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Nothing is ever easy is it? Sitting in A&E in Arrecife hospital last Monday, I was thinking I’d not even be starting the race the following Saturday, much less be missing the swim cut-off again.
We’ll come back to that in a little while.
Ironman Lanzarote 2018. By Magnus Jonsson May 30. (4 slots in the age group 50-54) – I didn’t collect it as I already have a slot from Ironman Los Cabos. Hero Text Instructions. This copy should match the race card. Both are managed by Webmasters. Please submit your updated sponsors, titles, and dates to them. Text Block Subtitle (Centered): IRONMAN 70.3 Sponsored by Title Sponsor Name Here.
So arriving in Lanzarote last Thursday after a less than ideal training block, a harsh British winter meaning that a lot of my bike training was done indoors and an eye infection meaning I’d only been back in the pool for the previous 6 weeks. I’d maybe only done four or five open water swims too, the first of which was only last month and done in a lake with a water temperature of just 7.4°. Running had been ok, but a bout of flu ruled me out of the Sheffield Half Marathon in early April and then another cold and sore throat had been hanging around after that, right up until arriving in Lanzarote. Not the best of starts to race week, but we’re here, so let’s get cracked on.
Friday I went out to recce the early part of the bike route. Our hotel was just down from the Toro restaurant, just past which you turn on to the donkey track for the first climb of the bike course, all the way up to Conil and La Geria. It was a bit of a stiff one, and made me realise how little hill training I’d done this year, but the HIIT intervals I’d been doing on the turbo seemed to have kept me honest. Spinning up with the occasional grind up a steeper ramp was doable for 15km, but could I keep that going for another 160km+? We’d soon find out.
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It wasn’t the climbing that was the major issue though, as the descent from La Geria to Uga, while being ridiculously fast, was also seriously windy, and I found myself holding on for grim death as the crosswinds were doing their best to have me off the road and into the lava fields. I was so happy I’d fetched shallow rims as anything deeper would’ve made my bike almost uncontrollable. How the pros do it on 60mm fronts and disc rears I have no idea. So I span out to Yaiza and came back via the camel roundabout and Puerto Calero before landing back at the hotel and wondering again if I’d done enough to tackle this course.
The following day I did the Sailfish Lanzarote Open Water swim race. Just did the single 1.9km option and not the 3.8km this year. There was another option for proper nutters, who took on a 5km swim. Kudos to them, that’s some going. Especially those who were doing that distance AND the Ironman the following week! So I made it round in 48 minutes, which I was happy with, despite my inner chimp doing it’s damndest to convince me that I’d missed the 1hr cut-off. Everything seemed to be going well, I had a nice run on Saturday afternoon and was looking forward to some more hills on the bike on Sunday. However…
Sunday came and it was cloudy. Christine suggested we go and drive round the bike route. We’d been to Lanzarote so many times and never really seen anything other than PdC and Arrecife, so off we went. I wish we hadn’t. It gave me nightmares. Up until Haría, there was nothing that gave me any cause for concern, but the hairpin up to the windmills and then that little ramp halfway up Mirador del Rio kept me awake for the next couple of nights. Once again my inner chimp was doing its best to derail my strongest discipline, and even though I hadn’t done the hill work, I should’ve had more belief in myself, but I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. After we returned back from the sightseeing tour from hell, I nipped out in the bike to recce the last few kms of the course and do some flatter riding, pushing a big gear into the wind. And that wind, again, was a beast. There’s no accounting for how it seems to be everywhere all at once, headwind and crosswinds all over the place, just never seems to behind you.
Monday morning I was up bright and early and down in the beach to have a session with IM coach Paul Cardwell Hounam, who runs an open water session on Playa Grande all year round on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 9am, and every morning on Ironman race week at 8am. It’s well worth attending these sessions if you’re racing. Not only is it very inspiring, he knows his stuff about the tides and times and where to sight dependent on what time of year it is. If I’d been down to his sessions last year, who knows how things may have turned out.
