On the 18th July the alarm clock went off way too early! After grabbing some food and a coffee we headed down the autobahn to Hilpoltstein, the start of the Challenge Roth Ironman distance race. As we turned up at T1, where we'd racked the bikes the night previously, the PA system was already blaring out cheesy europop, and thousands of sleepwalking triathletes were putting the finishing touches to their race preparation. As the elite start time approached, most of the competitors headed down to the start to cheer them off. Each wave was started with a piece of music specially composed, quite nice the first time, but by the thirteenth wave it was beyond annoying! The advantage of being in a later wave was that we got to see the elites coming out of the water and zipping through transition at something approaching the speed of light.

When it came to my turn to start, we were let into the canal with a couple of minutes to warm up before the start music played, the gun sounded, and we were off. Despite only being a wave of 200 people, the first half of the swim was a bit of a fight. The 3.8km swim was in a large canal, and you could see the first turn-around point from the start, although for ages it seemed to be moving away as fast as I was swimming towards it. After the turn-around, the swim was a bit quieter, and I was able to get into a bit of a rhythm heading down towards the second turn, which again seemed to take ages to get any closer. After the second turn, it was only a short distance to the swim exit, and I hit land after 1:20, which I was pleased with, especially as it had seemed much longer when I was doing it.

Heading through transition, I grabbed my kit bag from the rows where they were all laid out in order, swapped the wetsuit for a cycling top and collected my bike. The bike course was an undulating two-lapper, with another 10k to get to T2, which was separate from T1. I started the 180km ride knowing that my aim was to take it easy, and make sure that I ate plenty. I'd equipped myself with flapjacks and Eccles cakes, as well as the more traditional energy gels, much to the amusement of some of my fellow competitors. The first half of each lap was with the wind, and it felt great being pushed along. Of course this mean that the second half was more of a challenge, so it was a case of getting into a good aero position and not getting too depressed when the speedometer showed the average speed falling away. On my first lap I got lapped by a few of the elite riders, including Chrissie Wellington who was having a bit of a battle with one of the men.

Along the course, at every village, people had set out benches beside the road and were drinking beer and making supportive noise with whatever they had to hand; an air-raid siren, vuvuzelas, dustbin lids as well as the more traditional rattles and cow bells. On the two main climbs, there were even more crowds, and the Solarer Berg felt like the Tour de France mountain stages as the crowds pressed in and cheered.

As T2 approached, I looked at my watch and saw that I'd taken 5:40 for the bike, which left me about 3:55 for the marathon to get under 11 hours. Surely I could do that, I hadn't run a marathon that slowly in years! I handed my bike to the helpers, put on my running kit and flew out of transition. After 100m or so a fellow competitor yelled at me to slow down, he had a point as I was doing the sort of pace I'd normally do in a sprint tri! I eased down to my target pace and settled into counting down the kilometres left to go. With 14km done, I congratulated myself on having got a third of it done, and started wondering whether I could get a new marathon PB. Suddenly, a short stretch of uphill knocked me off my stride, and I decided to walk up the 100m slope. As soon as I started running again, I realised I'd lost my rhythm, and just couldn't get back to the speed I'd been running at before. Things got worse from there, and I found myself having to walk longer and longer stretches, and the running was getting slower. At about 30km I realised that if I was going to get under 11 hours, I was going to need to jog the remainder of the course. The resolution lasted for a couple of kilometres, but then disappeared, and even the possibility of keeping my marathon under 4 hours wasn't enough to keep me going. Eventually I stumbled up to the 40km sign, and knew that there was only 2,195m to go, and that I was going to finish. I broke into a jog, and even managed a bit of a sprint finish over the last 200m. Where had all that energy been when I needed it?

Overall I finished in 11:10:31, with a marathon of 4:06. Looking back, I'm pleased with that time, but I do wonder if I could have gone under 11 hours, I probably should have used more energy gels in the early part of the run, as I just seemed to run out of energy. All in all though, I had a great day and enjoyed the race which was exceptionally well organised. I'll never do that again, but if I do, I reckon I could knock a bit of time off that marathon!