Humorous Anecdotes, Observations & Accounts of Marathon Running & Agile Adventures.
It was a dark and stormy night.
It was a dark and stormy morning too.
In fact, the whole damn week had been dark and stormy.
Still, I had no one but myself (and some bat-eating bastard in Wuhan) to blame for the predicament I now faced. On the coldest, wettest and most miserable day of the year, I was the idiot who’d be attempting a Home Ironman as his first ever triathlon. Continue reading “The Home Ironman Experience (my first triathlon)”
When I decided to do my own Home Ironman challenge, I checked out the original, pre-Covid-19 date of Ironman South Africa and realised it would have been on Sunday 29 March. With Covid-craziness gripping South African endurance athletes, I wondered whether and real triathletes would be undertaking a Home Ironman on the first weekend of lockdown. It turned out that two did. I was fortunate enough to chat to both – this is the story of the first Home IronMom, Charlotte Raubenheimer.
Saturday the 28th of March was day two of the South Africa’s original 21-day lockdown period. Whilst many South Africans spent the day getting acclimatised to lockdown conditions (or figuring out where they were going to store all the food and toilet paper they’d needlessly stockpiled), for Charlotte Raubenheimer it was a day of speculation. Continue reading “Charlotte Raubenheimer – The First Home IronMom”
When I decided to do my own Home Ironman challenge, I checked out the original, pre-Covid-19 date of Ironman South Africa and realised it would have been on Sunday 29 March. With Covid-craziness gripping South African endurance athletes, I wondered whether any real triathletes would be undertaking a Home Ironman on the first weekend of lockdown. It turned out that two did. I was fortunate enough to chat to both – this is the story of the first indoor Ironman, Tom Barlow.
Tom is accomplished triathlete who already has eight full Ironmen under his lycra chaps. He had been training hard in the build up to 29 March and, after an excellent half Ironman in East London, was eyeing a 9h45 finish in Port Elizabeth to qualify for the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii.
Whilst on his final pre-lockdown farewell run in nature, Tom’s mind drifted to the Frenchman who’d just run a marathon on his balcony. Not wanting many months of hard training to go to waste, Tom Barlow’s world wasn’t going to stop for Covid-19 and he decided that attempting the first ever indoor Ironman was the logical way to beat the lockdown blues – and raise money for a good cause at the same time. Continue reading “Tom Barlow – The First Indoor Ironman”