So there I was, Z-list triathlon celebrity/loser, on the beach, giving it Billy Big Bollocks in my wetsuit, and sets off hell for leather when we get into the water. Halfway to the first buoy I had to stop, I couldn’t breathe. And I also realised I’d forgotten to put my earplugs in. I almost went back to the beach for the earplugs, but I thought I’d be ok. I was wrong. Every 100m I had to keep stopping, I just couldn’t get any air into my lungs, everything was tightening up and I was becoming increasingly anxious. Despite me swimming the fastest 800m in open water I ever have (1:48/100m), when we turned at the end after discussing sighting, not only couldn’t I breathe, I was having the most immense anxiety attacks and I was almost in tears as I told Paul, who’d been good enough to stay with me the entire time, that I had to get out of the water. I did the walk of shame back to the start, but Paul was good enough to walk back with me, and told me to go and get checked out. I wasn’t going to bother, being a bloke and all that and having a “it’ll be fine” attitude, until I walked off the beach and starred coughing. Then I spat up blood. Then a load more blood. And continued to do so all the way back to the car. By now I was shitting myself. Despite not having any pain, the fact that I’d had two pulmonary emboli in the past had me panicking, and Christine ordered me to go to A&E in Arrecife.
As we’re sitting there, me struggling to breathe, all sorts of bad thoughts are going through my head. And hers. We were convinced that this was everything pretty much over and I’d not be getting out of hospitable the foreseeable. I was sitting there gasping for breath and all of a sudden, it just stopped. I’m serious. I took a full, deep breath in and whatever had been going on had stopped. It was the bizarrest thing. By now I was digging into some medical textbook buried deep in my brain, and just googled something. What I found ticked every box of every symptom I had.
Swimming induced pulmonary oedema. A perfect storm of contributory factors that lead to fluid and capillary blood leaking into the lungs. And as I’d already found, it resolves spontaneously with no treatment. The worry now was though, was it going to happen again the next time in the water? Despite the literature stating it could never happen again, the fear was there. We apologised for wasting the hospital’s time and left.
The plan was to rest on the Tuesday. Complete rest, no training, chill out, do nothing. Well, as triathletes know, that was easier said than done. Some of the lads in the hotel were planning a little spin out Tuesday afternoon and was I coming? Well of course I was. Then plans changed and one of the lads wives was racing on Saturday too and wanted someone to ride with her, as she wanted to recce the Donkey Track, so Christine volunteered me. So just a little spin out, 4km and almost 150m of climb! And then the same back down at stupid speeds. Hayley was struggling with gearing issues, so she was going out again, but I changed shoes and went out for a little brick run and everything seemed fine. Certainly no respiratory issues from cycling or running.
I returned to the beach on the Wednesday morning with not a small amount of trepidation, acutely aware of my respiratory rate and how my chest felt. We had the pre-swim briefing (and if you’re doing Ironman Lanzarote, trust me, these sessions are well worth it http://www.swimlanzarote.com) split into groups and got into the water. When I stopped my watch at the end of the Ironman loop, it read 46 minutes. I was fucking made up. Despite feeling awful on Monday, Paul had given me some sighting tips at the infamous far turn and one tiny stroke tweak that had all worked wonders. Could I really be looking at a 1:30 on Saturday? Me? Surely not.
Confidence restored when I went to registration on Wednesday afternoon. We didn’t hang around too long, but I did have a chat with a fair few folk. I didn’t want to push or jinx things, so went for a run the next morning. The end of which coincided with the swim briefing on the beach, so there I was listening again, but this time in my running kit, and when everyone had got in the water, I told Paul I’d be back for the Friday morning session, not for the full loop, just for a little 400m out and back to the first buoy, just to feel the water before Saturday. And I’m glad I did, as I had the best little ocean swim I’d ever had. 400m in 8 minutes. I don’t swim that fast in a pool!
Thursday afternoon I went back to Club La Santa for the briefing, due to there being so many changes to both transition and the bike route. I wish I’d never bothered, and many others will corroborate this, but we were none the wiser. Last year’s briefing was excellent, informative, effusive and inspiring. The lady doing it this year didn’t seem to know what she was talking about.
