So I will cut straight to the chase and tell you that this race was a disaster, I sustained an injury right at the very start which resulted in me pulling out after the bike leg.

Back to the normal race recap style now and let’s go into a bit more detail.

You can read about the registration in my IRONMAN 70.3 MALLORCA – DAY 1 blog and about the racking and bag drops in my IRONMAN 70.3 MALLORCA – DAY 2 blog. I also posted a MY IRONMAN 70.3 MALLORCA GEAR blog just before departing where I talk about my race day gear and nutrition.

The thinking behind splitting the blogs up in this manner was to make the race recap a shorter post.

This is my second middle distance triathlon, having completed IRONMAN 70.3 STAFFORDSHIRE last year and my fourth triathlon in total, so still learning the ropes but improving race by race.

This race had a relatively late start at 07:55am, that coupled with my hotel being a 15min walk to the start meant I didn’t wake until 5:30am, compare that to the 3:15am alarm for Ironman UK, it feels like a weekend lie in.

As per usual, the night before, I had laid out the gear I was wearing for the walk to the start and packed my wetsuit, swim cap & goggles into my white bag. I had set out all of the race nutrition and stored my filled the water bottles in the fridge to cool as much as possible.

This meant all I had to do was eat my porridge, mix the Maurten sachets into the water bottles and walk to transition.

I quickly got the bike nutrition and bottles loaded, set the Garmin Edge up ready to track my bike leg and chucked the run nutrition into my red bag. All was going smoothly, I decided to change into my wetsuit whilst in transition and dropped the white bag off on the walk to the beach starting area.

In past Ironman events, I have not been able to do a wet warm-up before starting the swim, this time we had an hour to warm-up in the sea before the race start. I took this opportunity to swim up and down the warm-up area, clocking 1,230yrds. I got out of the sea 10 mins before the start gun.

For this swim, I put myself in the 35 – 40 minute group. Last year my swim at Ironman 70.3 Staffordshire was 41:58 but in training, I have been swimming around the 37-minute mark, in the pool. This was my first open water swim of the year so I was confident of swimming a PB but still not confident enough to jump in with the sub-5-hour racers, even though my goal was to complete the race under 5-hours.

Swim – 00:34.17

It took 25-minutes for me to enter the water once the start gun went but I was happy with this, they let 6 athletes into the water every 6 seconds to give a wider field spread and move space to swim. I think this is a great way of ensuring everyone has a comfortable swim.

I got to the start gates, the buzzer was counting down 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and off I went, I ran into the water, as the water got deep I was still running and kicking my legs out to the side to clear the water then I felt something in my right calf pop, I took one more step went to put the weight back onto the right leg and it just gave way. I collapsed into the water, to those watching it must have looked like I didn’t know what I was doing and had tripped. I stood up and tried another step again collapsing into the water.

At this split second, I had a decision to make, I thought that I had pulled or torn my right calf so could I swim with a badly damaged calf? could I do the bike leg? running looked impossible based on the two previous steps resulting in me collapsing both times.

I decided to drag myself further into the water and see if I can swim. I knew that if I got into difficulties I can roll on to my back and let the wetsuit keep me afloat.

After a nervous first 100m, I felt that I could swim fine, I was not experiencing any pain in the kick and I was passing those from the two groups who started behind me but passed me as I was lying in the shallows.

I pressed ahead and really enjoyed the swim, I didn’t feel like I was really pushing hard, I wasn’t out of breath and I was sighting really well, hitting a straight line from buoy to buoy.

As I passed the last buoy and was heading towards the swim exit arch, I looked at my watch and saw it read 30:39!! I stood up to run or walk the last 15m or so from the water to the swim timing mat and once again my leg gave way. I managed to slowly hobble out of the water, crossing the mat in 34:17, a 7:27 swim PB despite the lost time at the start and end of the swim, a massive improvement of just over 20%.

The walk from the beach to transition was a long one, I was hobbling and slowly making my way up the red carpet. There were so many people lining both sides of the walkway but right at that moment, I wished that they weren’t there. It felt embarrassing limping and hobbling past them. The support they were giving me was fantastic but it was lost on me. I knew that I wasn’t going to finish this race and I knew that it was a bad injury possibly meaning a long time out on the sidelines.

I reached my bags and just sat on the bench with my blue bag. Did I really want to cycle 57-miles over a mountain with one fully functioning leg? Could I do that? before I knew it I had taken my wetsuit off and put my cycle gear on, I guess we are doing this then.

Now started another long hobble through the 0.5km long transition zone to where my bike was. I took about 20 steps before decided I can’t do this, I am losing too much time and so many people are passing me. I went back and sat on the bench again wondering who I speak to about withdrawing.

I then set off on another trek to reach my bike. Finally getting there and pushing it out of T1 to the mount line.

