“Try not to get too hung up on the profile. It’s not going to change. Just get out on some hills!” This was the advice from Katie after I’d spent several hours staring at the course profile for Ironman UK. It had started several weeks earlier when an email from the race director cheerily informed competitors that changes to the bike leg mean the “elevation of the new course is 1,270m, down from 1,600m”.
1270m of climbing still sounds like a lot to me. I read on and the guy who came third at Ironman UK in 2012 had ridden the new route and said: “It will certainly push everyone to the limits as it’s constantly up and down giving little respite.
I know I can cycle 112 miles. I think I can probably cycle 112 miles after a 3.8km swim. And a 26.2 mile run after a 3.8km swim and a 112 mile cycle seems doable. Even with 1270m of climbing thrown into the cycle leg, I still think I could push on and complete it. But there’s the cut-offs to think about.
The time limit for Ironman is 17 hours. OK. It wouldn’t be easy, and there’d be no time to stop and chat or take a photo, but again, achievable. Probably. What I’m concerned about, worried about even, is that the cut-off for the bike might see me not make it to the run leg.
The bike cut-off is 10 hours and 30 minutes after the start of the race. This gives me about 8 hours 30 minutes to cycle 112 miles with 1270m of climbing. I can recite these numbers easier than I can recall my PIN number. They’re what’s keeping me up at night.
But I can’t do anything about the elevation, or the time limit, the only thing I can do is “Just get out on some hills.” So that’s what I’m doing. At the weekend I cycled from London to Cambridge – conveniently a half-iron cycle distance. I cycled up 427m of climb. It wasn’t easy, but it was easier than it used to be. And hopefully, in the next 10 weeks, it will get easier still.
When I got to Cambridge my parents were waiting for me with a pint of beer and a long list of pubs to drag me round. This is how we do endurance training.
Haha it’s nice that you have a great support group with beer and everything! You got this!
The hills are killers aren’t they? My husband is doing IM Wales & it has 2000 metres of climbing on the bike course. It’s really up & down with little flat bits.
You can do it! Do practice on lots of hills. I did Ironman France last summer and I come from South Florida which is amazingly flat. So I did one 60-90 minute hill training session on the bike per week. I was slow but I just kept at it and made it through. Keep up the good work.