Ironman Copenhagen race report from Alex

Pre-race: the weeks building up to copenhagen had been far from ideal; exams at the end of June 
and starting full time work meant had meant limited training. My last race was the English
 middle distance championships, which, although I won my age group, included a dehydration
 induced collapse, half way round the run and I'd been struggling with a trapped nerve in my
 back, so, as you can imagine, I was apprehensive about this latest challenge.
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Del Williams’ race report from the Ultimate Half Ironman in Whitchurch, Shropshire.

So the seed was sown for this distance back in the wonderful Mallorca triathlon training camp back in April (small plug – it’s a brilliant week, and highly recommend anyone with a slight interest to sign up now!). I was lucky enough to have a brilliant and crazy French lady as my roommate, and as with so many brilliant ideas, pillow talk quickly developed into ironman and half ironman distance events (She was training for the full event) and her contagious enthusiasm got me thinking…..not sure how I got any sleep that week, the two of us had way too much energy to be sharing a room together.

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So an open water swim, mid August in South Wales,it’s called “” but swimming steady stroke rate low impact how “brutal” can it get, even over 10km…Well that was the thinking anyway and why Rosie Brister, Andy Parratt  and myself found ourselves heading across to North Wales this weekend to Llanberis commonly known as home to the Slateman.
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From a Non-Swimming MTB Rider to IRONMAN, Mike Catley’s IM Bolton race report.

RACE DAY

2.45 am Sunday , I got out of bed . Notice I never said woke up as I didn’t sleep. Poked down my trusty 100g of porridge and a black coffee, toilet trip then in the car to the macron. Waiting for the bus not much was said between me and Ric, nerves/excitement/anticipation of the unknown. Who knows ???

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My Ironman Experience.

Where do I begin? I can’t really remember the exact time that I made the decision that I wanted to do an Ironman but I can remember the first time I made it public and from then on it was going to happen. I was in Portugal on holiday with all the family sat round the pool on a hot summer’s day probably with a beer talking to Mike. I announced then that I was going to do an Ironman. I can’t really remember what was said from that point but the seed was also planted with Mike. I have a great friendship with Mike so if he was to also do it, I knew it would be an amazing experience. Why? Overweight, wanted to see if I could do it, but most of all probably because of all the great Ironmen in our club. I was going to name a few but didn’t want to leave anyone out and that would have taken too long to do as our club is brimming with Ironmen. Anyone would have thought it was easy to do with the amount of Ironmen our club has!
Skip a few weeks and Mike and Andy had also decided to do the Ironman, so we all entered. I’ve only been doing triathlons for a couple of years so the honest truth was where do I begin? I had a rough idea but I needed structure and it mapping out so I was clear on what and how! In stepped Phil Binch. I cannot thank Phil enough for what he has done for me. He helped me set goals and then broke everything back into little steps and goals to achieve throughout my training right up to the day itself. Without Phil’s input I wouldn’t have had such an enjoyable day on the 20th July! Yes enjoyable the hard work was done all I had to do was keep moving forward on the day.
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