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Lanzarote 2014
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Now.. i dont know if he finished , i suspect probably not, but as i cycled up the Mirador de Haria i shared the road for a while with a dutch guy on his full suspension mountain bike !! . He was sporting a race number and was definately part of the race . I didnt think anything other than road or tt bikes were permitted ? .. The guy definately hads the right gears for the miradors though thats for sure as he happily span away. Apparently he preferred the geometry of the mountain bike.
Special needs stop at top of Haria .. learning something from last years mistakes i had water and food waiting this time.. cliff shot blocs.. lush , i leave as a happy boy.. off down the amazing switch backs but with the knowlege that it would go terribly up hill again all too soon. Walked a couple of the village hills and the shiny new cleats are starting to look a bit sorry for themselves . There are now a handful of us alternating between ride and walk but definately not many others in line of sight in front or behind .. i assume we are the last to have made the cut off .
The views off the Mirador del Rio were even better than i rememberred, and well worth the climb.. breathtaking. Up to the feed station at the top of Mirador Del Rio.. looking for the timing mat that i was sure ws there last year , but no sign of it .. i conclude (incorrectly as i now know) that for some reason they havent bothered this year . I fill up the aero bottle , thank the feed station folk , and head off down the hill ...the roads pretty rough here and 500metres later that secureing clip i mentioned earlier would have been realy useful, as i his a pot hole and the freshly topped up bottle pings off and explodes .. arse .. i stop .. collect the debris (partly because i dont like littering .. and partly because it cost me 40 quid and i wanted to see if it was repairable .. it wasnt .. but i brought it back to PDC anyway ) . I look back up the hill contemplating going back for another bottle , but decide to crack on as it was largely downhill to the next feed station ...
I guess this is where things started to get interesting .. after about 10k i followed the turn right sign at the roundabout and started pushing up hill again .. something wasnt right .. i didnt remember this hill from last year , and the further i got the more concerned i became , eventually i decided to wait 5 mins and see if anyone came past .. i knew there were other riders behind me .. nothing .. i think i had also started to hallucinate as i became convinced i could see a macdonads golden arch sign a few hundred metres up the road .. it wasnt .. i went back to the roundabout and after doing a 360 spotted the yellow bike bottles discarded at the "straight over" exit.. from here on i was guided as much by gel wraps and bottles as i was by the signage. Earlier in the day all the junctions and roundabouts had been manned , now they were not , and the roads were fully open .I reached las Cabreras , and could see where the feed station had been , but it was long gone ...same story at Masdache but myself and a Veneseulan competitor (hola Bondio) were able to get a water bottle each from a motorcycle marshal who we found near the road of hell..water seriously never tasted so good. The ROH lived up to its name .. a truly grotty piece of road that just drags on for ages. We catch up with a vehicle out removing the signage , and to his credit when he realised we were there he waited for us to pass before taking each one down .. unfortunately there had been other teams out clearing signs further on. With a degree of luck and a little bit of route recall from last year I found my way to the top of the legendary donkey track , a truly amazing road that you can take at breakneck speeds , one big scare when at 47mph i rounded a bend to find a van coming towards me , some fearsome braking ,arse cheek clenching , and thinking shit this is going to hurt , but we miss each other and with an apologetic wave i carry on ,unfortunately when i reached the end of the donkey track i had no idea where to go .. i rode up and down a bit but with no race signs I had to follow the PDC sign and hope it worked out .. it didnt , bringing me in to town from the wrong direction and at the far end of transition ... game over.
I walk alongside transition on the wrong side of the fence looking for a way in when i hear my name being screamed out and Tasha and Button emerge from the information tent where they and race officials had been trying to figure out where i was. Releived faces all round, Button takes the bike while i go with Tasha to tell information what happened and once again hand in my chip for a dnf , Then to go collect my bags. So its race over for me .. off to the boozer. To my surprise Hokori is sitting there with the pirate contingent .. i had assumed he was well on to the marathon by now , but discover that he too had a bad day at the office and had pulled out after the bike. Pudge finished his marathon shortly thereafter with a fantastic time , SA still going strong and would also turn in a very respectable finish.
Whilst i fully accept that it was debateable and indeed probably quite unlikely that i would have made the cut off time i have complained to the organisers about the feed stations and signage , largely because it was really dangerous to close that all down when riders were still out on course. We should have been "swept up" if they wanted to close it down. And it was unacceptable for them not to know who was still out there riding. I have today received their feedback on the issues and a nice apology.