All this meant I spent a shocking 13:07 in T1. I was 1,362nd out of the water out of over 3,800, it felt like 3,800 had come past me in transition.

Bike – 03:05.14

Before this race, I had been hoping to ride under 3-hours and hopefully under the 2:53.29 I did for the bike in Staffs. This course did have a mountain to climb over whereas Staffs was rolling hills but I felt my bike training had significantly improved my power and endurance.

As I could not put any weight on the right leg I knew that my power was going to be drastically reduced now and that any hope of riding a bike PB had gone so I just wanted to ride my bike and enjoy the morning out in the sun the best I could.

Again, like the swim I found that I didn’t feel too much pain when cycling in a lower gear at a high cadence, in fact, on the road from Alcudia to Port De Pollenca, I was still able to average just shy of 25mph and was passing so many people. This made me wonder whether I was going out far far too hard and pushing harder than I probably should be with an injured calf.

I thought what the hell, let’s go with it and continued on, I knew there was zero chance of me running 13.1-miles at the end of this bike leg so I had no need to hold back.

All the way to Port De Pollenca and up the climb to Lluc I was passing rider after rider despite riding at what turned out to be 70% my race power.

On the descent from the top of the mountain, I knew this was my weak point. I am not the most confident at coming downhill fast, especially coming 2,200ft down a mountain with many hairpins and switchbacks, so I took it steady. Braking hard for each bend to ensure I got down safely.

This approach was highlighted to me when I went around one bend to see someone had gone too fast and crashed into the wall, there was carbon all across the road and he looked in a bad way. Thankfully there were medics with him, I later saw him in the medical tent in a neck brace covered in cuts and scrapes but he seemed generally okay.

After that descent, it was mostly flat roads where again I was able to push 20mph+ and pass a lot more riders.

As I cycled back into Alcudia I wondered how my calf will feel when I get off the bike, in fact, I was concerned about how I would actually get off the bike. I knew I wouldn’t be able to unclip the left leg and swing over to the right side of the bike for a running dismount like normal. I opted for the safe approach of coasting up to the barrier, holding on to that and unclipping before getting off to the left.

I crossed the timing mat in 3:05.14. Around 12 minutes slower than Staffs but to be honest, I was really pleased with that time, I knew I had massively held back for the whole 57-miles so to only be 12 minutes off my PB was a great example of just how far my cycling has come.

I got off the bike in 1,420th place overall, only 58 places lower than I got out of the water and that was after spending a lifetime in T1.

Soon as I start to push my bike through transition I felt the leg wasn’t any better and the run wasn’t going to happen. I made the decision to lean on the bike and use that to roll through transition, kind of against the rules but at that stage, I was more concerned about the damage walking would do to my calf.

All the way on the 0.5km walk through that transition I could not see any medical staff, I asked one volunteer where the medical tent was but she did not know and could not find it on her map.

I made my way through to my run bag, took my cycle shoes and helmet off, put on my running shoes and cap and headed out of transition to look for someone I could tell I was pulling out.

Finally, right at the exit to T2 I saw two people in white tabards with a red cross on the front.

I explained to the lady that I had felt it pop/snap as I had entered the water at the start, specifically stressing the fact that it WAS NOT CRAMP!! I knew there standard approach was going to be, this guy has cramp so let’s stretch it out and get him on his way.

Unfortunately, neither of the medics could speak English and my Spanish wasn’t up to the task of telling them I had most likely strained my calf muscle.

The guy lay me down and went straight to stretching the calf out. I was in agony telling him to stop but he just kept saying to lie back. After a few minutes of this and realising it was having no impact he went on the radio to someone and next thing I knew he was assisting me to walk off somewhere. This turned out to be the medical tent which was nearly 1-mile away at the finish zone. Meaning I had now walked well over 1-mile with a leg muscle injury.

On the way to the medical tent, they take you around the finish arch but through the finish zone so the volunteers were offering me the finisher medal and t-shirt, no doubt thinking I had collapsed at the finish line. I refused to take these as I hadn’t done the course and the fact that the overall race winner had literally just crossed the finish line 2 minutes ago, it just didn’t feel right to cheat my way to a medal like that.

I spent around 90-minutes in the medical tent before being released and told to apply some ice and rest it.

That was all well and good but I had a 2-mile walk back to the hotel in 27’c heat and a 2-hour wait for the transition to open for bag and bike collection. I spent these two hours sat under a tree cheering on the remaining runners.

After explaining to my wife what had happened and why I was still showing as in T2 on the timing app, the first question I asked her was “Do you fancy a week in Alcudia next May?” Ironman 70.3 Mallorca, we have some unfinished business to take care of. 2020 will be where I come back and finish the job and smash that PB.