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Tony Fisher's Route au DecaIronMan, Vidauban, France 2006
Page Une 1. Some background: I suppose that my journey to the DecaIronMan (10xIM) started with my first ultra-distance triathlon in June 2004: the Levis Double Ultratriathlon, Quebec, Canada over the double IronMan (2xIM) distance of swim 4.8 miles: bike 224 miles: run 52-and-a-bit miles. Since I had started triathlon at the age of 40, I had done maybe a hundred-or-so races and covered all the classic distances from super-sprint to IronMan: initially, whilst living in Scotland as a member of Stirling Tri, and subsequently since 1998, with Chester City Tri ( visit our website ) :both tremendous clubs. I had excelled pretty-much at mediocrity with my best 'long' results being, an age-group win at the 2002 Longest Day when it was the national championships and 2 top-ten age-group finishes in the Worlds Long Course in Nice (2003) and Ibiza (2004). The 2003 Longest Day was safely put behind me in June and I (or rather my Number One Fan, Coach, Supporter and favourite wife Heather) was looking forward to the end of hour-upon-hour of training and the onset of heavy duty gardening, decorating and general domestic DIY: the prospect of tidying the garage had even been considered. The phone rings: 'Hi Tony! It's Rob here ... I'm just off the plane from Canada .. the Levis 2xIM was absolutely fantastic and it's got your name written all over it!' I had been following Rob Mad Dog Holmes on the Internet the previous week when he stunned us at Chester by being the first Club Member to nail an ultra-distance race. I had seen the results come in and just couldn't imagine how anybody mortal could have got through it. (The swim had been in the St Lawrence River and evidently half the field had almost drowned it was so rough.) I was in awe of his achievement: surely only the people you read about in magazines or saw on TV could do something as heroic as this? I was reasonably dismissive of Mad Dog's ... your name all over it, after all, my mental health was reasonable, I had no death wish, and the realistic chances of my finishing a 2xIM were marginally slimmer than me winning the Miss World Contest (review the evidence here .. if asked by your browser, it's safe to allow it to run): after all, whilst I do admit that I had somewhat of a name in the Club for being just a little obsessive in my training hours (Tony's maxim ... 'loads: good ... excess: better ... too much: best') that hardly warranted something as preposterous as a 2xIM. Well, to cut a (very-very) long story short, I ended up embracing ultra-distance rather dramatically by doing Levis the following year with a 25 hours 28 mins finishing 7th overall and last year doing it again finishing 6th. Then, to further enhance my reputation as Mr-never-mind-the-quality-feel-the-length, I went on to complete 6 IMs distances in 3 months including the Longest Day as Chester Tri's trans-gender solo women's relay team and the mind-bogglingly hard Norseman Extreme Tri. Mad Dog was with
me for my first Levis 2xIM 2004, as was Suraya Oliver (Black Country
Tri): they were old hands at this ultra-stuff and were great support
to me. We shared rooms with Nick Mallet (maddest and
The phone rings: 'Hi Tony! It's Rob here ... I'm just off the plane from Hawaii .. the Deca was absolutely fantastic and it's got your name written all over it!' No Mad Dog, No! I am not sure when I actually decided I was going to have a go at the Deca but probably sometime before Xmas 2005 after the Norseman. The Deca usually runs every 2 years and this year, 2006, it was due to go back to Mexico in November. However, it was rumoured that Christophe Llamas (French professional ultra-triathlete masquerading as an officer in the French Paratroops Corps) was trying to put on the first non-American Deca in Vidauban, Provence, just north of Nice. Well how tempting was that? If I were going to have a shot at the Deca, Nice is virtually a suburb of Vicar's Cross isn't it? With the availability of affordable flights from Easy Stelios, saying 'No' was becoming increasingly difficult. The most likely date was June 2006. OK: Christophe got his race together ( official Website here ), I signed-up and yes I did it. Since then I have been asked by many friends and Club colleagues to write my Deca story, maybe even as a book. Up until now I have resisted even compiling a race report: somehow I felt that whilst it damn-well occupied almost every waking second of my existence (and Heather's) from November 2005 to June 2006, maybe it was not such a big deal and that people wouldn't really be that interested. However, that doesn't seem to be the case, and it's here with trepidation, that I'll write just a few illustrated pages describing my adventures. If in some way it is seen as an acknowledgement of the fantastic support that I have had during some of the dark-and-not-so-glamorous hours of preparation, then I will be very pleased: on the other hand, I shall be disappointed if I bore readers with hyperbole, cliché and self-inflation: that really is not my intention. 2. A bit of training needed I suppose! I have always been a reasonable cyclist and runner over long slow distances, so 2 thirds of the race only worried me: the swim rather bemused and perplexed me .. How could I, the club's famously enthusiastic-but-awful swimmer, manage to knock out 24 miles in one go? I could perhaps learn to swim with an element of style and efficiency, OR I could just get stronger and more aggressive and thrash my way up-and-down that 25m pool for 1520 lengths and the hell with subtlety. Now we all now which option I was going to go for don't we? In November 2005, the prospect was hopefully the Deca in France in June, or if that were not to happen, out to Mexico in November 2006. The Mexico race was very much the second choice as it was going to run in the novel format of 10 days: 10xIM at 1xIM per day ... nobody on the IUTA (International Ultra-distance Triathlon Assoc.) circuit seemed to think this was going to be possible for all but an elite few: certainly a long way to go to be eliminated after just few days (failing to make the swim start each morning after completing a 1xIM the day before and it is out). So with sights set initially at least on June in France, I had about 7 months to build on my existing training: having come off 6 IM distances in 3 months I was fit right enough but tired. I had been promising myself that I would set-up my own ego website ( Tony Fisher's Simple Website ) to cover family, work and sport. I would use this to record and plan my preparation and start what would be the focus of The Grand Plan, namely, the Training Log ( see here ) for October 2005 to June 2006. My preparation was based on a Core Week that I would change as things progressed.
