Ironman Nice: Race Report Part 1
This blog has lain dormant for a few months, but I’ve decided to bring it back and recount my take of my epic Ironman adventure last summer.
WHEN ONE cruises down down the final chute towards the finishing arch, which upon crossing draws to a close months and months of training, hard work, early starts and worrying, one will hear the immortal words:
“Jonathan, YOU are an Ironman!”
For many, this signifies the achievement of a lifetime, the culmination of immense dedication, sacrifice and pursuit of their ultimate goal. The feeling when you enter the final stages of an Ironman event are indescribable and I lack the ability of a seasoned wordsmith to do it justice. Instead, in my own words, I will try and recount, to the best of my ability, my race weekend and the highs and lows that are inseparable from it.
In a separate post to come at a later stage, I’ll recount the final month of training building into the event itself. I want to keep this section relatively succinct and discuss the race in more detail, so I’ll save the rambling on training volume, practise events and all of the tiny planning details that make something like this possible for a separate piece.
Anyhow, after 6 months of intense training, the weekend had arrived. Fast forward to Thursday evening. Due to holiday restrictions (namely, not having much of my allowance left) I could only head out to Nice on the Thursday before the event. One of the lessons I learnt this weekend that a few extra days in the city would be useful - to acclimatise, perhaps take a final gentle, relaxed ride or drive the route a day earlier.
We left Bristol at 6pm on Thursday evening. Although I’m based in London for the majority of the time, I was back ‘home’ for the week preceding the event. My brother was accompanying me on the drive down, and he lives there, so it made sense as a starting point. I worked from his house that afternoon and swiftly shut my laptop upon conclusion of the working day, strapped the bikes (Excalibur II & Galahad, yes, they have names) onto the back of the car and we were off.
We’d agreed to share the driving and I was first up. Our crossing on Le Shuttle wasn’t until 11.20pm so we weren’t in a huge rush. Brother Matthew demonstrated this perfectly at Cobham services on the M25 - helping himself to a McDonald’s order that can only be described as an effort to antagonise the protagonist of the story as much as possible. We soon found ourselves in France and I continued my shift into the early hours - pulling over in a rest stop about 50km outside of Paris, or 2.30am local time.
Matthew had managed to catch a few hours of sleep though was aided by the huge can of Monster he’d thoughtfully packed for himself. On trips such as these, it has become the norm that Brother Matthew takes responsibility for the curation of “snacc baggington’, the name given to the invaluable bag of snacks that keeps one going on such a long journey. His shift passed without mention, apart from when I awoke in the passenger's seat to Matthew in a panic, attempting to navigate suburban Paris in the dark, driving rain - in the middle lane - and surrounded on all sides by unforgivable drivers.
We switched over a few times throughout the course of the morning, the other trying to catch a few minutes of sleep here and there. I’ve a newfound appreciation for just how big France is - we were driving for hours and hours with seemingly the little car on the Sat Nav refusing to move. An hour out from Nice I clambered back into the driving seat for the last time, Matthew telling me “don’t worry about the fuel level, it’s OK”.
We rolled into Nice at 3pm Friday and unloaded the car. 2 bikes (I took Galahad as a back up in case something happened to the first choice), multiple boxes of kit, and of course the remains of snacc bagginton fit nicely into our AirBnb overlooking the port of Nice.
Dad wasn’t joining us until the following day, so we freshened up and headed in to see the town. We stopped for some food (though conscious that now was NOT the time to take any risks I opted for a salad) and I went over to the Race Village to register for the event. Registering didn’t take very long at all - it was very well organised and although there was a bit of a queue it moved along quickly.
At registration they give you your race pack - this contains your race number that you pin to your race belt, your swimming cap (x2), your transition bags, and a sheet of stickers that go on various items, including each of your T-bags, helmet, and your bike. As it was my first Ironman, I also received an orange Ironman wristband that said, “I will become one”. And everyone clapped because they shout it out, which is nice but does make you a bit self-conscious. Having said that, it was at times a comfort to see other wearing it.
After registration, I checked out the Expo - basically a pop-up shop. I’m not sure this does it justice though, as it was very busy and had a wide selection. There were a lot of tempting buys, though I curbed my enthusiasm and only got a hat - I didn’t want to tempt fate at all and I refused to wear the hat until the morning after the event, just in case.
