IRONMAN

Over the last year I have been training for my first Ironman triathlon and today I successfully completed it!

The Ironman 140.6 I took part in was held in Vichy France.

The distances for each discipline were as follows:

Swim 3.8km (2.3mile)
Bike 180km (112miles)
Run 42.2km (26miles)

 

We had a 6am start and had to swim the 3.8km loop in Lac D’Allier.

The Bike course was a new course for 2019 and had a new revised route which had the element of hill climbing of which involved a total of 6000+ ft of climbing over the 112mile route.

The route was made up of 3 loops of which were two thirds climbing and one third broken decent (mixed up and downhill) which made for a really challenging and intense bike including hill gradients around 8-10%

The challenge was exaggerated further with the weather conditions and temperatures of 35c + which made for a really strict fuelling and hydration program, so much so that the event quickly turned from being a race to a survival day for many of the athletes.

The marathon was a lovely flat route with 4 laps through the town and surrounding areas again in 35c+ heat which made for a further challenging hydration program. Key was to take in a sensible amount of fluids, not too much and not too little.

 

My finish time was a little slower than originally hoped but with the conditions I was delighted to finish in 11 hours 51min.

 

I have to add that the support from the French people along the route was nothing more than incredible and I would highly urge anyone wanting to do any kind of athletic event to go and do it in France as they seem to be a lot better at it than us Brits.

 

Some interesting stats from the event:

 

DNF (Did not finish) 15%

DNS (Did not start) 10%

Cut off time 16 hours

Average finish time for my age group (30-34) was 13 hours.

Average finish time for all of the event was around 14 hours.