SMASH your 70.3

Against a backdrop of the first Ironman 70.3 Swansea, 220 staff writer Kate Milsom finds out the vomit-inducing hard way where and how to make key performance gains over 112km...

- Kate Milsom

I’m nothing special. Your average, time-crunched age-grouper who just might have bitten off more than they can chew by targeting a middle-distance triathlon. Injury and boredom brought me to tri – the all-rounder sport with the most welcoming community. Though I’ve done a couple of tris before (in the pre-pandemic era of motivation and health), I’ve never followed any solid guidance or race plan, unless patching together mis-matched tips from the internet and word-of-mouth counts. I want to find out once and for all how to ace a half-Ironman from start to finish. What’s the best race strategy? Where can those time-savings be made? And how to keep going when the going gets tough. Really tough. The perfect setting for this experiment? The inaugural Ironman 70.3 Swansea, boasting unforgiving hills along the ruggedly beautiful Gower parkland, balanced out by a calm, dockside sea swim and blissfully flat seafront run. And providing the advice? Tri coach Dermott Hayes. Let’s get racing… 

ACTION TIME: T-30MINS UNTIL RACE START

The calm waters of Swansea’s Prince of Wales Dock glittered in the sunshine as I jostled among the crowd of silicone-green egg heads waiting to start. It was a rolling seeded start, but with 2,000 competitors, the otherwise calm water became a writhing mass of neoprene-clad bodies. The 1.9km swim started with a short inner loop followed by a longer circuit along the dock’s perimeter. Crowds hung over the balustrade with homemade signs and streamers, but I turned my attention away from them, doing a quick mental checklist: wetsuit secure, goggles in position, hat on, watch poised. That’s it. I was ready.

ONE MINUTE INTO THE SWIM