Ironman Switzerland

I have never been so consistent when training for any other event. In the last 6 months I have maintained my training hours. There were a couple of dips but 10 hours per week was always my goal and I often went over this. For a lot of people this is a relatively modest training budget, but it was what I was happy to commit to. We’re a busy family and with Wheezy Junior taking his GCSE exams this summer and my wife, Sue also having a busy and demanding full time job, I had to make my training as effective as possible in the time I had. I was also confident in the aerobic base that I had built up over the past 7 years. Long distance time trials, Audax rides, marathons and half marathons. I feel that I’ve developed a pretty good engine that would meet the demands of an ironman triathlon. My build wasn’t perfect, but then, is it ever?

Two things played out. The first was a niggling calf injury that on three separate occasions, stopped me running. When I was running, it felt good and I was able to clip along with easy 8 minute miles. Not fast, but a comfortable IM pace. But I just was not getting the run volume in that I needed. The second factor was a little harder to deal with. Every six to eight weeks I would get a feeling like the beginning of a cold. I would have a headache, sore throat, small mouth ulcers and be extremely tired. It would wipe me out for a couple of days before it would gradually fade. It took a couple of cycles of this before I realised that it was more likely life and training stress getting the better of my immune system.

So, not perfect, but despite these few issues, I was happy with how the last six months had panned out. I had always wanted to do Ironman Switzerland as I really liked the look of the bike course and I knew that it had been popular with a few folks in TT1.0. I had two long course finishes under my belt (Forestman 2011 and The Outlaw 2017). I also wanted to see what all the fuss was about with the Ironman branded races and to hopefully go under 11 hours. I’ve always believed that I’ve got a 10:30 ish time in me, but of course, talk is cheap. Bearing in mind I did no swim training or running before the Outlaw and pretty much on time trialling alone, I got my 11:27, I really believed that a sub 11 time would be very achievable. I did the Cotswold 113 and finished in 5:01. My bike pacing was at IM intensity and on little run training I ran. 1:36 off the bike. This gave me bags of confidence going into the last 6 weeks of training. My long rides were going well as I am very comfortable on my tt bike but a final calf niggle meant that I didn’t run at all for the last month.

 The really vexing thing was my swimming and I just seemed to be getting slower, the closer I got to IMCH. I’d spent a lot of time doing drills in the earlier part of the year but as spring turned into early summer I stopped in favour of more reps, but in hindsight I simply wasn’t doing enough CSS sets and ended up plodding at the same pace. Including the Cotswold 113 I swam 4 times in open water which was rather light, but bearing in mind before the Outlaw I only swam 4 times in total and swam 1:15, I couldn’t see any reason why 1:10 was not possible.

The Ironsquad out and about, the day before.

 It transpired that a group of five of us would make our way to Zurich to race including two former colleagues from work. Of the five of us, three had completed a long course triathlon before and with partners, parents and spectators there was a large group of us heading out and it was going to be a great weekend, with Sue coming out to see me race for the first time since I’d done the Beaulieu half back in 2008. She had decided then that triathlons with two small children was not a spectator sport, but we were going to treat this as a bit of a city break as our children were now older and a bit more self sufficient, with the help of very accommodating friends and parents back home.

Registering and signing in

 I guess I wanted to see what all the Ironman branded fuss was about as well. Other than the Alp d’ Huez tri five years ago, I’ve only ever done UK non branded events. To be honest, I was blown away by the slickness of the operation and I could see the effort that they put into catering for all the athletes and spectators. It was extremely impressive. The week before IMCH I’d had another bout of the tiredness, sore throat and headaches, but I hit the taper hard and necked ibuprofen and after a few days it subsided. I put it down to my last block of training and by the time of race morning, which was extremely wet, I felt relaxed and good to go and really excited.

Even in gloomy conditions, Lake Zurich is beautiful

 They did rolling start for the swim, releasing 8 athletes at a time, every five seconds. In terms of biff etc it didn’t actually work. I seeded myself correctly in the 70-80 minute pen and within 1 minute I was swimming over a guy who was very slow. Although there was a 2:20 cutoff for the swim, there were a couple of time of day cutoffs on the bike so I think there were quite a few slower swimmers who seeded thamselves far too fast to give themselves extra time. Every turn buoy was very congested and even on the long straight I seemed to be swimming into people or having to stop and breaststroke to sight and find gaps. I tried a few times to find feet but didn’t manage it for any length of time. All that said, the lake was beautiful to swim in. Only just wetsuit legal but the temperature was lovely and the water was really clean. The heavens opened again as I swam to the finish and I knew the time was at the lower end of what I was expecting but as I ran into T1, I was just glad to get it out the way and get onto the bike. Six months’ swimming has resulted in me being a minute slower when compared to my Outlaw swim two years’ previously. I put that thought to the back of my mind and headed into T1.

