Well I've done it. In line with my intention to do a major sponsored event every 4 years I have decided I can resist the Ironman challenge no longer. The event is on August the 19th and between now and then I shall increase my training load steadily in a bid perform better than my dismal showing in last years Wensleydale Tri. My favoured charity is the MS Trust, and all the sponsorship money raised will be split between them and the MS Therapy Centre in Rawdon. Read it all here, the trials and tribulations of an ordinary persons attempt at an Ironman Triathlon.

Since I started racing 2 years ago the bulk of my training has been the races themselves with not much in between, I have no fitness base and I have done very little training at anything approaching a steady pace. This has led to many injury problems as well as a spell on the sidelines due to being 'overtrained'. From now on however I intend to train smarter not harder, During the next 3 months I am intending to build up a high mileage but low intensity fitness base as well as doing the odd organised event to vary the intensity a bit. Good aerobic fitness is the key to completing the Ironman even if it comes at the expense of flat out speed.

August: The Big Day.

The trainings done, the restings done, the fundraisings done and we've bought a tent. We set off down to Dorset on the Friday morning in our Volvo estate looking like a family that has just been kicked out of a hostel. We arrived at the campsite at tea time and pitched the tent which was fun, Scott thought I was playing ghosts but I was just trying to erect the bloody thing in a force nine gale. Then the rain set in and things just got better, the day before the event was terrible and we virtually hibernated for the whole day with me just nipping out to register and put my bike in transition. As I walked past the swim course I felt strangely calm and resigned to my fate the next day. I was up on race morning at 4am and could only face an energy bar for breakfast, we wandered down to the start and checked the bike, damn it it's still there! I got into the water early and swam the 250m to the start slowly and found myself a place near the edge of the swim start. The atmosphere was awesome as 1500 athletes waited for the start, I kept telling myself pace, pace, pace. The klaxon sounded and the lake became a churning mass of bodies, I kept myself calm and swam steadily but not particularly well and soon found myself rounding the turnaround buoy, 1hour and 36 mins later and I was scrambling out of the lake and not even in last place.

I bumbled my way through transition and set off on the cycle, the weather was cool and the wind was strong which was ok for the first 8 miles or so. Unfortunately the route has to head back to Sherborne at some point ( 3 times actually ) and its at that point that the real work of the day started. The relentless climbing and blustery weather meant I was unable to keep my heart rate below 80% never mind the 75% I had been intending to stay below. The support on the course was really good and I was soon on the last lap and feeling ok, the niggling knee pain I started with dissappeared around the 80 mile mark and shortly after that the gels handed out at the aid stations dissappeared also. Never mind, who needs energy anyway! I entered the second transition feeling quite pleased with myself despite being 30 mins or so behind schedule.

The run started ok and I decided to keep racing at about 80% and see what happened. My plan worked fine for the first 7 miles or so and I kept slowly passing people during the run section that passes through the castle grounds, the cheering crowds at this point were great. From the castle the run heads out through Sherborne and out onto the exposed dual carriageway and it was here that my race fell apart, gradually my body started to moan about the pace I had set and the lack of calories on the last 20 miles or so of the bike were starting to show effect. My legs got slower and slower, the other athletes got faster and faster and my mood got fouler and fouler. The exposed hilly A30 is a desolate place to be when you've hit the wall, the wind seemed to get stronger and I got colder, the last 16 miles of the run were just a battle of attrition for me. My legs were full of cramp and I was despondant, but slowly the miles passed and the finish got nearer, all the people we are raising money for would love to be doing this I thought and I kept up my pathetic shuffle to the end. I did manage to jog in the last half mile or so and passed under the finish banner in 13 hours 26 minutes. The feeling of emotion at that point is hard to describe and for a strange moment it seemed instantly to make all the struggle insignificant. The pizza handed out at the finish was the best I had ever tasted and the hot pools looked amazing, not as good as the hugs and kisses from my family promised to be though, and I left the athletes area and went to rub my sweaty body on the long suffering souls.

