Sunday 1st May 2016 was a day that I had been looking forward to for a long time. Since 11th October last year in fact, which was when I booked my entry into the Ironman 70.3 Pays D’Aix in Aix En Provence, France. Although I raced a few UK based middle distance races in 2015, this was to be my first Ironman branded event and I couldn’t wait.
Over the months since booking entry into the race I’d been booking flights to get Emily and I to Aix, booking an apartment in the centre of the town for us to stay in for race week, sorting out transfers from the airport and logistics for the week and generally getting pretty excited about racing there. My winter of training hadn’t gone anywhere near as well as I’d hoped but the few weeks before the race I’d been able to get some quality sessions in, putting out higher numbers on the bike than I ever have before and feeling okay in the pool. I was still recovering from some ITB problems picked up in early March so running had been a bit stop and start, but I was still confident that I could run a good time in the race.
Race week came about pretty quickly. I’d taken the whole week off work to try and have a bit of holiday time too so we we’re flying out on Monday 25th April and back the following Monday, making use of the bank holiday. I drove up to Emily’s on Friday evening after work and spent the weekend there, getting a good 103km ride in on the Saturday around the Lincolnshire Wolds, the first 50km with Emily. We stayed there until Saturday afternoon as it was Emily’s sister’s birthday and then headed back to Loughborough so I could finish packing. The flight was at 7.50am from Gatwick, so we’d have to be up early to leave Loughborough around 2am, so an early night was planned. This didn’t really work out and I finally finished packing everything at about 11.30pm… oops!
**Beep…Beep…Beep…** My alarm sounded after only about 1.5hrs of sleep and we we’re up. Very bleary eyed I knew I needed to eat something to wake me up before the 2.5 hour drive, so had a couple of breakfast bars and a glass of juice which seemed to do the trick. A quick bit of last minute packing and final checking to make sure we had everything later, we packed my bike box and our suitcases into the car and were off, just about on time. Within about 10 mins of setting off Emily was fast asleep (&snoring!!) 😛 I’d brought some more breakfast bars and other food for the journey to keep me awake and this was much needed later on, the lack of sleep the night before not doing me any favours! We made it to the car park at 4.30am and having left my car + keys with them we jumped on a bus to the terminal, suitcases and bike in tow. An uneventful check in, bag drop and security check later we were into the departures lounge with about 1.5hours until the flight was due to push back. Time for some breakfast! A hot drink & croissant from Costa later and a bit of wandering around the lounge it was soon time to head to the gate ready for boarding.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, getting the flight to Marseille Provence airport, getting my bike back and quickly checking to make sure it wasn’t snapped in half, getting a bus to Aix En Provence (~40mins), walking to the apartment and getting settled in there. Having built up my bike and checked it over, we headed to the supermarket to get some food for the first half of the week and then headed out to get some dinner – burger + chips and crepes for pudding 😀 After all that it was time for some sleep – I’m pretty sure we both fell fast asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow!
The next day after having a bit of a lie in I headed out for a full route recce of the bike course, which meant biking the ~25km to the lake in Peyrolles En Provence, and then going round the 90km course. It was a sunny day and despite a few mishaps on route (losing the bottle from my saddle mounted bottle cage and also losing one of the brake pads from my front brake!), I had a good ride out and my legs were feeling very good. The course itself was fun, with some technical descents, open flat sections that the wind made interesting and some lovely climbs. The first picture below was taken looking towards the last and main climb of the course, the Col du Cengle, and the second photo taken at the top of it!
On arriving back at the apartment we headed out to find a bike shop and get some new brake pads and then cooked ourselves some dinner and got another early night.
On Wednesday we caught the bus to Peyrolles to spend the afternoon up at Lac de Peyrolles (the swim venue for the race), having a picnic lunch and doing some open water swimming in our lovely Zone3 Vanquish wetsuits 😀 This was the first time I’d tried my new 2016 Vanquish and they’ve somehow managed to make it even better than last years suit! Here’s some pictures from our time at the lake:
Thursday was another cycling day. We’d looked into bike hire for Emily so she’d be able to cycle too, and found a shop not too far from our apartment, so headed down to them around 9am to see what they could do. Unfortunately they said that the only road bike they had left was a 56cm frame, which was a bit too big considering Emily usually rides a 49cm! They had some hybrid’s but none of these were right either, so Emily wouldn’t be able to cycle too, as there were no other bike hire shops in town 😦 I hadn’t realised before how many people would come to a race and hire a bike rather than bringing their own, but it seemed this is where all the hire bikes had gone to! Anyway, I headed out for a 35km ride, out and back, up and down the final descent of the bike course. My legs again felt good and I was putting out some good numbers up the climb which I was pleased with. I couldn’t wait to race down the descent on closed roads on Sunday being able to use the whole road into the hairpins etc. I did the ride in my Compressport shorts which I was planning on using on race day, and my Compressport top, and they were both super comfy and perfect for the conditions!
