Ironman Barcelona 2019
I made Ironman Barcelona my key focus for this season, when I entered last October, after a disappointing 2018. My main aim in 2018 was to go under 9 hours over an Iron Distance race and unfortunately this didn’t happen when things didn’t go to plan at Challenge Venice. For me, going under 9 hours has always been a goal and something that I’ve dreamed of doing since starting the sport. I raced Ironman UK in 2016 and 2017 and won my AG to qualify for Kona both years but only raced it in 2016. Ironman UK isn’t a fast course and some years have seen top pros go over 5 hours on the bike course. I kept saying to myself those performances of 9hrs 30mins would’ve been sub 9 on a flatter course but the voice in my head said it doesn’t matter until you’ve done it. So, with that in mind, I knew I wanted to make that my focus and make that happen.
I know Calella, where Ironman Barcelona takes place, very well. I have been on training camps there, raced the 70.3 there a few times and also raced the Ironman there in 2014 (albeit on a slightly different course). This was the reason for choosing that as a race because I knew exactly what I was going to have to do and that I would be comfortable in my surroundings. When I raced Challenge Venice in 2018, they announced a week before the race that they were changing the bike course from 2 perfect 90km loops to 7 laps of industrial dockland which included multiple (industrial) tram track crossings every lap. I knew something like this would never happen in an Ironman event like Barcelona so that was another reason for entering.
I hurt my back severely in July after jumping out of the way of a guy who stepped out in front of me when I was running. Not only could I not race the British Champs in August, I couldn’t even walk off a step. It was taking me about 45 minutes to walk a kilometer and I was in a bad way. I was seriously questioning whether Barcelona was possible but luckily I made a quick recovery. This was about 7 weeks out from Barcelona so I still had time to do my build block of training which I knew was not perfect but would be enough to be at 90%. My training went pretty well over the course of the build and I was hitting the best numbers I ever have in my running. I got a really bad cold 3 weeks out from the race which lasted a week because I trained all out even through it. I did a 35km run at 4.06min/km pace after a 5hour day before that week, which was maybe a little stupid, but gave me a lot of confidence as I didn’t think I could possibly feel as ill as that in the race. Getting ill a couple of weeks before an event can often mean you won’t get ill on the day of an event. So with everything that had happened, I was really pleased to hit race week with a good training block in the legs while also feeling fit and healthy. I knew from the numbers in Training Peaks that I was also in optimal shape and I had built my fitness in a consistent and manageable way.
The swim is a single loop of 3.8km in the Mediterranean Sea. It can be very choppy but luckily for us it was pretty calm and there was only a little chop. The water was also 21 degrees which is ideal for open water swimming. The weather forecast was ideal for the day, light winds, cloud cover and low 20’s. I knew this was set up to be a good day. I placed myself a little bit off the back of the fastest swimmers on the line up, but this was a mistake as I was immediately swimming through people after running into the sea. I spent the first few hundred meters having to swim quite wide so that I had a clear path. It wasn’t until I got to half way and made the turn around at the final buoy that it started to thin out. Unfortunately, myself and Craig Coull, had about 20 guys sitting on our feet for the rest of the swim. I hit land and started exiting the water in around 54mins on my Garmin. I was surprised by this as the swim didn’t feel fast and this was a good PB and the pace was above target. I gave that all away when I lost my bike in T1! I went to the wrong line of bikes. When I saw my bike on the other rack, I ducked under and started running off with it. I didn’t realise that this isn’t allowed so I had to re-rack my bike, duck back under and run around. This cost me about 3minutes or in other words 200 and a bit meters of swimming. The lesson here is you have to practice every detail and remember where your bike is. I did have my letter written on my hand but still missed it as it was LL, not L.
Anyway, after finally getting out on the bike, my legs immediately felt good and I knew there was some power there. I set off riding at target watts with some pretty clear road. A few guys started working and we seemed to get a small line working. Most of the first lap was fairly uneventful, pretty smooth power, good nutrition, good legs and the position felt good. Then it went bad. For some reason, triathletes just don’t know how to ride a bike and seem to think they can break all the rules. Riders started cutting into gaps between riders and started riding on the wheel of people in the line. We had a Pro female making every effort she could do ride on the person’s wheel that she was behind. This was all happening at the end of the first lap which you can see from my power file below:
My watts (the pink line) starts to get really spiky when the group started to swell. This is due to me having to break from riders cutting in to gaps that weren’t there to be cut in to. We were riding 10 meters apart and the rules state that you have to pass all riders ahead of you if you make a pass and you can’t slot into a line. This part of the course is pretty flat and fast so riding off the front is very difficult as it would take a huge effort for very little gain. The chances are that you will just get dragged back and end up in the same mess. I made the decision to just slow the pace and ride off the bike of the group ahead holding the correct distance. The referees were getting involved but they weren’t doing nearly enough. I decided that I would attack when I hit the first of two climbs at the start of the second lap. You’ll see there’s a higher block of sustained effort in the middle. This was a 20minute hard effort up one short climb, down a descent and then up a longer climb. This totally separated me from all the riders and gave me completely clean road for a long time which meant i could focus on my pace. I did eventually get caught by some of those riders which you’ll see in the power file again. This time I got through to the referee and he gave several of them penalties. This still doesn’t seem just though as drafting the whole way round the bike and getting a 5 minute stop is hardly a significant penalty. What I wanted to show with this ride was that you could do a flattish Ironman bike course in a good time without drafting. The course at Barcelona gets some criticism because people say Ironman want more money and there’s too many athletes on the course. Part of that is true, but for me, every athlete I saw drafting had a choice whether they drafted or not and they blatantly chose to cheat. The problem isn’t the courses, it’s the athletes not respecting the rules. I think Ironman should start logging how many penalties athletes get at races. Repeat offenders could be flagged on their race number before the event so that if a ref sees they’re doing it then they know they’re cheating again and they can get DQ’d.
