Recovery from the event has also been good and my training has resumed and is starting to pick up again. I’ve been adding some high intensity reps into my bike work and as a result have already knocked a further 3 minutes of my pb for my 40km hilly circuit. Providing I stay healthy, this bodes very well for the Vitruvian in September. Last time I managed 6:03, so on current form I should  get below  6 hours. But, by how much?  Last time I finished the event, I managed the bike leg in a pretty rapid 2:54 which equates to 18.7mph. Last year I dropped out due to illness, but still did the first half of the bike leg in a time which would have been around the 2:50 mark. So, if form continues I would hope to duck under 2:50 for the bike and shave a chunk of time on my new pb for the run. 5:45 is my target time which would put me about halfway down the results sheet for the 1000 entrants. Let’s see.

There may be those among you that would question the sanity of anyone enjoying a swim in a reservoir at any time, let alone at 6 in the morning, but I confess to be really enjoying the swim element of the 3 legs. I think this is because I know I am a rubbish swimmer and any attempts to emulate Ian Thorpe result in absolute exhaustion within 25 metres and helpless giggles on the part of onlookers. So I plough my own sedate furrow and enjoy the atmosphere of swimming in a large, clean lake, free from chlorine, shrieking children and superfast human torpedoes who have receded into the far distance by the time I get going.

Familiarity with the super-tough bike leg didn’t make it any easier. The compact crank on my bike meant that I got up all the hills without walking this year, and without my heart rate disappearing off the scale. In fact I knocked 17 minutes of my time from last year, but still felt exhausted as I rolled into the second transition to start my run.

The final 13.1 miles (and the .1 is really important by the time you get that far!) of UK Ironman 70.3 is effectively a cross country run on grass and paths with plenty of gradients thrown in. This rapidly became my usual survival stagger and I completed the run in 2:34, an almost identical time to last year.

So, my swim was 3 minutes faster, my bike 17 minutes faster and run the same. I was also nearly five minutes faster through the 2 transitions making an overall gain of 25 minutes over last year’s time (I finished in 7:08 rather than 7:33).  Other positives to come out of this are my nutrition strategy is now sorted (no energy gels, these just make me feel nauseous) and my recovery is excellent – I’ll be back on my bike tomorrow: 3 days after the event! I now just need to make the decision: which Ironman should I do?

I should give a big shout out to my new triathlon mate, Phil Clarke from Ross-on-Wye who was staying on the same campsite as me who completed the course in a frankly staggering 6:01, despite his claims to be “rubbish on the bike”. His half-marathon time of 1:51 after all those hills is an amazing effort: well done, mate! Corporate Calendars and Company Diaries.

So, what’s the story this year. I have replaced my standard racing crankset with a compact. I’ve ridden this all winter and have deliberately sought out hilly training routes. This was supposed to lead up to an assault of the Etape du Dales, which, although it ended prematurely, was still a longer ride than Wimbleball over considerably bigger hills. My recovery was excellent, so that boosted my feeling that I can take half an hour off my bike leg giving me a sub 7:00 target for the race as a whole.

As usual, in the buildup things have gone awry. A week after the Etape (which itself was hit by illness), I was just ramping up my training again for my crucial build week 3 weeks before the race when I went down with a stinker of a cold: no training for 4 days. This meant that I had to work really hard last week to make sure I was ready. I put in a 12 hour week, including 4 bike rides, 3 swims (1 was open water) and a couple of runs. The last bike ride was a hard 50 miles, and two days later I have recovered excellently.

So, are there any excuses? Not really, bring on Sunday!

Note for northwest triathletes: Xtramile Events are running an open water swim session every Thursday night throughout the summer at Boundary Water Park from 6:30 until 9pm (£3.50). Just turn up and swim – gotta be better than Salford Quays!!!

He commented afterwards that this was the toughest Ironman 70.3 distance event that he had ever done.

For the full article click here.

That explains why I thought it was so darned difficult. The race is going to be run again next summer, don’t say you weren’t warned.

