I Went From Zero to Ironman 70.3 in 10 Months: This is What Happened…

🚀 Ten months ago, I decided to train for an Ironman 70.3 with no prior experience in swimming, cycling, or running. The journey was brutal, marked by injuries and setbacks one after another. But crossing the finish line was one of the best experiences of my life. This is what really happened during my transformation from complete beginner to Ironman 70.3 finisher, including all the stuff no one tells you about.

Follow my complete 10-month Ironman training journey from start to finish in this playlist: https://bit.ly/3Tcc9Dj

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⚡️ Timestamps ⚡️
0:00 Intro
0:28 2 days before race day
1:36 The gear I brought with me for the race
2:37 Opening my Ironman goody bag
3:21 Trying carb loading for the first time
3:51 My first mistake…
4:40 The morning of race day
5:07 The swim
5:53 The bike
6:18 The run
6:50 How it went…
7:44 I did NOT expect this when training for my Ironman
9:44 Back in the UK, and plans for my next Ironman
10:20 The #1 thing I learned when training for my Ironman
10:43 My incredible team that helped me throughout
12:15 My final Ironman 70.3 race day times
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🐶 While training for my Ironman, I’m raising funds to help save stray dogs 🐶

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#ironman #vlog #triathlon

I went from zero to Iron Man 70.3 in 10 months. My first ever. And that day changed me forever. It certainly wasn’t easy. I had recurring back, neck, and shoulder injuries that threatened to derail everything, but I pushed through them and this became genuinely one of the hardest yet most rewarding things I’ve ever done. So, this video is documenting that entire 10-month process. Today is Friday 2:30 p.m. and on Sunday I’ll be doing the 70.3 in Daang, Vietnam. So, I’m going to go and register now. [Music] I’ve just registered. I’ve got my orange armband and I’ve got my goodie bag. I have no idea what’s in here, but it’s quite heavy. I’ll open this up once I’m back at the hotel. I’m now heading over to pick up my bike because I got it delivered here. I live about 8 hours drive away and I didn’t fancy riding my bike all that way. So, I got it delivered. Hopefully, it’s still intact. I picked up my bike. It seems to be intact. I’ll go for a little ride and see how he feels. I just got back to the hotel and I’ve got my goodie bag here which I’m going to unload very shortly. When I was downstairs at reception asking if I could bring my bike upstairs to my room. They said no. And I was like, “It’s a very expensive bike.” With a little bit of persuasion, they very kindly allowed me to bring it upstairs to my room. And while I’m here, I’ll show you all the things that I’ve brought with me. I’ve got all my cycling stuff here. I’ve got all my swimming stuff here. I’ve got my running things here. And then I have my stretching/ gym stuff here. And I’ll go through them. So, here I’ve got obviously the helmet, bike pump, satnav, too light, chain lube, and some anti-slip agent because sometimes this seat post slips down. So, this is actually really helpful. And I’ve got my jersey, which I’m probably not going to use cuz I got my triuits here. Then, moving to the left, I’ve got two pairs of goggles, my main goggles, and then a spare set of goggles. I’ve got my swimming suit and a dry bag. And then, moving over to the left, I’ve got my running things. So, obviously running t-shirt, running belts. I’ve got some electrolytes here. And I’ve got some goo energy gels here. And then moving over to the left, this is what I use for stretching. And in here, there’s just some smaller bands as well. I’ve got two random bananas here. And I’ve got my Oakley sunglasses and my run cap for if it gets too sunny because no doubt it’s so hot out there. I’ll definitely be needing those. So, I’m going to open the bag that I’ve got. I have not actually opened it. I have no idea what’s in here. So, I’ve got my race bib here. No idea who Michael is. I don’t know why they didn’t put Mike. Um, I’ve got some leaflets. I’ve got some What is this? I’ve got a It’s a beer. Okay, then. Uh, protein bar of some sort. A mug. Fine porcelain mug because why not? And that’s the lot. And an Iron Man bag. How about that? and another Iron Man bag. Unique. That’s a very strange set of goodies. One thing that I’m doing that I’ve never done before is a carb load. So, I’m trying to at least get in 30 to 40% more