I’ve left writing up this race report for a while now to try and let my thoughts settle down after such a tough weekend. What has become apparent is that the scars from this race will take a long while to heal…

I approached this race with my highest ever level of fitness and was as prepared physically as I could have hoped for. I’ve been living in Australia for a year now and my last race was at Ironman Western Australia where I managed to clock my second 8hr53min finish. I was determined to better this time and was looking forward to finding out just how my training over the past months had paid off. My training team comprising of my swim coach Graham McDonald at the Sports Super Centre, my physio Mark Barrett of Physiologic and training partner Rebekah Keat were all talking up my chances at Ironman Switzerland. My confidence was sky high, as it should be when in training you are able to complete sessions that previously had you beat. The real icing on the cake for me though was not only my fitness but my lack of injuries. I didn’t even have the slightest niggle and once again I have my physio Mark and masseur Brenden to thank for this. For weeks they pummelled me with their fists and elbows and stabbed me with their acupuncture needles then to finish me off covered me in tape to keep my joints (specifically my Sacroiliac joints) in the correct place. Just so there is no doubt I was ready…just not quite ready for everything.

Leaving Australia was tough. I married my long term girlie in March and really didn’t want to leave her home alone but this is my chosen profession and we both understood that this is just one of those things. My return flight had me back in the UK 12days before the race so enough time to get over the jetlag and recover from my solid training right up to the day of my flight. I landed to a perfect summer’s day which I was a pleasant surprise. I had just over a week in the UK before I headed over to Zurich but had a very clear training programme and knew that I just needed to stick to it. Training in the UK is tough especially when you have been spoilt for the past year. Swimming requires a whole new technique as you play dodge the blue rinser during public sessions and of course it’s imperative that you remember there’s a wall every 25m not the usual 50m!! I still managed to get a few swims in and some semi decent sets where I could. The riding before the event was tougher than I imagined, the wet weather combined with the jetlag resulted in a couple of miserable rides but I still knew though that all I needed was already in the tank. My running was exactly as I’d hoped for and it really wasn’t long before I headed off…

Arriving in Zurich I was hit by the cleanliness and the thinness of the air. Zurich is actually at 300m above sea level which I knew would help for quicker times come race day. Everything was just as I had hoped for in the days leading up to the race. I felt fantastic, with just effortless speed in every discipline and the ability to just pile on the pace during my “pick up’s”. This was going to be a super quick day…the weather forecast was a bit of a tetchy point though with the forecast for wet weather to hit over the weekend but my thinking was if I’ve been training in the high 20’s then a bit of wet will just make me even more efficient.

A bit of wet though is quite a lot of wet to the rest of the world in Switzerland it appears. The day before the race was just plain wet but what hit me most was the massive drop in temperature from the days previous. We were down to about 17deg now from the high 20’s. Luckily I’d packed a fair bit of “winter wear” and just went about my finals day’s tasks as usual with the weather not affecting me. I did have my fingers crossed that this would clear for race day and in the evening as the clouds began to break up I thought we were on for a good day. I now realise that I could have not been any more wrong. I awoke on race day after a good night’s sleep to the worst rain so far and yet another drop in temperature. I knew that I’d just need to wear more clothes in the race and just hoped that there would be nothing more to it. Nirvana had arranged a coach down to the race venue and all went according to plan. I met up with David from Zero2Hero to use the pump and wished each other luck and went on our own way. Normally I like to hang around in transition to absorb the atmosphere but today I really wasn’t in the mood. It was far too cold and wet to hang around so headed off to put my wetsuit on and try and warm up.

Once my suit was on I made it down to the swim start and only had time for a couple of hundred metres to try and get going. Even though the water was warm(ish) I still felt really cold and this shows in my swim time. I was aiming for a 51min swim but missed the pack and ended up leading round the second chase group. By the end of the first lap I just backed off and swam in the group but this easing off was probably the beginning of the end of me as I was actually getting cold now in the water. As it was I ended up swimming the second loop in the pack and on feet knowing that the race would be won out on the bike and run as most of the race favourites would still be exiting the water behind me. I had a fairly slick transition and was out onto the bike and tried to settle down into a decent pace. What I was hit with I truly didn’t expect. I was riding okay but my heart-rate was just super low, about 15beats down on what I’d expect. The effort was still there so just did my best to ease into the ride knowing that once I warmed up I’d be able to start making some time up. Along by the lake the eventual second place finisher Stefan Reisen as well as Petr Vabrosek and Nick Saunders rode by but there was no way I had the change of pace required to go with them. I was stuck in a rut and had no change of pace at all. This should really have been a signal to me that all was not well. I figured that once I hit the first climb and the wind chill was no longer an issue my body temperature would work its way back up to a more acceptable level, by this stage I was struggling to not shiver. The first climb was just a steady rise and I waited patiently for everything to warm up but before I knew it and now had to contend with an even lower effort level and more wind chill. The next major climb was the Beast and this really was nothing like as hard as what I’ve been training on and yet my legs just felt like lead. This wasn’t right, and certainly what I had planned. The race was slipping away from me but as Jason Shortis regularly states you never, ever, never give up and so I just kept plugging away. When we were back down onto the lake I was really struggling to keep focused on the task at hand. The urge to shiver now was stronger than ever and it was everything I could do to hold it off but by the time I’d gone past transition and started Heartbreak hill I had the shakes. As I came back round to finish my first lap I heard my Mum at the roadside and just had to stop so doubled back and put some more clothes on. I was now wearing arm warmers, a race top, road jersey and a water proof jacket and was still shivering. Now is not the time for stepping down and giving up though and headed off on my way again. My legs by this stage just had nothing and I felt like I was just rolling along on an easy training ride. It was as I reached the bottom of the first climb by the end of the lake I could tell my legs were done but waited until the Beast to see what would happen as I tried to salvage my day. By the time the Beast approached I was done. My hands were blue and I had no control over my fingers making my bike handling really quite questionable. It was now that I realised that even if I made it to T2 my body would be in no fit shape for the marathon that lie ahead. I was done…

I pulled over to the side of the road full of thoughts and disappointment and removed my number and chip and rode on to try and find an English speaking medic or race official. At 160k I pulled into an aid station and waited for my lift back. As I arrived back at transition I was whisked into the medical tent and was given two bags of warm fluids. I just lay on the medical bed distraught, a shadow of what I had planned for myself. How can you go through all the pain in training, and sacrifice and end up like this. As I’ve told people this story since the event two words regularly crop up, fair and luck though generally with the words not and bad prefixing them respectively. These are not words I want to be associated with, I want a level playing field with no excuses but I know now after 2 years in the sport this truly does not exist. It is this and the lack of payback for my work and sacrifice that is driving me away from this sport. Whilst I do believe you get what you deserve and you deserve what you settle for I am not sure how much more of this I can take. My life is turning away from this sport as a profession such as it is (I still joke that I’m more FREElance than professional triathlete)…

I am now in the process of building all my training again to take on the Big Woody where I will race the full Ironman distance event. I am looking forward to the challenge of the event and catching up with some familiar faces. I will be travelling around a bit this week to try and catch up with some friends and sponsors and then it will be head down for the run up to what will more than likely be my last race as a professional on British soil.

I would of course like to thank my sponsors for all of their support, High5 care of fastgear.com.au, Forsport, Elagen Sport whose new product will blow you away, USE and my new pimp'd pods, KCNC, BlueSeventy for their new Helix and of course Zero2Hero who without their support I certainly wouldn't have been able to experience and discover all that I have.