Thanks to Steve Pallett for bringing this article to my attention: good luck at the London Tri, Steve.

My swim went pretty much as I expected, took it steady and came out of the water on 46 minutes. A bit slower than hoped for, but I had a lot of problems with my goggles. The start itself was great fun, being the first beach start that I’d done – a neoprene cavalry charge into the water followed by a whirling melee of arms and legs. The exit from the swim was particularly pleasant: a 400m run up a steep (and I mean steep) grass bank. It set the tone for things to come.

Living on the edge of the Peak District, I always include hills in my bike training, and believe me, there are some pretty tasty ones within a few miles of my house. So much so, that David Millar, the pro cyclist from Saunier Duval lives here too and I often see him on his bike heading for the hills. However, as I lengthened my mileage in training, I subconciously put fewer and fewer hills into my routes – preferring to head out onto the Cheshire plain. I paid for this weakness in spades.

The bike leg of the race started with a big uphill section which I covered fairly comfortably. There followed a long undulating section and a thrilling downhill to the bottom of the course. At a left turn in the vilagge of Morebath the route kicked viciously upwards. First with a nasty hill of about 15%, followed by several small uphills before an absolute monster – another big 15%er, with a central pitch that was possibly even steeper. It was on this that I was overtaken by Chris McCormack and a host of other pros on their second lap! (they did start about 20 minutes earlier on the swim, though). There were people walking up this hill on the first lap. After a short descent, the course continued relentlessly uphill for the remainder of the first lap.

The second lap was carnage. By the second of the big hills, the majority of people left out on the course were walking, and for the first time, I joined them as walkers were going as fast as me on my bike! From the top to the finish of the bike I remained in the saddle – and my wife told me afterwards that I looked good as I passed her with 5 miles to go – my sessions practising the Lance Armstrong mask while inwardly suffering like a dog had obviously paid off! My bike leg ended up at being exactly 4 hours long, some 45 minutes longer than I had anticipated. As I ran into transition I passed my bike to a marshal giving him full permission to sell it and I never wanted to see it again. So much for my favourite discipline of the three.

The problem now facing me was a half-marathon (a distance which I had never done in training – due to fear of injury) after having put much more in to the bike ride than I could have possibly imagined. Predictably, the course was undulating, and included a nasty uphill and very steep descent. I was beginning to appreciate that Ironman finisher t-shirts weren’t handed out lightly! Inevitably the run descended into a painful shuffle, although I fought long and hard not to walk any sections. I succumbed to the inevitable as I walked up the steep hill at the start of the second lap. Thereafter, every time the course pointed upwards, I walked. My mood was lightened briefly as I started the last lap. A number of the pros (who by this time had finished over 2 hours ago were on the sides cheering the poor strugglers along. I exchanged high 5s with Macca as I shuffled past knowing that at least at the end of this lap, I would be taking the finish tape.

My finishing time? 7 hours 31 minutes 51 seconds, a full hour slower than I had hoped for. I finished 699 out of 802 people who actually finished, but I have no idea how many dropped out, or were outside the 9 hour cut-off.

A massive thankyou is due to Kirsty who kept me sane and organised throughout the build-up to the event – she is an irreplaceable “team manager”. I’d also like to thank Steve Pallett (race number 311) who was staying at the same hotel as me, and who scouted the course with me and talked tri-tactics all weekend (he finished in an awesome 6:15)

I guess I was slightly pleased!

Am I going to go for the full Ironman? – the jury is out. I feel sufficiently encouraged to have another go at half-ironman as I think with the fitness gained and the experience i have, I can get a lot closer to 6:30 than on this course.

My tip to anyone wishing to do Wimbleball 2007: dream up the hardest hill course you can think of to train on, then make it harder.

In his words:

The bike course is goes up long and steady for out 3-4 miles out of the start,then levels off for a few miles then down down  down and undulating maybe 7-10miles then a very steep uphill section just before morebath….then all the way up again lots of slow and steady with some quite steep bits too …its pretty hard so lots of hill training needed!! im strongest on the bike but after 1 lap i was busted!