Previous races - Ironman Lanzarote part 1 - the faffing

Note: I'm going to use this blog as a place to store my previous race reports - some of these went out on social media and may well be lost or unfindable, so having them in a central place that I can point people at is useful.

Ironman Lanzarote race report part 1

5:30am the alarm went off, and I think my biggest thought was “Why am I here?”. I’d been out in Lanzarote since Tuesday, and it still wasn’t real - I’d never raced abroad before, and never a race with this reputation. There’s always a “I’m not ready for this” before an iron distance race, but this was a “I’ll never be ready for this”. This was Ironman Lanzarote.

Lanzarote seemed to have a mythical reputation amongst those I knew or had read about who had done it. Its the same Ironman distance - 2.6 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and a marathon run to finish. I’d been told that the swim was flat apart from the waves, the bike wasn’t, and that the run could be a bit warm. I’d never done a proper sea swim in my life other than splashing around on holiday, and my strength (such as it was) was in my running rather than my cycling. Of course, you had to get to the run in the first place before that would help.

The preparation

The preparation before hadn’t been great - I had planned to do the conventional 30-weeks training program, knowing that I needed to get my fitness level up to a far higher place than it had been before to have a chance at getting round. 30 weeks before Lanzarote I had just got out of hospital after a week’s visit for pneumonia, and just discovered that all the coughing before I was admitted to hospital had popped a hernia. So what with one thing or another training didn’t start until well into January, and somewhat nervously. After that had come a couple of good races (running, as that was the bit I could do - probably should have done more swimming and biking in there somewhere!), but then a DNF at Manchester Marathon, which I could have done without. If I couldn’t do a marathon on its own, I didn’t stand much chance of doing one after the Lanza bike. Still, at least it would be warmer than Manchester (it was).

On arriving in Lanzarote that week, you realise quite how much the whole island supports this event, and how big it is. Even on the Tuesday, there were bike boxes pouring off the carousels at the  airport, all with lots of labels showing previous triathlon destinations. I grabbed my hired one, whose only label said “fragile”. Less so the bike than its owner, at that point. Off to the hire car, an the next challenge - how you put the back seat down in a Citroen Cactus to get the bike box in. Sorted that, manual driver, wrong side, hotel. That at least was something I’d done a lot before.

I was staying in the same hotel as most of the pirate gang, but I’d wanted to get there a few days before the event - either to acclimatise or panic, I wasn’t sure. I spent most of the rest of Tuesday and some of Wednesday wandering around in a bit of a daze. I took a look at the swim route - two laps of a rectangular course marked out by buoys. From the shore, it didn’t look that bad. They were running practice sessions every morning that week, at what felt like the early hour of 8am, so I thought I’d better try one, and went down on Thursday morning.

Living in Rutland, the opportunities for sea swimming are limited. If you are a cold water wuss like me, and your race is at the end of May, then your opportunity for any sort of open water session is fairly limited. So I hadn’t been looking forward to the swim. I’d done one sea swim triathlon, a short distance back the previous September, but that was it. I fought my way round one lap of the course, and my time from the first buoy to the end was 50 minutes. An hour for the lap. Cutoff for the two lap swim distance on the day was two hours. I was starting to wonder whether I’d get as far as the bike.

Speaking of the bike, it was time to get that set up and put back together again - dismantling the bike to get it in its bike box was another part of the learning curve. I managed it, and took it out for a ride. After a while, I realised that I’d have more chance making it round the course if the handlebars were straight, and went back to fix it. Other than that, it seemed to have survived the trip OK. I got back to the hotel to hear a pirate cursing - not in itself that unusual, but the phrase “rear mech” was coming up a lot. I guessed I’d been lucky. 

Briefing and registration was the other side of the island. The registration process included taking my weight - I was told that was to check whether I was dehydrated or not if I needed an ambulance. That wasn’t helping either. I got my rucksack, tried to ignore the gazelle-level athletes all around me, and headed back out.

The friends with me took the opportunity to show me some of the bike course on the way back to the hotel. I had guessed that I might not be sightseeing on the day, so I took the chance to look around - I could see why this was so special. It wasn’t beautiful as such - black lava rock formations don’t often get that tag - but it was amazing. And hot. And windy.

When I’d heard about the Lanzarote bike course, I’d been told about hot and hilly. I’d managed to space on the “windy”. It was becoming rather apparent that I’d missed an important bit out there. On the Thursday and Friday Lanzarote was getting over a storm that had passed, and the wind was singing in the spokes when I took my bike out for the test. Some helpful person posted a video of them holding their bike by the crossbar and watching it blow out to 45 degrees like a sail. That wasn’t helping either.

Friday was faffing day - get the transition bags sorted and rack the bike. Against the other bikes there, I felt as if I’d driven my hired Citroen Cactus into a Mercedes dealership. Still, its what you do with it, not what you’ve got, I thought. I looked around at the ridiculously fit people on either side. Bugger.