In a bizarre way though this maybe wasnt altogether such a bad outcome. I came to this race massively undertrained through a series or incidents, injuries, and generally life getting in the way . And much as i would have loved to finish , and went out with that goal in mind , realistically hadnt expected to make the first bike cut. the fact that i got to ride 180K (albeit the wrong 180k) was a pretty decent result for me .
i wont let this race defeat me , and will come back again .. one day.
Congratulations to Pudge and Silent Assassin for a job well done ..massive thanks to all those that have supported especially Button Mushroom who travelled out with us to support and keep an eye out for eldest child for me. For the second time this year he has had to lie his way into a medical facility to see if i was ok .. this time pretending i was his dad ffs !! .. which in fairness is i guess an improvement on last time were he claimed to be my gay lover.
Thanks wife , biff , bumpy , tish . for supporting me in these crazy things x
Shame you didn't make it, but I'm appalled at them shutting down the course with riders still on it. I would be seriously pissed off.
Great report and sorry you didn't make the cut-offs, but agree with Iron Pingu in that the signage and drink stations shouldn't have been taken down with riders still on the course.
for sure .. and the organisers have accepted that this should not have happened and that there was a break down in comms along the line somewhere . They are putting measures in place to make sure it cant happen next year.
Well, if something's learnt from it that's the best outcome I suppose.
It doesn't make much sense, as you say, you'd expect the broom waggon to precede designing.
I don't suppose they've offered you a free place next year to compensate?
agree with above......very unnerving...the organisers are lucky there wasn't an accident
Gutsy effort Slag and exactly what I expect from you. Well done for completing the bike portion. Shame on the organisers and a free place should be yours next year. Third time lucky?!
Ok not sure where to start but the word WOW comes to mind.
Some 7 years ago when I started getting into this sport we love I looked around at the races available and Ironman Lanzarote looked just so awesome but far too hard for someone like me to be able to do.
So fast forward and thanks to a certain IronHolgs and his attempt which showed that “fat, slipper wearing poofs” could actually do this race, I knew that after Outlaw last year I wasn’t good in the heat, wasn’t really a fan of climbing hills, hated the wind and as IronHolgs himself says that was the attraction, I wanted to test myself to my physical limits, try to push myself to the edge. I was further drawn into doing this race after reading the race reports from all the Pirates who went to the island last year and after completing a tough Ironman, IM Wales, 2 years ago, I thought I might be ready for the race that I always thought would beyond me.
So when entries opened I punched in my credit card details and that was that, I had a confirmed entry for Ironman Lanzarote.
Every time I enter a race that’s 1 year away, I always convince myself that come race time I would be the fittest racing snake possible, I would lose a shed load of weight, would hit every training session planned and would then breeze the race and every time, work, family, weather or whatever excuse you want to use gets in the way.
This time I did lose a lot of weight, still a bit more to go but definitely in the right direction, the weather didn’t play a great role in training with the wettest winter on record but training was done and I got to the island in the best shape I could.
I took a lot of confidence from the Pirate DIY half IM that we run as I had my best performance yet.
Flights booked and accommodation sorted, LittleClown was coming with us as Sherpa / supporter, Button Mushroom was also staying with us as he was coming out to help Slagiatt. Pudge threw his hat in and entered and Hokori was as good as his word and entered which made a small little outing, more of a pirate dingy than the pirate ship sailing.
So landed on the island on Wednesday after at 02:45 alarm call and got to work putting the bike together, a quick 5 mile ride having to stop several times to make adjustments saw me happy that my bike was OK.
It struck me just how hot it was on Lanza even with the cooling wind.
Thursday morning saw us up early for a practice swim on the course, with Slagiatt, BM, Hokori and LC the water was lovely and I swam well, catching sight of some of amazing fish plus a couple of jelly fish which worried me little as I have a massive fear of those stingy things.
Then a 20 mile ride with LC on the bike to check a bit of the course, it felt really windy and I was getting worried, followed by a 3 mile run with Mrs SA right in the heat of the midday sun, Mrs SA found it to hot and bailed early.
I was now in full meltdown mode worrying about heat, wind and hills, questioning why I thought I could ever complete such a race.
Friday saw us meeting with up Nicko, who had booked a holiday on the island not realising it was race week, this was a massive welcome distraction or me as it gave a couple of hours of not thinking about the race, Nicko I have to say is looking really well J
Then in the afternoon it was time to rack, my bike was found a nice spot in between 2 palm trees next a phone booth, be easy to find the next day, bike to run bags hung up and had to go onto the beach with my swim to bike bag, dog the sand was hot, I had to go back 3 times to this bag because I kept believing I had forgotten to put things in it.
