Nice Ironman World Championships 2024 - Alexandra Meek

The lead up  … the 6-7 year lead up !

During my first Ironman in 2018, I remember thinking to myself during the run that I was glad I didn’t have any more Ironmans lined up and that I’d only want to do another one if I were feeling ready to try and do it better than my first one was going at that point (longly and tiredly..). My swim wasn’t bad (for a non-swimmer like me – 1h10) and I was pretty happy with my bike (5h38 – less than 10 minutes slower than my carrot, Daniel!) but oh my goodness I could not run off the bike. I think my marathon PB at the time was 3h11 but I dragged myself around the Ironman course more than a minute per km slower. :O And I can’t say I was enjoying it! Hence why I had no desire to do another one until I was ready to give it a decent crack.  

Fast forward a few years and, probably off the back of running a sub-3h marathon, I thought maybe it was time to have another go in 2022. I trained hard and things weren’t going too badly… until I hit a wall (literal, not figurative) down the freeway going about 35km/h on my TT. ☹ Thankfully I wasn’t too badly injured… just a minor concussion and a few possibly broken ribs – so the Ironman would need to wait until the next year! 

My ribs had finally stopped hurting by March 2023. Ironman training went even better off the back of the year before. I rode lots and was riding pretty well. (My training goal was to try and ride more like Russell! :D) By the time the Ironman was approaching though, I was definitely looking forward to not spending my whole weekend on the bike. Nevertheless, I was pretty confident that I was strong on the bike and had high hopes for both my bike and run. In the olden days (as in, pre-2023), you generally had to win your age group to get a world champs slot as there weren’t many slots for women. But as the event has been split into separate men’s and women’s events since 2023, at the moment there are a lot more women’s entries available so I knew that I probably only needed to finish the event to get a world champs slot. I’d also never been particularly interested in going to Kona but I quite like France so as the world champs was going to be in Nice, I was pretty interested. 

The day started well – I swam 1h10 again. The conditions in 2018 had been absolutely perfect and I’d also been doing 4 swims per week in the lead up in 2018 so I was pretty pleased to get the same time off the back of only 2 swims per week and in good but not amazing conditions. Off I went on the bike… It was a windy day and I often struggle on the bike in the wind. I was feeling okay for about the first 30km and then I was uncomfortable and unhappy for the next 150km. That is a long time to be uncomfortable and unhappy! I was feeling pretty sick on the bike which continued on the run. I had many hours on the bike to question my life choices and was thinking that I didn’t want to take the world champs slot. Some days you just have a bad day and unfortunately for me, the bad day happened to line up with my big race for the year. But… by the time the next morning rolled around, I thought maybe as it was the world champs I should do it. And _then_ retire from the full distance! I came third in my age group as well – I think if I’d come 8th like I did in 2018, I wouldn’t have accepted the world champs spot. 

So I rolled into my third straight year of Ironman training. Working full time and training for 3 Ironmans in a row is definitely not easy. I know some people do it and enjoy it… good for them… I definitely found it tough! I decided to work with Steve again for this one. Although I’d done my own program the year before, it adds extra mental load being the one telling yourself what to do. It definitely simplifies the process when someone else tells you what to do. I’d learnt a few things at Busselton 2023 (like, don’t eat so much on the bike that you make yourself sick!) so I was keen to improve on the year before both from a training and racing perspective. 

One thing that made it extra hard was that UWA is such a small tri club, it can be hard to find others to ride with (particularly when you’re trying to ride such long distances.. for some reason most people don’t want to ride a million km on the weekend!). I did get the odd group ride here and there and for those of you who came out with me occasionally, it was appreciated. I knew the Nice course was going to have a lot of elevation so to the hills it was! I was also able to ride the Nice course on the internet a couple of times which was really helpful to understand just how bad it was going to be! 

I felt like my riding wasn’t going well and I was struggling to ride with any sort of intensity – I think 3 years of Ironman training was getting the better of me. But one thing that was going really well were my runs off the bike. For the first time since I’d started triathlon, I was getting some really good paces off the bike. I could tell I was in pretty good running form and so thought I should make the most of it by having a crack at a half marathon PB. Sub 4 min/km for a half marathon had been a dream goal of mine for some years so I was very pleased to run 84 min at Perth half in August. Even if the Ironman went badly, I was happy I’d achieved that goal as part of it (and I’m still dining out on it!).  

