Reflections of Ironman

Even though I am not happy with my Ironman finish time, I am very happy I did the race.  When it was announced, I knew the hype it would generate amongst the Triathlon Community was going to be huge (and it was).  It was great to feel like I was involved in this hype and I'm sure I would have regretted it if I wasn't entered.

I thought the course was very good and the organisation excellent, especially seeing as it was first time the race had been held here, and possibly the first time ever that an Ironman had been run in a capital city (logistical nightmare).

A lot of people get hooked after their first Ironman.  It is not unusual for triathletes to do an Ironman every year, in fact it is common to see people do 2 or more a year.  Some look for improvement at each race, others seem to enjoy just getting through the day without much concern about their time - I'm sure you would find similar attitudes in any Marathon field. Personally I do not have any great urge to subject myself to an Ironman again. I'm not saying I won't do another one, I just lack the burning desire.  Likewise I don't feel like running a Marathon either.

If I was to do another Ironman, I doubt I'd do Melbourne again.  This is not a reflection upon the Melbourne course, but if I am to subject myself to that much misery again I'd like some different scenery.  While there was definitely lots of benefits to racing on such familiar ground, there were no new sights to take my mind off the pain.  At the moment I think my choice of location would be the Challenge Roth race in Germany.

Below is a more statistical analysis of my Ironman Melbourne Race.

Bike statistics for each 20km split:
    0-20km  - 34.0 kph  133 bpm  84 rpm  180 watts
   20-40km  - 31.7 kph  134 bpm  85 rpm  180 watts
   40-60km  - 37.1 kph  135 bpm  87 rpm  189 watts
   60-80km  - 37.1 kph  136 bpm  87 rpm  183 watts
   80-100km - 32.1 kph  138 bpm  88 rpm  179 watts
  100-120km - 30.5 kph  139 bpm  85 rpm  166 watts
  120-140km - 30.4 kph  135 bpm  82 rpm  163 watts
  140-160km - 34.0 kph  132 bpm  81 rpm  156 watts
  160-180km - 31.5 kph  131 bpm  80 rpm  150 watts

My heart rate and power was kept under control for the whole bike leg, but it is obvious that my second lap was slower and my falling heart rate and power numbers show I really started to lose interest in the last 40km (edit: I subsequently remembered that my knee started to hurt in the last 40km, so I deliberately backed off in the hope it would come good for the run).

Run pace and heart rate for each 5km split:
   0-5km    - 5m11s  144bpm
   5-10km   - 5m39s  143bpm
  10-15km   - 5m39s  145bpm
  15-20km   - 6m06s  137bpm
  20-25km   - 7m03s  129bpm
  25-30km   - 7m15s  128bpm
  30-35km   - 7m01s  128bpm
  35-40km   - 8m12s  120bpm (walked for 1km)
  40-42.2km - 7m22s  121bpm

As you can see from the above splits I felt extremely good for the first 5km (I had a lot of trouble holding back my pace), I slowed down slightly after 15km, slowed down a lot after 20km and then fell into a big hole after the 35km mark.

Luckily my marathon time (off the bike) of 4h45m easily beat the efforts of Katie Holmes 5h30m and Hamish Blake 5h25m in standalone marathons.  Tragically I was slower than Oprah 4h29m and P.Diddy 4h15m - that fact alone may force me into doing another Ironman,