It was still drizzling at the start but the air was nice and warm. I settled in and focussed on my target IF of 0.7. which was my planned power target and initially I was well below that at around 0.63. I avoided the temptation to push as the first section was flat and fast and I didn’t want to get this wrong, so I was patient and slowly, over the first 90 minutes it gradually crept up as I warmed up and got my cycling muscles firing. Due to the torrential rain beforehand there were a lot of early punctures out on the course, one rider with his tub tyre off a disc looking like he was already waiting for the course mechanic and another rider in the first 10kms being treated by an ambulance. There were quite a few groups and avoiding drafting was nigh on impossible and I found myself soft pedalling and then surging to try to keep within the rules.

The second half of the course took in the big climb of the day and while I got up it easily enough, there’s no doubt I would have preferred another couple of teeth on my large sprocket. The drop down the other side was insanely fast, even on the base bars, almost reaching 50mph. It was very cool. Speaking of which, so was I. It was still cloudy and not particularly hot. My nutrition was a few cliff bars and then alternatively sipping the on course enervit and water in my saddle bottle and this was working well for me.  The lap was finished off with a climb up Heart-break hill. To be honest, it was not particularly challenging but being lined with a lot of supporters all the way up, for a couple of minutes it felt like being on the Tour. It was brilliant.


 I got onto the second lap comfortably and found myself on the front of a few riders, with one American blatantly drafting me for a good 10kms or so. Eventually we got to one small hill where I sat up and took a bottle while shaking my head and giving him the eyeball as he went past. The big climb the second time was tougher but I just gently ground out my smallest gear. It was here that the sun came out for the first time properly and I got a hotter and felt my effort level having to spike quite a long way, but still comfortably within the limits I’d set myself.



As I descended the second time I felt a very sharp pain on my chest. At first I couldn’t figure out what it was before realising that I’d been stung by a wasp or bee. It really hurt but after a few minutes I forgot all about it. With the efforts up the hills my IF pushed out to .71 but I was able to soft pedal and bring it back down as we rolled back towards transition.

 As I trotted out of T2 I was a bit surprised at how I felt. After the pacing of the bike I was really confident that I had got it right but I was not as sprightly as I though I would be. No bother, this is an Ironman after all. I got into my 9min/1min run walk. I had done this before in some of my early halves and had worked well, allowing me to break up the distance and cool down more easily during the walk. The first three went fine but I started to feel really unwell with a very queasy feeling in my stomach. I have guts of iron. I’ve done 100 mile rides while consuming pasties and sandwiches and all sorts and Audax rides where I have eaten a full English breakfast mid-ride. The only problem I have had with stomach issues in the past was the Buzzard-Exe Audax last year, when the temperature got up to over 35 degrees and I found it very hard to eat. As soon as I slowed down and cooled down, it was fine but this was not that hot and the feeling came on really suddenly. As I came back into a small park near the end of the loop my stomach convulsed and I brought up all the liquid I had consumed in the last couple of hours. Everything. That explained why I hadn’t felt so good in T2. I hadn’t been taking in any carbs on the last part of the bike. I’d gone into a bush and a couple of very kind spectators asked if I was ok Luckily I was only a couple of hundred metres from where I knew Sue was spectating in the shade.

Although not good, I felt that if I walked the next lap and got some water in I’d probably be ok. Any chance of a time under or around 11 hours or a 4 hour marathon had gone, but I was still confident of getting my medal and tee shirt. I’ve never not finished a triathlon. I started my second lap walk very gingerly and started to sip a small amount of water at each aid station. I’d been meticulously sponging, icing and using the water showers all during the event to keep cool anyway, but although I didn’t feel hot it seemed wise to keep this going. I was hoping that a one lap walk would be enough and that after that I’d be able to get some sort of shuffle going. Not what I’d wanted, but I was trying to wrestle back some kind of control and to realign my goals.

