Ironman 70.3 Ireland, Galway: Part 1

Here we go again! This time it's off the mainland and over to the emerald isle for Ironman 70.3 Ireland in Galway.

It feels very different this time. Having done a 70.3 earlier in the year at Wimbleball, and then the full Ironman distance a few weeks ago at Bolton, I have no fear about the distance. I've learned a lot in the last two events, and this is the first opportunity I have to put it all together.

It's also the third of the four events in the Ironman Ultimate Challenge. At Wimbleball, the first event and my first 70.3 (half Ironman), the distance and the hilly course was the challenge. At Bolton it was my first full distance Ironman, and just getting to the end was the objective. Now I know (barring unforeseen calamity) I will get to the end tomorrow so my thoughts are turning to completion of the Ultimate Challenge. With this race, and then Ironman Wales in two weeks' time, the pressure is quite different - I'm starting to feel like I'm half way through a 13-week race, and tomorrow is the third quarter. It's a means to an end rather than an end in itself. My concern in the event of a DNF (Did Not Finish) here isn't that I'd fail to finish 70.3 Ireland, but that I'd fail the Ultimate Challenge. It feels like the stakes are somehow higher now!

Thursday 30th August

As I was off jetting around the world last weekend I missed the Sunday and Monday of my bank holiday weekend. Therefore I took Thursday off instead, and me and Mrs decided to take a leisurely meander to Galway and split the journey over Thursday and Friday. After my last training session (an hour and a half on the bike, and thirty minutes in the pool) we packed the car and set off for North Wales.

We stayed over Thursday night at Northop Hall Hotel, a nice little place that Mrs found

Friday 31st August

We had an uneventful drive to Hollyhead to catch the ferry to Dublin - this was certainly the right way to do it. Getting up at what would have had to have been 4am to drive here in one day would have sucked in the extreme. I needed a few sound nights of sleep - getting a good 8 hours the last few nights before a race can really pay dividends. It's not so much about the night before, indeed it's been shown that one night makes little difference to athletic performance, but the preceding 2-3 nights are definitely worth making the effort for particularly if there's a risk of a poor night ahead of race day.

Boat required

The ferry was good fun, I can't remember the last time I was on a ferry. There were lots of cars with bikes mounted on (in and behind) them, and an appropriate number of weathered triathletes making a direct line for the complimentary snacks.

Mrs and her happy snacks (we demolished an order of magnitude more snacks than this...)

A relaxed drive across Ireland followed as Dublin and Galway are at opposite sides. We went straight to Leisureland for registration, and picked up our bags, numbers, and assorted paraphernalia.

The Ultimate Athletes get another double-page spread - 8 competitors remaining

Another race, another wristband

We arrived at Sea Breeze Lodge (I can't be held responsible for the web site) late afternoon. The room is absolutely beautiful, a real surprise for what I was expecting to be a regular lived-in looking B&B. Everything has been recently redecorated, we have a big room with good quality fittings, very well presented common areas, and a warm welcome from the boss.

Sea Breeze Lodge, Galway - three locals and me the interloper!

We relaxed and got our kit ready for dropping off at transition on Saturday, and strolled up the road to Capone's for some dinner (a local Italian where parents take their kids to scream).

Kate and Charlie Stannet popped round at about 8pm and invited us out for a beer, so we went up to Tom Sheridans for a pint of the black stuff. A nice relaxing day, just what the doctor ordered.

Saturday 1st September

Today was already well planned out. Get up, 15 minute run to 'get the legs turning over' (I'm not sure my legs turned all the way over, but I went for the run anyway). Then some light(isn) breakfast, and down to Leisureland for swim practice and dropping off of bikes and transition bags.

The sea was not as cold as I'd feared. We swam out and back a couple of times, about 20 minutes in total. Wind was up a bit, but the waves were manageable. Tomorrow is due to be calmer, so I don't think the swim will be too bad for my first race sea-swim.

One of tomorrow's challenges is fast and efficient transitions, so I'm going with the bare minimum of stuff.

