Maybe if you need a bit of inspiration for doing
triathlon and then maybe working your way towards doing an Ironman then
take a look at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qMz0QwyqPw then surely this will give you
inspiration to reach goals that you thought you'd never reach.
Ironman South Africa didn't quite go as well as I wanted it to. I
thought that I'd done enough to get me round in my predicted time
because since my foot operation in March 2006 where I had done no
running from May 2005 to April 2006, my training up to race day was
400hrs, the swim training consisted of 200,000mtrs, bike was 3540 miles
and running was 87hrs.
Race day morning dawned, extremely windy with some cloud cover. On
getting to the swim start for my 2.4 mile swim, we were warned that
there was a strong under-tow on the return leg past the pier, which
didn't seem to affect me too badly but after my two lap swim I stood up
in 1hr 16min & thought ‘ that was a bit slow’. OK. I'll make it up on
the bike which was a three lap course totalling 112 miles. It was still
windy out on the bike course which hid the heat of the sun. I consumed
plenty of food and drink and eventually got off my bike 6hrs 19min later
so I hadn't made up any time – in fact I had lost even more. Things
were definitely not going to plan but I was still thinking positive
thoughts. I knew that my run training and races had been good leading
up to the race so I believed that I could do a good marathon. However,
all good plans seem to go to pot. After about half-way I just couldn't
keep the speed and was compelled to introduce more walking than running
which made it an incredibly long run. But I got to the finish line
after a 5hr 19min marathon.
In hindsight, I don't think that I had enough run training to get me
through an Ironman Marathon. However, I got the medal & the T-shirt so I
can call myself an IRONMAN.
Graham
Starmer