For the first 3 months I substituted Saturday's long bike for either a 10k run or a few hours fun running with the Club in Delamere etc. (thank you Phil and Chris for arranging) and then an hour with Colin at City Baths. Christleton swims didn't actually start until the Spring. Over the Xmas period, I wasn't biking to work and the pools were closed. My Ten Days of Christmas were to run 200 miles as 20 miles per day. That turned out to be quite easy (or so I thought at the time, but more of this later): not biking up-and-down the A41 each day just so saves the legs. Colin's efforts to get me to swim like a swimmer must have seemed pretty hopeless: all I seemed to do was learn to splash with slightly more style. However, I did progress and my solo long swims, when I had the time to think a little, undoubtedly became better. Thank you Colin. During Spring, I had to drop the Saturday runs and swims and get on with the long 100 mile grinds on the bike. The weather was rarely kind and it was difficult to keep to plan. Why does the wind always blow against you even on an out-and-back ride? The staple course was: Chester, Old Waverton, Tattenhall, Whitchurch, Shrewsbury, Tern Hill, Shrewsbury, Warrington Road to Beeston, round-the-lanes-a-bit, Tarvin and home .. dead on 100 miles. Boring as hell but do-able. About March (?) I started wetsuit swimming for ~ 2 hours on a Thursday evening at Christleton: this was really excellent. Although notionally a Club session, I usually swum in the public lanes where I wouldn't get in the way of Club sets but would cause maximum aggravation to the Public who somehow thought that a man dressed in a black rubber suit, belting up-and-down non-stop for 2 hours was, somehow, 'not normal' and not compatible with their own 2-lengths-and-a-chat regime! I can't understand it: can you?! My long Sunday swim was getting up to 8000m quite regularly. Good to have in the bank but I was becoming increasingly worried that 38000m (viz 24 miles!) was a very long way to have to swim on the day .. I was wondering if I might fall at the first hurdle, as it were. For the last few off-road runs on Saturday with the Club, I had been getting soreness in my left shin and in front of my ankle. At first this did not worry me too much as I very rarely suffer injuries, and anyway, how could one train for 20+ hours per week and not feel some aches and pains. Mind you, remember that after my Ten Days of Christmas 200 miles, said ankle and left calf were making walk backwards downstairs to breakfast every morning. This turned-out to be 12 weeks of trouble. Probably it stared with a stress fracture in the shin (later seen when healed on X ray) and then the normal domino effect of related damage and injury followed on. I first tried a stretching regime which just hurt and made me fed-up, then changed my running shoes .. all to no avail. Finally, I started to 'take it easy' and cut my run miles back and back to the extent that did zero mileage some weeks: hardly what you need 3 months out from the Deca ('cos, as oft said ... it's all in the run you know! ). For the last few years I have been doing a training camp in Portugal in March/April. This historically has been arranged by CEPAC/West Cheshire AC, but recently, thanks to Chris Morgan, quite a few Chester Tri Members have become regulars. Just before leaving this year, we got confirmation that Deca France was on and I had been invited with Suraya Oliver to represent GB. My own brief for Portugal in previous years was to do all the big bike days and then either do long runs with Chris or very-long very-slow runs by myself. This year, after just Day 1, running only 12k-or-so with Phil T and Chris along the beach, my leg was giving me so much trouble that I phoned Heather that evening and told her that my Deca would probably be off. Over the next few days we did some good biking and by Day 5 I was ready to try and run again. Using the tried-and-tested Tony-bang-or-bust approach, I loaded up with drink and carbo and set off on a 4-and-a-half hour run (2 circuits of ~ 14 miles: temp about 28C). Fantastic! After a few miles of hobbling, it all came good and I just flew around. Next phone call home, The Deca is back on! However, the next day I had to spend with my leg either raised in the air above my head (a pretty sight as you can imagine) or sitting by the pool dangling the offending limb in cold water. Over the next few weeks my consumption of ibuprofen was to take on agricultural proportions! Next phone call home? ... the Deca is probably off ... ... On return home, my training took on a new