Happy New Year (Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016)!

I haven't posted much here lately, what with my knee issues and hip pain and because, well, it's Winter and there's not much to share!

Like last year I've learned some important lessons, namely that trying to do 4 big races in 4 months just doesn't work. I've had moderate success this year position wise having come 2nd place in the Ladybower 20. And of course there's the fact that I completed my first Ironman in Bolton, UK with a time of 14:18:45; it might not have been the time I was hoping for, but it was faster than the time I was expecting.

Ladybower 50/20

So I was supposed to be doing the Ladybower 50 ultra, a 50 mile run around Ladybower, Howden and Derwent reservoirs. This didn't happen.

Robert, You Are An Ironman!

So it's been a week since the big race, so I'll write things here as I remember them!

After getting up to some rather dreary weather, I drove to the Macron stadium (and T2) to catch the coach to the start line at Pennington Flash. The coach left a lot later than it was supposed to and by the time I got to T1 I only had about 30 minutes to fix up the bike, get changed and be ready to race. It was raining heavily and none of the gels would stick to the bike, and there was nowhere to fill my water bottles up. Not a good start. Fortunately one kind soul gave me the remainder of his bottle of water which allowed me to fill up at least some of the way.