Having a family and working a 40-hour week is enough to occupy most people's time. Nigel "Old Man" Richardson managed to squeeze a few extra hours out of the day to train for the UK Ironman. As you do.

Now remember, the cut-off for an Ironman is 17 hours. Anything over that, and you're not an Ironman. Anything under that and you have bragging rights for life.

I gather the courage to get up one Thursday morning at 6am to go swimming with this SAUK UK Tri squad that sounds all a bit to committal for me on my “train when I commute to work schedule”. Then I meet the likes of Keeto, Rob, The Big E (Eugene) and all these other nutters who talk ironman, ironman and more ironman. It rings big style in my ears; I simply have to give it a bash.

Mark (friend of mine), Big E and I head down to Sherborne, on the Sat before the race. Big E has brought his “holy grail” SA ironman medal to get me going and I’m thinking “I know where you can shove that thing”. Its funny how when these events confront my psyche I always start saying to myself “oh I’ll just do the swim and bike leg then cop out if I feel like it” to which Eugene said “if you quit I’ll bliksem you”.

Arriving at Sherborne the atmosphere there was brilliant it just oozes a professional setup and there’s nothing better than the tent there that has loads of kit to oogle over, so I skip the race briefing for some kit exploration instead. It got my mind off the race announcers rubbing my nerves up the wrong way and I could stay in partial denial of what tomorrow was gonna bring. Caught up with Kev Richards and he propped me up as usual with some useful tips and we did a quick recce of the swim course. Big E arrives back in the tent with the same story from the UK 70.3 so its registration time and then off to get the steed racked. By which stage I’ve already acquired the name tag “the old man” for having Eugene push me in, in the registration queue and then watching me dither over my kit before racking. The “Old man” name tag stuck when we had to turn back because I hadn’t collected my timing chip.

We bumped into the ultimate rookie Dawie Lombard doing an ironman in your first tri season, and followed him and Kerri around the bike course, oouch a little hilly.

Eugene and I are sharing a room and before long the place smells like a harem of deep invigorating creams. Ever tried going to sleep when your nostrils are breathing inches bigger than they should be? Several toilet breaks later and a little sleep the 3:30 alarm went off, it’s was the latest I could negotiate and lay there thinking what am I doing here with no Deidre and kids and an Ironman in front of me. Then I think to myself I have never swum further than 2.8k’s or biked further than 145k’s how am I then going to do that and more and do a marathon I must be stupid, there were a few SAUK Tri members whose ears should’ve been ringing big league. Then one of them in a highly organised manner was bolting all over the room in military fashion, so I stayed where I was and went to meet him in a few minutes for some Breakfast.

When we got there the wind was pumping and there was a bit of rain but strangely enough that didn’t bother me I got into a zone and lapped up the atmosphere, I knew I was kinda ready and it felt good to be there at the starting line. As always the athletes were all friendly and full of comradery, triathletes are a really good breed. I stuck close to Eugene and it was good that I was getting into this with my trusty training mate. When we entered the water and swam out to the start the lake was pumping full of excitement and I thought to myself I dig this.

The horn went and we were off on time 1200 athletes fighting it out. Swim was great, got cramp in strange places but they subsided with a bit of breastroke. Once I hit the 3km mark and was on the way home I felt like I could do another 3km but there were other things to do. I knew I had got my taper right then and just needed to manage myself on the ride.

Out the water and onto the bike course, all was going well until about the 140k mark and I started to slow a bit and felt nauseous so took a gel and then switched to water at which point Lance “the Big E” Armstrong came cruising past me in the big gear and gave the orders to follow close. My initial thoughts were here’s my ticket home but even with my relaxed view on drafting I thought this is not the place and it doesn’t belong here. But before I could look up there was a little speck on the horizon, the man had pulled back 9 minutes from the swim and put another 3 into me by the end of the bike. Hats off to that effort, really remarkable. If there is one thing you have to learn in Half and Full Ironman racing is that you have to race your own race and don’t try go with someone else’s plan because it’s a long day and you don’t want to go get into trouble without knowing it. I listened well to this followed my nutrition plan and to average out at a 135bpm heart rate (132bpm was the end figure by the way). By the way stuck a water proof small nutrition plan on my tri bars and it really helped I would have been lost without it.

When I hit T2 the women helper thought I was going to die I think and the thought of the marathon was staring me down the neck, the legs didn’t feel to bad though and I stumbled out. The run course was challenging and keeping a rhythm was difficult. I could see Big E in cruise mode just ahead of me and he looked good, but a nutrition slip left “bonked” him temporarily and I caught up at about mile 10. I stopped for a quick chat and walk to see if we could go together, but an ironman marathon of listening to each others highs and lows may have been a little tough going so I carried on.

Eugene got his energy back and kept himself at about ˝ a km distance from me. Miles 14 to 20 really challenged me mentally, the wind was pumping into our faces down an open stretch of undulating highway, but the thought of still seeing athletes starting their second lap when I was well into mine kept me going. At the 20 mile mark Eugene had caught up with Dawie who was at mile 16’ish and was spurring him on, I was a little ahead and realised that I could break the 11 hour mark so I piled in 4 / 8 min miles but it was a little too late I should have been paying attention. The last mile was a toughie, with numerous undulations and a walk way bridge to contend with but with the finish line around the corner I could smell it and boy did I savour those moments. Finished well for a 11:04 and Eugene came in at 11:14, that was better than we both expected, job done big style. Dawie came 12:32 which is so huge for a virgin tri season, you just gotta be over the moon with that effort.

Ironman is great, I don’t think its any tougher than the 70.3’s or some of the Olympics, it just requires more training, the pace is different and the game plan is all down to knowing what you can sustain. It just has this mystique that I fear will draw me down that road of wanting to notch up a couple more.

Well done to Eugene who notched a personal best and to Dawie getting that one behind him in his first season.

A massive, massive thank you to SAUK Tri, Kevin Richards and my training mates, not to mention my family who had to live through it.