October 8^th will be a date that sticks in my mind for, literally, ever.  It’s the day (and this is the short version of the story) that I successfully participated and completed the Ironman World Championship race in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii.

I can’t begin to explain the emotion (and the emotional roller coaster) of getting to the finish line and, in the process, raising tens of thousands of pounds for Scope, the charity that gave me the opportunity to race in the greatest single-day sporting endurance event on planet earth.

So, if you want the gory details, read on (there are pictures).  If you’re happy with knowing that I didn’t die (or disappointed that I didn’t), then feel free to bail now via www.justgiving.com/andrew2kona.

So here’s the long version….

I’ll go into the gory details but won’t make any apologies for the length of the ramblings.  As much as anything, whilst it’s still fresh in my mind I want to remember it for myself….

Bag packed, Shaz, my lovely Mum and I set off to Heathrow – some 24 hours after Megan’s 18^th birthday party at our house and the ensuing mammoth cleaning job.  A quick check-in and my pride and joy bike disappeared on a trolley on its way to LA and then to Kona.

A relatively incident free flight (barring Mum forgetting she had headphones on when she talked VERY LOUDLY to me) saw us land in LA with two hours for our connecting flight to Kona.

Unfortunately, Shaz had obviously had her fingerprints changed or removed or something which resulted in her almost getting the rubber-glove treatment and spending an hour with some scary looking customs officials.  Once ‘released’ we had to literally run across LAX to get our connecting flight but after a further 5 hours we landed in Kona and were thankfully reunited with our bags and my bike.

A transfer to The King K hotel on the sea front in Kona and we were set in our rooms that would become our base for the next week.  We had a  great view over the bay, the swim start and the transition area.

Tuesday morning we had a bike course recce with Shane the Aussie, an ex-pro Ironman who had raced Kona a few times and now edits a tri magazine in Oz and runs a Tri-orientated travel business.

Oh Sh1t, this is pretty scary…

We drove the length of the course – a 5 mile south-bound out and back followed by a 51 mile return trip to Hawi on the north of the island.  Hllly?  Yes, Warm?  Not really in our air-con bus.  Windy? Ditto the air-con bus.

Shane gave us a blow-by-blow of the course.  “This bit is really tough if the wind is blowing”, “this bit is always so hot you’ll feel like your shoes are melting”, “Don’t take your hands off the handlebars here to eat because the side winds will have you on the ground in an instant”, “This hill is a mother-f**ker – it’ll kill you”.

The Aussies are brilliant at motivational stuff!

The landscape was nothing like nothing I’d ever seen.  Tens of thousands of square miles of lava fields which look like rock fields that have been ploughed by giants.

Anyway, we got out the bus just before ‘Bum-hole hill’ (because it looks like a bum hole and ‘even has some odd hairs on it!’ according to Shane) and cycled the 25k back to town.

It was hilly, windy and so hot I could feel my eye-balls sweating.  The section we cycled was the ‘flatest and fastest’ part of the course.  It amounted to about 15% of the distance but only 5% of the effort of the total race-day course of 112 miles.

A little bit nervous, I headed to bed that night hoping the run-recce would be slightly more uplifting.

No, it really is scary…

We drove out to the Energy Lab on Wednesday to run the 5k section which I’d read was the part of the run which most commonly broke people.  Can’t understand why as it was only 97 degrees F and 85% humidity with not a breath of wind blowing.  And hilly.

2k in I was mullered.  My run kit was dripping and I couldn’t catch my breath.   Thankfully I did find a pace (crawling, hands and knees style) which I could cope with and finished the trial run having clocked 8m 30 second miles.  Not quite Mo Farah pace, but better than I had hoped for.

And breath…

Day three in Kona I decided a swim would be in order.  I donned my (immesnly flattering) swim skin that’s designed to a make stick insect look fat and headed down to the swim area.

The next 30 minutes was simply brilliant.  I swam out for ten minutes feeling super relaxed until I came across a boat, sponsored by Clif Bars, that was giving away coffee to athletes.  There were about two hundred  similarly dressed swimmers in the soup – all hanging off a large boat drinking espresso with coral below and fish swimming all over.

Post coffee I swam back to shore and got myself ready for another hard day of sitting on my over-sized arse.

