IRONMAN AUSTRIA 2006

OR:

WHAT I DID ON MY HOLIDAYS

If you're a runner, you'll probably want to do a marathon at least once, or you'll always wonder how you'd have measured up. As a triathlete, the equivalent is Ironman. A number of Ironman races are run annually, in various locations worldwide; what they have in common is the distances, which are a bit eccentric, but based in the origins of the sport of triathlon: 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and a marathon to finish with. Roughly speaking, it's the equivalent of jumping in the canal by the Anchor at High Offley and swimming to Norbury, jumping onto a bike there and cycling to Oxford, then running down the hard shoulder of the M40 to High Wycombe. It took me a couple of years to get the courage up, but having done a couple of half-Ironman races I realised there are no bragging rights in doing half-anything, and so I entered Ironman Austria 2006.

Training was based around commuting to Birmingham and back by bike once a week. This makes for an early start, but after the clocks have gone forward it's actually a nice way to start and end your day (it does take a bit more resolution when it's dark, wet and cold). That plus a 4km swim once a week was the backbone of the training, although obviously there was more as well. There should have been a weekly long run, but a long-standing injury niggle limited the run training severely. All told, over a ten-month period I've averaged about eight hours a week training, up to twelve on a good week.

The race, on 16 July, was based on Lake Worthersee, in southern Austria, and there can't be many race locations as beautiful. The lake is an amazing emerald green, averages around 25 degrees centigrade in July, and is surrounded by Alpine foothills (like our Lake District, but not raining). I'd entered with my friend Lawrence, and of course Sarah came too, to spectate and lend wifely support (and to try and pretend she was getting a holiday this summer). We arrived a week beforehand.

Austria was having the same heatwave as most of the rest of Europe. Temperatures were consistently in the low- to mid-30s, and staying well hydrated was a constant battle even in the days leading up to the race, let alone when racing.

Race-day began around 4.00 a.m. – not that that made much difference to anything, as pre-race nerves made sure there wasn't much sleep going on. First job was to start cramming in carbohydrates, and believe me a large Austrian sweet pastry is the last thing you want when you've just rolled out of bed at 4.00 a.m. The same applies to chasing it down with a litre and a half of energy drink, and a bread roll with some jam.

We drove down to the lake for about 5.15, messed around with final preparations, queued for the loo, watched the sun come up, and squinted out into the lake trying to see the buoy which marked the turning-point of the swim. Seemed a long way off. There was already an incredible number of spectators by the lakeside. Fifteen minutes before the race start I downed an energy gel (nasty sugary goo), and got my wetsuit on. Start time was 7.00 a.m.

Swim

Most triathlons divide the competitors into a number of waves, each starting a few minutes apart. However, the World Triathlon Corporation, who organise all Ironman events, insist on the spectacle of a mass start, with all competitors going off at once. Until you've seen 2200 swimmers start a race all at the same time, it's pretty hard to imagine. With everyone in wetsuits, it's something like an enormous school of seals, but with arms flailing and turning the water white.

Inevitably people are going to get in each other's way, especially at the start, though with that number of swimmers there was a bit of rough stuff most of the way round. There was only the one occasion when I felt a hand arrive firmly between my shoulder-blades and deliberately push me under, but elbows and feet kept appearing all the time. I gave as good as I got. An unexpected discomfort came while swimming for a while with a guy on my right, the side to which I breathe, who was breathing to his left: he had terrible garlic breath.

Seeing where you're going can be tricky in an open-water swim: unlike a pool, a lake has no black line to follow on the bottom. Swimmers of my standard have plenty of people to follow, though, and I managed to sight pretty well, despite swimming into the sun on the way back to shore. The final 800m of the swim is pretty special in Ironman Austria, as the route goes up a canal. Although the bunch is quite well strung out by that time, you've still got a lot of swimmers trying to funnel into a 4m wide canal, and it was beginning to look more like a WWF wrestling bout than a swim. I was out of the water after 1hr 20 mins, bang on schedule, so pleased with my swim.

Bike

Out on the bike for two laps of a large figure-of-eight course, with the temperature beginning to rise. You don't actually feel it that much on the bike, being air-cooled, but you need to be drinking constantly, as well as getting some food in. Nutrition is, as the cliché goes, the fourth discipline, and if you don't get it right in a race of that length you're just going to fall over. I had some food in a pack on the bike, numerous energy gels crammed into pockets, and bottles of energy drink and water on the bike. Plus there were aid stations every 15km, where you could pick up bottles, gels, and other food. My nutrition plan had been neatly copied out and was taped to the handlebars, so I wouldn't forget it when fatigued.

The bike is my strongest discipline, and usually I spend the bike leg working my way up the field. This was different, though, as I needed to do a very conservatively-paced bike if I was to manage the run OK. If it was just a matter of racing over 112 miles on the bike, I'd expect to get round in about five hours; for this event, I was aiming for six, or an average 30 kph.

Even so, I wasn't sure I was going to manage that as comfortably as I wanted. Some Ironman courses are mountainous, some are almost completely flat, and this was somewhere in between. Over 112 miles, 1660m of height gain isn't all that much, but it's still a vertical mile when all's said and done – or about one-fifth of Everest, to think of it in another way.

