On Saturday we completed the short drive from Manchester to Stafford and spent most of the day registering and setting up kit for the IronMan. The event has split transitions with Swim and T1 at Chasewater a good 30 min drive away from T2 and Run in central Stafford. We stayed overnight in the North Stafford Premier Inn (Hurricane) which was horribly hot.
Race day was a very early start with Alarm at 5.15 am and then a drive to the Chasewater car park and then a fair bit of waiting about for the rolling start swim. First start was around 7 am and I think I started towards 8 am very near the back with low expectations for my swim.
The water was fairly choppy which made it a bit more challenging than Foxlake and a long 1.2 miles more or less linear course. Felt pretty comfortable in the swim and was going faster than enough people to be confident I'd make the cut off. Clocked in with a time of 58:59 which I am pretty pleased with.
A few hundred metres run to transition and I took my time to dry properly and make sure I was well set up for a comfortable ride. It was cloudy enough to merit wearing a shower jacket for the first hour. Felt pretty good for the first half of the ride and average speed was above 16 mph for a while. After that it felt a bit more challenge with a degree of fatigue and a more uphill section into Cannock Chase. Once this was done a more general downward trend into Stafford and finished in decent shape in a time of 3:53:26 for the roughly 56 mile route.
T2 was a bit more straightforward and I was soon off on the run and a slow but steady pace. It was very nice run route mainly in the town centre with lots of support lining the route and lots of feed/water stations. Whilst it was never easy I was pretty comfortable running at a steady pace and just walking up the inclines to conserve energy. Got round in 2:25:38 which is a terrible half marathon time but very reasonably given what preceded and the sharp hills on the route.
Overall very pleased with the effort.
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