TravTri: IRONMAN SOUTH AFRICA HELD ON 29 MARCH 2015 – GETTING TO THE STARTLINE OF #IMSA

Every athlete that makes it to the starting line of an endurance event has made many sacrifices and commitments to get there. More often than not it is the support of our family and friends that enable us to experience this sport in the way we do.

There are always obstacles and challenges involved in training for an Iron distance triathlon. Injuries or sickness can get in the way of consistent training weeks. Situations at work can lead to excessive travel or overtime being worked. I thus salute each and every participant who I took part with on Sunday.

Just finishing a short swim 3 days prior to IMSA

The last time I did a full Ironman event was on the 10^th of July 2011 being Ironman Switzerland held in Zurich. It would thus nearly be four years since I did my last long distance triathlon event.

From a triathlon perspective 2012 saw me focusing on completing two 70.3 races in Florida, U.S.A (Haines City and Miami). Early 2013 my son Jordan was born. I thus decided to focus on the Olympic distance during that year and competed in both Island Games (held in Bermuda) and USAT Age Group Champs (Milwaukee, Wisconsin). During December 2013 my wife, son and I relocated back to South Africa after spending six amazing years in the Cayman Islands (Caribbean).

My son Jordan born on my birthday in 2013

I totally underestimated (from various perspectives) how demanding the move back to South Africa would be. From a work perspective I found myself working long hours from Jan – Aug 2014. Logistically I was travelling a great deal which meant little time for quality training.

Whilst watching the streaming broadcast of the Ironman World Champs (4 October 2014) I decided that I needed to make a concerted effort to get fit again. I was borderline sedentary (at least from my perspective) and 7kg overweight. By end of day 4 October 2014 I had signed up for what would be my second attempt at Ironman South Africa. I knew the journey would be an exciting one as I had something to prove. I completed my first full Ironman in South Africa during 2009. That day in 2009 did not go quite as expected as it was extremely hot during the run leg (afternoon) and I suffered from severe GI distress issues. I hobbled over the finish line in a time of 11:37 after doing a 4h40min run/walk effort in the marathon. I always knew after that day that I would come back to do the course again and run the marathon under four hours.

For those of you not familiar with the Ironman South Africa course, changes were made to the swim course and more significant changes made to bike course during 2013 (for the 10^th anniversary of the event). It meant that the swim now became one large 3.8km lap instead of a two lap swim as it was in the past. The most significant change was to the bike course changing it from a 3 x 60km course to a 2 x 90km course. That change to the bike course meant that there were many more hills introduced taking the total ascent of the bike course to +- 1,650m over the 180km course. For those of you thus taking a look at bike splits and thinking they are on average slower than other Ironman courses, well then you are right.

Hanging the bike and run bags prior to race day

The bike course (more on that later) is a challenging one due to three factors:

· 1. Port Elizabeth is known as the friendly city but also the windy city. If the easterly wind blows it means that one faces a head-on wind for 50% of the bike course (all the way from Maitland mouth and back to Hobie beach).

· 2. Most of the roads that make up the 90km lap needs to be resurfaced. The road surface is very rough and uneven in places making for a bumpy ride. To further move IMSA forward I truly believe that Standard Bank as the main sponsor of the event, the race organizing committee and Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality would need to work together to improve the road for future races in order to continue drawing the international triathlon community to the event. Cities like Cape Town and Durban would give their front teeth to host a race like Ironman South Africa.

· 3. As mentioned above, the bike course has many hills (some being rather steep) resulting in total ascent of +-1,650m.

These three factors makes the bike course tough. As usual, some of the male pros went well under 5 hours for the bike course whilst other just managed to break the 5h mark. All in all only 19 male pros were able to break the 5h barrier for the bike course.

Ok, one thing that counts in one’s favour is that the bike course is actually 177km and not 180km.

RACE MORNING

Moments before the start of Ironman South Africa 2015

Race day started at around 3:50am. I had a fairly good night of sleep except for waking up around 2am, soon to realize that the start of race day is fast approaching. It was great to have my Mom flying down from Pretoria for a couple of days to support me for the race. It meant that Jana could walk down to the race start with Jordan a bit later whilst my Mom could assist me with my usual race morning routine.

Race morning is always a bit of a rush. 4 – 5am was spent eating breakfast, attaching timing chip and getting race day hydration and nutrition together. I got to the transition zone at 5:15am. I could hand a couple of items to my Mom to hold onto whilst I entered transition. I topped up my tyre pressure and did final checks on my swim, bike and run equipment.

Around 5:45am I headed over to the swim bag area and handed in my post race gear.

Around 6am I was ready to zip up my tri-suit. Nothing ever goes perfect on race day and was about to experience my first issue of the day. My zip got totally stuck at the bottom of the suit as it had done a couple of times before. I desperately tried fixing the zip and pulled it so hard that I cut both my index fingers. Like any other part of race day, one has to focus whilst in that moment. My Mom tried to help me as well but eventually I was just like “Oh well, I can zip up my wetsuit and luckily had a bike jersey which I could zip up on the bike”. It meant that I would be running with an open chest during the run which help cooling down anyway.

Around 6:15am I quickly entered the water to get my body use to the sea temperature which was around 19 – 20 degrees Celsius.

6:20am we all had to enter the start chute as the PRO Men set off at 6:30am whilst the PRO Women started at 6:33am.

One of the most glorious and magnificent parts of Ironman South Africa (and being South African) is singing and hearing the anthem whilst standing on Hobie beach. There are usually two choppers in the sky, the sun is rising over the sea and thousands of people standing jam packed on the pier. All of these factors contribute to an incredible atmosphere.

Around 6:35am I found myself lined up right in front on the start line with at least a thousand people behind me. Being a strong swimmer I always try and take the best line to the first buoy. This also means that I surround myself with generally quite aggressive guys gunning for Kona slots.

At 6:45am the start gun goes off. Ready steady GO!!!