Following hot on the heels of Ruth’s great write-up of her (and Tim and Phil’s) adventure at the Outlaw Ironman distance event in July, a quick summary of my first IronMan event with a couple of work colleagues at the official UK IronMan in Bolton on 4th August.

We’d travelled up on the Friday night to register early on the Saturday and get set up in transition(s). The Bolton course is complicated in having two transition sites; T1 (swim-to-bike) at Pennington reservoir and T2 (bike-to-run) at Rivington school. Like Ruth, the alarm was set for 4am for the early porridge and bananas and the drive to the swim start.

The mass swim start at 6am was frightening, all flailing arms and legs.  But I had a fantastic swim, quickly got into a rhythm and amazingly clocked 1:03 and was 192nd out of the water in a field of 1600, feeling relaxed as I entered T1. With the bike my worst element, consequently, everyone went pass me on the ride. IronMan UK has a tough cycle course with a point-to-point 14 miles (Mike passed me on this) and then 3 loops of 33 miles (Simon passed on No. 2) which had a 10% climb on the notorious Sheep House Lane hill up onto the moors and a total of 7365 ft elevation.

I wore the distinctive SNCC kit for the cycle and got quite a few shouts of “Come on St Nitts” from the crowd, from a couple of NiceTri competitors as they shot past me and also Tim (I think) in the crowd at Belmont.  I’d picked up a lower back injury from the training load in July and it really started hurting on the last loop and my pace slowed significantly in the final miles before T2. I took a little longer in T2, popped a couple of ibuprofen and started out on the run.

The marathon course was again a point-to-point of 8 miles and then 3 undulating loops of 6 miles in and out of Bolton city centre, collecting coloured arm bands on each loop. It started raining a couple of miles into the run and continued raining, harder and harder until it was “stair rods”. My back started aching again during the 2nd loop, the last 8 miles were pure agony and I had to walk up the short hill coming out of the city centre. Despite the rain the supporters were out in force and really helped drag the sodden runners round.  The sense of achievement (and relief) you get when you finish is fantastic.

IM1IM2IM3

Name

Age Cat

Total Time

Swim

T1

Bike

T2

Run

Age Cat Pos

Michael van der Merwe

40-44

11:56:53

1:06:12

06:40

06:26:10

03:52

04:14:01

66

Simon Hemmings

35-39

12:19:17

1:24:41

06:56

06:41:19

06:55

03:57:13

73

Steve Pleasance

50-54

13:47:56

1:03:43

06:22

07:28:54

07:40

05:01:19

54

Mike and Simon both had great races, Mike was sub-12 (fastest on the bike) and Simon was sub-13 (fastest on the run), particularly when you realise that at the start of training he was swimming breast stroke.  I will admit to being a little disappointed with my own time, as I’d done the 6 months of training, got the nutrition right and I felt really fit before, during and after and it was the back injury that prevented me from performing on as well as I could on the day; I've done the cycle distance over an hour quicker in training and my fastest London marathon is 3:50. Having said that, it is a great achievement and like Ruth also said, I managed to do the sub-14 that I’d targeted and I know where I can improve.  When you see the time of the Pros you realise what the human body is capable of; Lucy Gossage from Cambridge Triathlon Club won the women’s race in 9:29:12 (she was 9th overall).

Massive thanks to my wife Sarah for putting up with 6 months of me moaning, the aches and pains, the weird diet, all the early mornings, spending money on “kit”, all the lost weekends and for being there in the pouring rain in Bolton cheering me over the line.

IM4

Both Steve and Sarah pleased as punch for finishing my first (and only?) IronMan