I must be mad...

Welcome along for the journey!

Hi, 

My name is Gavin Gall and I'm a Physics Teacher at Carluke High School in South Lanarkshire.

In this blog I'll be describing the trials and tribulations of training for an Ironman event… I'll be competing in Ironman Austria in 2013 on June 30th, 2013, with my good lady wife!

For those of you who haven't heard of this race, it's basically a long, or should I say, very long triathlon…

Ironman distance triathlons feature a 3.8km / 2.4 mile swim, followed by 180km / 112 mile bike ride then topped off with a full 42 km / 26.2 mile marathon.

Utter Madness you're no doubt thinking… and you're probably right.

Why an Ironman?

I had successful bi-patellar tendinopathy (knee surgery on both knees) in February 2011 to correct damage from years of playing football (and never stretching out) in my youth. Boy did that come back to bite me. Both patellar tendons were a mass of scar tissues that needed to be cleaned up through key-hole surgery using a radio-ablation method. The orthopaedic surgeon recommended I take up in-line sports (cycling, running and front-crawl swimming) to help strengthen the tendons and get me (literally) back up and running.

I've done a couple of marathons in the past (Edinburgh and London) and could ride a bike (back in the day, even with no hands!) although swimming was not a strong point. I could swim a couple of 25m lengths in the pool, rest for half an hour or so and then give it another bash but qualifying for London 2012 or Glasgow 2014 was definitely not on the cards.

My better half had completed a couple of triathlons of varying distances, and after no doubt upping the health insurance on me, suggested I try a tri. Not content with starting with a sensible distance, I decided that I'd give the Ironman a go… after all, how difficult could it be?  

Read on and find out…