Ironman Mark

Since drafting this I heard that Tim Wilks died on the second lap of the run.   It really puts things into perspective.  I don’t think I have met Tim but I may well have passed him while he was still on his first lap.  I left the Bucklers Hard before I heard anything about it.  My best wishes to his family and friends as well as those (like Mrs Mash) who helped him.

As I said, this was written before I heard this…

Had a great race. Like everything else with Race New Forest, the weather was very well organised. My car said 26C on the way home! Summer is here!

Swim: there was quite a strong current while we were waiting for the start so I started swimming towards the far bank when the horn sounded and we were off, swimming straight into the sun. I followed the bubbles of the person in front of me but had absolutely no idea where I was going, the sun was so bright. I only spotted the turn around buoy about 30 metres away.

I took the swim easy on the way back. It felt like it took a quarter of the time to get back to the start of the lap. I pushed the effort up for the second out lap and took a tactical decision to follow someone towards the left rather than straight up the middle. Good decision. I started over taking people almost immediately on the second lap. Not sure if they started late but if they did start with us, they would have been in there a looooong time.

I stayed with him for most of the way to the turn around but I went a bit wrong trying to work out where the turn around buoy was and he got away.

Bike: Felt very under trained for the first lap as people bombed by me. The second lap was much better and only a few people went by. The forest is so wonderful to ride and we even got to go by the beach. There must have been some thirsty people out there as there were lots of bottles on the road (esp by the cattle grids).

Run: Hot, very hot. Did the first lap ok. Then pushed the effort up for the next three miles but went too hard. I eased off a bit and then lost quite a bit of time in the last two miles. I’d got very thirsty and was looking forward to an aid station at the run/bike junction but it wasn’t there on the second lap! I ran to the next one and drank two cups of water too quickly and so felt a little sick and slowed a lot. Mrs Mash took the mick out of my running yet again.

No idea of the time yet. Didn’t start my watch until I got to Beaulieu.

Definitely recommend it for next year.