From Ironman Emilia-Romagna 2025
This is the first of two blogs in which I'll write about my two Ironman races in Italy. I'll go through each race separately, and the period before.
Why Cervia
Ironman Cervia is one of the easiest Ironmans on the calendar, at least when you look at the course profile: ocean swim, flat bike, flat run. I'd call it an ideal first timer race. Why Italy? I wasn't necessarily looking for the easiest Ironman, I was looking for one relatively close to home. My first choice was Klagenfurt, second was Thun, but neither fit my calendar because of the seasonal skippering work I do over summer. Cervia fell at the end of the season, so it was the easiest one to fit in. I was also aware that my prep wouldn't give me enough volume, especially on the bike, so a flat IM was the obvious choice, no debate.
Preparing for My First IM
In preparation for my first IM I finished two half distance triathlons, IM70.3 Rapperswil-Jona and the half distance Challenge Marco Polo on Korčula. I'd say both were on the harder end effort wise, but since my goal was the full distance, I knew it was good prep and didn't hold back too much. Both races were special in their own way, stunning scenery, a brutal bike and an easy run. I didn't worry too much about the swim; after 16 years of training long distance swimming, the IM swim distance is nothing more than a good warm up for me, and I knew that would be an advantage. The bike and the run, on the other hand, were bigger unknowns, and through them I was stepping into distances and efforts I'd never touched. Even with a lifetime of sport behind me, having done sport for as long as I can remember, my first IM was a leap into the unknown. The main reason: before the race I'd never in my life ridden a bike further than 120 km or run further than 25 km. I knew I could handle those distances, what came after them was a total unknown.
The Swim
Start, confident, from the front rows, and a disaster. After countless open water races, these 3800m were, if not the worst race of my life, close to it. My wetsuit was choking my shoulders because of bad prep and not enough time training in it. My cap falls off, my goggles fill with water, I collide with other swimmers, I take a punch straight to the fingers on a buoy. Constant changes in rhythm, I can't find my pace, and then finally out of the water. Fine, that part's behind me, 57:36, a great time for any recreational triathlete, disappointing for me because of all the problems and the energy I'd burned just getting through it. I definitely wanted to come out fresher than that.
T1 and the Bike
Among the first into T1, no crowd, everything going to plan, and then one of the longest bike racks I've ever seen. I grab my bike, start running, and after about ten seconds the bike drops from under me, I go flying over it, bottles everywhere. I pick myself and the bike up off the ground, and a horrible thought tears through my head: did I break the bike, is the race over for me. Luckily I'd only bent the derailleur, everything still worked, and I start riding.
For the first hour everyone flies past me like we're not from the same planet. In the second hour two guys show up riding at a slightly faster pace than me, and things get easier, turns out I belong here too. After the second hour comes the Bertinoro climb, a brutal mountain for a "flat course," about 2 km and 200 m of elevation. I get through it without issue. At 90 km I start my second lap, and here comes the group starting their first lap, a group I'm faster than on the bike. Since this is a fun sport, I pass them one by one, feeling like Remco.
Bertinoro, Again
120 km done, I start fading, my legs go acidic, they hurt, I badly overdid it. Racing against others swept me up, and now I'm paying the expensive price for it. I come up on the climb again. This time it feels twice as long, even though the distance is the same. Downhill and into T2 with a giant question mark over my head: what comes next. My legs are cooked, I'm not just wondering whether I'll run to the finish, I'm wondering whether I'll finish the race at all. I come off the bike at 5:21:45.
T2 and the Run
Off the bike, it feels like learning to walk again, and then to run. Not a fast transition, but much better than the first one, and I feel a wave of relief that the bike leg is done, now I don't depend on the bike anymore, whether a tire blows or a chain drops, just on my own legs, and that alone is a relief.
I start running and I fly like a bird. The pace feels easy, it's great, I'm going too fast but I can't slow down. The run course is four 10.5 km laps. Halfway through lap one, the problems start: my left hamstring hurts, expected, I'd been carrying that injury even before the start. Then the other hamstring, then my stomach, then my back, then my calves. I don't remember the exact order anymore, but I think every single muscle in my body hurts at some point.
Falling Apart, Holding On
My pace gets slower every lap, especially after the halfway point, I'm falling apart. I finish lap 3, calculate my split, and see that if I run a 5:00 pace to the finish I've got a shot at breaking 10 hours, my secondary goal after the main one: finishing. I speed up, run fast for 500m, and every warning light in my body goes off: abort mission if you want to make it to the end. I make peace with the fact that sub 10 is out of reach, and it doesn't hurt to let it go. Now it's a straight fight to keep running, not walking, to the finish. I allow myself to walk through aid stations so I can drink and eat more easily, but after every aid station I walk a few steps longer and have to beg myself to start running again.
The Finish
I pass 38 km and realize I'm going to finish, emotion hits, I feel tears in my eyes. From there it's pure ecstasy to the line, an empty tank, running, slow but running, closer and closer to the finish. I can hear it. My girlfriend and my parents are waiting there. I come onto the red carpet, ring the bell for becoming an Ironman for the first time, walk the carpet, soak up as much of the atmosphere as I can. I hug my parents, kiss my girlfriend, and cross the line. Then silence, I feel nothing but an enormous emptiness. A great time for a first attempt, 10:12:26, a placing of 40th out of 224 in my age group, and 319th out of 2,219 finishers overall. But all of that felt secondary next to the fact that I'd crossed that finish line.
What's Next
I became an Ironman. Now what, what's next. My first thought: I never want to put myself through this again, this kind of pain and everything else my body just went through. But I didn't want to make any decisions right away, I needed a few days to think, let the emotions settle, sleep on it. I don't think three days had even passed before I'd decided, not just that I wanted to do this again, but that I wanted to stay in this sport for the rest of my life, for as long as my legs will carry me.
