Ironman Kalmar 2018

Club member Stuart Campbell's detailed experience of his Ironman event in Kalmar, Sweden including broken bike spokes and painful knees!

After giving club member Stuart Campbell some time to recover from his first ever Ironman in Kalmar, Sweden back in August, we finally have his report on his personal experience of the whole event. So..get your cuppa at the ready...get comfy and read on to find out about Stuart's race, his bike spoke and his knees! 

Kalmar was my first IronMan event and first triathlon of this distance. In truth, I hadn’t cycled this distance since my first ride of the 2018 season - stopping multiple times; and hadn’t run this distance for a number of years. I was confident of the swim though. My plan was to draft the swim, survive the cycle and exit T2 feeling just as bad as everyone else. As several club IronMen(and women) had said, “You can always walk!” So, I arrived in Sweden feeling generally quite content. Not quite confident. But accepting the challenge and with realistic goals: (1) Finish (2) Target 14 Hours (3) Bonus Target 13 Hours. Not pushing for an unrealistic goal allowed for a calm that persisted right up to the final bike check on race morning.

Kalmar is a lovely old city right at the south-east corner of Sweden. Famous in years past for being a royal seat and for its part in local wars against the Danish; nowadays, the 7km bridge to Oland is one of Europe’s longest. With the IronMan machine in town, the buzz was electric with pent up energy just waiting for the start-gun. First realisation of the scale of an IronMan event was upon entering the hall for race briefing. An enormous sports complex of what I assume to be about 10 tennis courts, utterly packed with race entrants, and side doors slid open for the overflow and volunteers. Many more first-timers. How many more unprepared for the run!? My early night delivered a solid 4 hours of good, restful sleep; followed by another 4 hours of lying awake interspersed with stretching exercises and mindset music (mostly Martyn Bennett, Boards Of Canada). Breakfasted at 4am alongside a few dozen others, each in varying states of forced-relaxation, nervous-excitement, apprehension and dread. I felt good. Transition check and a broken spoke changed things. A quick visit to the emergency-mechanic however and the offending spoke was bent-and-taped in a make-do fix. I could start. But now I had a worry. The weather was perfect. Bright. Warm, not hot. Calm. Only a slight breeze in the air. Just after 7am however, none of that - or indeed anything else - mattered. The water was positively warm (20-degrees plus) and I was being punched and kicked from all directions and I was giving as good back. The draft didn’t happen. Such was the concentration of swimmers and limited visibility of the water, that finding someone’s feet was difficult; maintaining position impossible. But stolen glances at the city basking in the full glow of the morning sun, from a location not listed in any tourist guide-book, were remarkably rewarded. I took my time in T1. Put some fuel in the tank, collected my wheels and limped out onto the bike course. Huge crowds. Within a couple of Kms we were ascending the bridge and reaching the highest point of the race. 20km passed, 1/9th of the bike course complete. I was feeling ok. 40km passed and I was starting to hurt. With no hills to climb, there were no descents to rest; and lots of fast cyclists speeding past.

About 120km, after completing a circumnavigation of the southern half of the island, we re-crossed the bridge and headed out for a short tour of rural mainland Sweden. Small villages. Big crowds. Isolated farmhouses. Party! T2 was a repeat of T1. Again taking my time, refuelling, not as much as planned but making sure I was ready and in mind-set to engage with the next discipline. I set off at as slow a pace as I could muster, knowing that a crawl here would be a sprint at 30km.The first 14km lap went well. Slowly. I felt good, encouraged that at no point had I slowed to a walk and I really felt that I could keep pace going for the duration. A couple kms further and I got the first twinge in my knee. At 18km it went. As if a red-hot branding-iron was stamping the underside of my knee-cap, warming the entire joint and loosening the braces. I stopped. Massaged joint. Restarted slow jog. Started walking. I picked up a roll of bandage at a medical tent and improvised a compression-wrap above the knee. This worked in providing support, but hampered efforts by further limiting movements. But I was able to continue at a walk/hobble pace. When I neared the city, with its swollen crowds and their incredible support, I eased up to a sort of hobble-skip. Without doubt, the most difficult part of the race, emotionally, was passing through the packed grandstand area alongside the finish line, in utter pain and discomfort, receiving the support of the announcer and crowd, and knowing I still had another full lap to complete. Fought back and continued my hobble-skip out of the city again, desperate for a clearing in the crowds so I could slow to a rest. This latter part of the run, I was one of many walking long stretches, upping pace to a slow jog for hundreds of meters at a time, slowing back to walking. On repeat. I’d hobble past and call encouragement. They’d stride past and call encouragement. We could walk. And we would finish. We now knew it beyond mere pep-talking. On my final couple of km, approaching the city for the final time, I resumed my hobble-skip. With increased determination managed even a skip-jog. Passed a lot of people.

Recognised the streets, squares, restaurants, back on the road, around the pond, over the moat, through the enclosed passage, past the coffee shop. And around the final corner. Skip-sprinted down the cobbled street, past another couple of runners. And onto the red carpet. Under the arch. I don’t remember finishing. I don’t remember hearing those famous words. I don’t remember receiving my finisher medal or pack. I recall having my photo taken and being directed to the food tent. Eating two slices of pizza and struggling to finish a third. Had a quick massage and got medal engraved. I missed out on my 14 hour target by only by 8.5 minutes. Disappointed to have been held back from a potentially far quicker time, not by exhaustion but by injury; yet thrilled with the result under the circumstances.

And then it was over. Stumbling back into town the next morning, it was astonishing to see nearly everything packed up already. Gantry and grandstand seating dismantled and being bundled into lorries. Transition zone reverted back to a car park. Race shop swarming with folk trying to grab the last medium-sized event t-shirt (though these had sold out since Friday!), largely empty shelves and mass-discounts on what remained. IronMan Sweden’s host city was back to being Kalmar again. The pleasant, sleepy, historical, small city with the cobbled streets on the southeast coast.

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Fantastic racing and an amazing achievement Stuart - congratulations. Speedy recovery on those painful knees!