How are you feeling looking back at the race?

I am buzzing

I spent over 6 months working hard for that one moment and running down that finishing chute and hearing ‘Jack you are an Ironman’ made it all worth it

How did it compare to the few races you’ve done?

Absolutely blew them all out of the water

In the lead up I did a local Olympic distance and a very small organised middle distance triathlon but the support out in Leeds on the Ironman day wasn’t even comparable to the previous races I’d done 

Really pleased Rich was able to fit these into my training plan as it gave me experience on what to expect on the day

How did you find the training from rich?

Really enjoyed every part of the training as each session was diverse each day of the week 

As time progressed I could really see myself getting fitter each week, particularly my open water swimming

The first race I completed was open water and I had a bit of a climate shock for the first few minutes, but I fed this back to rich and he incorporated more open water swimming in my plan and the swim turned out to be my favourite part of the Ironman!

Was it the right amount to fit your lifestyle?

We spoke about this when I first met rich and we worked out how many hours I could dedicate a week

Rich really emphasised keeping one day of the week free as a ‘family day’ but this day quickly turned into my bike cleaning and service day, but maybe my bike wouldn’t be so clean if I had a family 

I don’t have any out of work commitments so I found it relatively easy to get stuck into the training and complete every session rich set, this was also possible as my job is quite flexible

Were they specific to achieve your goal?

Yes, we worked on all 3 disciplines, with swimming being my weakest discipline when I first started, so we dedicated a lot of time to this

Any particular things went well?

I came out the water feeling great and wasn’t tired at all

We spoke about how I should be feeling good coming out of the swim and using it as a bit of a warm up so this was successful

Although I wasn’t going for a set time on each discipline, I had a rough time aim on each based around how I wanted to feel afterwards, and I managed to save time on all 3 and felt great throughout 

What did not go well and what would you do different?

I probably spent a bit too long in transition due to having to get fully changed after each discipline 

Next time I would probably try and be a bit more organised in my transition and make sure my fuelling was more organised, but I guess this comes with experience 

What’s next, Jack?

Hopefully try and get some more running events booked in this year in the lead up to Seville marathon February 2026, where I’m aiming to get as close to 3 hours as possible

Maybe, just maybe, another Ironman next year, but somewhere with better weather and ideally a slightly flatter run course