Ironman 70.3 World Championship

Towards the end of last term, I took some Long Service Leave to travel to Lahti in Finland to compete at the Ironman 70.3 World Championship. For those who were aware, I qualified by finishing second in my Age Group at Ironman Cairns in June, earlier this year. Lahti is the sporting capital of Finland, where they have hosted the World Cup Final for Ski Jumping. In Summer they have almost 20 hours of sunlight and the average daytime temperature is about 20 degrees. In Winter it can fall to minus 20 degrees! I was there at the end of the Northern Summer.

Why 70.3? Well it's the total distance of the event, in miles. For us here in Australia (and most of the rest of the world, it's 113km and it's half of a full Ironman Triathlon. The race consisted of a 1.9km swim, followed by a 90km bicycle and finishes with a 21.1km run.

I've had enough interest from both students and families, that I thought I'd share how things went. Before that, let me share some numbers... Racing took place over 2 days. Saturday was the women's race and Sunday the men's. There were a total of almost 6000 competitors from more than 100 countries (about 3600 men and 1400 women). The largest contingent of athletes came from the USA at about 1000, and 500 each from France and Germany. There were about 250 Australians. There were about 45 professional athletes in each of the men's and women's field and they were competing for a first prize of $50,000. My Age Group had about 300 men.

The swim took place in a fresh water lake in the centre of town, then you jumped onto the bike for a ride out of town and into the Finnish countryside, where there were fields of sunflowers and forests of pine trees and some small villages. Finally onto a run that took you into some of the local woodlands and back by the lake to finish back at the Ski Jump stadium.

The race started in overcast conditions, but by the time I started the bike it began to rain, and it kept raining for the whole ride and much of the run. This meant it got quite cold and when I arrived at the transition to the run, my fingers had gotten so cold, I had trouble pulling on my socks and even more difficulty doing up my shoe laces! The run was challenging with a long hill early on each lap, but I managed to keep myself going and reached the finish in 5:00:47 missing my target time of 5 hours by a mere 47 seconds.

Getting to the finish line is something I feel incredibly grateful for. Especially to those people around me that helped me to get there. While I cross the line alone, there are so many others that enable me to do so, from the staff here at school, that continue to encourage me, especially Mr Steve, for allowing me the time away from school during the school term, to my family that put up with my regular absences while I'm out training.

I've thrown in a couple of photos, that hopefully give you some idea of what it was like and if anyone wants to see more, I'm happy to share!

Mr Cameron