What are you made of?

I've been running since I was a kid and doing triathlons for the last five years, but the thought of doing an "Ironman" always seemed something that crazy people with a masochistic penchant for sitting on razor sharp bike seats for hours at a time do. Comprising of a 3.8km open water swim, followed by a 180km bike ride, and topped off with a full marathon distance (42km) run, the Ironman is one of amateur sport's toughest days out.

Gradually, however, the idea of trying an Ironman began to seep into my brain. I was inspired by race reports on the Internet telling tales of joy and pain, sometimes of life changing finishes (and failures to finish), and intrigued by the incredible ends to which triathletes go to grasp their sport's Holy Grail; a place at the World Ironman Championships in Kona, Hawaii. It was only when I found myself filling out the entry forms for the 2000 Ironman Asia event in Korea, that I realized that I had succumbed to the idea.

Goto culture on display

Where it all began

Tamura supporters give the eventual winner a boost

Sydney Olympian Obara strides out to a 3rd place Ironman debut

Yoko Okuda scored the first ever Ironman victory by a Japanese woman

The author goes the distance

Lovely!

So, 6 months later, what the hell was I doing downloading entry forms for the 2001, Ironman Japan? How quickly the post finish sense of relief and endorphine rush blots out the pain, and how easy it is to fill in an entry form and then start telling your mates, "Hey, I'm a total loony and will be doing an Ironman in the blistering summer heat," in the hope that they will ask, "So just how long is this Ironman?" and you can nonchalantly reel off figures that few people can really get their head around. The scary thing, which starts to sink in as the race gets closer and the mercury starts to rise, is that you can't really get your head around them either.

Jump 4 months of juggling a full-time job, running a web magazine, and a training regime that occasionally nudged 20 hours a week, and the race, sorry "event" (veterans advise "newbies" never to consider racing this event first tiome out, as it is often a recipe for disaster), is approaching fast, and those numbers are coming out less and less nonchalantly. The temperature is rising daily and though in the back of your mind you'd love to quit, now that you've told so many people what a nutter you are quitting is not an option.

As is the case with most triathlons in Japan the Ironman was held in an area of stunning natural beauty, and an absolute bugger to get to. Japan was the first foreign nation to have a recognized qualifying race for the Hawaii Championships, but despite the maniac-like support among competitors (sorry "participants"), and testament to the logistical nightmare that staging an event of this scale entails, Japan had been without it's own event for 4 years.

Bringing the event to the tiny island of Fukue in The Goto Island chain west of Nagasaki City took almost all of those 4 years. It certainly crossed my mind whether a small island community that had never hosted a triathlon of any kind was ready to pull of an Ironman. We were warned by marshals to be aware that the local people really had no idea of just how fast some of the athletes would be biking, and to bear this in mind when whipping a bottle of water out of a middle-aged PTA member's hand at 50km/hr. I myself lost valuable time out on the run course trying to get the well-meaning women at the water stations to drench me from head to foot in ice-cold water "Are you sure? It's terribly cold." "Yes, please." "It's really cold you know" "YES! That's why I want to you to do it!"

Sports psychologists talk about getting into "the zone" before a race, utilizing visualization techniques and such. I knew however, that visualization would mean that I would have to face up to the enormity of the task that faced me, and it would frankly scare the crap out of me. So, my pre-race strategy was to think as little about the "event" as possible, and as a result I spent the two days prior to it in a kind of detached haze, enjoying chatting to all the interesting people who had come from all over Japan and around the world to do... "Oh, something or other". Now, this is no good if you're a pro athlete, but I feel it helped me enormously. Evidence of this came on race morning when many of my fellow "participants" greeted me with drawn faces and the question "Did you get any sleep?" I had, to their surprise slept like a log. But, now with only an hour to start there really was no choice but to face the fact that it was going to be a very long day.

Nature marked the return of Ironman Japan with the hottest day of the year so far. In 90% humidity the temperature was already above 25C and would rise to as high as 37C by the end of the day. Drinking for all one's worth and pacing would be the key factors in deciding not only who would come in first, who would finish and who would succumb the heat. Of the 712 participants who set out on the swim over 120 would not make it to the finish.

The course went from the sublime - breathtakingly beautiful beaches that cried out "Go on, put down that bike, take a dip - just for a minute" - to the hellish - a barren stretch of road alongside an airfield around which we looped back and forth, like pieces of butter sliding across a frying pan, for what seemed an eternity.

I had a great race - it's over and I can now use the "R" word - I was lucky that everything went well for me, and dare I say it, I had a great time. It didn't change my life, but despite the pain and not being able to get a pair of shoes on my feet for over a week, the post race high lasted for days. Having grabbed a slot for Hawaii, I'm actually looking forward to doing it all over again in 3 months.

It isn't the good races that make the best stories though. No one sits in the pub and says, "Hey, tell us about the Ironman that you did when everything went perfectly and you finished with no problem at all." Everyone wants to know about the person who collapsed a few steps from the finish line, or had most of their internal organs removed after the race.

So, my hat goes off to the guy in his 70s who staggered across the finish line 20 minutes after the cut-off time (meaning he would not get a medal, finisher's T-shirt, or an official time ) to rapturous applause from the crowd of local supporters, and racers who had returned to the finish to applaud those who were still doing battle long after they had showered.

And here's one for the pub. A competitor from Hong Kong spent the night in hospital in his running gear, trussed up in a surgical collar after seven bags of fluid had been pumped into him through an IV. He had crashed his bike twice, and apparently stopped drinking, and run the entire marathon in a state of heat exhaustion.

For those who might be considering joining in this festival of pain, the fact that next year's event will be held in the more tolerable month of May may be enough to push you over the edge. Keep an eye on www.ironmanjapan.com for more details.