Club: Horsham Tri Club

I was a jogger. I used to jog in my lunch break, 5km there and back, and a longer 10km run on a weekend – that was it. A work colleague saw me coming in from one of these runs and suggested I come along on a Thursday night to a coached running session. This running session was part of a triathlon club’s weekly training and it wasn’t long before I was being badgered into going to the Saturday bike session and then the Wednesday swim session.

It was the swim that nearly did for this budding triathlete as I couldn’t swim more than a length and certainly couldn’t do the whole breathing thing. Dogged perseverance, a few one to one lessons and eventually I cracked it and had entered and completed my first novice triathlon before I knew it.

That was in 2011, when I was approaching my 50^th birthday.

Plans

- Qualifying for a GB Age Group

PB's

- parkrun 24:55

- 10k 50:25

- HM 1:54:42

- Ironman 14:31

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Event - IRONMAN UK - BOLTON 2013

DISCIPLINE - Triathlon

Distance - Ironman

DATE: 2013

Event Profile

The Event

In August 2013 I found myself standing at the edge of Pennington Flash lake near Bolton lining up with a couple of thousand other competitors, waiting for the start of Ironman UK – not only was the longest triathlon race I had ever done, a standard distance, once, I had also never run a marathon!

One of my fears about competing in an Ironman race was running out of energy. It was going to be a very long day for me. As my bike rides got longer in training, I tried out several different nutrition strategies, gels, carb drinks and real food. Sometimes I got it right and others spectacularly wrong.

Race Day

On race day, I got up at 3am and had a large bowl of porridge with banana. On the journey to the swim start I sipped on Lucozade Sport and about 15 mins before the swim start had a ZipVit ZV7 energy gel.

I have to say that on the bike I was almost religious in my nutrition and drinking regime. I had borrowed another Garmin and had set up alerts to go off every 20 minutes. When the buzzer went I sipped either High Five Zero or High Five 2:1 carb drink and had a bite to eat. Even if I didn’t feel like it. I had a variety of food in my pockets; two bagels with strawberry jam and peanut butter; a couple of flapjacks and a ZipVit strawberry chocolate energy bar. I also stopped at one of the feed stations for a banana. That might sound a lot but I was out there for over 8 and a half hours.

The Run

I saved the gels for the run. I favour the High Five electrolyte gels for runs as they are easy to take and don’t need water. I had a bite to eat while in transition and then took a gel as I headed out onto the run.

There was a 16km route to Bolton centre followed by 4 laps of 8km of the town. I took one gel toward the end of the 16km and then one per lap plus I always had a drink at each feed station, so every 4km.

You are an Ironman

I never ran out of steam and finished IM Bolton in 14:31 which was about 2 hours quicker than I expected.

Post Race

My stomach was in turmoil after I finished though. I couldn’t face the free pizza and nothing appealed much. In the end I had a McFlurry ice cream which had absolutely no nutrition value whatsoever but hit the spot completely. These days after long training or race days I have a banana/chocolate/peanut butter milkshake sometimes with added protein powder.

Nutrition \ Whats Next

My nutrition strategy has moved on a bit since 2013 too. I am mostly taking part in Olympic/Standard Distance triathlons this year with a view to qualifying for a GB Age Group spot in either the World Champs in 2017 or the Europeans in 2018. I did manage to qualify for a spot in the European Duathlon Champs this year which take place in Soria in April which is exciting and daunting in equal measure.