Sunday June 14th – Wimbleball Lake, Exmoor

(1.2 miles, 56 miles, 13.1 miles)

Gary Chapman

985 starters
899 finishers (20 missed swim cut off and another 66 stopped on bike/run)

Swim: 00:43:53 724th
Transition 1: 00:06:52 535th
Bike 03:18:00 296th
Transition 2 00:01:54 356th
Run 01:41:34 116th

Overall: 05:52:11 242nd

This is one of those events that if anybody has some time to train for then it will never be forgotten and not just due to the pain. It is on an
enormous scale with fantastic organisation. Down on Exmoor, they set up a large tented village for 4 days and it is a real fantastic atmosphere. As everybody has to register and put bikes into transition by Saturday afternoon, they all have to stay in area. The venue is perfect as they can set up huge campsites around the lake with temporary facilities whilst others choose the many bed & breakfasts in the area.

Race day is up at 4am as they start blaring out music on the Commentators sound system. Whilst there are a lot of bleary eyed people getting out of tents, you can see everybody trying to focus on the 6am start and the pain to come. We all had to gather at 5.40am in transition area prior to 6am start but unfortunately the lake was shrouded in mist. It was a perfect day with blue skies and the sun rising so it looked spectacular but the mist that was laying on the water meant that you could not see the marker buoys to swim around. It meant a 75 minute delay just to nicely top up the nerves.

The swim start was manic and despite doing some previous triathlons, nothing prepared me for 1000 people going off from same point (you can look it up on You Tube). I must have been hit or kicked on at least 400 occasions due to the close proximity of flailing arms and legs including what felt like a hefty right hook to my nose and goggles.Even when you spread out, it makes little difference not least as to go around the buoys everybody cuts in so close that we were all on top of each other again.

At Transition 1, you have to run about 400 metres uphill from the water on a grass surface whilst trying to start process of removing wetsuit. However this was where Ironman organisation came into its own as at the tents, they had teams of volunteers stripping wetsuits from you, helping you to change into your bike gear and then packing away your wetsuits. The lead athlete did it in about 2 minutes which was staggering to run 400m, escape from wetsuit and get into bike gear.

The bike stage is known as the toughest on the World Ironman circuit as there are 52 hills within the 56 mile route. The first half was actually
fairly quick and I hit 43 mph in a few places but the second half had 3 nasty hills as well as many short sharp inclines. There are two laps of
circuit but having realised that hills were not as bad as I feared (training in Pennines has its benefits !!), I managed to push on. Unfortunately I punctured with 5 miles to go but after quick stop realised that as slow puncture, I would risk it and managed to get back before tyre was completely flat. Again, the organisation and marshalling was superb throughout the bike course. The drinks stations (4 of them) provided two
cycle bottles at every stop plus Power Bars etc so no excuse for not keeping some energy levels up.

Mentally the toughest bit was to come though as the half marathon had about 3000 feet in ascent in the 3 laps. It was very twisty and mostly off road on tracks so underfoot it was uneven and constant up and down. The course is designed so it twists around the start/finish area and goes back on itself so that a keen spectator could probably see the same runner upto 5 times per lap. As the many friends/family of competitors were based in this area, it made for a great atmosphere. The race was all conducted by Wimbleball Lake not that we were able to appreciate the views by that stage. With 3 laps to be run, it meant that many of competitors were on course at same time but at different stages with new runners feeding in all the time as they got off their bikes. As the race had started 75 mins late, it was now after midday on the run and with a cloudless sky and 25 degrees, it was pretty difficult. However, it makes a massive difference when your strongest of the three disciplines comes last so once the top athletes had finished, it was very motivational to be overtaking people as
the majority of people were doing over two hours. Again the drinks and feed stations were very plentiful as there were 9 on the half marathon all with energy drinks, water, bananas, gels, power bars.

It was a fantastic feeling to finally hit the finishing line and my first thought was that I would be back next year to what is an amazing event for
both competitors and spectators. I just have to do a bit more training to see if I can go the whole way and do a full one.

The winner did it in about 4 hrs 15 mins and some of the world’s top male and female triathletes competed. Channel 4 were filming it so it will be on TV soon. There was certainly an international field as there were Yanks, Russians, Aussies, Kiwi’s and various Euro nationalities there.