Why try Ironman?
The recent journey to my decision to try Ironman has taken about 2 and a half years, though I’ve always been interested in sports. As a kid I played football for hours on end but stopped most sport in my early 20′s. I was more interested in drinking and hanging around! In 2003 I was tired of being overweight and started going to the gym and running in my free time but it wasn’t until I signed up and ran my first half marathon in Prague in 2005 with a group of my fellow teachers that I found out how rewarding it could be – and I lost a lot of weight training too – and could eat more food than ever!
After that first race I started looking for others and I still really enjoy them. I think they are my perfect event…. they take quite a long time, unlike sprinting (which I tried when I joined an athletics club in Spain in 2007) where you spend a lot of time travelling and waiting to race and not much time actually doing exercise. Running a marathon is a bit too long for me – I tried that too, and finished in 3h 15mins but found that I was exhausted for 2-3 weeks afterwards, and it took a long time to get back to training. A half marathon takes just a couple of days to recover from.
Another advantage of these races is that you can make an excuse to visit places you would never normally go – do a race and spend some time looking round after.
After reaching what I consider to be close to my best times in half marathons I started looking for other challenges and tried triathlon, after my brother did the London Triathlon. I had never considered it before as I don’t like swimming but after he did it, I thought I should also give it a go!
At the time I was living in San Sebastian and they had a beautiful beach and there was an olympic triathlon there in June which meant I had no excuse. I signed up as soon as I could and also had plenty of time to swim in the sea prior to the race, which also made me nervous as I’ve never liked swimming too far from the shore!
My first triathlon was in dire conditions, the sea was rough and it was raining very hard but the buzz was great (especially at the end of the swim) and I knew I had to do another one – and I did did another 2 in the next 2 consecutive weekends – That was it, I was hooked.
It was then a logical step (in my mind!) to try a half Ironman (1.9km swim,90km bike, 21.1km run) as I had been quite well trained for those triathlons and hadn’t found them too hard (compared to my favourite half marathon event 
)
I signed up for the Ironman 70.3 in St Polten before Christmas as I wanted to see what it would be like to run 21.1km after the bike ride – weird eh? but true! Again I loved the atmosphere and the day and maybe this is my favourite distance of triathlon too! – (now I’ve done 3 three of these, and some sprint distances too).
I was frightened of going further as the 180km bike ride put me off, and knowing how I felt after the marathon I never thought I’d go further but its always there, and I always want to push myself a bit further…. and now I know people who do these races and they say the marathon isn’t so bad in an Ironman….. (I don’t understand how!) and I kept thinking that if I didn’t try it I’d always wonder, and these thoughts made me sign up for Challenge Roth. It has a great reputation and the more I thought about it, I just had to try it……
That was last July and I still can’t believe I signed up but during my visit to Vietnam, and seeing how the people there live and thinking that these people cannot afford the luxury to do sport and enjoy their lives like I can, travelling and essentially doing everything I want. The people spend their lives worrying about making enough money to feed their families – and so many children, like those I met on my visit to Blue Dragon, are left with no future and no opportunities to grow and make something of themselves just because of the place where they were born. Unless organisations like Blue Dragon can help them to realize their potential.
It is just a triathlon but this one has become a massive dream for me and while I take part I think it’s the perfect opportunity to try to do something for people less fortunate than myself.
At the start of the article are a few photos of friends and places which have inspired me to this point.
