This weekend, Newport & District Running Club’s Chas Bickford-Smith completed Lanzarote 70.3 half Iironman, a race that is often billed as the toughest Ironman 70.3 race in their annual calendar. The bike course, with 1,000 metres of climbing in gale-force winds, is ridden on smooth roads through the middle of Timanfaya national park, past the black hardened lava fields left by ancient volcanoes. After completing the race, Chas sent us this report:
“The 90-km bike ride was an endurance test like no other, and is one of the world’s great bike rides. Cactus and palm trees sprout impossibly out of the black rock along with beautiful views of the sparkling blue Atlantic ocean. At Bike racking on Friday, I realised that the transition was over half a kilometre long, and my bike was at the wrong end, meaning I had to run out with my bike and back in to rack it to then go out on the run. Outlaw Nottingham [which Chas completed last year] has a long transition, but has an in-and-out, balancing the bike push for all.
What a beautiful 2km swim in warm clear sea water! It was a bit tricky navigating the second half into the rising sun. The best bit was swimming through the entrance of Playa Blanca marina. I really enjoyed it, but I did get stuck in traffic with the usual kicks and pushing. The bike was a different thing. Over 3,000 feet of UP with long hills and constant strong headwinds through the Lanzarote lava. I forgot to start my Garmin until after the first 8km climb – a tough start and of course into a headwind.
Without a clear distance, I wasn’t too sure on where the final and highest turn was, which just seemed to take forever to arrive. After the final turn at 70km, the best bit was the downhill, with speeds of 65+kph on the 20km way back to town. I spoke to a lady at the finish who has completed 70 half ironman races, and she said that this was the toughest bike leg she had ever raced. I thought I wasn’t going to able to run after the bike, but managed it, albeit a little bit slowly, but spurred on with overtaking a lot of fit-looking people on the hot and windy course. My estimated finish time was 6 hours (last year’s finish time of 3rd in my age group) but 6:37 for me was ok.”
Newport & District Running Club 