2 Poles, 7 Summits, 13 Ironman's and 196 Countries

Langkawi, Ironman Malaysia 2014  🇲🇾 Friday before the race Mark, a recruitment consultant, and I had prepared well. Bikes were in, a good lunch and dinner a 90min massage and some chill out time. Saturday morning, race day. Awake at 5:15am and down at breakfast 5:30am. A small breakfast of porridge which Elle had packed for me and by 5:45am we were walking to the event. Arriving I was relived to find my tyres were both still inflated, no small thing given recent history. Some last minute tasks, nutrition packing, computer mounting etc and soon I was ready. Mark was already soughted. It was still dark, the sun was starting to peak through the clouds as everywhere were nervous athletes thinking through the day. Most were pretty serious, opposed to Japan there was a lot of fuss over small technical things. No access to the transition bags, no compression wear in the swim, no covers on the bike and on and on it went. The swim would start as a self seeded wave start....

Ironman Japan 2014  🇯🇵 Was a pretty good day. It started of with a scare as I turned up and the front tyre was flat, it would not pump up. At 5:00 in the morning this was a panic as missing the whole race flashes before my eyes. Orlando was upset because Elle and I were both worried and probably also because he had been pulled out of bed at 4am for no apparent reason and was now surrounded by people with bikes looking anxious. The technical team swapped the tyre and fixed it and all was fine.....relief! Rushing down to the start the spectacle that was Ironman began.  In the first wave after the pros I waded into the lake, that seemed murky at first but would soon reveal itself as a stunning clear beautiful lake.  The commentator seemed to switch effortlessly between English and Japanese. 1min to go, 30 secs, 10 secs, then the air horn went off. For the first km to the white buoy I followed the washing machine of bodies, unable to view the buoy. Things cleared...