We then went and relaxed in the park for a few hours soaking up some sun 😀
On Friday we’d planned to go up to the lake again and spend some more time sunbathing, open water swimming and generally relaxing! It was also the first day of registration for the race, so I did so on the way to the bus station and got my race pack with my numbers, transition bags etc. We then caught the bus to the lake, had a picnic, swam around for a bit, sunbathed and took lots of photos 😀 All in all a nice relaxing day.
When we got back to the apartment I got my kit ready and into my transition bags ready for racking on Saturday.
Saturday was a slightly earlier start than the last few days as there was the english race briefing at 9.30am followed by a few hours to do final kit checks before dropping off my T2 run bag in the centre of Aix and getting a shuttle bus with my bike up to the lake to rack and drop off my T1 Bike bag in transition. I didn’t spend much time up at the lake other than racking and was straight back onto another shuttle bus to take us back to Aix. I then headed back to Emily at the apartment and cooked up a big load of pasta and sauce for dinner! I had to be up at around 4am the following morning (I like to have my porridge about 4 hours before race start) so an early(ish) night was needed, though I don’t think I actually got to sleep for quite a while with the nerves/excitement/adrenaline of racing the following day definitely having kicked in by that point.
I woke up pretty quickly when my alarm went off and set about making a nice big bowl of porridge. For the first time before a race I struggled to eat it because of the nerves, but over about 20 minutes I managed to finish it off. The buses to go up to the lake for race start were leaving from the center of Aix at around 5.30am, so I packed up my kit, said goodbye and had a nice hug with Emily and left the apartment. I managed to get on the first bus up to the lake, and about 40mins later arrived to a transition filled with race officials moving the bag drop boxes around and seeming chaos. After about 30mins of hundreds of athletes standing around not knowing what was going on (having arrived expecting to be able to get into transition and do their final race prep) we were informed that due to cold air temperature then the swim had been cancelled! Damn, I was looking forward to swimming in my new Vanquish wetsuit and being a strong open water swimmer I knew this would have an effect on my race.
It emerged that the start was to be a ‘TT-style’ affair, with 5 athletes set off every 8 seconds, setting off roughly in race number order. I was race number 758, so had a fair few people setting off before me. My start was due to be around 8.40am, 1 hour after the swim was supposed to begin! Oh well, nothing we could do about it, just had to make the best of the situation. I did my final race prep, put on my Compressport socks (in much less of a rush than I would have had to in T1!) and rolled up to the start line.
Beep…Beep…Beep…BEEP. I was off. About 20m after the start line there was a 90 degree left turn, which I don’t think the organisers had thought too much about having 5 athletes all aiming for the racing line. After this there was a long straight, 90 degree right turn, long straight, left turn and then we were onto the main roads. I knew not to get carried away in the first few km’s of the bike and to just settle down, let the legs warm up and see how they were feeling. I was progressing well and overtaking lots of those who had set off before me. Just before the start of the first climb (~18km in) I was averaging 42kmph and was slightly up on the average power I was hoping to put out, so was pleased and my legs were feeling great!
I settled into a good rhythm and continued to overtake more people up the first climb. I was feeling good as we passed the first aid station which was on a flat section mid way up the climb and my bottle was no way near even half empty by that point (only 20km into the race), so I moved over to the far side of the road to avoid the people slowing down to pick up bottles etc. A sharp descent followed and then another bit of climbing before descending into Ginasservis. There was a sharp left turn followed by a hairpin to the right, where there was a few marshalls instructing people to slow down for the corner. A fairly straight downhill followed before a sweeping right hand bend and a tight left. As I came out of the sweeping right bend my back wheel felt a bit wobbly so I looked down and found that my rear tyre was bulging quite a lot. Damn, a puncture only 30km into the race. At this point I was going ~60kmph and with a tight left corner coming up I got on my brakes quickly! After a bit of a scary moment with the back wheel sliding all over the place I managed to come to a stop about halfway round said corner.
I got off my bike quickly and leant it up against a wall so I could un-tape the foam canister from my bike and try to get my tyre pumped back up again and continue the race. After what seemed like forever faffing trying to screw the foam canister tube onto the valve I had got it as tight as it would go, so pressed the top of the canister to release the foam. Unfortunately the foam then decided to go just about everywhere except into the tyre 😦 This was probably because the valve cutout in the disc is a pretty small hole and getting the foam canister tube to screw onto the valve was next to impossible when I was trying to rush, so I hadn’t quite got it to seal properly, hence the foam explosion! In hindsight I probably should have been a bit calmer and taken a bit more time to screw the tube onto the valve, but in the heat of the moment I just couldn’t do it right.