 The volunteers at the aid stations were simply superb and loads of people sunbathing, drinking in bars or just generally ambling about kept going ‘opp opp opp’. I’d give a thumbs up, head down, keep trudging on. I was in Audax mode; just keep moving forward and you’ll get there. During this lap I got passed by Mike and Jess who were in my group, both first timers they went on to finish brilliantly. I saw Jess with about 4km of the second lap to go and she looked like she was moving quite well, while I stopped to high five and walk on. Fifteen minutes later I was nearing the same shady tree lined avenue at the top of the lake. I felt my stomach heave and I was just about able to get into a bush, away from the families who were nearby, while I brought up all the water that I had been sipping over the last 90 minutes since I had last been sick. This time I kept on going, water, bile, the lot, that eventually led to a lot of dry heaves. It was pretty grim.

 With my hands on my knees, bent double, I knew that was me done for the day. Without even being able to keep down water and with realistically another 3-4 hours walking in the hottest part of the day, it was time to call it quits. It wasn’t an easy call but I knew that it was the right one. I walked up to Sue, sat on the grass verge and started to cry. That was me done. It was mainly just shear frustration. I’d been more prepared for this event than any other triathlon I’ve ever done and it had all unravelled in a couple of hours and with Sue sitting next to me, knowing all the support that she had given me so that I could do this, it was a really bitter pill to swallow.

 After an hour or so on the verge and after handing my tracker in, I picked up my bags and bike and we headed slowly back to the flat where we were staying, in the old town, just by the run course. I spent another hour or so, cooling and calming down before getting changed. By this time Mike and Jess has finished but my two other friends were still on the course. I didn’t want to sit around moping about so we headed back to where their supporters were, near where it had ended for me. A few weeks back, someone on Tritalk had talked about his race at Frankfurt going wrong and he made it his mission to boost and clap everyone who he encountered and this really stuck with me. As Sue and I walked back we ‘oop-oop’ed every runner. ‘Looking great’. ‘Running strong’ and trying to pronounce every foreign name we could. Those 4 hours were magnificent and in that time we both saw the power of the Ironman brand and its truly international feel. We were both pretty emotional anyway but we were so moved by what we saw. There was a Japanese guy who was one of the last to finish. We were clapping and cheering him as he went past and he put his hands together and bowed and it was I all I could do to stop bursting into tears again. I was a fucking wreck.

 My friend Sharon has only just been in front of cutoff all day. In fact, three riders 20 seconds behind her were pulled from the course and she had just made it out of T2 with about 20 seconds to spare. We were able to see her through her final two laps and then went to the finish line to cheer her home. I think she was the penultimate athlete home and she had all the support crew out for her. Seeing her come down the finish line was just one of the best sporting things I’ve been a part of and she deserved every second of it.

Spot the odd one out.

 It’s been really hard coming home on the plane and walking around Zürich with virtually everyone else in their finisher’s tees and medals. I now know home Cav felt coming home after the 2008 Olympics, the only member of the cycling squad without a medal. We all met up the next day for a drink and obviously everyone was really thrilled to have finished but I couldn’t help thinking whether I had made the right call. With a couple of days’ thinking time, I know I did but it didn’t stop a few more tears. I don’t think it was the insect sting on its own, but as I’d just completed the biggest climb of the day, with my heart rate at its highest and then getting stung was probably enough to start my stomach shutting down. I may also have simply gone a little too hard on the bike but as I had been training at that intensity with the same power zones for the last month or so with no ill effects, this is probably unlikely. I’ll have a good look at my Garmin file to see if there’s any clues.

 Two really surprising things as a result. As we were waiting in the departure lounge yesterday evening for our delayed sleazyjet flight back to Gatwick, Sue was looking through next year’s Ironman calendar. She seems pretty determined that I should go back, either to the new IMCH event or somewhere else and knock this off as we both know I can’t leave it like this. Whether it’s next year remains to be seen, but I’m pretty sure at some point I will finish what I started. The second thing and by far the best thing is that Sue was so inspired by the event she wants to start running and fancies having a go at entering a marathon, something that she’s always wanted to do but has always put off. Other than having an emotional wreck of a husband to deal with all weekend, she absolutely loved the whole experience and that has surprised us both. It’s only a race and it’s only a hobby. But it’s a hobby that I have realised is more important to me than I ever thought. That again, I suppose, is a good thing to realise.