Ironman UK report

Sorry not a good writer.

Well I will just start at 3am the morning of the race, 6am start time. Of course no sleep through night. Took bus to start was a 20 minute ride. When we got to site I had a flat on bike, lucky for me the bike mechanic had enough time to fix it for me. No warm up in water was allowed for anyone. The lake doesn?t allow swimming, only for this race. I was told because the water is not safe. It was a open water start which meant I had to swim out 300 meter to the start line. Then the gun went off (yes the water was disgusting and very cold). I stayed way outside because I didn?t want to swallow any water by getting bumped or waves. This cost time but was worth it. I was shocked to find out I swam 1:31. I though it would of been 1:45 because I really swam far outside. The bike, well first thing was I had the wrong type of bike. A road bike would have been better. Just think of one of Peters rides for 2hrs, time it by 3, then double. This was nothing but hills (yes people were walking up some). Going down you couldn?t make up lost time because most were very short zig zags and some found out the hard way not to go fast. Lots of bike flats, lucky not me except the one in the morning. The pros bike times are a lot slower on this coarse than others. Came in off the bike feeling great, so on to the run. Felt very fresh and had a great pace and looking forward to a sub 4hr run, but stomach started to ache. 2 miles in seen wife at hotel, went right by it. Then had to stop for 2 maybe 3 minutes to get stomach settled. This worked and off I went again. Then all hell broke loose just about 2 miles from first turnaround. Bad muscle cramps started and I left salt pills on bike. I slowed down and they seemed to go away, but every time I went to go faster they came back. This drove me nuts because I really wanted to go. I felt so good but the cramps just wouldn?t leave so it forced me to walk one large hill three times , this was a 4 part run, 2nd part was 10k and you did it 3 times. (this was good because it was packed with people cheering you) From then on I just ran a slow pace the rest of the race testing a number of times to see if I could go faster but no. Lots of people were sick probably because of the lake water. All in all I really enjoyed the race. I think in a few years I might go back, with all said it was a nice race. If you were wondering , yes the run was hilly also but not bad. Got up early next day and visited the site of All creatures great and small TV set. Visited a castle etc.etc. O ya it was wife?s time now and I dare not complain. LOL

Thank all. o by the way, the roads are so narrow in most places the cars have to pull over to let cars coming the other way get by. This also gave the bike ride a real twist, not fun.