Coming in off the bike I knew I was on for a good time. I had a solid swim with a sub 4.40 bike so sub 9 hours was on the cards. I knew I needed to have a swift T2 so that meant I ate my Mars Bar extra quick and downed my bottle of Coke in record time (I have this every Ironman). You can only imagine my dismay when my Mars Bar had melted to liquid in T2 at Challenge Venice - I knew the day was doomed when I found that. It’s amazing how we make an instant judgement about how the marathon is going to go based on how are legs feel on those first few steps running through transition. Mine felt pretty good at Barcelona so I thought it was as good as it could be.
I set off the run at target pace, roughly 4.00min/km pace. In fact I was a bit quick and was sitting at 3.50’s so I made sure to back off. The run at Barca is 3 laps and I know it very well. I knew I was in sub 3 hour shape and my nutrition is absolutely dialled so I have no issues taking on exactly the right carbs and fluid. There’s no 2 ways about it, if you want to do well in Ironman then you have to run well and if you want to run well, then you have to have no nutrition issues. I have spent years getting my nutrition right and that’s how long I think it takes to get your body where it needs to be to go fast from start to finish in an Ironman. After 1 lap, I was felling strong and I was on pace. I was also holding Fredie Van Lierde, ex Ironman World Champion, at the same distance on all the turn points (he was on his next lap) so I knew I was keeping good pace. On the second lap, I started to into a bit of a hole. I started to question why I was there, what was I doing hurting myself like this, I had no motivation and I was not enjoying it in any way. This is the mental battle you go through in an Ironman and everyone will face these demons. These emotions lasted for a long time and they didn’t pass, I just had to keep battling on and checking off the distance. I started looking at the time of the day because I knew I had until 5.15pm to go under 9 hours. I started working out how much longer I had to keep going through the pain until I could potentially jog and still sneak under 9. Luckily, I never slowed, I hit 7km to go and I found a bit of energy and started picking up the pace. With 2.5km to go, I passed another guy who was in a different AG. He was in a bad way so I hit him on the back and told him to come with me as this is what the sport is all about. I wanted him to do well and get the best from the race. This is the opposite from when I then saw a guy ahead, with 400m to go, who I knew had been drafting on the bike course. I sprinted as hard as I could to get pass him and kept sprinting so he couldn’t come with me. This meant I finished the marathon in 2hours59mins (a new PB) and a overall time of 8hour42mins (also a new PB).
The sprint finish put me in 3rd position in the AG my 0.5 seconds! 2nd place was only 20secs ahead and 5th place was only 4secs behind. I have never seen racing so close. This also meant I got a Kona slot my 0.5 seconds as there were only 3 places. I did feel particularly sorry for the guy behind me because I would have been completely gutted if I was him.
This was my 10th Ironman and I would say it was my most complete performance. Ironman has been completely normalised and I don’t understand why. It is an unbelievably hard day and in my eyes, the hardest single day event out there. There aren’t many athletes who can actually go 100% in an Ironman from gun to finish and I certainly don’t count myself as one of those. What the likes of Jan Frodeno do is just super human and just on another planet from what I’ll ever be able to achieve. However, I did race from start to finish and worked pretty much as hard as possible for 8hrs and 40mins which has taken me 10 years of work to get fit enough to do. More athletes are going under 9 hours because more athletes are racing, technology is better, training is better and there’s more information out there than ever before. That doesn’t take anything away from it in my eyes and you can’t say you can go under 9 hours until you have done it. I have made every mistake in the book and it’s those mistakes and those lessons learnt that made that performance complete at Barcelona. There wasn’t a situation I didn’t know how to deal with and I executed a plan.
I hope you enjoyed reading this and that you can take something from it that helps you in your next race. Please comment if you have any questions. This race was filled with difficulties and hard moments as every race is. It’s all relative and it never gets any easier, you just go faster. Aloha!
