Ironman Brasil Race Report

Orca Swim, It was a beach start with the pros getting an approximately 5m head start on all the age groupers. I was a little nervous about this as my previous beach starts have not been the best. But I got a good start and settled into the front pack with a solo swimmer going off the front right from the early stages. It was a M shaped course, with 2 bouys, yes, two bouys, but luckily there was no real swell so navigation was not too much of a problem. After the first lap we had an approx. 100m run around/along the beach to start the 2nd lap. This was the hardest part of the swim. Exiting the water, I was still where I needed to be.


On to the Orbea bike course, and straight away the sensations in the legs didn’t feel that great. I got dropped from the front group and continued to loose time until the end. I was just hoping to come right, but never got going. Sturla had done a demolition on the rest of the field and I was now 20min down starting the run. The bike was two laps, with quite a few out and back sections and most of it was on the motorway with one lane closed off for the cyclists and the other used for the cars.

So out on to the Saucony / compressport run and I tried to get the engine revved up , I picked up previous winner Galendiz and a few others but the gap to Mcdonald who was in 5th at the half way stage was 9min. With Roth coming up soon I decided not to kill myself as there was no way I was going to run him down or the others close by unless they had some spectacular blow ups which they didn’t. The run course was one big lap of 21k then two smaller 10.5k laps.

So I rolled in to the finish in 8hr37min in 6th position on the Timex Race Trainer Watch. Not exactly what I wanted but I learnt some good lessons, and a solid 180k in the legs which will be good for me.

The last couple of days Tracy and I have been having a look around Rio De Janeiro and have now just arrived in Santiago for 2 nights before we fly back to NZ. The legs are pretty good, so I will be straight back into it on Monday J





Big thanks to our accommodation hosts Paulo and Lu. Some interesting conversations with gesturing, and a mixture on portugese / English words!