On 27 August 2017, I managed to finish my first Ironman 70.3 in Zell am See, Austria! The original goal was to 1. finish, 2. finish under 6 hours, later changed to under 5:30 hours. And I accomplished my goal!
My total time was 5 hours 20 minutes and 53 seconds. So, nicely under the 5:30 hrs I must say 🙂
After crossing the finish line, I was quite exhausted. Couldn’t even drink the offered beer (!) but after a little while I managed to drink some water and wait for my friend to finish a few minutes after me.
After taking a good shower in the hotel, a little bit of rest on bed, and picking up my bike and other stuff in the transition zone, I was hungry enough for a large pizza and some drinks. The next day I said goodbye to my friend (who was still having holidays with his family) and drove back to Innsbruck.
In the next month, I did a few rides and a single run and then it was time for my next working project. During this 4 weeks project I was mostly staying onshore at night, so I could go for a couple of runs every week. In the following months, I didn’t train that much. Did I want to continue training, compete in more Ironman triathlons or forget about it all and just go for an occasional run/ride or swim once in a while? No, I wanted to continue, I needed to continue because actually it felt good! I felt energized, challenged and happy! Like I’ve said before, I’ve been sporting all my life and it just feels so good 🙂
After living in Austria for a couple of years (working as a ski instructor in winter and working offshore in my normal profession the rest of the year) I decided to go back to my home country, The Netherlands. I bought a very old house (built in 1934) in my home town that needed a desperate renovation and spend a lot of time doing the most of the reno work. First a lot of demolition (with help of my family) and then the built-up phase. Since the house was in such a bad and unliveable state when I bought it, I moved back to my parents house until my whole renovation work would be completed.
The day before Christmas I finally moved back into my own house. The house wasn’t completely ready yet, but was good enough to live in! A few days later, end of December, I had to go working offshore again and besides of the long hours working (at least 12 hrs a day), I managed to find some time to relax and do some indoor bike rides and occasionally a run when we were in port. Back home, I continued my trainings for cycling, running and swimming. After some discussions with my company with regards to getting periods off from work, the goals for 2018 were set!
- Ironman 70.3 Rapperswil-Jona in Switzerland on 10 June 2018
- Ironman 70.3 Koper in Slovenia on 23 September 2018
The trainings in the next couple of months were a little bit inconsistent due to my offshore work, but I managed to train quite a bit next to my offshore job or house renovation back home…
Since I had set my goals for 2018 to finishing two Ironman 70.3 races, I thought it was justified to buy a real triathlon bike! I had a bike fit at a triathlon specialised shop, TriPro in Hilversum, The Netherlands, and decided to buy the Cervelo P3 with Edco aerodynamic carbon fibre wheels.
Right after buying my new bike, my time-off from work started and from 1 May 2018 I had less than 1.5 months before the IM 70.3 race in Rapperswil-Jona! That meant in a relatively short period I had to train really a lot and trying to get into the best shape possible.
About 3 weeks before IM 70.3 Rapperswil-Jona, I drove to Innsbruck for more mountain specific bike trainings in the Alps. I cycled to Schwarz/Wattens (known for the Swarovski crystal), to Telfs a few times and the Kuhtai round route (skiing area).
About a good week before the race, I drove further to Rapperswil, Switzerland, where I was able to explore a part of the bike route, run the running route and swim in the lake. And then came the weekend of Ironman 70.3 Rapperswil-Jona, but that’s for the next post 😉