Blue bike bag for T1 (I need all of this stuff, but there's nothing extraneous here)

Red run bag for T2 (socks, hat, and inhaler all optional - only shoes are essential)

We went for a quick blast up and down on the bikes to make sure they were working OK. Mine was fine, but Mrs had sheared her rear gear cable somehow. A nice mechanic in the expo fixed it for €10, good as new.

Our bikes, racked and ready to go (Ultimate Athlete Bethan Fowler's bike in the background)

All done, and it was back to Sea Breeze Lodge for a relaxing afternoon of doing very little, and updating my blog (there you go, we've caught up with real-time now!).

Plan for Race Day

Swim: Put some effort in for once. I want to be out in under 35 minutes (tall order for first sea swim). Kick hard in last 100-150m, looks like it might be quite a trek up to T1 and jelly-legs would be annoying! Visualise transition.

T1: Fast, efficient, no faffing. No decisions to be made about what to wear or take, so no reason to slow down. Don't forget to put my bars in my back pocket. Not wearing a secondary bike top this time.

Bike: PACE YOURSELF! Start slower than I would normally want to and make sure HR is under control. Build after first 5-10 minutes up to around 130-135 BPM. See if I can hold it around there for the duration. Fuelling as has worked perfectly before - gel at +15, half a bar at +45, and gel/bar alternating every half hour from there. I'm carrying 2x 750ml drink so with a time of around 3 hours and 500ml/hour I should have no need to stop for anything. Take care flying through the aid stations, other people will be stopping! Don't forget to take feet out of shoes ahead of bike dismount!

T2: This should be very fast - nothing to do but put running shoes on. Take hat if it's strong sun (unlikely), change socks if it was raining on the bike (unlikely). Let's see how far up the ranking I can get for transition.

Run: Only part of the race with a time target. I really want to a) go under 2 hours, and b) negative split. Therefore, first 5km, take it gently, don't sprint off. A half marathon in under 2 hours means breaking 5:41/km on average. There's no need to go off any harder than this. If feeling strong, from 5 to 15km try to hold 5:15-5:30/km. Find a rhythm, and keep it going up until 15km, if you can't speed up, don't worry, just try and stay within 5:41/km. At 15km, if feeling strong, open it up and see what else you've got left - I know I can run a fast 5km, just think of it as a parkrun.

If I manage the bike well, and the first 10-15km of the run, I should be able to put in an effort to be proud of.

Let's see what happens tomorrow!

Ironman 70.3 UK, Day two, Registration

Today we had a few things to do, but as we'd driven down so early we had plenty of time to get them done in. Athlete registration opened at 10am so we had some breakfast and set off. The instructions said to avoid the tiny hamlet of Brompton Regis because it's too small to handle much traffic, so we carefully plotted a route that went down ridiculously tiny roads with very few passing places (no problem if your car is small and manoeuvrable, like mine isn't) and ended up taking us straight through Brompton Regis. Nil points for route planning. It's only 7-10 miles from where we're staying to Wimbleball lake, depending which of the dozen twisty routes you take - over the course of the day we optimised and now have a nice fast route on main roads with the barest minimum of head-on collisions.

We got there at just before 10 and went to register. The "Expo" (grand name for a few tents) was still being assembled, and there was hardly anyone around.

The "Expo", still being assembled - there's no-one here yet! 

The PA being assembled just past the finishing line

This is the only time I'll ever see a 70.3 finishing gantry with a time starting with "4 hours"!

We got our ID bands attached, these would have to remain on until after the race, and collected our registration packs containing a hard copy of the race programme, numbers, swim hat (thick, red), and the all-important timing chip (left ankle, so it can't foul your chainrings on the bike). The last table was giving out transfers (number on right arm, age category identifier on back of right leg).

Mrs at registration 

Wristband ID being attached - smiles all round!

Picking up the race packs

Funky fake tattoos for our race numbers - just like the elites

The registration team were still clearly very new at their tasks (no mistakes, just not particularly optimised) and so I estimate we were two of the first half dozen athletes to register.