Friday pasta and chill out and wander down to racking with Paul, another Yorkshire lad who was doing his last Lanzarote Ironman. In fact, he says he’s selling his bikes and not doing triathlon again! Transition was amazing again. Absolutely boiling hot, millions of pounds worth of carbon everywhere, pros milling about, cameras everywhere. I saw so many people I knew and so many people spoke to me who I didn’t know, I was buzzing. Transition this year was on the beach, so it didn’t have the same “goldfish bowl” effect as it did last year when it was up on the road, but it did mean it wasn’t quite as long. Bags were hung, markers were noted and we all walked back up to the hotel. Whereupon another disaster occurred. My feet were a problem at Bolton last year, and walking to racking and back in flipflops had wrecked them again, and despite being slathered in F50, I was a little bit sunburned too. Gallons of aloe vera cream later things had settled down, but it was another controllable that I’d lost control of.
I ate early and on my own on Friday night. The restaurant in the hotel was very quiet, everyone who was planning an early night was lost in their thoughts and there were lots of thousand yard stares as lots of small, bland meals were ingested. Orange juice and water drank, excuses made and I was in bed for about half nine while everyone was still partying.
I think I slept a bit, maybe three or four hours, but I certainly felt way better than last year when my alarm went off at 4am. I managed all my porridge and peanut butter, a lovely cup of tea and one of my delicious peanut butter and marmite sandwiches (more of which went into my special needs bag and my run bag when we got back to transition), along with salt and vinegar Pringles) before a very leisurely and rather giggly walk down to the start with my wife and daughter-in-law, who were doing the early shift again with me.
We parted company at the entrance to transition and I went to prep my bike and pop my picnic in my run bag. I was going to go for a quick swim warm-up, but it was still dark by the time I got my bike finished and my wetsuit on. Things suddenly got very real. I found Christine on the beach and told her I wasn’t starting, I didn’t belong here and we were going back to the hotel. She just told me to go and have a paddle, it will all be fine. It still felt like the middle of the night when I waded into the water, it was as windy as hell and the water seemed to be at seriously low tide and very choppy. Nightmare scenario.
I dived in and swam out to the final turn buoy, maybe 100m away, stopped and turned to look at the beach. Dark clouds were scudding overhead, but there was brightness behind. The water was cold and dark and I could feel the swell. I felt amazing. A huge grin broke out on my face and I swam back in feeling calm and smooth. I saw Coach Paul as I waded out. He just said “OK?” and I just smiled and gave him a thumbs up. It was all that was needed. I found Christine again and told her, still grinning, that I was ready. She gave me a kiss and told me to get into the start pen and she’d see me soon.
The start pen was chaos. Apparently there was an issue with one of the timing mats, and people who’d not entered through the back of the pen and had got to the front by other means, all had to go to the back of the chute and scan their ankle chips. You can imagine the upset with 100s of racing snakes all trying to get to a point that was about a foot wide. It got quite nasty at one point. Then someone said they didn’t have to bother and there was a stampede back to the front.
Countdown. Hooter goes. I hear it this year and we start the slow movement down the beach. By the time I got in the water, the fast lot weren’t even at the first buoy, which I thought was a positive sign. I spotted my family at the far side of the start and gave them a wave and dived into the churn.
Whitewater. Just bubbles. I immediately got on some feet and kept telling myself to ease into this slowly, don’t go balls out from the start, nice and relaxed to the first buoy and then use the current to build some pace. I concentrated on my stroke, nice long reach with my left arm as I breathed, slow, high right arm, bent elbow, cocked wrist, punch the entry hard, big pull all the way back, as the left arm reaches forward again and I take another lungful of air. This felt good. I’d started somewhere in the middle, but now was hugging the buoy line and the first turn was approaching fast, and I was going past people! I stayed on that buoy line all the way to the far turn, and had alternatively feet and clear water all the way there. Find feet, catch a draft, save some energy, swim past. Repeat. This was working. As I hit the turn, I could hear Paul’s voice saying “sight the shop with the lights on, dig in, don’t glide” and then I was turning for home. I’d gone straight down the buoy line again.
I finished the first lap in 47 minutes and I felt awesome. The pros had only gone past me right at the end. I knew I’d be ok as long as I kept my head. Back in for the second lap. I stood for a minute looking out to the first turn and had a little wee in my wetsuit. I could afford the time, nothing was stopping me today. This time round was obviously far less congested. I had a little twinge of anxiety as the swell got up again on the back of the course and I got slapped in the face by chop a couple of times, but I got to the far turn again and dug in. Once again, I went straight down the buoy line. The current was there, but it wasn’t bothering me this time. As I breathed I could see people far off to my right. I felt for them, I really did, but I was so focused on my own race I just pushed on. The return leg was hard. I inhaled a load of spray, which really stung, but with 1:45:02 on my watch, I walked up the beach to kisses from my wife, my daughter-in-law and my sister and high fives and cheers and massive smiles. While it was certainly less crowded when I came out after my first lap the atmosphere was no less awesome.