The island will let you in…

Thursday evening was race-briefing.  A veritable who’s who of Kona winners – very inspiring but, if I’m honest, more than a bit cheesy.  I don’t really think the Big Island gods actually determine your destiny before the race and, quite frankly, if I secreted a bit of lava in my bag to bring home I don’t think it would bring me long term health problems, impotence or syphilis.  (watch this space for me being unable to get it up and being riddled with the worst of STD’s).

Anyway, a good opportunity to see some of the GB age-groupers who were there on the back of their amazing qualifying performances.

A veritable pressure cooker

Friday was racking and the waiting game.  Which roughly translates as a bunch of superb but slightly egotistical athletes wandering around making people like me feel wholly inadequate and a little bit shit.

Bluntly, I’ve never felt so out of my depth and as a consequence, the adrelanine was brown and the banter non-existent.

As my brother from another, PT, will tell you, race night is about eating until you feel sick.  This is, without a doubt, my greatest strength & I spent a good three hours eating anything that I could lay my hands on until I reached the goal of feeling properly nauseous.

I managed not to barf and drifted off instead into a deep and comforting THIRTY MINUTE SLEEP.  ARRRGGGGHHHH.  I was supposed to sleep until 4am, not twenty past ten.

So when the alarm went at 4, I was about as rested as a man waiting to be executed.  The bags under my eyes were bigger that Ron Jeremey’s scrotum, but at least it was race day….  The WORLD BLOODY CHAMPIONSHIPS!!!!.

Aloha’a Kona

Swim suit on, pot noodle (yes, really) consumed.  Off I set.  The first challenge was body
marking (to make sure if you die they can identify you) and a weigh in.  The cheeky bastard that weighed me actually laughed.  Apparently they don’t get too many 196lb Ironman athletes.

At 6:50am we were allowed to get in the blue, warm, crystal-clear Pacific to swim out out to the start line.

Five minutes later the canon went and we were away.  1,200 male age-groupers setting out on a 2.4 mile out and back swim.

The usual nonsense happened.  Punching, kicking, goggles getting ripped off until after ten minutes everybody found some space and the swimming got properly underway.

It’s worth saying at this point that I’m a terrible swimmer so a 90 minute swim was an aggressive target, but 92 minutes after the gun went off, I found myself clambering out of the swim having been right-royally beaten (physically and in time-terms) by the quicker female competitors who started 15 minutes after the men.

I was happier than a pig in a huge pile of poo and ran into T1 with high hopes for the rest of the day.

A decent (actually my fastest) kit change and I picked up my bike for the 112 mile bike ride with 1hr and 39 minutes on the clock.

The first ten miles take you south of Kona and then back to the town before you head out on the King K highway.  The advice from the omni-present Shane was to only take on water for the first five miles to reduce the tounge swelling from the swim & I duely followed his advice having somehow acquired a tongue the size of my left foot.

Five miles in I felt great and started to push on.  10 minutes later I had got to the Palani climb – a 20% short climb up onto the main highway.

The next 20 miles were awesome.  I felt like Lance Armstrong (with or without the drugs) and pushed my average speed up to over 20 mph.  Shit, if I kept this up, I might win!!!!

Three days earlier Shane had said “don’t ever think you know what’s going to happen next” and sure enough, at the 40 mile point the wind came out of nowhere and I found myself peddling down-hill like a loon into a 30 mph headwind and only managing 10 mph.

Heading towards the Hawi climb I was buggered (not literally).  19 miles of rolling up hill seemed to be testing everyone & the demoralising sight of the best age groupers hurtling down the other side took the wind out of my sails.

At this point, an age old injury reared its head and I found it impossible to push with my left foot.  This could have been disaster but Mrs D had reminded me the night before of Shane’s anecdote…. “every ten minutes ask yourself the question ‘how can I make my situation better’”.  This is and was simply the best advice I could have asked for.  I decided to take my foot out of my cycle shoe and pedal with it on top of the shoe.  A little known techniqhe (invented only on this race by me) was a life saver & I managed to get to the top of the long climb without losing any speed or places.

A quick pee stop and I was back on my way for the last 53 miles on the bike.

Since when was the wind god a bastard?

After dealing with tens of miles of headwinds on the outward portion of the course, I was convinced that the return journey would be wind-assisted and I’d fly like a a man on EPO.

But…..  midday is turn-around time and by the time I got back to the 40 miles to go sign the wind had done a full 180……  and was back in my teeth.

A soul searching, deep-digging 40 miles followed where I saw at least three competitors throw the towel in and another half a dozen try to eek each other on to T2.

