Deca Ironman is on

It has been a long time and just when I thought I could 'retire' from these crazy events, my last being in 2015! my Triple Ironman . Claire at http://decauk.co.uk/ decides to host the UK's first Deca Ironman. How can I resist!

The Stats

To summarise this is a continuous 24 mile swim, 1,120 mile bike ride and then finishing with a 262 mile run all of which you have to complete within the 12 day cut off.

Putting this into some perspective it is approximately the equivalent of:

Swimming the English Channel (or a little under a marathon distance)

Cycling from Land's End to John o'Groats and back again

Running from London to the Lake District

It all kicks off on July 21st!

The Why

I was originally going to keep this on the quiet and just announce when I felt good and ready (closer to the time) but sadly my cousin John Power aka Loki Dread had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and I felt i to do something to 'help'.
Given this awful news I decided to raise money for a good cause which is why I am raising money for Macmillan. Macmillan has been amazing in helping John and his family come to terms with his illness and supporting him throughout with home care. If it was not for Macmillan he would not have been allowed home surrounded by his loving family of a wife and two amazing young daughters.

I had announced my event just before Christmas on other social media places but I have now decided to kick start my blog again throughout this journey to keep others updated and myself on track.

Sadly John passed away in the new year.

This is for you cuz

You

It would be amazing to have donations, if you would like to please use this link https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/doddi-deca

An itch that wont go away

Just as the title says I have had something churning over in my mind for quite some time now. Despite the setbacks that I have had for the past few weeks/months with injuries and general lack of mojo there has been a thought process or should I say an event drilling its merry way into my head.

I even went through the process of booking another event (sorry Equinox24 I will be back in 2016) that happened to be on the same weekend as this one just to try and clear it from my mind, as you can probably already guess, the mind won. I gingerly approached the subject to the wife and surprisingly she was keen for me to give it a go, I'm wondering if there might be some life insurance involved somewhere, and I might be slightly over exaggerating the keenness on her part  but it was a yes. I have now committed myself to taking on this challenge.

This event is a one time event never to be held again (maybe) which if I am being honest is part of the appeal, it is the Triple Brutal iron distance triathlon, this is a continuous 7.2mile swim, 336mile (30000ft) cycle and 78mile (6000ft) run with the addition of a stroll up and down Snowdon itself! Not only that but being held over in Snowdonia it is probably going to have some interesting weather thrown into the mix especially considering that the event is held in September.

I have already completed the single iron distance of this event back in 2012 which was my first year of triathlons and I still remember the pain it caused, especially the cold swim! This is without a doubt going to be my toughest challenge to date and I have no idea how I am going to get the training, food, sleep and family life (not necessarily in that order in case she is reading!) to all fit together but I/we will make it work.

It has only just occurred to me whilst writing this blog that this year I will be doing 5 ironman events in total, this will not only double my total iron distance races but it will also take the total to a nice round 10! I am counting doubles and triples as 2 and 3 iron races :-) This is going to be a tough year.

If anyone needs me I will be swimming, riding or running......

Double Ironman Enduroman Race Report 2014

Double Ironman Race Report

Prep/Training

Training was going great until 6 weeks prior to the event. The bike was mostly spent on the turbo with the long weekend rides combining a few 100milers, two 120miles and one 150 mile ride and when the weather allowed a once a week 40mile round commute to work and back. Halfway through my training I decided to switch plans because it was becoming just too time consuming and I was struggling to handle the commitment with a fulltime job, family and training (the usual double ironman training issues!). The switching of the plan helped my mindset tremendously as now I at least had a day off a week with much less swimming YES!

Then I manage to tear my left calf, it was probably my own fault for pushing too hard on my Tuesday brick sessions. At the beginning I wasn’t too disheartened I had two other disciplines I could keep working on and I usually heal quickly. This was all true except for the healing, 3 weeks later and still no running; it was not getting better (you know how it is, in your mind you think it will be OK but deep down you know it isnt but you decide to try out a run anyway only to find 1mile down the road it isnt). The bad luck started rolling in; the famliy car I was going to use to get us down, a nice big people carrier decided to die on me, “sh1t” I have three weeks to find a car, not only that I now have to cycle to work with a dodgy calf every day, training was hard enough I didn’t want to have to ride a bike aswell! :-) Then the last week and on taper I started to get the horrible feeling I always get prior to a big race, cold/flu like symptoms but this time it wasn’t taper induced my lovely daughter decided to give me a cold, I doused myself with as much cold medicine as I could and slept as much as possible, luckily it didn’t get to my chest until after the event.

My original goal was to get 36hrs with an ideal of around 30, now it was to just complete.

Swim 2:35:51

My ironman times have been between 1:09 and 1:20 so I thought 2:40 would be a reasonably time to aim for. Normally I go off too fast and for the remainder of the swim I am constantly trying to recover, fortunately from the off I seemed to find a nice relaxed rhythm which stayed for the entire swim. I hit a low point when a surge of cold water entered down the back of my wetsuit. I suffer terribly with the cold and often find that once I get cold I really struggle to get warm again. I remembered eddies advice from the briefing, if you get cold just push through which I did by having a pee to warm me up.

My crew were fantastic always there keeping an eye on me sat on the first pontoon from the swim start, I kept an eye on them to make sure they were still cheering me on and hadn't got bored already and I even managed a smile or a wave at them with each lap.

Cold set in again and my mind was desperate to ask how many laps I had left to go, I made it a couple more laps until I could wait no longer, I was convinced it was over halfway….it wasnt and I remember thinking to myself that that wasn’t a smart move.