By this point I knew my race was over, with no other way to fix the tyre. I then took my anger out on the foam canister by throwing it very hard at a nearby tree, making a nice dent in the tree (sorry mother nature!). I then decided the best thing to do was to walk back up the hill ~1km to where I had seen the marshalls on the tight hairpin. On arriving there they were all looking very puzzled to see me before I pointed at my back tyre and them all giving a sympathetic ‘Aaah’ before saying something in French that I couldn’t understand!
So that was that. I didn’t really know what to do, I had no way of contacting anyone and would just have to sit there and wait till the sweeper bus came around at the back of the race and jump on that. I knew Emily would be going out to near transition within about an hour as we had arranged where she was going to spectate from etc, and I knew that as the minutes ticked by with me not arriving in transition that she would be getting worried. The fact I was completely helpless in this and that I couldn’t let Emily know I was okay was very annoying!
So I sat there watching everyone streaming past, absolutely gutted that I had to stop after only 50mins of racing, not how I had envisaged my first 70.3 would go. I sat there for ~ 3 hours before the sweeper bus arrived, and having put my bike into the accompanying lorry, jumped onto the bus to find a handful of others were already on there, some with hands and faces covered in oil, some carrying parts of their bike (one guy had one crank arm and a pedal!), but all looking very disappointed. From picking me up, it took us around 2.5 hours to get back to Aix, and we picked up a good few more athletes who had had mechanicals or their legs had just given up!
By the time we got back to Aix we were all having a bit of a laugh and had just about got over our respective DNF’s. We were dropped off with our bikes near transition and just had to go and return our timing chips to the officials and collect our T1, T2 and streetwear bags from the racking and were then free to go.
I’d arranged to meet Emily by a tree which was near to the finish, and as I had no other way of contacting anyone this is the only place I could think of going, so wandered over to said tree even though I could see that Emily wasn’t there. Just as I was putting my bags down and leaning my bike up against the tree I spotted Emily walking over to me. Cue a nice big hug which was much needed by us both. It turned out that Emily, having waited for me to come back off the bike to no avail, had found a marshall who was radio’ing to try to find where I was but to no avail, so she was very glad to see me, as I was her after a rubbish day. She’d been pretty worried as I’d thought she might be, which was only made worse by the numerous sirens that she could hear coming in and out of Aix as there were some nasty accidents on the course. As I said to someone on the sweeper bus back, it was better to be coming back on the bus of broken bikes than broken bones. Some food for thought!
Anyway, after a nice long hug we picked up my kit and headed back to the apartment to pack up my bike and our kit ready for travelling home the following morning. I also unstitched my rear tyre to try to find the puncture, only to find that it was a small hole that had opened up on a seam near the valve, and not even a proper puncture. Not sure what caused that but a very annoying find. We then headed out to get some dinner and some final crepes before returning to the apartment and getting some sleep after a long and tiring (but for all the wrong reasons) day for us both.
The following morning we dragged our suitcases and the bike back across town to the bus station, caught a bus to the airport and were soon on our flight back home to England and a slight change in weather:
Looking back on the race now just over 2 weeks on I’m still very disappointed and gutted to have DNF’d at my first 70.3, and still wish that I could go back to race day and do it all again, but finish this time, as it feels like very much of a let down currently after looking forward to this race for so long. Oh well, just have to use this as motivation for the next one!
Talking about the next race, that’s coming up this weekend in the form of Grafman Middle Distance triathlon at Grafham Water in Cambridgeshire which is the British Middle Champs this year, so a big race and one that I’m hoping to do well at! The morning after then Emily and I are flying out to Lisbon for the European Champs the following weekend, hopefully it’s nice and sunny there and the race will go a bit better than Aix!
Thank you as ever to everyone whose generosity is helping me to race at these events, I’m gutted the race in Aix didn’t go as planned and that I couldn’t do my amazing kit justice. Thank you to Pedal Potential, Zone3, High5, Bounce Foods, Compressport, Natures Kiss and the Old Stamfordians Club at Stamford School, your help is very much appreciated and I hope to do you all justice this coming weekend and for the rest of the season 🙂
That’s a wrap for this blog, hopefully I’ll have a better race report to write next time! Thank you for reading this far and for all your wishes of luck and support on social media, I really appreciate it 😀
Happy training! Angus.
Angus Smith - Triathlete 
I crashed out of my 1st half ironman and remember lying in hospital thinking I wish I had a mechanical instead!
I’m sure your next blog will be all about bossing the British champs – Good luck!
Ouch, sorry to hear that!
Thanks, next one will be up in the next few days 🙂