I got off the bike after 6 hours 57 minutes of pedalling.  8 hours and 36 m minutes after I started and a full half an hour after the winner had already crossed the finishing line after having run a full marathon.

Just a 42.2k run to go then…..

T2 was a scene of calm.  A great guy helped me change from cycling to running gear and literally pushed me out in to the marathon cousre.

A gel and a couple of co-codamol and I was away.  Confident of a finish within the cut-off time and, hopeful of really competitive time, I ran the first mile in good style.

Ali’I drive is the most famous part of the course and with crowds 10 deep.  I couldn’t do anything other that hammer along on the run.
I felt good.  Really good, like the island gods had said ‘TODAY ANDREW DAY, YOU SHORT FAT FELLOW, YOU WILL BREAK RECORDS’.  Sadly that island gods are bastards.

They hadn’t told me about the hosepipes.

‘Do you want a squirt sir?’….

It’s hot on Ali’I drive.  33 degrees, 95% humidity and no wind.  The locals love this race and so they sit with beers, music blaring and hosepipes.  The latter they spray, on request, at athletes to help them cool down.

The relief was immense.  I went from feeling like I was in an over-stacked tumble dryer to feeling like I’d just consumed the worlds over-supply of McFlurry.

Bring it on I said time and time again without realising my feet were getting wetter and wetter and my shoes were filling up with cold water.

By mile 7 my feet were buggered.  The blister I could feel seemed to cover the entire lower half of my body.

By mile 9 they had started to really hurt.

By mile 10 I couldn’t run any more.

That left me with 16 miles of ‘running’ to go.

The hardest 16 mile finish in the World of Iron-distance racing.

By mile 12 I could actually hear the skin moving around my feet and by mile 18 I was in agony.

I wouldn’t suggest that it was worse than child birth, but it was.

The final 8 miles hurt beyond anything I had experienced before.  My feet were just blisters and my heels, because I couldn’t run, were taking a pounding.

 

But at mile 16 a guy ran up beside me.  He was 72 years old and had qualified 16 times before. He told me that the wind on the bike course was the worst he had ever experienced,  that I should be hugely proud that I got round the swell in the swim and that the run, whilst not the hottest, was more humid than he could remember.

At that point I thought not finishing was not an option.  I told him so & he agreed, before opening his stride and running off into the distance like a spring lamb.  72 years old.  Bastard.

By now the darkness was complete.  Navigation was cone-to-cone.  The temperature was the same as it had been all day and The Energy Lab was hotter than a lamb on a Greek skewer.

At the 8 mile to go mark my hands had swollen to the size of footballs (Shane later pointed out that I had ‘proper fat blokes hands’), but after meeting Greg and finding some resolve about raising money for charity, there wasn’t a chance of me not finishing.

6 hours 15 minutes after starting the marathon, I ran down the famous Ali’I drive.  One of the greatest feelings I’ve ever had.

I cried.  I said thanks to my old man.  I kissed my wife and my Mum and picked up a Union Flag to run down the finishing chute some 15 hours and 5 minutes after the starting canon.

My time might not have broken records, but I beat the Kona Ironman course.

I don’t care what people say, its the hardest course in the world.  The environment is like no other I’ve experienced and the joy of getting across the finishing line will stay with me forever.

One of the amazing athletes I cycle with on a Thursday said some months ago that the bragging rights are forever.  I might not have qualified, but I succeeded where many others have failed and, in the process raised close to 30,000 for Scope.

The only thing that keeps going through my head are the words I heard as I crossed the line…

Andrew, you are an Ironman

So to the thank-you’s

Firstly, a massive thank-you to all the people that sponsored me.  Both the corporate and personal sponsors – you have raised a life-changing amount of money for Scope – an amazing charity.

Secondly, to my support crew. Shaz, my Mum, and the huge crew who descended in person or virtually on The Toll House to follow my progress and cheer me on through what was a long night for them.  It was amazing to know there were so many people rooting for me.

Kris deserves special mention for geeking out with spreadsheets, trackers, virtual images of where I was and so on – an amazing effort.

And finally to the people who along the way have helped with advice, trained with me or simply offered words of encouragement.  The Thursday cycle crew, Alan the physio from ACT, Shane the Aussie, Sam from Sams Bike Shop, Monty (because it’s all his fault) and a long list of people who I’ve probably forgotten to single out.