Into the change tent, slathered in F50 (she’d got lovely hands!), shoes, jersey and helmet on and I went and grabbed my bike after yet another pee stop. I was still very wobbly and I had all on walking up the slope out of transition, but I got to the mount line and I was away, to yet more cheers and shouts all the way out of Puerto del Carmen.
It seems to take me ages to get my bike legs going. Despite me feeling like I was struggling though, I did my second fastest ascent up the donkey track and as I hit the La Geria descent I started to feel very comfortable and managed to maintain a pretty decent average all the way to Uga, then it was time for another long descent to El Golfo before it started going up again. I was having fun. I’d been told, that when it starts to feel hard, smile. I couldn’t stop smiling. Not because it was hard (which it was, believe me), but I was just so happy to be there, somewhere I’d worked so hard to be for the last 6 years. And it was doubly so because of the disappointment of last year.
Then things started to go wrong. Around El Golfo things started to feel wrong with the bike. I was still passing people, but the handling felt wrong and it didn’t feel as smooth. Looking down I was sure my rear tyre was far more compressed than it should be, and at Mancha Blanca, about 40km in, I stopped and checked. It was almost flat. Cue some vigorous pumping with a small hand-pump I had in my jersey managed get it up to a decent pressure. Luckily, 10km further up the road there were the on course mechanics, who, after a quick once over of the tyre, got it back up to 100psi with a track pump. I can’t have tightened the valve fully when I prepped the bike in transition earlier, and it had been leaking out the whole time. How much speed had I been robbed of? How much more effort had I had to make to overcome such increased rolling resistance? It must have been quite a bit, as about 60km in, heading towards Teguise, the cramp started, inside my right thigh, it was agony. I think I stopped half a dozen times to stretch it out, and I’m infinitely grateful to Alberto for the painkillers and to Mark (who was doing his first EVER triathlon!) for the salt tablets. In fact, me and Mark spent a long time chatting while tapping up some of the long, long climbs. I finished ahead of him on the bike, but he destroyed me on the run. There were some great people I spoke to from all over the world. Mariano from Argentina, Udo from Germany and kid from Barcelona who name I forget but with whom I had a nice chat with on the way out of Timanfaya from Mancha Blanca. This is a sport filled with genuinely lovely people, united in suffering.
So the big climbs arrived. As I mentioned previously, the recce of most of the route the week before had really worried me. It needn’t have. By the time we were heading towards Haría, I was well into bike mode and was happily spinning up the steep bits, and still passing people! I went past Justin just below the hairpin, but wow, he came past me into Haría town like Valentino Rossi! I’d had some good craic with two Irish lads, Tom and Keith from right back at Conil, and I was still laughing with Keith at the special needs stop while we were having a picnic and pissing into the wind. There were four of us stood having a wee. The Spanish kid to my right farted. He looked at me, I looked at him. Then I farted too, a similarly long, squeaky whistle. We both started giggling like little children. A good trump is funny in any language.
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The descent off Haría is just epic. Exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure. I heard later that someone overshot a corner and crashed into the barrier, narrowly missing going over the side. Lucky, he wouldn’t have survived. Ironman is tough at the best of times, but in Lanzarote normal rules just don’t apply.
At the top of Mirador del Rio, a beautiful climb with amazing views, I was laughing out loud. My old mate Craig, a two time Lanzarote Ironman told me I’d be emotional at the top. I didn’t realise I would be so deleriously happy. The descent again was epic, and we were soon back at sea level and tapping towards the turn back to Teguise on the flat, and I was tramming along with the wind behind me at almost 50kmh, happy to be making up time. I’d thought that Mirador del Rio was the last of the big climbs. Wrong.
The climb back to Teguise was soul destroying. A barreling head/crosswind and a relentless ascent brought everything back to a crawl, and once again there was a train of bikes, everyone just tapping out a rhythm into the wind. Teguise brought some well earned respite with a lightning fast descent. This is where we’d seen the pros on their way back down.
