FATMAN 2 IRONMAN UK 2010- A journey by Jason Briley by jasonnawty

128 miles in the bag.

Today it was time to do my longest planned cycle as part of my IM training. It was the Magnificat 127 mile sportive starting in Newbury. The route headed straight for Linkenholt,Conholt and Coombe Gibbet. Bit of a steep start. Then it was downhill all the way to Stockbridge then across to Winchester taking in the hilliest part of the South downs then we snaked our way back to Newbury. There was over 11,450 ft of climbing and i felt every bit of it. I met some interesting people along the way including 2 girls from Salisbuy Tri preparing for their third IM along with another couple of guys training for Ironman. They had loads of good tips about race day for me and made me feel less anxious about it all. There were 2 feed stations and i’ve never seen anything like it in my life. There was rows of tables full of cakes, flapjacks and peanut butter sarnies. Which was much needed at 80 miles. My plan of sticking to 45mph went out the window as i felt so strong and couldn’t help but tag along with the roadies. For the first half i was averaging nearly 18mph but the South downs really affected that and i ended up doing the 128 miles at an average of 16.2 in a cycling time of 7hrs 55 mins. I pressed lap on my watch when i got to 112 miles and including 30 mins of stoppages i did the IM distance in 7hrs 23mins which made the average 15.1mph. so actual cycle time for the IM distance was 6hrs 53mins 16.2 avg . I am well chuffed with that even though it’s a bit fast form IM.  It was good to do over the distance at a higher speed though. Even did my usual jog around the car park when i finished to see if i could run straight after and it felt quite promising. The event was one of the best organised ive done and the volunteers were super helpful. I would recommend this ride to anyone and everyone that wants to go long.  Having said that there is also a 50 and 80 miler on the same day if thats more your distance.

Thats me done now im just having an easy taper week winding down to the half iron at Wimbleball next weekend.

Thanks for listening i hope all your training is going well.

Jay.