Post-Script…

My feet were really very sore (and remain so today).  As a consequence, I ended up being pushed around various airports in a wheel chair wearing ‘I’ve just competed in the Ironman World Championships’ kit and a pair of size 13 luminous flip flops – the only shoes we could find that would fit my swollen and bruised feet!

 

 

Charity Golf, Tennis & Spa 4^th July Celebration

Hosted by Andy Day in aid of

Scope and the IDM Creative Data Academy

Stoke Park Golf Club, Bucks, Monday 4^th July 2015

We are delighted to be organising the inaugural DataIQ Charity Golf, Tennis & SPA 4^th July Celebration to raise money for two great causes:

Scope – the disability charity

IDM Creative Data Academy to encourage more students into the data industry.

The DataIQ Charity Golf, Tennis & SPA 4^th July Celebration will be hosted by Andy Day and takes place on Monday 4^th July 2016 at the prestigious Stoke Park Club.

Founded in 1908, Stoke Park is the perfect place to enjoy life in a five star and friendly atmosphere. It provides a unique combination of the traditions of an exclusive club and the best of today’s sporting, leisure, entertaining and hotel facilities in one of the most convenient locations in Britain: only 35 minutes from London and 7 miles from London Heathrow.  See www.stokepark.com/

Itinerary for the day:

• Golf registration opens from 9.30am onwards with coffee/tea/bacon rolls on arrival
• White golf shirts will be given to all players
• First tee is at 11.00am (please arrive in plenty of time to meet your team mates and transfer to your designated starting hole if shotgun start – subject to numbers)
• Tennis players can enjoy a later start with sandwiches from noon and the tennis competition beginning from 1.30pm
• 3.00 pm – Cocktails
• From 5.00pm – luxury barbecue including ½ bottle of wine per person, prize giving, prize draw, charity auction and entertainment
• There will be a number of fundraising initiatives in operation on the day too so be sure to bring some spare cash with you.

Sponsorship opportunities include:

Golf tournament: 18 Holes Stableford best 2 scores from 4 to count.

Team prizes 1^st to 3^rd place

Individual sweep (£10 per player) best individual score wins £200

Nearest the pin on Holes 3,7,11 and 15

Longest drive on Hole 1

Hole sponsorship (display your company banner)

Tennis Tournament

Shirt sponsorship

Golf Team Sponsors £250 per player (£980 per 4 person team)

Individual players £250 each

Tennis team sponsors £225 per player (£450 per 2 person team)

Contributions for the auction/raffle welcome.

 

To discuss the many and varied opportunities and request a booking form contact:

Adrian Gregory: 07798 705858 Email: adrian.gregory@dataiq.co.uk

We look forward to welcoming you and your team at the magnificent Stoke Park for what promises to be a great day.

 

Without a shadow of doubt, the most daunting part of my journey to Hawaii is the challenge to raise £50,000.  That’s a whole lot of cup cakes…

So I am delighted to have another corporate sponsor on-board in the shape of Immobile.

I’ve worked with IMI for years and I’m grateful to Jay Patel, their CEO and Andy White for putting their metaphoric hands in their pockets.

Again, I won’t do the full sales pitch (you can have a look at their cool website here), but IMImobile is a leading provider of software and services that enables organisations with the ability to harness network, device and channel capabilities to improve service delivery and customer engagement.

What’s great about IMI getting involved is that Andy himself is training for his first Ironman – so we’ve been exchanging notes and sharing tips as we start to up the training.

Thank-you IMIMobile – The folks at Scope will be as grateful as I am.

As most people start to wind down for the festive break, it’s all action at what has become known (in my head mostly) as “Project Kona”.

So with just a day before we sit down a gorge our way through a pile of turkey, spuds and the mandatory single Brussels Sprout, I am absolutely chuffed to be able to announce my latest sponsor…  North Highland Consulting.

I feel hugely proud that an organisation that I hold in such high esteem should agree to put their metaphoric hand in their pocket for Scope by sponsoring me.

Tony Doocey, North Highland’s Group Vice President of their London office has been instrumental in making this happen and I am hugely grateful for his commitment.  In return for their sponsorship, I will be sharing my story and journey with his team and hopefully showing that you don’t have to be an athlete to be an Ironman.  I will also be proudly covered in their logo when I train and race.