Would I do it again? Yes, a truly great event with awesome support, my strong bike leg helped me through on the day and with a bit more training and a lot more food maybe I can crack the 12 hour mark. See you at Ironman UK 2008 anybody? 

July: Mmmm, Just 6 weeks to go. Doesn't time fly. When I first entered Ironman it all seemed so distant. A  50 mile ride here, a short run there and I should be ok! er, yes wake up Steve and lets face some facts, you haven't actually ridden 100 miles in one day since 2003 and you have only ever done 1 run over 15 miles and then the swimming, oh dear the swimming, you are supposed to be swimming along the surface not look as though you are trying to climb out of it. I have had a dilemma this month, I didn't want to risk injury at this stage but also realised that I would feel more confident if I had actually completed the distance in at least 1 of the disciplines. So this month I have done 1 ride of 100 miles in the pouring rain and a hilly half marathon all interspersed with lots of short recovery rides and some swims. Alexia has been working hard on my swimming and has been a great help by swimming alongside me in my open water practise sessions, I have a tendency to panic when on my own, a deep rooted problem stemming from when I nearly drowned myself whilst in Australia some years ago. Her enthusiasm and calm nature has helped immensely and towards the end of the month I swam 2 miles open water which was great. I also feel my confidence growing with every swim and am becoming more relaxed amongst the weeds and carp (crap?) in the local quarry.

June: I think I have had the best training month of the year so far. I seem to have had a reasonable spell free from injury and illness ( and the dreaded grass cutting round ) which has helped me to put in some consistent training miles on the bike. I still think the cycle leg will make or break my day in August, then again maybe I am just trying to justify spending more of my time on my favourite discipline! Of all the three aspects, I am most natural as a runner and my times have been coming down steadily now even though I do very little training ( 1 run a week), I am sure this is due to the cross over of fitness from cycling to running. Most of my training is now done at around 75% of my maximum heart rate, this the intensity that I envisage racing at during Ironman and I seem to consume about 800 calories an hour at that pace. I regularly use this calorie calculation to justify scoffing endless  'cookie and cream' flavour powerbars.

May: Thats the trouble with life, it can come up with endless other things that you should be doing with your time other than training for an Ironman, you know, mundane things like work, paperwork, family, kids, dare i say it-other hobbies. The list is endless but there is only so many hours in the day. Due to the nature of our business we enter a particularly tiring part of the year around now, hence the old training regime has taken a bit of a knock. At my current training volume I will have gained enough fitness to make it about halfway through the cycle section of Ironman UK before being swept up by the broom wagon. So as well as reduced training due to lack of time (due to the need to actually scratch a living), the bit of training I can do, I don't recover from very well due to the relentless physical labour of the working week. However a ray of light, or The Bobster, as we know him has been shining on us since he came to work for us a week or so ago. Despite being 60 he is over the moon that somebody has freed him from the miserable existence that is factory work and is relishing the new challenge of landscaping himself to death, and looks set to save the day training wise. By taking on all the more onerous jobs he will be freeing me to train more consistently. So long live the Bobster, quite possibly the saviour of my ever more pathetic attempt at Ironman 2007. Oh by the way I have managed a 21 mile run with no ill effects and my time trialling is coming along a bit now as well.

April: April has been much better as regards training, I can honestly say that I have had no problems with illness or injury, this must be some sort of record for me, maybe all the base training has done some good after all. The time trial league has now started and I managed to knock over 2 mins off my previous best for 9 miles which was encouraging. The intensity of my training is gradually increasing and I am now experimenting with a training principle called 'crashing' which sounded just up my street. Briefly this involves increasing overload training for the first 3 weeks of a month and then having the 4th week as a much easier rest week, the idea seems good and after 3 to 4 months of this I should be Ironman ready. The down side is watching your race times disintegrate during the latter part of the hard training phase as your body struggles to cope with the demands, I will soon have completed my week off and will see how I feel when I start the next 3 weeks of torture. So will it be Ironman glory or Crash and Burn, who knows but my legs now resemble those of a Blackbird which is obviously a great improvement over the Sparrows legs I used to have.