I joined back up with Matthew, took a quick dip in the sea ( it was wavy, so Matthew went in and I watched, under the pretence of “not wanting to get injured”) and we had dinner back ‘in the gaff’. On the way back, we took a quick detour to check out the finishing line and both agreed it would be an epic ending and stopped for a beer (I had a Diet Coke). In bed early, after 22 Jump Street on French Netflix. We’d only had a few hours sleep each the night before obviously so we were keen for a relatively early one.
On the Saturday morning, Dad was scheduled to arrive on a flight from the UK. As it was, his flight was delayed by an hour, which was welcome news to me as it meant that I could get a much needed extra hour in bed. One of the good things about Nice is that the airport is really close to the city centre, which means despite being the other side of town, it only took 20 minutes in the car to get there.
We’d agreed that after we’d picked Dad up from the airport, we would head out in the car and do a reconnaissance of the bike course I would be faced with the day after. After Matthew learnt that would mean driving a further 112 miles he suddenly “had other plans” and took himself off for a swim and mooch around the town - I can’t blame him.
Anyway - Dad and I in the car, myself driving and Dad navigating us through the course using my phone which had the course loaded. I’m going to save the ins and outs of the course for my recount of the actual race, but it was good to see the course beforehand in my own eyes, and I would absolutely recommend to anyone doing a similar event that they do the same. For example, the profile had several long climbs and fast, technical descents, and it was invaluable to experience these beforehand - things like which line to take on the road, when to brake, when to change gear in advance of a sudden incline - that sort of thing. I was also glad that Dad was there, as it meant kind of sharing the bike experience and allowed him I think to relate to what was happening during the bike leg as he’d driven it the day before.
We were in the car for several hours all told and once back, grabbed some lunch and set about preparing my transition bags. These are important. you get given four colour-coded bags as part of your race pack. In one goes everything you’ll need for the swim/bike transition, or T1, and in the second goes everything you’ll need for the bike/run transition (T2). I’d run through exactly what I needed for each one so many times before and I’d pre-packed them in boxes back in England, but this still didn’t stop me worrying I’d forgotten something valuable like my running shoes.
In my T1 bag: cycling shoes & socks, helmet, sun-screen, banana, heavily-concentrated (3x usual) electrolyte drink, sunglasses, towel, talcum powder, chamois cream (important!), race belt (with race number already clipped on), energy gels.
My T2 bag: running shoes, spare sunglasses, hat, spare contact lenses, paracetamol, more electrolytes, energy gels.
The other 2 bags are your Personal Needs bags. You get one each for the bike and run legs. In here you can place items to collect/use halfway round the course (80km in on the bike leg, for example). The trade-off is that you don’t get this back afterwards, so you need to be selective about what you include. I just threw in some sweets, a note to myself, and some bike maintenance things like spare CO2 canisters and an inner tube - you can never be too prepared.
Anyway, bags sorted and time to go down and check my bike in. It was impressive looking at the bike park - 4,500 bikes all racked up next to each other - the total value of all of those bikes in the park must have been getting close to £10 million we calculated. At bike check-in, you also receive your timing chip. This goes round your left ankle on race day and is what tracks your time and location during the event.
I met back up with Dad and Matthew who had been out on a run around the bay and we headed out for dinner. I opted for a standard pasta in tomato sauce, again with the aim of not risking anything too exotic. The others enjoyed something else, but washed down with a European-2-pinter whilst I enjoyed a Diet Coke.
I spent most of Saturday night staring at the wall. Whatever I tried, I simply coudn’t get to sleep such was the level of nerves. No sooner had I dropped off my alarm was ringing - imploring me to rise at 4.30am. Trying to force breakfast down at this time is not easy and it was made harder by my nervousness. I managed to chug down half a bottle of Huel and a couple of brioche buns which was about as much as I could have managed.
After a few last minute checks of my swimming equipment, it was time to leave our base and head down to the start. There’s time available the morning of the race to conduct last minute checks of your bike - I took this time to also clip on my bike computer, bottles (which had been in the freezer overnight), and bento box with food - you don’t want to take a chance that any of these go missing. The bike park closed at 6.15am, 1.15 before the start time, so there was suddenly a lot of time to kill - the calm before the storm.
After leaving the bike park I pulled my wetsuit on and dropped off my backpack (you get given a nice Ironman-branded one as part of your race pack) with my Dad and brother who were waiting just outside. I milled around with them for a bit and we took a final photo before it was time to head down to the start line.