I certainly didn’t feel like I was doing anywhere near the same sort of speed as they were. They were like missiles. And what was that noise all about?
They’d said at the briefing that the dog-leg to Famara was the sting in the tail. That was an understatement. From pedalling downhill for 10km, into the wind again, to a turn-around point that never seemed to arrive, to coming back up the hill on an accent that just never seemed to end, more cramp, more giggling and lots of swearing! There was a guy coming down the hill as I was nearing the top. As we crossed, I heard him say “oh for fuck’s sake”, the wind was so, so harsh. Even when you got back to the roundabout to head back towards Macher and the final 10 miles, it still didn’t stop. Not until Conil again and the wicked descent of the donkey track. That was when I knew I was there. I’d got enough time to walk the marathon should I need to, and I hit the dismount line just after 5pm. Later than I wanted, but hey, throw mechanicals and cramp into the mix and I was happy enough.
Cue lots of shouts and kisses from wife and family and another loooong T2. My feet weren’t as bad as Bolton, but I paid a visit to the loo on my way out and couldn’t pee, so there was another 5 minues added to my transition time. I seem destined to be in T2 for 15 minutes every time!
The early part of the run out of Puerto del Carmen was utterly ridiculous. I might as well have been running on the surface of the sun it was so hot, and I went off far too quickly. First 2km were done in 12 minutes and my wheels soon fell off. It didn’t matter, I was going to finish. That was the aim and there was no point making myself ill to try and get a faster time than I needed to. I wasn’t the only one. There were young lads with both lap bands on looking haggard and walking. I didn’t need to look like that, so power walked for a little while, then would spot two landmarks again to run between. Then walk again and spot another couple of landmarks and trot off again. I kept this up for the rest of the run. On my way back after the first turn I was giving runners coming the other way lots of encouragement. I was 16km in before I saw the last person pass me on the way out to the first turn. They’d got a long way to go. As I headed back into town I was looking for my family, but I got told they’d gone to get coats from the hotel, as the temperature was dropping. I was told this by my lad and my nephew. Who were standing outside Route 66. While holding up pints. And they were quite obviously pissed already. Bastards!
The relief at getting that first lap band was awesome. 21km down, just the same to go. It was getting cold now, and I wasn’t working hard enough to keep warm so I was pushing a little bit harder to try and generate some heat, and I started doing all sorts of mental calculations to work out if I could:
A. Beat my Bolton marathon time
B. Get in under 16 hours.
Maths has never been my strong point, and I soon realised that I was going to miss out slightly on both unless I really buried myself. I decided that it wasn’t worth it, and besides, my kidneys were playing silly buggers and I was having to stop regularly for a piss. The run course was increasingly cold and desolate, and I remember feeling very lonely at times, despite having lots of company, including Tom, who I’d had some back and forth with on the bike. Seeing my wife and daughter-in-law at the side of the run close to the finish just before I got my second lap band was ace. Christine and Kelsey have been consummate in their support of me through this journey, they’ve been the ones getting up at 4am both times in Lanzarote, 3am in Bolton last year! It was so good to see them when I’d got that blue band and it gave me a real boost before heading back to Matagorda. I was still doing mental gymnastics and I reckoned I could beat my marathon time for IMUK, so I got a bit of a wriggle on and ran most of the lap out to the turn. As I got there Tom had turned and was struggling. He actually stopped and waited for me and told me he was done and was going to walk. I’d been with this guy on and off for the last 15+ hours, there was no way I was going to let him suffer by himself on his way in, so I made the decision to forego any beating of times and walk/shuffle back in with him. We had a good laugh that last 40 minutes, talked all sorts of rubbish until we eventually shambled back to the finish. I told him to go and enjoy his moment and stopped to hug my family and kiss my wife just before the finish chute. I was making no mistakes this time! Ruud the announcer actually called me Riptide as I hit the red carpet. He was staying in our hotel, so someone had obviously tipped him off! And that was it. Job done.