The rest was just a dull blur until I what I thought was still three laps remaining they called out the last lap. What a wonderful feeling.

I took my time getting out having a chat with my crew as I walked up to the change tent, I was in no hurry because I knew I would not be able to eat anything despite being hungry because I was uncontrollably shaking by this point, once I was sat down and dried off I was able to eat the freshly cooked and still warm scrambled and bacon wrap yum. I was ready for the bike leg.

Bike 14:05:38

I took both my TT bike and my Road bike. My plan was to use the TT for as long as I could bare it and then switch over to the much comfier road bike for the remainder. I also use tubs on the TT bike and I have no idea what I am doing when it comes to mechanics, any issues and it would have been a swap rather than fiddling and making the situation worse.

I walked out of transition to the turning point to find all my crew with tshirts of me printed on them and a banner….an amazing boost!

At the start I decided to just go with the flow and go at what felt like a comfy pace but to take it easy up the hills. I had only been on the TT bike outside once just a week prior to the event to make sure the bike needed nothing fixing, it felt so good on the road it was a joy to just be riding!

The second or third lap I seen a guy that had had an accident, he didn’t look happy at all (unsurprisingly) and then he told me he couldn’t see! I stopped but he insisted I carried on after I made sure he had called Eddie to be picked up.

I purposely tried not to look at my watch, it was going to be a long enough day. The only time I looked was when I came in to see the crew to see how long each lap was taking this would allow me to consider how much food and water I should be taking on (my crew was new to this so I was giving the orders). After approximately 80 miles in I was still averaging 18mph, at this point I decided it was about time to start sticking to my original plan of 15/16mph before I blew my legs. I just couldnt go that slow I was finding the combination of the rolling roads and TT so enjoyable I only slowed down a little.

Not long afterwards I bumped into Grom so I introduced myself and we chatted for a while. Grom gave an invaluable tip which was to get as much of the bike done within daylight going slightly above what you should really be doing for this sort of distance to be able to cover as much as the bike leg in daylight. As soon as he mentioned it was like a light bulb switching on, it was so obvious! he may have even seen it in my face because soon afterwards he told me to get going which I did.

I didn’t really have a low point within this section apart from the obvious aches and pains of being in the aero position for as much of the 14 hours as I could handle, the rest again is a bit of a blur chatting to a few people asking how they are doing especially the triplers! I distinctly remember bumping into Claire a few times, each and every time she was smiling but I could tell she was having a hard time.

With only 4 or 5 laps remaining I was starting to get quite uncomfy but there was no point swapping bikes at this point, the light was fading I just wanted to get it done so I decided to start hammering the hills instead of spinning up them, after all I was not sure my calf injury would even let me complete a single lap which had always been on my mind. These last laps just felt better and better (maybe my memory is fading already!) especially coming into the turning circle, the applause and cheers were amazing.

Run 09:55:10

I took my time getting changed perhaps too long I was seizing up and I didn't want to get off that comfy chair, right it was time to get going, mind over body (it wouldn't be the last time I needed to say this).

As soon as I started running I knew my calf was going to be fine, whether or not it was the calf guards (which I don't normally wear nowadays) giving me a false impression I didn't care; the fact that both my legs were doing as they were told for the first time in 6 weeks was a great feeling. The laps were ticking off well and I still didn't really know what position I was in, I knew I was doing well and then I was told I was in 2nd place…”what!” I was thinking around 10th how can this be? I also knew T_C was somehow still behind me so I knew 2nd would soon be gone and there was still the matter of getting through a double marathon. I got back to my crew and asked them to find out how far back 4th place was, I remember thinking it would be fantastic to get a 3rd place and knowing how far back 4th was would allow me to pace correctly without hurting myself, I never did get the answer (or I dont remember getting told). Not long after I went over on my ankle twice on the same spot on two consecutive laps, I wasn't concentrating enough on the technical root section so I told myself off after the pain had subsided, took some ibuprofen and cocodomal to help with the pain and soon forgot all about it.

I think it was T_C’s second lap when he came thundering past me on the downhill section down towards the lake, I blinked and he was out of site. I just stuck to my plan to be as consistent as possible I started to get a real good rhythm running most of the lap including the hills the only walk section was the small section up towards the tennis courts and the section going up to the lodge.

It was just after a marathon distance that I hit the lowest point of the whole event I started getting really dizzy and couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, I decided to eat some ‘real’ food again and asked for a pot noodle. I walked as I ate it for a small section passed it back and collected it again when I returned. After two or three laps of this I felt so much better in fact the best I had felt for a while so I got cracking, that was all I needed.

With about 4 laps left I got chatting with T_C while we walked the hills it was great to finally speak to the legend, he kindly said that he was now just going for the finish and for me to take no risks in getting to the finish...a gent. The last lap of Enduroman you do it in reverse so that you get to high five everyone else still on the course, T_C asked to go over the penultimate start/finish line with me, as we did he put my hand in the air and told me I was a great athlete. What a compliment! That last lap in reverse was fantastic not only was I becoming a double ironman ……I won!

None if it would have been possible without my crew, they are 80% of the team effort that it takes to get someone across that finish line.

Thank you to everyone cheering me on throughout the day there are so many new faces it was difficult to take it all in, even without the win it would have gone down as one of the best events I have done, everyone is so welcoming its like an extended family

The goal for me on this event was to see just how far I could push my body and I was convinced that this would be my limit….unfortunately for my wife and family it isnt……..