In the last couple of months of training, I had a sore shoulder so backed off the swimming a little and was struggling through my rides but as I was running the best I had off the bike, I decided my Ironman goal would be to not go too hard on the bike and then try to have a really good run. Based on my paces in training, I was aiming for 3h10-20 for the marathon. 

Race week

The race was on the Sunday and we were flying on the Monday/Tuesday. I knew it was risky flying so close to the race. Would my bike turn up on time? Would I get sick from breathing everyone else’s air on the plane? I’d packed all my race gear in my hand luggage so that if my bike didn’t turn up, I could hire something and I’d at least have everything else. I also meant to take a mask on the plane as some attempt at reducing my chance of getting sick but forgot to grab one in the last rush. While we waited to board at Perth airport, someone at our gate was coughing their lungs up with a mask tactfully placed over some but not all of their face holes. Great – fingers crossed they weren’t near us on the flight! …Once we were in our seats, who was across the aisle and one row back?! Coughy McSplutterpants themself ☹ I checked the seat pockets – eye mask, obligatory weird plane socks… no face mask. Despite my best hand sanitisation routine throughout the travel, the day after we arrived, I got a cold. *sigh* I went for a swim on the Thursday and was practically in tears my throat was so sore but I took solace in the fact that my throat stopped hurting when I stopped swimming and got my head out of the water so I knew if it was similar on the day, I just had to get through over an hour of excruciating pain, and then it would be okay! Easy. The pebble beach was also incredibly painful on your footsies with a steep drop around the water’s edge to make both getting in and out incredibly difficult. While getting ready to hop in the water, Daniel and I had a chuckle at some people nearby dragging themselves out of the water in a rather ungainly fashion.. and then proceeded to look similar ourselves while getting in and out! 

We were staying on about the 4th floor which usually wouldn’t be a problem for me but oh boy was I dragging myself up those stairs that week. I also didn’t really get to enjoy the race week activities and atmosphere as I was feeling crap. But hey ho, it is what it is – I was just hoping I’d be improving a little by race day. 

I dropped my bike and transition bags off the day before. It was quite windy and we all had to get creative finding things to secure our bikes to the racks and hoping they’d still be in one piece the next morning. 

Race day

By the time race day rolled around, I was on the improve a little a least. 

Not sure if it’s the same setup at Kona but once you’d entered transition pre-race, you were funnelled in one direction through to the swim start so you couldn’t see friends / family before the race unless you exited transition and then you’d need to walk 1km down the road to reenter transition to make your way to the swim start again. They also had the worst portaloo line system (in that there was no system). I was pretty surprised that they’d done such a bad job of the starting area given it was the world champs. 

I was in the first age group wave so felt a little rushed getting to the beach after the debacle that was the transition/start area. A random lady from my age group did up my wet suit for me – definitely not ideal that you couldn’t access friends and family for those last minute jobs but she did a fine job at least. 

Off we swam.. it was a deep water start at least so we’d already hobbled in over the death-pebbles. Ironmans take such a long time, it can be hard to remember too many details by the time you’re done (and have repressed the memory!) but I think I did a decent job of finding some feet in the first half. The course was a narrow M – the buoys for each out/back were quite close to one another. They should have made them different colours as it was quite hard to tell which buoys were the target. I mostly had some others around (not to say they were going the right way though!) – I was definitely a little lost as I went out on the second half. I found some company again though. At some point during the swim I got a kick in the face and had to do a goggle rearrange – the perils of triathlon! I was just hoping it wasn’t black-eye-worthy. 

I came to the shore – they had a carpet down to the water line and volunteers dragging people up over the drop thank goodness. It was still painful but was over a lot quicker than when you were trying to drag yourself out. 

Transition was fairly uneventful I think and off I went on the bike. Having ridden the course online, I knew there was a bit of flat getting towards the edge of town then some very steep hills – we’re talking mid-teens so 3 times as steep as Welshpool! I occasionally have a bit of trouble with my TT bike where my chain comes off if I drop down from a very heavy gear to a very light gear. I’d asked the bike shop to make it not do that anymore (!) but nevertheless, as I got to the first very steep climb, I dropped not only my gear but also my chain. 🙄So I had to jump off to get it back on – not too big a problem except that I was on a very steep hill at the time and was worried I wasn’t going to be able to get started again. Picturing myself running up the side of the road until it levelled out must have been inspirational enough and I managed to get going… Once the really really steep hills were done, there was some more flat before the main climb started. This was about 20km or 3-4 welshpools (I was using the well-known scientific theorem, The Theory of Welshpool-relativity). I already had my original plan of not killing myself on the bike so as to have a good run and then with the cold added in, I knew I couldn’t go too hard on this climb or I’d risk blowing my HR so I just resigned myself to noodling up the hill… usually I enjoy overtaking faster swimmers on the bike so I can’t say I loved spending the entire climb with people going past me. But I just tried to ignore them and not worry about it. I was feeling pretty crap and was nervous about how the run was going to go but I was also thinking about how good it was that once I’d finished the race, I wasn’t going to have to do another Ironman. Yay. That thought definitely cheered me on. 

