The 29th of July 2018 was the hardest day of my life so far. I managed to knock 5 hours off my previous ironman time from around 16 hours 7 minutes down to 11 hours 2 minutes, making me the 3rd fastest Brit aged 18 to 24. I was pretty disappointed that the swim was unfortunately cancelled due to an outbreak of blue-green algae on the swim course, which was replaced at the last minute with a 6 km run before the bike in order to stretch out the field. I estimate my overall time would have been faster if the swim had not been cancelled.
Laying down the watts on the streets of Hamburg, head is up on this slight technical portion.
My transition onto the bike went like absolute clockwork and I was very pleased with how fast I clocked the first loop of the bike, passing literally hundreds of people. However 5 km into the first loop I lost a bottle contain my main fuel source, it had about 18 sachets of energy gel in it (about 1,700 calories). This surprisingly didn’t make me panic, as I had 5 clif bars in my pocket and knew I could substitute this lose with bananas and gels being handed out on the course. On the second loop the wind started to pick up so had to fight a head wind for 40 km or so, and then two road cyclists not doing the race held up a bunch of competitors including myself which was aggravating. For both loops we were blessed with relatively cool air. At 140 km into the bike I hit a mighty psychological low but felt physically fine whilst playing leap frog with a few guys who wanted to give me a run for my money, including a fellow Brit, but gave thanks for the hardship and cracked on.
Coming off the bike into transition two I felt like absolute trash, but happy with my 5 hour 20 minute bike split considering my last took me over 8 hours. Went through another psychological battle in transition thinking, how I was going to be able to run. Transition again went like clockwork and I headed out onto the run after giving away some electrolyte fluid to someone in desperate need.
I started to run and suddenly felt amazing. Although I couldn't physically run very fast I was just grateful for being able to run. I held a confident pace for about the first 25 km, again a huge improvement from last time. I felt very faint after that so was reduced to a walk until I gained some stability. I knew if I lost consciousness I would almost definitely be pulled from the course.
The feeling passed after taking on some more sugar and water, and I managed to break back into a slow but steady run. I started to bonk and run out of sugar at 35 km into the Marathon after becoming sick to death of my energy gels, but forced some sugar into the system. I shuffled on for the next 3 km and gave it absolutely everything to get to the finish at km 42. Overall okay with the run especially considering it was a blistering 29 degrees C; not so bad as on the bike recon days before it was 39 degrees C.
Overall I am pleased with how the day turned out despite all the things that went wrong, but these things happen for a reason. I am grateful for how far I have come after only really training with true purpose and constancy for the past year. This is also my first proper race since coming to faith so made as much effort as I could to give thanks continuously throughout the day to be able to do this, as well as for all the support I've been given, and to especially give thanks when things were going well as much as when things were going bad.
Was hurting a lot at the last bit of the finish, this is me running down the last few meters of the finishers carpet. I have very little memory of this because I was so gone mentally and emotionally.
Official finish time.
This is moments after the finish, I couldn't see the detail on my medal because I was starting to go blind. When your muscles are consuming so much sugar in your system parts of your brain can be deprived and things can temporarily shut down, this is also made worse by the loss of essential salts and minerals from your sweat.
It has been a valuable learning experience and look forward to doing another Ironman race in the next two years or so to clock and even faster time in further pursuit of that world championship qualification slot. In the meantime it’s all about recovery. I am spending 2 weeks off doing virtually nothing, apart from the odd few sets of pull ups, push up and sit ups just to stop me going insane with being immobile. Then the following year I expect I’ll sign up for a few marathons and open water swims as training races for future Ironman triathlons in the future.