So I was very happy to be averaging 31 kph at the end of the first lap, heading for something like 5.50 for the bike leg. I was enjoying the day a huge amount at this stage; the swim had been fun, and the mountain scenery on the bike was spectacular. There were spectators all round the course, cheering and banging things together, and on the main climbs we were riding through crowds of them – the atmosphere was incredibly exciting. In most villages, they'd set up a shaded spot to gather and watch the race, and maybe have a barbecue, and in several they'd set up a sound system, so there was noisy support most of the way.

All was going well until about 85 miles in. I was climbing a hill out of the saddle, when there was a loud crack, followed by a nasty scraping sound. I knew without looking what had happened: a spoke in the rear wheel had broken. These are specialist race wheels with carbon rims and not many spokes, and everything is under a lot of tension. So when a spoke goes, the wheel is pulled seriously out of shape. It was now rubbing on the brakes as it revolved; I released the brakes, and found that it was also rubbing on the bike-frame. Bad news.

This was potentially a race-ending problem, and the obvious thing to do would have been to limp to the next aid station, withdraw from the race, and wait to be taken back to the start. I couldn't bear to pull out now, though – and the Ironman spirit says you finish no matter what. So I carried on. With the tyre rubbing on the frame, it was a matter of time before it blew out, and I was lucky it lasted as long as it did. I rode the last 25 miles on a flat, and with the wheel grinding against the frame at every revolution. It was a pretty grim last couple of hours, and obviously there was no question now of completing the race on schedule; the only brighter moment was when a Mexican competitor came past me with a just a few miles left, and (seeing my name on my race number) said “You are my hero, Mark”.

From having been on schedule to do the bike in 5.50, I eventually finished it in 6.30, so it cost me 40 minutes. In the circumstances, I thought I'd limited my losses OK.

Run

I started out on the run 8 hours and 4 minutes into the race. Four minutes after that, the winner was finishing – glad I didn't know that at the time. I'd stuck to the nutrition plan faithfully up to that point, and it was working well in the sense that I was adequately hydrated, and wasn't running out of energy. However, the constant onslaught of sugary carbohydrate had left me feeling bloated and gassy, and the discomfort didn't leave me until well into the second half of the run.

Part of the mental challenge of the race is that while you have to maintain the patience, discipline and concentration to stick to what you've planned, you also have to have the realism and flexibility to change if you have a problem. So I threw out the remaining gels, and started taking on small amounts of solid food (bananas, dry bread) from the aid stations, as well as sticking to the plan as regards plenty of water, cola and energy drink. Definitely the right thing to do, and if I ever did another one I'd be looking to have some ‘real' food on the bike as well.

The run course was flat as a pancake, at least, and shaded in parts. The heat was punishing, though, as it was now mid-afternoon. There were plenty of sponges at the aid-stations, and I was squeezing water over my head all the time. Again, the support along the course was amazing, and in particular there were lots of family groups outside their front gardens; at quite a few, a child had been equipped with a hose and given free rein to spray it at the runners as they went past. Bliss.

I didn't have enough run training in my legs, and it had always been a bit of a gamble as to what might happen on the run. I started fairly well, but after the first 5k I went to my fallback plan of switching between running and walking. Five minutes walk, five minutes run. If you're doing a slow jog at best, you don't actually lose that much time, and it's a good way of eking out whatever strength you've got. My guess is that I walked about half the distance, and of the competitors at my end of the field, it looked like I was walking less than most. Marathons are hard anyway, and coming at the end of an Ironman, it finishes off a very long, hard day. It took more and more willpower to get running again, at the end of each walking spell, and there was also the battle against the temptation, ever-present with a multi-lap course, to call it a day at the end of each lap.

But Ironman is all about finishing, however much your race schedule is blown. I'd come too far by then to contemplate quitting, and it was a sweet feeling to run down the finishing chute, high-fiving spectators and punching the air as I crossed the line. I finished in 13.18.34. My target had been 12 hours, but the time really doesn't matter.

Lawrence did rather better, having a fast swim (57 minutes), though I'd have almost caught him on the bike if not for the broken spoke. He ran almost all of the marathon, as well, and finished in 12.08.15.

Would I do it again? Probably not. First of all, the training commitment requires you to be pretty selfish over a number of months. My eight hours a week average wasn't enough, and I really don't see how I could have fitted in much more. Mainly, though, it's such an extreme event, and beats you up to a huge extent. Early in the final lap of the run, I was thinking about how it would feel to finish, and began to well up; I thought for a while I might end up crossing the finish line in tears, and it wasn't anything to do with emotion, it was just fatigue. I train and race with a heart-rate monitor, which is set up to make an educated guess as to calorie use; the estimated usage over the whole race was 8565, compared to 2500 for an average day. After the event, competitors were dropping like flies, and being hauled off to the first aid tent to spend an hour on a saline drip (Lawrence included).

But the fascination of the event is really that it's mainly a mental challenge. Obviously physical fitness and endurance are essential, but they're not enough on their own, and you won't even develop them if you don't have the right mental approach throughout the months of training, just as you won't finish the event without it. You have to be highly planned, but also adaptable; commit to doing the key training sessions, but don't panic when sessions get missed or things go off-course; be patient if you pick up training injuries; and learn to work with what you've got instead of what you'd ideally like to have, given that no-one ever has exactly the preparation they planned to have.

Another cliché, but you really do learn some stuff about yourself that you didn't know before, and it's only having done it that you really know what the announcer means when you cross the line and he says, as he does for every finisher, “Mark, you are an Ironman!”