A nice healthy salad for tea and that was me in bed for the night.
I slept quite well all things considered and woke with the alarm at 4, Mrs SA prepared me my breakfast while Jordy slept, we had decided that Mrs SA would stay in the apartment to let Jordy sleep as long as possible as I wanted him to still be awake when I hopefully finished and this could be as late as 12 o’clock.
I had tried to mirror a lot of things I had done at IM Wales, one of these was to put my MP3 player on and listen to the songs that get you through the last 15 minutes of a tough turbo sessions, when I was collecting all my nutrition and fluid on Saturday morning I forgot my MP3 player, so when walking down to race start I mentioned this to LC and BM who in best pirate tradition rather than suggest to go back it, asked what songs they were and then preceded to try and sing “Eye of the tiger”
Into transition to get my legs into the wetsuit “Alright mate, how you doin?” it was old school pirate and all round top bloke, Bassy. Little did I know that this bloke would save my race in a couple of hours. Pumped some air into my tires and generally faffed about, which is the pirate way.
Saw Pudge who for some reason had seen fit to wear a tenalady on the back of neck, he claimed it was because of his sore neck, but only after seeing his neck several days later did I believe him J
So then all 5 us me, Pudge, Slagiatt, Hokori and Bassy stood at the back of everyone waiting to start.
The hooter sounded and we were away, my plan was to start at the back and then follow the guide rope for the first 1K, this was a big mistake and it seemed like everyone else had the same idea, I have never been in such a ruck even in my rugby days there wasn’t this much fighting, to my left I had a guy doing 5 strokes crawl, 5 strokes breaststroke, to my right was someone I called kicky man and in front was zig zag man, you would get 20 odd strokes in and then it felt like the whole field bunched up and it was swim over people or be swam over, glad to say I got more punches in than was punched. It felt a bit better after the turn around and then we were back to the beach, checked my watch 40 minutes, I’ll take that, ding ding seconds out and lap 2 was more of the fisty cuffs for the first half of the second lap, on the way back to the beech my hand went into the water and plunged into something different, my first thought was that I had scooped up a jellyfish so let out a massive girly scream but it turned out to only be someone’s swim hat that had come off, hahaha.
Onto the beach and run into transition, the second lap had taken 45 minutes; transition was just one massive tent on the beach.
Covering in sun cream, helmet on, glasses on, stuff gels into back pocket, grab socks and off we go, passed Pudge in transition who I think was getting a shampoo and set
I had already put my bike shoes onto the bike for a speedy get away, massive “Go Pirate” from all the supporters that had gather around mine and Slagiatt’s bike and run down to the mount line. I was first pirate out on the bike and we all know that a kills a kill.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before Pudge caught up and passed me and it was about 3 mile when he eased alongside me and after a quick chat he was off. Started to settle into in to the bike until about 9 mile when I’m not sure if it was the first climb or someone had turned the wind up but suddenly I had nothing in my legs, I was struggling to go 7 mph, it was at this point when I went into a dark place, I can’t do this, I seriously considered just turning round and riding back to the start, I have bitten more than I can chew here, everyone seemed to be riding past me, I got to my lowest point when “ How are you fella?” Bassy rode up to me,” Not to good, my legs have got nothing in them” Bassy replied that he was riding with a power meter and we were outputting over 200w which was good for where we were riding, this gave me enough to at least carry one and see how it went, thanks mate, I dread to think he you hadn’t come along when you did what I would have done.
The bike course then turned into a bit of a blur, long fast descents, long punishing climbs into the wind, I can’t remember all the names of the hills but I knew that Mirador Del Rio was the last proper climb, I got to some uphill switchbacks and at the top of one was a sign which said “Mirador” I think this was on a restaurant, I thought “I’ve done it” but then realised that we hadn’t passed the special needs station and that was at the top of Haria, which is the climb before Mirador Del Rio, I think it was round this time that I rode passed IronFanny who mentioned that the next 14K are all climbing, nice.
I was aware that the day was getting very hot and knew that the run would be hard work in this heat, now after last year’s Outlaw and having to work most of the marathon which took me 6 hours 42 minutes, I knew that if I could back into transition by 5 o’clock then I have a full 7 hours in which to do the run.
Getting to the top of Haria was great as you get to get off your bike if only for brief time but long enough to stretch my bike and restock on gels. I decided that this was a good time to go to the toilet; I asked a marshal were the toilets were? He told me to just piss off the side of the mountain, which is exactly what I did!
