What am I doing?

It's a question I ask myself quite a lot these days.

What am I doing! and more importantly why!

But, dear reader, it twas a question I was asked last week. 'What exactly are you doing?'
Even my parents had a disagreement over this, Mum said i was doing a triathlon and Dad said I was doing an Ironman.

So I shall explain all...hopefully.

In a nut shell I am doing a really long triathlon. A triathlon is a swim, followed by a cycle followed by a run. The change overs are transitions.
An Ironman is a long distance triathlon, but more than that it is a brand name. There are other iron distance triathlons, but Ironman have introduced prize money so they get all the best athletes and therefore the best coverage.

They are sometimes known as 140.6 due to the total distance in miles.

An iron distance triathlon is;

3.8km swim  (2.4m)
180km bike   (112m)
42km run       (26.2m - marathon)

And where will all this take place. Well 15th July at 6am it will start with the swim in Pennington Flash.



As you can see I swim two laps of Pennington Flash. I believe that I get out and then back in again start the second lap but I am not sure. Not that I think it really matters. Part of me would like to keep swimming and part of me would like the break.

Once out of the swim, strip off the wetsuit, put on my cycle kit then it will be out on the cycle route.



The cycle route is round and round Chorley. It takes a few miles before you get on the loopy bit, and there are two hills in this. Underneath the route map is the elevation profile. The first hill is Hunters hill, the second steeper hill is Sheep House Lane. The organisers thought it would be nice to put this in the loop section so I will get to go up them twice.





Cycle in from the left on this map (blue line) passed all the faster athletes already on their runs! Another transition then it is four laps of Bolton. I kind of like the idea of four laps, it will be 6.5 miles each so it will be quite easy to monitor pace and progress.

Then peel off and through the finish gate.

Because there is a staggered start the final time won't be known until I cross the line, whereupon it will flash up on the screen. I will watch my own time as well, but I will not know the official time until right at the end.

And that is really that.

One last thing to mention is that I have smashed my fund raising target. So a massive thank you to all of you that have donated and supported me!

STATMAN

Fund Raising Target - £1000
Total raised - £1235

Total Distance - 140.6 miles
Total Elevation - 6,300 feet bike and run

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

13.13.27

Image
6am July 15th 2018 I stood in a crowd of people all looking the same as me. Black clad in wetsuits with swim caps on all thinking 'what are we doing'. Three and a half hours earlier I was sitting in the hotel restaurant trying to eat my last meal and not thinking about the day ahead. I had already rehearsed it over and over in my head whilst staring at the ceiling trying to sleep. The announcer proclaimed the race was on and slowly we began to edge are way forwards. This was it, the day I had been waiting for. I had a brief glimpse of the field out in front of me, a long stretch of thrashing arms and legs before I was in, and thrashing myself. And I was off. I had finally started my Ironman. https://www.facebook.com/IRONMANtri/videos/10160738387870551/ (If you want to know what the swim looks like!) And my first sensation is brown. Earthy dull brown - that was the colour of the water. Due to the hot temperatures there was a risk the swim would be cancelled due ...
Read more

Confessions of a triathlete

I was thinking about what to write this week, and you are probably all very bored of me saying I’ve gone swimming, and cycling and running…..again. I thought maybe I could tell you some of the darker aspects of being a triathlete, the stuff that no-one else knows. Then I realised that it is mostly swimming and cycling and running. But, dear reader, I have one advantage over the majority of these race hardened individuals, and that is I haven’t a clue what I am doing, and therefore I have stories galore. Here is a summary of my complete muppetry – I encourage you to stay the course as the best one is last. Some of these may have appeared in other weekly blogs but hey ho. Swimming To demonstrate how fare I have come I will take you back to January. I signed up to the triathlon club Black Country Triathletes predominately to get some coaching at swimming.   There I was a fresh faced newby turning up on a Wednesday night watching all these people arrive with floats and fl...
Read more

The Schedule

Image
Money link https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/christopher-dawson5 Right I have been particularly slack with my blog updates, being that I have written one and then nothing. Its not fair on you the reader, and for that I apologise! Also it show on how much money I haven’t raised yet, you don’t get anything for free these days – not even sponsorship. My intention between now and then is to post every Monday. That way it will give everyone to look forward to after that first day back at work, and as all my events are on Sundays I can report back on them. And that then leads me onto todays topic -the schedule. The actual event that I am leading up to is the UK Ironman, which is on 15 th July. Now I was particularly aware that not haven’t done any real triathlons going into this green was a bit ambitious. I mean it’s a bit ambitious as it is but I wanted to have some experience, particularly open water swimming and the transitions. So I have signed my self up for various...
Read more