Our jewellery for the next 3 days

Contents of registration bag

It was a nice experience being there so early. We wandered around unimpeded and had time to take a good look at transition, the lake, the various routes we would be taking. A technique to ease the pressure on race day is to visualise the route you take and what you'll be doing at each point, and this relaxed time to survey the layout is very useful.

The lake, cold but bearable

Giant buoys - aim for these on Sunday and you won't go far wrong

The runway mowed into the grass from lake exit up towards transition

Part of the run course (it's a crazy route near the lake, you go round in triangles!)

We had a long chat with Peter from Totally Bikes about bike hire and kit and all manner of things. I was particularly impressed by the Vision Metron bar end shifters on this Felt DA, at first I thought they were little secondary brake levers. Squeeze the lever to change up one way, click the end to go down - beautiful, and much less movement/balance required than with conventional bar end shifters. Might have to look at those for a potential upgrade.

Cute - Vision Metron bar-end shifters

The rain came in while we were down by the lake, so we scuttled off back to the car in search of somewhere to go and buy some snacks. We decided to go down to Dulverton, the bigger village just down the road from Exebridge where we were based. We hid from the showers in Lewis's Tearooms, where I had an unexpectedly wonderful salmon and noodle lunch - perfectly teriyaki, soy, and miring flavours. I was due to speak to my coach at 14:40 so we hung around and then huddled in a phone box for 20 minutes (is there really absolutely no phone reception anywhere around here?).

Bloody lovely lunch

Next job was bike assembly. They'd been sat in the car since we got here. There was a minor problem in that one of my brake levers had come loose, and the only way to tighten it is to take out the brake cable inner, re-seat and tighten it, then re-thread. Thankfully I had new cable cutters and all the tools I needed (see big list of stuff I brought). To be honest, when I looked at the list yesterday I thought I'd gone a bit over the top with precautions, but now I feel vindicated - score one point for preparation and not needing to roam around trying to find a bike shop in the middle of nowhere.

Bikes assembled, and one quick test-ride later, and it was back to the lake for a swim. The water was cold, damn cold, but thankfully not as icy as at the familiarisation day. It was well under 10C on that day (6-8C estimated) but a positively balmy 14C at the moment. Whilst cold, you don't get the wind knocked out of you, and it feels easier to manage the naturally occurring cold-water reflex. A good confidence boost as I didn't freak out, and was able to swim properly after 6 or 7 minutes of warming up. As long as I get a chance to warm up on race day, I should be fine.

Back to base for dinner and getting everything ready for our race bags. The blue BIKE bag has everything you need in T1, the red RUN bag s everything for T2, and the white SWIM bag os for putting things in right at the start, then you get it back right at the end, so use it to store anything you'll need straight after finishing (recovery drink, warm clothes, etc). The bags have to get dropped off the day before the race in transition along with your bike, and there's (theoretically) no access to them on race morning - therefore careful preparation is required.

Bike in one piece and ready to go

White SWIM bag - covered in "before and after" things, not everything will end up in this bag

Blue for Bike and Red for Run

Blue bag: Bike helmet, warm socks, cycling shoes, gloves, arm warmers (prepared for it to be chilly out, can always roll them down if it's warm), sunglasses, race number attached to race belt, inhaler (shouldn't need it, but it's better to be safe, and psychologically I'm less likely to experience difficulty breathing if I know it's near).

Red bag: Well used run shoes (I don't care if they get trashed in the mud, it's going to be a very messy course I think), run hat, spare socks (lovely if my bike ones have proven too hot, or have got wet) and another inhaler (I'm not planning on cycling with the one from the blue bag, and I won't have blu bag access again until after the race, so this is another safety net).

First two gels, mounted on tri-bar extensions with electrical tape round the rip-off top

More gels, more tape, prepared for one per 30 mins - enough here even if I have a bad ride

I'm planning on being self-sufficient on the ride. 2x 750ml drinks bottles and 7x gels. I shouldn't need to stop at any aid stations, this will save me a lot of time (I can imagine it gets very crowded around them) and will remove one of the highest risk crash points - taking bottles, gels, and bars whilst cycling.

Not long to go now!