I did appreciate when I was at the 90km mark that I didn’t feel like I was going to die and wasn’t desperate to get off the bike. Unfortunately the feeling didn’t last too long. There was a little out back around the middle of the bike course with a turnaround at 95km. I could tell I was going downhill to the turn but I didn’t realise I had a tailwind until I turned around. From that turnaround it was some combination of up, down and flat for about 40km until the proper downhill started and there were still some decent climbs in there! It was tough. Having made myself sick at Busselton the year before, I was making sure I didn’t eat too much. The risk of this of course is trying not to bonk. So at about 100km in, I bonked! I was frantically trying to eat everything I could. I also managed to drop my chain again somewhere in here on one of those sneaky bonus climbs. 

From 130km to 170km, it was mostly downhill other than one more Welshpool thrown in there for good measure. There were some really steep technical downhills towards the top. I knew of one in particular that we’d been warned about – I still forgot about it though and flew way too hot into a steep fast u-turn 125km in. Having survived that one though, the rest was okay. Most of the dangerous turns were well marked and the riders were pretty spread out so the road wasn’t crowded. There were also some goats on the road at one point trying to climb up an embankment so that was definitely a highlight! 

Before the last Welshpool, I was freezing from the downhill and appreciated the first few minutes of the climb to warm back up (I didn’t appreciate the rest of the minutes though!). A few ladies caught me about halfway down so I decided I could do with some company and kept them in sight (all legal of course). In all my previous (2) Ironmans I’ve been limping my way to T2 so I was really happy that I was able to rip it down the hills and finish strong. 

I had also estimated to Daniel that the ride would take me 7h and I could tell it was going to be really close which was some more motivation to push it back to transition (I finished in about 7h00-01). I probably worked a tiny bit harder than I should have in the last 25km but I was just so pleased to be feeling okay and then the closer I got, I was feeling so relieved that I was going to make it. Daniel was clearly enjoying lunch and napping too much though and didn’t get to the end of the bike leg! (I’m considering firing him from the position of 2024 Ironman world champs lead supporter.)

T2 hooray 

I did see Daniel on my way out of T2 so at least he got there eventually!

Although I’d been running 4:30s off the bike in training, with the cold, I didn’t think I was going to even hit that pace at all so I was pretty pleased when I looked at my watch half a km in and was running 4:30. I knew having had effectively no taper though, I wasn’t going to be able to run it for too long. I held it for a as long as it felt comfortable which was 7km in the end and then started to let it slip. 

I’d felt like I was the last rider on the bike course so, although I felt bad for them, it did cheer me up a little to see there were still bikes coming in throughout most of the marathon. 

My favourite part of the run course was the ice. The day was quite warm and I thought maybe ice was an Australian race thing so was very pleased when I found they had ice at some aid stations. Cold or no cold, I felt a million times better than at Busselton and got a few gels down as planned but still by about half way I was struggling to keep getting nutrition down. I was also incredibly tired and decided I’d do some walk runs as much for my mental as physical fatigue. The run was 4 laps so I got to see Daniel and my dad and sister twice per lap. About half way in I went for a little walk with Daniel which was nice but then he made me start running again. I would have loved to have walked the last 32k of the run but I did the maths and didn’t really want to be out that long. My last lap though had a fair few walks in it. I ended up finishing the marathon in 3h45 which was definitely frustrating given I’d been running so well in training and had been aiming for about half an hour faster. 

Mostly though, I was so happy to finish! I am still celebrating my retirement from Ironmans and am excited about doing some shorter faster races next year. If nothing else, at least doing Ironmans makes you appreciate how easy it is to fit in training for marathons and 70.3/100s! 

Yay for no more Ironmans! :D