Author: Buck

I have been spending my last day off wisely reading through the works of the master, Alan Moore. In particular ‘The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ (a wonderful collage of  fin-de-siecle fictional characters) whence upon I perused this missive and reply;

Dear Sirs-

Last post on this, promise. And I’ll make it brief.

I have some images to show for my ordeal. Unfortunately they are not very good. They seem to show me being really slow, and in the case of exiting the swim, totally shell-shocked. Which is mainly because they are accurate.  Damn!

…And that makes us mighty.”

Nine months ago, when I first discovered there was such a thing as an Ironman, I used that quote (from Mel, in Firefly) to express what I thought it would be like to have completed one. Nine months. Didn’t realize it was that quick.

I know, I’ve already covered it; it was stupidly hilly, uneven underfoot, hotter than a chilli in a microwave, and we  had to ford a stream, so ran the last eight or so kilometres with soaked, very heavy feet.

Now though, I have the race statistics!

I said it was tough, here’s how tough: there were 610 people started the race, only 383 finished it!  My time, which for a flat, road race would have been lamentable at 4.09:25, was good enough to put me 85th on the day. Which was 28th in my age category (Male, 40-50). These are things that please me. As did outlasting a guy with a ‘100 Marathons Club’ T-shirt on. Hehehe. He was good most of the way around but I had him (ooo-er, Mrs!) in the last 6k.   

I said in my last post that the swim was the thing that was really worrying me. The estimated time at the pace I was doing was 2.01, when I only had 2.15 to swim, change, and be out riding. Also that I was concerned I would fade, and be even slower over the last mile. I said I was going to try to get a 2 hour swim session in on Friday evening.

This I did. I was, as ever, a bit late so I didn’t get swimming till eight minutes past eight. This was a concern as I thought I would need at least 1.53, possibly the full two hours. Not drinking has advantages though. Being a Friday night when I got into the pool it was empty! Presumably everyone else was busy drinking/ having a life. This meant I could put my head down and swim without having to constantly check that I wasn’t about to punch someone in the face (they are not understanding about it. Me, me, me!)

I used my new-fangled ring-watch-lap-counter jobby to accurately count the lengths. At 40 lengths (a smidge over 1.2 miles, or half distance) it was only 9 o’clock! Go me! I set to with a will, found a decent rhythm and carried on. I was worried that I would tire and run out of time before I’d done the second half. Cracked on and did the full 2.1 miles in 1.43!