are swimming to as it is not entirely clear which one of the brightly coloured buoys we are to aim for. Eventually, the song ‘ final countdown’ starts blaring out and that is our prompt to make our way into the water ready for the start, I have positioned myself towards the rear of the field, but trying to seed myself in front of the breaststrokers because my fear is that I’ll receive a kick to the face and die or something ! I only get ankle deep before we are told to go and the fireworks pop, I amble forward and ungracefully flop into the water – I am off on my Ironman adventure!
The water is very warm and a really nice shade of blue – this is heaven – also, I am not getting the duffing up that I was expecting from reading other peoples Ironman reports, it is busy granted, but people are being sensible and pacing themselves in my section of the water. My pace has steadied down and I am really enjoying the first 1400m – and in a bonus, I can see clearly the buoys that I am supposed to swim to. At 1400m, we all have to turn left, and then a little further along, turn left again and head back towards the beach and ultimately an 800m stretch of canal. As soon as we make that second turn towards the beach though, I cannot see a thing because the low sun has is in my face and it is blinding me. All I can do is try and follow the general direction of my fellow swimmers, and keep an eye on the canoeists that are herding us towards the canal section. It would be interesting to see a GPS of this part of the swim as I guess there was a lot of zigging and sagging going on. The swim up the canal for the last part of the swim is phenomenal as the crowds lining both sides are making loads of noise and it is all of a sudden really busy with so many swimmers crammed into such a narrow lane. I can see the hotel now and start to kick hard to get some life back in my legs ready for the run to transition. A helper grabs me I exit the water in 1 hour 28 mins – within my prediction window and not bad for a brick with no technique – so far then so good.
T1 – there is a 100m trot across a main road into the transition area. I find my bag easily (well there weren’t that many left !) and go into the change tent. My bag is emptied and then I make sure that I line up the contents to make sure I don’t forget anything – there are worried looks from others in the tent. I was just over 10 minutes in T1, but it was worth it to be comfortable going onto the bike and it was time well invested.
Bike
The Austrian countryside is absolutely beautiful and cycling through it for six odd hours was a real treat. The bike leg starts with 20km section which follows the lakes edge around to Velden – this section is mostly flat or downhill and is really fast, this was excellent to ride and I spent a lot of time down on my tri bars. I passed a few people myself, but was surprised by the amount of fitter looking Austrians that were coming past me on this stretch – whisper it quietly but I don’t think many Austrians can actually swim that well and this is coming from the human brick ! Once into Velden and the route becomes more undulating. Any rise was usually preceeded by lots of graffiti on the road so you sort of knew where you were going to have to put the work in. I tried to keep a steady pace of around 18mph when on the flat bits and hoped that I didn’t lose too much time on the hills. There are two climbs of note on the circuit, the first one is at Egg, which is a steady climb over a kilometre and although I tried to sit and just spin my way up the first time around I just couldn’t and had to get out of the saddle on a couple of occasions. I hadn’t driven the bike course so didn’t know what to expect from the main climb or where exactly it was – all I knew from various reports was that you could hear a DJ from miles away. Problem is that all the bars on the route seemed to have loud music playing and lots of crowds – this meant that there were a lot of false dawns. Eventually though, after negotiating another rise, I saw a bright yellow inflatable arch at the bottom of a hill and then I knew, here it was the famous Rupertilberg ! I got about ten metres past this arch before yep, I was out of the saddle again. The climb in fairness is only tough because of the length of it, because at its maximum I think it was only 11% or so. I could hear the DJ in the distance cheering on the Ironmen and Iron-laydeeeeeez, to the backdrop of some real cheesy europop numbers. From the top of the Rupertilberg, it is mostly downhill back to Klagenfurt and this was the fastest section on my race.
3.07 then for the first lap of the course and just the little matter of doing it all again. On the second time around, the legs started to stiffen up, and consequently the speed dropped, and the climbs seemed much, much longer and were far more painful ! I was grateful to get off the bike by the end of the second lap because I felt shattered. I still had the little matter of the Marathon to go though. 6.37 for the bike leg and in line with expectations.
Run
The second transition took about 4 minutes, and there were more bags on the pegs than when I was last in transition so I had clearly made some places on the bike. I didn’t feel like running at this point so decided to have a go at the first couple of kilometres before having a walk. However, as my legs started to free up, and my running settled down I started to feel really good and managed to keep up a pace that was slightly quicker than I had done in my long slow training runs. There were aid stations every 2km’s and I stuck to the plan of walking them to make sure that I took enough water on board and had a couple of mouthfuls of gels when I felt I needed them. The gels were the Powerbar Apple ones and I can tell you that there are rank ! The run is basically made up of two laps with two out and backs making up each circuit. The first 10km takes you out to Krumpendorf on the northern shore of the Worthersee and is basically a straight path alongside a trainline, and this section could be really dull, however because it was quite a narrow path it was also very busy which I think helped break up any monotiny. With the first out and back completed in around 55 minutes it was time to pass back through Iron City and then follow the canal into the centre of Klagenfurt. I still felt really good and made sure that I used the sponges to keep as cool as possible as the sun was out and it was very warm in it. I managed to complete the first half of the marathon in around 2.01 which for me is very quick ( last year in Antwerp I ran 2.13 which still is my PB over the distance).
I started to entertain thoughts of a sub 4 hour marathon ( funny how Ironman starts to play with your mind like that) and at 22km the clock read 2.06 something...mmm...2 x 55 minute 10k’s – could I do it ????
Then, within a kilometre the wheels started to wobble quite badly, I began noticeably swaying and didn’t feel great anymore !
I stopped and walked to the next aid station where I made myself take a whole sickly gel ( there is a point in one of the most recent Harry Potter films where Dumbledore has to keep drinking against his will – this is what taking an entire Powerbar Apple gel is really like !) I also drank two whole cups of water and hoped that I had managed to sort any problem out. During this inactivity, every leg muscle seemed to have tightened up and when I began running again it was more of a painful hobble ! Any thoughts of a sub 4 Mara disappeared and my attention turned to an attempt to finish in under 13 hours which had been my super secret hope before the event.
Although still surrounded by fellow Iron peeps on that boring stretch to and from Krumpendorf, I don’t think I have ever felt as lonely as I did on that stretch and was so relieved to see Heidi and the in law support crew as I passed through Iron City again at 31km. I think that at this point with only 10km to go, that it really sank in that I was going to finish – I had 6 miles to go and about 1hr 15mins to go sub 13. I began to enjoy it again and made myself little targets of getting from each aid station without stopping in between. Any down slopes on the canal path were negotiated very slowly and comically the up slopes were very slowly walked up by queues of athletes. I took some flat coke for the first time ever at around 6km to go, which had the reverse effect on me as I walked for a good five minutes around the centre of Klagenfurt ! After ringing the bell, I drank some coke and finally got the legs turning over again for the home stretch back along the canal to the finish area. The hobble – aid station strategy got me safely through the final few miles ok and I took time out to hug Heidi before turning into the finish chute to finish my sub 4.5hr Marathon. I was over the moon to finish in 12.51.37 in the end, and loved all the flashing lights, music, cheering and cheerleaders on that last magical 20 metres.
I am an Ironman ! It feels weird, I wanted it for so long and all I could think about was doing it again, again, again !
So whats next ? Well, for the rest of the year I’ll mostly be chasing down my half marathon times and maybe taking in some sportives along the way as well. Next year, therewill be no full Ironman, but I will be signing up for the 70.3 at Wimbleball. The books open for 2013 though as I’d love to go long again – with Roth looking like the likely destination.
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