Elbaman

It was a real struggle waking up, and there was a feeling of 'what the hell am I doing' rather than the common nervous excitement. I put this down to just being drained and sleeping in the tent. I stuffed everything randomly into my big backpack before wandering over to the toilet block to eat my breakfast of cereal and jam sandwiches. Breakfast and toilet over I started the slow walk down to the transition area with music in my ears to try and wake myself up/get myself going. After getting to transition it immediately became apparent that I should have sorted everything out into each relevant bag yesterday. I got there an hour before the race start but it took all of this time decanting everything into the T1 bag, T2 bag, post-race bag, sort out nutrition, put on the race number tattoos, go to the toilet once more and put on my wetsuit. With about 5 minutes to spare I had made it onto the beach start area. It was a beautiful clear morning - the sun was about to rise above the hills on the other side of the bay.  And then we were off - I was feeling more excited than earlier and was glad that the race was underway. I employed my usual tactic of sticking at the back of the pack at the start of the swim aiming to avoid any flailing arms and legs. I felt OK at the beginning of the swim - it was the standard 2-lap loop with Australian exit after lap 1. Thankfully the water was pretty calm - I had heard from speaking to other competitors/race officials that this was far from the case during last years swim. Towards the end of the first lap my stomach started to feel slightly unsettled, and as the second lap progressed I started to feel really rough - the main cause of this being the unfamiliar breakfast cereal that I had eaten earlier. I was close to giving up towards the end of the swim and it was definitely a case of simply making it back to the beach rather than trying to swim quickly or have a decent technique. Thankfully I just about made it back, gingerly exited the water and managed a slow jog to transition.  Drinking water helped get rid of the seawater taste and made me feel slightly better. Thankfully after about 15 minutes on the bike I started to feel OK again and the race was back on :) . It was a stunning day (warm and sunny), which like the swim was a stark contrast to the torrential downpour that had happened during a previous race. The course was very hilly and there was the odd car/moped that came past (the roads were still open to traffic). Despite this I loved the 3-lap bike course, with the highlights being some stunning coastal roads and technical descents snaking down the mountains. There were enough feed stations around the course and the bike leg went well, with me making up several places from my pedestrian swim earlier. With the tough nature of the bike course ruling out any kind of fast finishing time I started the run with the sole ambition of completing the remaining 26.2 miles, and if things went well maybe doing it before sunset. I had lost a lot of salt during the course of the day (my tri-suit was heavily stained) so ran well within my capabilities and used each feed station to rehydrate and on several occasions refuel. It seemed like 90% of the competitors were Italian (this was shown on each race number), and I only spotted about 5 Brits. The 4.5-lap course featured an out-and-back along the seafront and around some of the town centre before another out-and-back in the opposite direction. The seafront in the centre of town and running down the council square road were the best bits mainly thanks to crowd support. The leading men had long-since finished but I passed the leading ladies on 2 or 3 occasions going in the opposite direction on the out-and-back stretches. The second lady was a brit so I gave her a cheer when we passed each other. I didn't manage to finish before dark - there was probably 1.5 laps to go after the sun had set. This made a big difference in the temperature and life became a lot easier. My last lap was significantly faster than the previous laps, and I overtook several people. The crowd were loving my fast finish and I got several high-5's and cheers as I smashed it (at least that's what it felt like) - definitely a highlight from my Elbaman experience. I crossed the finish line in 13 hours 13 minutes. Within about 10 minutes of finishing I felt sick. I tried to eat some of the pasta party food but couldn't manage anything significant. About 45 minutes after finishing I was sick - a significant amount of the fluids that I had taken on during the race came back up. I felt much better after this and was able to eat a decent amount of the pasta party buffet and drink some of the free beer. I spoke to a few of the other finishers at the pasta party before moving outside to the finish area. A local radio station were providing the PA and music at the end which was good, but certainly not as good as the finish party at Ironman Mallorca last year. Still I enjoyed cheering on the final finishers whilst drinking the free beer. The last one crossed the line with less than 2 minutes until the midnight cut-off, and was cheered home in style. After this I slowly cycled back to the tent and it was after 1am by the time I finally went to bed. The finishers presentation was at 10am, so I set my alarm accordingly.

Getting to Elba

Getting to Elba The first glitch happened at Gatwick as I was checking my bags in. My bike box was overweight by approximately 5kg and BA wanted to charge me £60 extra for this. There was absolutely NO WAY that I wanted to give them this extortionate fee, especially after I'd already forked out £250 for the flights. My flight was in about 80 minutes time so I didn't have long to come up with a solution. After about 10 minutes of pondering I came up with the solution - lose the heavy hard-cased bike box use the contents of this (bike box lining, sleeping mat and rags to create to gaffa tape around the bike and create improvised padded 'case'. As the I had to work quickly but managed to bodge it together well enough. The man at the oversized luggage conveyor belt even gave me a bit of help when I was flipping the bike over so that I could tape it all around. After using virtually an entire roll of gaffa tape to ensure it was 'wrapped' well enough I popped it on the scales - it was 6kg under. I ran back to the BA desk, the lady came over and when satisfied that it was underweight issued me with the relevant baggage stickers. I then had to get rid of the empty bike box. The solution - quickly stash it in a bush outside before running back in and rushing to the departure lounge. It was a stressful period but all worked out fine in the end. The flight was fine and the bike packaging remained intact. My pen and paper came in handy on the taxi from the airport to the hostel - I had to write down the name of the hostel so that the driver could understand/look up where to go. I got to the hostel fine and checked in. By the time I'd sorted myself out it was getting quite late, so the focus switched to finding dinner. I asked the guy at reception about restaurants - he told me about a few local ones. The first place I went in and sat down only to discover that they didn't do pasta. The second one again didn't serve pasta - very disappointing. After walking around a bit more and failing to find any other restaurants I went back to the second one and got a pizza. The thin-based/average sized pizza was decent but didn't fill me up enough, so I then ordered a Calzone too. Dinner done I made the short walk back to the hostel and promptly went to bed with the alarm set for 6. I struggled to get up, and dragged myself out of bed significantly later than intended. This along with the obligatory free breakfast meant that I got to the train station very late. I hadn't researched the train route properly - I only knew that it would take the best part of the day to get down to Piombino. After liaising with the woman at the ticket office I found out that the journey would involve 3 changes and that I'd have to cycle the final 16km to get to the ferry. One consolation was that the train ticket was cheap - significantly cheaper than what the same sort of journey would have cost in the UK. So it was a long and boring day sitting on the train - the only brief highlight being catching a quick look at The Leaning Tower whilst waiting for a connecting train in Pisa. I got to the end of my train journey between 7.30-8pm. It was now dark. I got talking to another guy that was doing Elbaman, and he told me what direction to go to get to the ferry. He said something about going on some smaller roads to avoid the busier dual-carriageway. At this point I just wanted to get there ASAP so stuck on my lights and hit the dual-carriageway knowing that this would be quicker. There were very few cars so it wasn't too dodgy. I managed to find the port easily and purchased a very-reasonably priced return ferry ticket. The next (and last) ferry of the day would be leaving at 10.30pm. With over an hour to kill I went and got some pasta at the ticket office restaurant. I knew that I wouldn't be getting to my destination of Marina di Campo (the town in Elba where Elbaman was taking place) until after midnight and that there probably wouldn't be an opportunity to get food by that time. Anyway I got on the ferry fine and finally got a decent wifi signal courtesy of Toremar. So the hour on he ferry flew by with Google maps, emails and Facebook giving me something to focus on. Once off of the boat I immediately began pedalling. It took the best part of two hours to get to Marina di Campo with there being a lot of hills/me going slowly to conserve energy for Elbaman. It then took a while to locate the campsite that was well hidden at the far end of the beach. I finally popped the tent up and went to bed at 1.45am. I woke up understandably tired at about 7.30am. The English race briefing was at 10am so I had time to go to the shop and prepare my bike for leaving it in the transition area later. Everything was pretty close together for the race (the marquee for the pre-race briefing/post-race pasta party, finish line/bike mechanic/clothing stalls were in the main town square, the registration area was in a school a 5-minute walk away, the transition area in between the square and school and the swim start was on the beach very close to the transition area). I managed to get to the English race briefing on time. However I didn't absorb much information as it seemed to be mostly in other languages and I kept falling asleep. I think there may have been the English briefing directly after this - I didn't hang around to find out as the bits of the briefing I managed to stay awake for were all the standard boring race rules etc. I was now very hungry so went to a nice cafe overlooking the beach and got myself a delightful panini for breakfast. Next came the registration. I'd forgotten to bring my USA Triathlon Licence card with me from home which I needed. Trying to register without this failed and I was instructed to print off an email conformation to prove that I had the license. So back to the campsite it was - thankfully the staff at reception were very nice and allowed me to go into the office and print off what I needed free of charge. After a pasta lunch I headed back to the school and successfully registered. The race pack contained the standard stuff (numbers, t-shirt, race guide) as well as a free meal voucher to use tonight at one of the towns 3 selected restaurants. I stickered-up the bike and racked it in transition ready for the morning. After going to the supermarket and getting tomorrow's breakfast I went to one of the restaurants to use my free meal voucher. This was early evening. After the meal I was still hungry and needed the same kind of portion again. I tried to keep the free meal voucher when leaving so that I could use it in one of the other two selected restaurants - this failed and I had to give it to the waiter. There was a restaurant at the campsite so I headed back there for dinner number two. I was satisfactorily full after this so headed back to the tent for an early night. The alarm was set for 3.30am in order to give enough time for my breakfast to digest/prepare all my kit/allow enough toilet time/get down to the transition area/lay out everything by the bike and get to the beach for the start of the race at 7am.

Introduction

Introduction Originally my plan was to complete Elbaman (the 226km Iron-distance triathlon) before flying across Italy to Trieste and cycling to Kosice, Slovakia and completing the Kosice Peace Marahon. I had already signed up for Kosice and I had my mind set on some great cycling through Slovenia and Hungary en route. I have never been to Slovenia, Hungary or Slovakia before and was very much looking forward to making my way through them on two wheels. Then about a month before I went to book my flights and realised that the flights home from Kosice were either very expensive or at the wrong time. I had signed up for Elbaman in the first few months in 2015, and definitely wanted to complete this. So sadly The Kosice Marathon had to be dropped. I had booked the time off work, and was still very keen on the idea of some cycle touring before doing a marathon a week later. I had a look on the '100 Marathon Club' website at European Marathons on 4th October. The Turin Marathon came up - this was the perfect solution (I could get a return flight from London for a reasonable enough price at times that suited me). Also it was approximately 450km from Piombino (the port town where I would get the ferry to/from the island of Elba for Elbaman), which was a realistic distance to cover in the 6 days between completing Elbaman and running the Turin Marathon. I promptly booked my flights and Turin hostel for the first/last night and my place for the Turin Marathon. The immediate build up to the trip was far from ideal - the last couple of weeks beforehand were spent frantically searching for a house as the lease at my current house would be running out before I would be getting back from Italy. This failed and I ended up with the mammoth task of moving all of my stuff out of the house the night before going to Turin. It was a horrible experience and I was very fortunate and grateful to have my housemates Ben and Colm help shifting the endless boxes/bags of stuff into the van. Also to the guys at Reading Bicycle Kitchen who helped me offload it all at the other end. I knew my race in Elba wasn't going to be particularly quick - and I would have to rely on my previous Ironman experience and mental strength to see me through... With all the stress and upheaval of the last week I was just going to try and enjoy it.