For those of you who don’t know North Highland, they are a global consulting organisation who help businesses create true change.  I know because they helped me and my team do that for one part of our organisation.  Their mission is to ‘unleash potential together’ and, coupled with they purpose, ‘daring to be extraordinary’ play particularly well with the challenge ahead of me.  I won’t do the sales pitch for them here, but please take a moment to look at their website.

And please don’t forget, you don’t have to be a corporate sponsor to get involved.  You can sponsor me directly (literally every little helps) by clicking here.

And if you can’t afford to sponsor me just now, please carry on reading… it will keep me sane!

 

The normal reaction I get when I describe Ironman is initially of disbelief (‘Do people really do this?’) followed by a glance down at my belly (definitely not a six-pack, more of a beer barrel) and the question… “So how long will it take you?”

So here are some benchmark facts and figures:

The fastest Iron-distance race of all time took Andreas Raelert 7hours 41 minutes at Challenge Roth.  That’s bonkers.  A 46 minute 2.4 mile swim followed by a 4 hour 11 minute 112 mile bike ride (that’s nearly 27 miles per hour) and a 2 hour 40 minute marathon.  That marathon split, just for the record, would have put him in the top 300 finishers in the London Marathon this year!

Ironman Kona is a tougher course – hillier, hotter and usually with strong winds – but the best ever time is still only 8 hours and 3 minutes.  Craig Alexander completed the swim in 52 minutes, the bike in 4 hours 24 minutes and the marathon in 2 hours 44 minutes.

So, on to me….

I’ve completed seven Iron-distance races.  They have varied massively in difficulty and therefore finishing times.  The fastest, The Outlaw in Nottingham, took me 12 hours and 7 minutes with a 1hr 13m swim, 5hr 40m bike and 4hr 59m run.  It was a flat-ish course.

My slowest took 18 hours and 45 minutes.  It was tough… a swim that almost killed me and took 1hr 47m, a bike course that had relentless hills which I cursed and swore up and down in 8hr 14m and a run that turned out to be 29 miles long (I got lost) along the Jurassic Coast took 8hr 24m.  The Jurrasicman was only run twice.  I thought I was going to die.  Claire who runs Brutal Events is an evil person.

So here’s your chance to take a guess.  How long is it going to take me to complete Ironman Hawaii?  I’d love you to hazard a guess below!  And don’t forget to DONATE NOW!

If you’ve ever either taken part or watched an Ironman race (or pretty much any longer distance triathlon), you will probably have seen a few people sporting the famous M-dot tattoo.

So the ‘big’ question is “To ink or not to ink?”  (To be fair, it’s not that ‘big’ a question like how do we solve poverty, create peace across thh globe etc etc)

There are a million words or more written about this subject if you search the web. Some people love them, some people think you should only have the logo tattooed if you’ve been to Hawaii and competed. Others just think they are plain stupid.  That’s the group that refer to them as ‘twattoos’.

When I registered for my first half Ironman race in Wimbleball I stood behind a German guy who was sporting a big red M-dot tattoo. I took one look at it and said to my mate Paul that I thought it was ridiculous to put a brand logo on your leg just because you’d got round an Ironman – after all, just because I shop at Tesco doesn’t mean I’d be happy to have a big Tesco logo slapped on my leg/back/arm. His view was completely different & we agreed, after some debate, that if we ever completed a full Ironman, we’d book in and get tattoos.

15 months later when we both finished Ironman Austria, we agreed to ‘get

them done’. It wasn’t quite as I’d imagined in that there wasn’t a demon tattoo artist at the finish line where you paid your fifty Euros and got officially ‘inked’. Instead we booked into Carvilles of Windsor (it’s actually in Slough!) and both had the M-dot logo’s tattooed on our ankles by a bloke called ‘Dog’.  Glamourous… not really, and I’m not sure that they count David Beckham or Cheryl Cole Fernandez-Versini amongst their clientele!

Anyway, roll the clock forward nine years and Kevin, my brother, and I are stood at the start line of Ironman Wales where we agreed that should we both get round, we’d make a visit to have some more tats done!

Call it a mid-life crisis if you want, but I decided to have the flags of the countries I’d raced M-dots put above my M-dot and the logo for Brutal Triathlons put on my calf.  (Brutal Events run some amazing events including the Brutal Triathlon in Llanberis, North Wales and the Jurrasicman, a point-to-point Iron-distance race along the Jurassic coastline in Dorset).

So four new tattoos for me and Kev’s first.  All I needed now was the Harley and a dodgy beard.