perspective: I would increase my swimming (long swims up to 10 - 12k and my bikes up to 110 miles but now on my race machine all at a reasonable tempo, whilst my running (and walking, and sleeping) was just completely clouded by 24-hours-a-day leg pain: a sort of toothache that just groaned on-and-on. In desperation I decided to the sensible option and get a consultation with physiotherapist Sue: hardly a mammoth undertaking as she works with me on a research project at the Royal and she had been treating me for tennis (swimmer's??) elbow anyway .. I'd kind of hidden the leg problem from her because I was sure she was going to give me very bad news. I presented with this chronic lower leg pain and with the story that it hurt al the time, but if I could tough it out during running, I could actually get up to some reasonable distances (15 miles), although the next day wasn't too much fun. Yeh: we all know what's coming don't we? 'Well, if it hurts, don't do it' ... no, absolutely wrong: Sue said that if I were sensible, and running short term lessened the pain, just go and do it! Brilliant! That's the sort of medicine I like! The treatment plan was for physio to the calf and ankle and a visit to see another professional acquaintance in orthopaedics, 'Andrew the Foot Specialist'. Now Andrew knows a thing or 2 about feet and athletes, having been involved in some rather famous metatarsal rehabilitation with a couple of local professional footballers (confidentiality to be preserved, but this should not stop your imagination scoring the odd bulls-eye!). His suggestion was ether do nothing (retire from ultra?) or go for a nice steroid injection into the ankle joint. We left it that I was to think about it, weigh up the pros and cons, take advice maybe from a few other orthopaedic chums, check-out the IUTA 'prohibited drugs list' and then get back to him. 30 minutes later, I phoned him from my office and said that I was up for the biggest meanest dose he could come up with. Next day (Wednesday) ... big injection of depot methylprednisolone and local anaesthetic .. cycled home pain-free ... ran 10k pain-free ... swam 4k pain-free: next-next day couldn't stand: next-next-next-day could walk and even jog .. and at the weekend, ran 25 miles pain-free: the Deca was back on! Thank you Sue: thank you Andrew. The final phase of training now that I was a runner of sorts again, was just to take the Core Week and rev it up a bit: long swim always ≥ 8k (and practise drinking at 'nibbling' at 3k intervals); brick the Monday-to-Friday bike with 13 miles rather than 10k when possible; nail-down the 2 hour wetsuit swim. and radically, try to get more that 5 hours sleep at night! My weight was OK at 69kg but I was having to careful not miss any meals as loosing it was easier than gaining it. Just 3 weeks before the off, Suraya confirmed that she wouldn't be racing. This left a definite place open for Arthur who had been waiting in the wings for Nick Mallet's place whom we knew would not start as his attempt to bike from Tierra del Fuego (Argentina) to Canada en route to France had gone wrong. He was still somewhere in Columbia. Great for me. Arthur's good fun. knows a bit, but very importantly, comes attached to Mary who must be the most experienced (and best loved) soingneuse in the World (and she makes tea on request any time of the day ... ...). After a weekend's nominal taper, a few bike rides to and from work, a token swim and a couple of 10k runs, I finally closed the Training Log on 7th June 2006. My totals over 8 months had been: Swim: 356 km Bike: 8140 miles Run: 1278 miles ... averaging 21 hours per week. That would have to do. I had hoped that Chris Morgan (crew and soingneur fantastique) would have been able to come out and crew for me, at least for some of the time. Unfortunately for me, but great for him, his own race programme had really got on course with Alcatraz, barging his way into the GB squad and supporting wife Jan's season, and so it couldn't happen. In ultra-triathlon, your crew is everything and I was very lucky when my long-time friend Brian offered to come out for the full race period. Brian is these days a retired solicitor, and the nicest and most reliable bloke that I could have wished for in my camp: the only problem was that he had even less of an idea of what it was going to be all about than I did! The Deca is a team race where only one person in the team actually gets to race ... but more about this later.
3a. Timetable ... what happened when
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crudest Aussie
I have ever met: