Hi!

I’m not sure whether by stupidity or something else but I have, as many of you will know, entered the Ironman Switzerland event this year on 25 July 2010.

The idea to do the Ironman was born from competitive spirit and male testosterone! Me and three of my friends were talking last year after I had just finished the London Triathlon (a 1.5km swim, 40km bike and 10km run) and they had just done the Coast2Coast cycle ride in a day. We were looking for a challenge that we could do together that would be a real effort and something that we could do to raise money for some good causes.

The ‘race’ (a term that I use in the loosest of senses) is a three part event completed one stage after another without a break and with a maximum time to finish of 16 hours. The three stages are a 3.8km (2.4m) swim, 180km (112m) bike ride and then a 42km (26m) run (walk or crawl)... so, to put in into a local context, it is something like swimming from the Transporter Bridge to Newport Bridge in Middlesbrough then getting out, taking your wetsuit off and hopping on your bike and riding to Newcastle and back and then running a marathon!

We started with the half Ironman event in but that was full... the full distance Ironman event was not; so we entered! That was just before Christmas 2009 and all seemed fine... beer and Christmas followed and little thought was given to it. 1 January 2010 arrived and suddenly the mind was focused on what we had actually entered!

Since then we have all done a far amount of training... swimming, cycling and running obviously but also weights and core strengths training (I’ve lost about 2st in weight!)... as well as a lot of reading... nutrition planning, training planning and internet blogs about the course, the bike route and the hills... What I don’t now know about which legs muscles are used when cycling but not when running and vice versa and the electrolytes in a bottle of Powerade etc etc is not worth knowing! Ha. All of this followed further sacrifices, like not drinking – which in a World Cup year is far from ideal!, in a final push to haul myself round the race distance….

Any donation you are willing to make would be greatly received and will go to a very good cause and help to help those who are less fortune than we all are…

Please accept my thanks in advance for any donation you make and your support…

I will hopefully make it through the race in one piece to be able to share with you the details of the event and the total donations raised….

Thanks again and kind regards,

Nik