IronmanUK announced that they were going to out on a new 70.3 event in Staffordshire, demand was expected to be high but I was not that interested in doing another Half Ironman at the time so didn’t bother. Dave did and managed to get a place in the event, demand was indeed high and it sold out in an amazingly quick time.
I now felt a bit like I actually wouldn’t have minded giving it a go but too late all places had gone. I mentioned to Jennie that we should enter a relay team when they opened entries for that, she enjoys the swimming! So we did and it was set, Jennie would Swim, I would Cycle and she would Run.
We travelled up early on the Saturday as registration was due to close by 13.00 on Saturday, on arrival at Shugboroughtraffic was quite bad getting in the car park but eventually we were in and made our way to registration. Dave an Jennie were a bit behind us but we spoke to them just before 11 and they were in the queue to get into the car park. 40 minutes later they arrived at registration.
Registration was painfully slow, in the massive tent about ¾ of it was given over to trying to sell stuff and the final ¼ at the far end was where registration had been squeezed in. When we got to register various comments were made about not enough athlete rucksacks being provided for all competitors, bit of an oversight, they knew ages ago how many had entered!
We just about made it to the briefing, which was about twice as long as it needed to be, I really could have done without listening to the presenter talking africaans to the 3 South Africans in the tent. They started off by stating that they had not expected the majority of people to register on the Saturday, my reaction “Why not?” I would have expected the majority to come down on the Saturday, a lot of people work on Fridays and would not have taken the day off.
Logistically it was always going to be a nightmare, one single track road into Shugborough and no vehicle access to Chasewater where T1 was. So we all had to walk over a mile with Bikes and Bike gear bag to be racked and then back to cars to make our way to the hotel.
The following morning we were up at 3.30 to drive to Shugborough to get the shuttlebus back to Chasewater due to no parking at the start, unless your name was Gordon Ramsey and then you could park your Range Rover right next to T1!
Having checked the bikes we then had several hours to wait until the start, there was very little undercover areas for the athletes to wait, indeed we ended up sitting on the floor in one of the buildings.
Dave was first of our group to start followed by Nicky and finally it was Jennie’s turn along with the other relay swimmers. We saw them all off into the pen and then made our way back to transition so that I could take the baton from Jennie when she had completed the swim.
Jennie then had to get to Shugborough in time to take the baton back and complete the run, this wasn’t going to be a problem as there were shuttle buses laid on. Apparently there were very few buses and most of the relay athletes were getting worried that they would not get back there in time,they were all moved to the front of the queue and on the first bus available. Amanda had to wait over an hour for the next bus and just about managed to get to Shugborough about the same time I did! Fortunately Jennie was in transition waiting for me but had only got there about half hour before me.
I then went to cheer the others on from the Relay meeting point an when Jennie came round for the 3rd time joined her on the final run into the finish, then it was off to wait for Dave to come round to finish, having cheered him home I collected my bike from transition and joined the queue to exit Shugborough, about an hour later we were on the road home.
I must thank all the Volunteers and Marshals that looked after us on the day, they are amazing and deserve all the thanks we can give them. As for doing another IM event I think I will steer clear and go for the other non IM branded events, it seems that IM has become too commercialised and less about the athletes.
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