The post race experience was just a blur. All I wanted to do was get my stuff and see Christine and get back to the hotel. Massive thanks to Ian Dickens who helped me get bags and bike and point me in the right direction in transition. I wouldn’t have managed on my own. In fact I was so utterly fucked I would maybe have just wandered out without collecting anything at all
My finish photos show a mix of relief, happiness and outright elation. There’s not many places where you can recreate the feeling you get on an Ironman finish line. Is it worth it? At the time, yes. In the immediate aftermath I was selling my bikes and kit and never doing a triathlon again. In the following days as the pain eases and the recovery runs and rides are done and you begin to feel a bit more normal, you start looking ahead again, and thinking about the next challenge. What’s next? A local half in four weeks, Yorkshire Marathon in October, Mallorca 70.3 next year and then after that, who knows.
What I do know, is that Ironman Lanzarote is unlikely to figure. Any 140.6 is unlikely to be on my radar in future. Not because I don’t want to do another one, it’s just I can’t put my wife through it again. She finds my participation in full Iron distance overwhelming. She’s happy for me to do 70.3 anywhere in the world, and she knows the training is as equally difficult, but she knows I’ll be away and back within 6 or 7 hours, which she can handle. 15 or 16 hours of not knowing is just too much for her. So I respect her wishes. I love her way too much to disrespect that. I thought I’d be massively emotional at the end, but no tears, no upset, just smiles, happiness and relief, despite all the pain.
Ironman Lanzarote isn’t a normal race. Bolton was tough, but it just doesn’t compare to this. The climbs, despite there only being 500m difference in the ascents, are incomparable. There’s a reason Lanza is rightly regarded as the toughest Ironman in the world. It’s because it is. There really isn’t anything else to say. And I’m still utterly stunned that I can say I’m a Lanzarote Ironman.
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I’m so grateful to my wife Christine for her tolerance and unending support, my daughter-in-law Kelsey and my sister Cherrie for being my biggest fans, Daniel and Brett for spending two weeks in Lanzarote pretty much indoors, Kelly and Adam for the smelly shell, I can still smell it, and Liam, Tyler and Skyla for keeping my feet firmly on the ground.
Huge appreciation also to Mark and Hayley Turner, Paul and Sharon Ellis and all their lovely kids. Made for a great holiday and it was a pleasure to share some race time with you all, especially Hayley who I saw loads of times out in the run while we were both hurting.
Many thanks also to everyone out on the course and in the days before and after the race who said hello, and all the other athletes on the day who I shared various amounts of time with, we really are a united army.
Lastly, massive thanks to everyone who has ever supported me in this journey. There are far too many to mention. You know who you are.
Peace. X
BloggLast year I had a really bad race at Ironman Lanzarote so after the race I decided to go back and try to get it right. To race here, with my physic, is as logical as how bumblebees can fly. I’m just to heavy, don’t climb well on the bike and typically the guys doing well here are half my length and weight – but I can’t help it, l love the race and keep coming back to be brutally murdered.
My goal for the race was to do a <55min swim, 5:45 bike, and a 3:30 run. Most important was the run. I have not been able to run well in an Ironman since I started racing again 2015. My goal was to be able to do a 3:30 after one of the hardest bike courses of all Ironman races (hard gusty winds and >2,500m climbing over +180km).
Swim was a complete mess as it is with 1800 running into the water at the same time – 3,850m of fighting off people who tried to get a free ride on the Swedish dolphin. Swam much slower than planned and even slower than the easy practice swims I did on the course the week lead by up to the race. 57min.
On to the bike – no bang bang in the old legs at all, cold, miserable and a feeling that the legs would explode at any moment even at low pace/watts/hr. After 100km, they started to feel better and I abandoned my thoughts of DNF and thought – “let’s roll through this shit ride and practice marathon running today”.
Finished the bike in about 6hrs.
Got out on the run and did exactly as planned and apparently passed a lot of people in my age group. I didn’t know my position at all until after the race as I was just focusing on the plan and not other people’s plans and goals.
Run: 3:32 which I am really happy with!
Overall time 10:39:16 which is a ok time considering the conditions we race in on Lanzarote. only two people went under 9 hours, you could compare that with Ironman Texas a race without marshalls on the bike and 11 people came in under 8 hours. That is just one of the reason I love this race – it’s brutally honest, you simply can’t cheat and draft to get a better PB which nowadays seams to be the main purpose of for many athletes.
I realize that I probably will not be able to beat my best time here from 1997 of 10:08:16, but at least I improved my time from last year.
Overall I was 111th (out of 1,594 finishers) and second in my age group 50-54 (out of 221 finishers).