Long and short is that I love them.  They are a talking point, a conversation starter (that awkward time when you’re standing cold and shivering before a race starts when somebody asks “which one you’ve done”) and, most of all for me, a reminder of the races that have made me laugh and cry in equal measure – the races that have become interesting parts of a normal blokes history.

So quite frankly I can’t wait until I (hopefully) cross the line in Kona and I
can book myself back into Attattooed in Wokingham.. Seth, the resident artist is possibly the nicest bloke you could hope to meet and a really talented guy.  He also does nipple piercings, but that’s another story…

On Friday I had some amazing news….  Data IQ, a business I have worked with for a number of years, agreed to make ‘me’ their charity of 2016 – helping me raise money for Scope.

Adrian and David at DataIQ have been hugely supportive of what I’m trying to achieve for Scope and I’m delighted that across the course of 2016 we will be working together to raise a significant sum of money.

For those that don’t know DataIQ,  they are a business that was formed in 1996 to help organisations realise value from their data. They specialise in data governance, research, audit and advisory services as well as publishing the DataIQ journal and running a series of great conferences and round-tables that I’ve been fortunate enough to attend and present at.

So a massive, heart-felt thank-you from me (and Scope) for their support.

You can find more about them here  www.dataiq.co.uk

Please don’t forget you can sponsor me here.

It’s official….  I’m off to Hawaii next October.  I keep having to pinch myself, but Sharon and I will be flying out to Kona early in October and I’ll be standing on that famous beach on 8th October shoulder to shoulder with some of the greatest athletes on the planet.

I’m not worthy of their company from an athletic perspective, but hopefully I’ll be worthy of the slot I’ve taken having raised in excess of £50,000 for Scope.

The last few weeks have been a real journey.  What started with a casual comment from a friend on a bike ride (‘Do you fancy doing Kona for charity’), turned into a few days of soul searching (Can I do it? Can I raise the money? Is it just a selfish indulgence?) and from there into some speculative conversations firstly with the lovely Vivienne from Scope and then with some potential sponsors.

And then, today, confirmation that I’m in and can ‘go public’.

Now the hard-yards start – training, planning and, of course, fund raising.

So in the last 48 hours I’ve learnt how to set up a website (comments and feedback please), set up my Just Giving page and registered a domain (andrew2kona.com).  I’m buzzing and would love to have you along for the journey – either by following my blog here, coming out from time to time on a training ride, helping out with sponsorship events or simply just by putting your hand in your pocket and donating.  You can donate here.  Tell your friends, family and work colleagues.  Fifty Thousand pounds is a lot of money but every little helps.

Finally some thank-you’s.  I know it’s only just the start, but already a number of people have helped along the.  Here goes….

Thanks to Monty Gershon.  That bike ride in Henley was the start & I’m so very grateful for the introduction to Scope.

Thanks to Vivienne and all at Scope for offering me the place and believing that (a) I’ll do a great job of fund raising and (b) that I’ll be able to drag my ar$e around Ironman Hawaii.

Thanks to my brother, Kevin and his wife Lucy.  Four bottles of wine was all it took to convince me to go for it!

Meg and Alice – your cry of ‘go for it Dad’ tipped the balance.

And finally, Shaz – you know I couldn’t consider doing these silly things without your un-ending support.  I’ll never stop appreciating it.  Thank you for finally convincing me that if all else failed, you’d be happy to bake 50,000 cup cakes and sell the for £1 each to raise the money!

Back in 2007 as I stood at the start-line for Ironman Austria with my brother from another mother Paul Taylor, little did I know that nine years later I would be given the most amazing opportunity to race at the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii – the place where Ironman began.

Let me be clear…. I’m not going to Kona having proved myself to be amongst the best in the World at long distance triathlon racing – I’m simply too short for my weight to ever qualify, but every year WTC make a number of places available to ‘normal’ people who are prepared to raise what I believe to be an extraordinary amount of money for charity.

I’ve considered the fact that many far more competent triathletes will never get to compete at the World Championships, but the place that I will take is ring-fenced as a charity entry and, some would say, the efforts to get there are as significant.  Alongside holding down a ‘big’ job and training to race one of the toughest iron-distance races in the World I will be trying to raise in excess of FIFTY THOUSAND POUNDS for the charity Scope.

I’m super-excited about the opportunity and really look forward to sharing the highs and lows here.