carbs than I normally would one to two days before the actual Iron Man because apparently that should give me more energy for the actual triathlon. So, I’m heading to a bakery right now to do exactly that, to eat some bread. It’s 6:00 p.m., exactly 1 and 1/2 days before the actual Iron Man, and I’m going for a quick run for three reasons. Firstly, just to warm up. Secondly, to get acclimatized to this heat. It’s about 32 33°. And thirdly, and most importantly, I’ve never actually ran with cycling socks and running shoes. I have no idea whether this combination will actually work. And it’s not great that I’ve left it until 1 and 1/2 days before the actual event to test this out. But I’ll find out whether it’s going to work or not in about 10 minutes. Dropping my bike off at the bike station about 14 hours before the time we start. Hello. The time is 4:25 and I’m heading to Iron Run. I am number 501. Yeah, we start seeing in about an hour and a half. You can see people just getting ready behind. And I’m feeling good. My back’s feeling good. My neck’s feeling good. My shoulders feeling good. Surprisingly good. A mistake that I made with the swim was that I didn’t register my estimated swim time before the actual event. So Iron Man emailed me about 2 months beforehand basically asking me to submit my swim time. But I didn’t know my swim time, so I didn’t submit it. And then when the race came, I was given a gray swimming cap with all the other people that didn’t submit a time and the slowest swimmers. So the first 10 minutes of the swim, I was just kind of overtaking so many people, which did slow my overall time down, but lesson learned for next time. The swim was overall quite uneventful. It was relatively easy. I didn’t push too hard, as was recommended. So I just kind of used the swim as a warm-up for the bike part of the race. for the cycle. Again, relatively uneventful, which is kind of what you want. So, I set a target of averaging 30 km an hour, and I managed to average 31.5 km an hour, which for me, considering I just started cycling about 6 or 7 months back, was quite good. I decided not to fit arrow bars to my bike, but for my next 70.3, I’ll definitely be adding them just to kind of try to improve on my average speed. I completely underestimated how destroyed my legs would be after the bike. The first 10 minutes of the run were really difficult. I was genuinely questioning how I was going to do it. But I had one goal, literally just one goal, to just not stop running. It didn’t matter how much pain I was in. Just don’t stop. That’s all. And after 15 or 20 minutes, I kind of came out of the other side and started to feel a bit better. And I kept going until the finish line. As for my times, I’ll go through them at the end of the video. I just finished about 30 minutes ago, and honestly, almost everything went to plan. The swim was absolutely fine. Like, nothing really went wrong. The cycle went a lot better than expected. I went a lot faster than I had planned, and the run went well, although slower than planned. So, I’ll go over my times a bit later on once I’m back at the hotel. But the main thing, no major injuries or no even minor injuries. Secondly, my nutrition was on point. My electrolytes were on point. My hydration was on point. And I didn’t get any energy crashes throughout the entire time. So, it felt pretty damn good. I don’t actually know my official time, but whatever it is, I’ll be pretty damn proud of it. That Iron Man 70.3 genuinely one of the best things I’ve ever ever done. My god, that was I’m really proud. I’m really really proud. And here’s my medal as proof that I completed it. So when I started to train for the Iron Man about 9 months ago, I thought that it would be quite a smooth process, right? I thought that I would be in one week swimming, cycling, running, and strength training and I would just keep doing that kind of circuit of training for 9 months and then it would hit race day. I would do the race and that would be it. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. There were so many kind of obstacles and barriers. The main one being I slipped a disc like five or six years ago. And that injury has just kept coming up and up. And so for the two or three months up to race day, I was training literally once a week. And it got to a point where I didn’t train at all for about 3 weeks because I was resting my back. It got to a point actually where I was stuck in bed for a good four or five days. That was extremely frustrating. And also I was thinking I could barely even walk about 3 weeks before race day and I was like how am I going to run or how am I going to complete a 70.3 in 3 weeks if I can’t even walk. So I was in and out of physio multiple times a week. I was very lucky slash physio helped a lot and actually resting helped a lot as well and actually my back was quite good in fact very good during the actual race day and I didn’t have any back pain at all so I’m extremely lucky there. The second biggest risk during race day that could have significantly negatively affected my time is bonking or running out of energy throughout the race because of a lack of nutrition or electrolytes or hydration. I listened to my body. I ate a lot during the race. Bananas, watermelon, electrolytes, energy gels, and again I was very fortunate. Well, lucky, but also I was listening to my body and I was making sure that I was drinking a lot and eating a lot. So, I didn’t bonk even once during the entire race day, which I am very happy with. I’m back in the UK. The beach looks a little bit different here. I’ve already signed up for a second Iron Man 17.3. The idea really is to be doing an Iron Man 17.3 at least once every 6 months. And that way I can kind of keep track of time and see whether I’m actually improving on my time every 6 months. The idea is eventually to work up to a full Iron Man. So hopefully that will be sometime next year. But um I want to get at least two or three 70.3s in so that I’m fully fully ready for the full iron. On hindsight, looking back, the single biggest benefit to training for an Iron Man 70.3 or full Iron Man is actually staying consistent with your training. I don’t think I’ve ever been as fit as I am today. I don’t think I’ve ever trained this consistently for this long a period of time as I have today. That for me is easily the single biggest benefit to training for an iron man. The medal’s nice, the social clout is nice, but really it’s about staying consistent over a long period of time. Something which I’ve kind of struggled with over the years. I’m out of breath. Just gone for a run. But I just wanted to say before I drive off, the 70.3 that I just did, I really couldn’t have done it without an incredible team behind me. I had William who was my PT and still is my PT for the last 10 or 11 months. I’ve had Ben and Bal from the physio that got my back right just in time which I was extremely fortunate. I had Alice do my nutrition. I had Nikki who was my swimming coach and still is my swimming coach for the last I don’t know 10 11 months or so. He got me swimming from two laps in the swimming pool to now swimming 10 km ocean mans in the ocean which is insane. and Lee and Nikki from JetBlack because they uh supplied me with a smart trainer with the Jet Black Victory Trainer, which I really would not have got anywhere near the time that I did with my cycle if it wasn’t for that Jet Black trainer that I got like 3 or 4 months before the 70.3s. So, massive thank you to them. I really couldn’t have done it without them. And in 5 months, I’ve got another 70.3. But I’m going to go home now and I’ll go through my times, my swim, my cycle, and my run. And then my overall Iron Man time because that is the time that I’ve now set. So every 70.3 after this should be an improvement. At least that’s the idea. I got showered. I got changed. I’ve got my laptop in front of me and I’m going to go over the times that I got. So for the swim, I got 42 minutes. My transition time wasn’t amazing, 8 minutes 12 seconds. And then my bike was 2 hours 57 minutes with a transition from the bike to run at 9 minutes 34 seconds because I went to the toilet and then I my run was 2 hours 30 minutes. I thought that I would do the run at about 620 kilometer pace. However, I completely underestimated how much the bike ride would destroy my legs and so the run was relatively slow. But I did not stop once other than drinking and eating. So my overall time was 6 hours and 27 minutes. Not too bad. I mean, not too bad considering where I was fitness wise 3 months ago, 6 months ago, 9 months ago. However, that is now the benchmark. So my next Iron Man 70.3 in about 5 months time, I want to get sub 6 hours, which I’ve got 5 months to train, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. With that said, I’m going to end this video. So, if you’re interested in watching more of my Iron Man journey, you can watch this video and this video, and I’ll see you over