The Sign up:
I originally signed up to the Wales Ironman on the 20th Sept 2017, after coming home from the pub. I had really thought about the chance of entering it for a couple of years, but always thought that it would be too big. But once paid, and its not cheap at over four hundred notes, you are pretty committed… Here started my Ironman Journey..
The Training:
I have added a few blog entries, looking back, not that many – to cover the training, but basically I started properly in Jan 2018, and in the eight months I did:
Cycle – around 1500 miles over 45 rides with about 60,000ft of ascent
Run – around 630 miles over 92 runs with about 25,000ft of ascent
Swim – around 37 miles over 32 swims
Taking around 225 hrs which is just over 7hrs a week – which after doing it, seems alot less than it felt!!!
During that time, the longer swim was a mile and a half, the longest cycle 110 miles and the longest run was 18 miles…..
A daily breakdown was – swim, cycle, run, swim, rest, cycle, run
The Weekend:
Ironman is a big event, around 2400 competitors this year – and the “weekend” lasts from the Thurs to the Monday. Thurs and Friday are mostly for registration and the briefings, so I made my way down on Friday afternoon, into Tenby. First up was registration, whre you have to pay another fiver for a race licence, then you go and get your bags and the bracelet you have to wear until the end.
You get a – blue bag for your cycle stuff, a red bag for your run stuff, a white bag for your going home and arriving clothes, a pink bag for your extra trainers (due to the run from swim to transition), and if you have applied separately two “personal needs” bags which are the just in case bags you can pick up on course – if you dont use them they are binned! These are all put in a pretty snazzy ironman bag along with some stickers and your race number. You also have to “read” about 12 pages of rules and disclaimers so if you knacker yourself up it is entirely at your own risk and blah blah blah.
I was quite sad that I didn’t get the “tattoos” for your arms like you sometimes see, but I made do with the stickers.
After this I made my way down to the sea to check out where my pink bag went – this was on the zig-zag own to the sea, where you leave your trainers to pick up once the swim is finished and you have to wobble back to transition for the bike leg. I am very glad I did this, as some guys were really struggling to find their peg on the day…
The day was great, so as I had an hour to kill before the briefing I went and sat in the Imperial overlooking the beach and had a couple of crafty pints.
The briefing was an hour, in an absolutely packed hall – and just went through the gumph they had already published – this was a challenge in itself as the two beers were desperate to leave my body after half of it…
Once that was finished I met the family in South Beach Restaurant for another couple of beers and some pizza, where we bumped into Shane Williams (who whopped my time). And then off home.
On the Saturday it was racking time, this is where you stick your bike on the racks, and your blue and red bags on their racks.
I didn’t realise quite how stressful packing the bags is until Sat morning. You get one chance really, so you have to make sure you have everything – for the bike there was: helmet, gloves, sweatband, top, bib-shorts, socks, cycle shoes, towel, race belt (with number!), run vest and run vest supplies – steak slice, Ibuprofen, Hi5 zero, glasses rag, Jelly Babies, one bottle of coke one bottle of orange juice and water, a cliff bar and a spare headband. For the run: shoes, socks, shorts, top, run sweatband, spare towel and another steak slice (just in case!).
Bike filled with inner tubes, tools, numbers and tires pumped we set off for Tenby.
Arrived around midday, and the car park we expected to use was full, so tried to find somewhere else, we ended up in the golf-course, which had big signs saying they would clamp us, so although re-assured by my wife they wouldn’t I panicked and took my stuff and told her she’d have to find somewhere else – what a wally. So me and Kate took the bags and the bike up to the transition area.
The bikes were all outside, all 2400 of them, quite a sight. I finally found my spot – 1946 and the bloke behind me, was waiting for his spot, 1947 – quite a coincidence? You get access to the bikes on the following morning, but not your bags.
I stuck my bags inside the big transition tent, along with hundreds of others, and tried to remember where they were. As you leave you get your chip – which is pretty important, and then that’s that.
I found out at this point how to manage your bottles. The way the feed stations work is that they hand out water/electrolytes in bottles, but you need some bottles to start with, so I had no idea how that worked, until one of the guys stated the obvious – you dump the ones you start with – which was very sad as my bottle had been with me for some years. We had a walk a round in the rain, got a pasty and went home.
Fish and chips for supper and bed just after 9:00 for me, and quite a restless sleep.
Event Day.
Alarm clock was set for 04:00, I woke for the fourth and final time at 03:57. Time to get it on!
I had a quick shower, made up my “lunch”, which was four lots of thins with marmite and pate, filled my cycle bottles, got my swim stuff ready: wetsuit, watch, earplugs, goggles, swim hat put on my lucky event pants, , some going down clothes and a couple of pieces of toast.
We got down about 05:40 and the car-park was virtually full, luckily we found a spot, and set off for the transition area to get the stuff on the bike and get changed.
By the time I managed to get into transition and stick my lunch and bottles on the bike it was 06:10, and I had 10 mins to get onto HIgh Street, so I changed into the wetsuit, and got my shit together, and followed the line of penguins down to the start.
Got to my start position, which was pretty much the back, as I had slotted myself into the 1hr 40 bracket, and stood around for 40 mins busting for a wee.
As there were so many people in the queue, I missed the anthems which was a real shame, and at around 07:00 we trotted forward. I stuck my trainers in the pink bag, along with my glasses – popped it on the 1946 peg and this was it – I was about to start the day proper…….