March: Yet again a good chunk of March has been robbed from me by bouts of illness etc, even to the point where I was considering postponing my Ironman attempt for a year. My enthusiasm had hit rock bottom and I felt my training was going nowhere. However my enthusiasm is returning due in part to a mate of mine who has decided to take me out cycling once a week, and give me a merciless beasting, often reducing me to a quivering wreck while he rides merrily along looking over the hedges and commenting on the scenery. I try to tell him that all the sweat is stinging my eyes, and that my body feels like its gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson but my words get distorted by the wind and he just says 'yeah, we can go faster if you want, its just I thought you were looking a little jaded thats all'. This is obviously what I've been needing and I am slowly starting to put in some consistent training, though a lot of it is recovery based for reasons fore mentioned. I have joined a new gym for the swimming after Wendy worked out that by swapping we could save enough every year to pay for a holiday in Morroco, a week all inclusive as well! So slowly but surely things are beginning to turn round and if my training keeps progressing I should be ok for my goal in August. Now where is that magazine that promised to make me a stronger cyclist in 15 minutes! 

February: Well I thought January was bad enough but February has been a whole lot worse. I had a good week of training in the first week of Feb and then pulled a muscle in my back, I managed to acheive this with whilst painting a skirting board! I am still suffering from an overwhelming sense of disbelief that this is even possible, however I am reminded that is possible daily when I have to log roll myself out of bed on to my hands and knees and then spend 10 minutes wondering how I am going to actually stand up. Coughing, sneezing and putting my socks on have become major life challenges at the moment and the long steady road to Ironman fitness now seems to get steeper and more precarious by the day. I am currently consoling myself with copious quantities of Ibuprofen and haven't given up on training completely because I can still stretch my feet, which may not sound much to you but as I have the most unflexible ankles in Britain I have worked out that I can save minutes in the swim just by not dragging two size 10 water brakes around the course! Surely things can only get better, can't they?

January: You see, thats the trouble with Triathlon, life has a nasty habit of getting in the way. The first 10 days of Jan were a write off as far as training goes due to my uncanny ability to pick up any winter lurgys going ( I won't bore you with the details of why I think this is happening) Anyway I've managed to complete 2 of the reliability rides, both of which I really enjoyed and made me feel very humble about my abilities as usual ( as if I need reminding!) and have also done a reasonable amount of swimming. I have had a good long think about the Ironman and decided that it will be the cycling on the day which will get me through and will train accordingly. Running wise I will be doing long slow runs with some changes of pace and gruelling endurance runs up and down hills as preparation for the marathon leg. Talking of running, the only bit of good luck that I had this month was after I had got thoroughly sick of nursing my nagging shin splints, I ignored all good sense and ran hard and fast for as long as I could, miraculously they seem to have dissappeared. Definately not recommended but you won't find me complaining. Oh yes nearly forgot, had a near death experience on a late night training ride, unbeknown to me it was cold enough to freeze the brake cables and the levers were solid when I needed them most. After wrenching them on in a desperate bid to avoid a close encounter with some barbed wire fencing they locked on, I then spent 10mins trying to defrost them with hands that were evidently colder than the cables themselves. Roll on February (and summer).

December: During this month I have completed 4 long slow runs of 10,13,15 and 14 miles at around 70% of my maximum heart rate.I have ridden about 180 steady miles on the bike with the longest being about 80 miles. The swimming is coming along slowly and I am intending to slowly build up the distance I swim each week from the current 2 miles a week to about 5 miles a week, although because I am quite inefficient as a swimmer much of my pool time should really be spent on doing various drills rather than just ingraining bad habits for mile after mile. After a reasonable period of being injury free I am having trouble with a niggling pain half way down my left shin, I think this has stemmed from the road running and has worsened since I did the Chevin Chase on Sunday. I will concentrate on swimming and cycling for a week or two and hope it clears up. (Although I might still do the Jolly Holly Jog next week as I can't bear to waste the entry fee or the opportunity to shed some Christmas calories!). Roll on January.