The decent from Haria is spectacular, especially for someone who follows cycling, you drop down the other side of the t mountain via a series of switchbacks, which I found fantastic fun and left a lot of other cyclists behind me, when you are at the bottom of the valley you then start the climb up to Mirador Del Rio, this was hard but the reward at the top is more than worth it, the view is just breath taking, the amazing turquoise waters below on your left next to a sheer drop are quite spectacular, this is also the highest point on the course, after this you get the fantastic descent and after a couple of sweeping curves you get a very long straight downhill, here I maxed out my gears and set a new PB for speed at just over 49mph J
After this you get a long stretch along a main road which is a bit dull, you then turn left and ride slightly uphill into yet more wind, then come what can only be described as the road from hell, the road condition is so bad and it’s so rough that all you could see was bottles , tubes, pumps, bottle cages, in fact anything that wasn’t nailed onto your bike came off, I lost all my gels out of the back pocket on my monaco, it was horrible. The miles continued to creep by and my time was still looking OK, towards the end of the bike you get a wonderful downhill which sweeps left and right several times, I really enjoyed this part, then suddenly I was back riding through the centre of town towards the finish of the bike.
I saw AJH here who like Nicko was just on holiday during Ironman week, then a little further on was LC and BM, then I saw my beloved Mrs SA and Jordy who had been kept company by Nicko, when suddenly the dismount line was there and I had to jump off the bike, I had finished the bike and was 15 minutes inside what I wanted.
Helmet off, shoes off, head sweat on, run shoes on and off on the run, quickly came upon Mrs SA and had a massive hug, then hi 5 with BM and LC. The run course is 2 laps of an out and back course that is 16K each lap with a final out and back of 10K, I was quickly into the run / walk, the road / pavement past the feed stations was so slippy that you had to have your wits about you, I was craving salt but nothing on the feed stations had any, you did get a massive choice Coke, Red Bull, Energy drink, gels, power bars, bananas and oranges but nothing with salt, you only had to look at my short and top to see how much salt I had lost over the course of the day, they were are stained with white streaks, the run past without too much trouble apart from wishing the sun go in as it was so hot, but little by little, step by step the finish came closer, when I just had 5k left, only a park run I said to myself and set off thinking I can inside 16 hours, I must have run more of the last 5k than the rest as all sudden I was running down the finishing chute, grabbed Mrs SA and Jordy, all the crowds clapping and cheering gave me a finish that will stay with me for ever J Jordy then proceeded to tell the marshals and anyone that would listen for that matter that I was a hero.
I had done it 15:37:11 the race I never thought I could do.
Off for a beer and a plate of chips covered in salt
The next 2 days we chilled and drank plenty of beer with the other pirates, I did get out for a quick spin on the bike with LC on the Monday and was showing her were the run course went, when this person shot past running at quite a lick, I got off the bike and stood there open mouthed complete star struck, it was no other than Javier Gomez, I couldn’t believe the speed he was running at, we both jumped back on our bikes and sped after him pulling in a little further to make sure it was him, he gave us little nod of acknowledgment as he sped past.
I have a few / a lot of thank yous to make
To Colourin for the loan of the bike box
To all the COLTS out on the course both competing and supporting, the banter and support was first class
To IronHolgs for making me BELIEVE
To Nicko and AJH you took time out of your holidays to come and support
To my fellow pirate competitors Pudge, Slagiatt and Hokori, Pudge is a racing snake who is only going to get quicker, to Slagiatt and Hokori sorry you didn’t get your finishes but the time we spent together is full of the most amazing memories
To all the people that followed on line, sent message of support on the forum, Facebook and Twitter, thank you, your support does make a difference
To LittleClown for being the best Sherpa / supporter out there
To Button Mushroom, the constant banter, making me, Mrs SA and Jordy laugh all the time
To Bassy, you saved my race.
To all the pirates for the constant advice and words of encouragement
To Mrs SA and Jordy, for picking me up every time I’m down, for listen to my constant drivel about my training rides, for all the family time I missed with training, love you more than words can say
PS, just a little note for Lea the Pea, crazy golf was played twice and I crushed the opposition, still undefeated.
Cracking read SA, and fantastic performance.
Awesome SA! You are a superstar
Fantastic effort, achievement etc great race report mate, so pleased you made it, enjoy the memories, have agreat weekend and love to Jo and Jordy :0)
Great report Q!! Sounds like an immense adventure, glad you conquered it
Its definitely a race on my list...
What?! No, it's the onions....I'm not crying no way, it's definitely the onions...
Great report SA and a well earned finish
great report SA........you were looking good at the DIY weekend.so pleased the hard work paid off
Top bombing SA! Good effort and a lovely read!
Great report.