Ultrafit champ x 5…!
World lightweight 40? K indoor rowing record holder
8:45 ? At Barca last year… his palmares go on and on…
Great race mat, you managed what tri taren couldn’t … he’s still my new hero though!
Nice one chaps. Sounds like an awesome day out
Yeah, he’s insanely fast!
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RACE REPORTS PLEASE!!!
@TTowel has registered & posted here.
Maybe he can give you a race report Poet. Like he ‘crushed it like a grape’ or something.
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Will take me a while. I’ve still not written about my (illness) failure at VLM, and if you’ve read any of my previous reports, I tend not to do short summaries! 
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I entered IM 70.3 Elsinore at the last moment in a last ditch attempt to qualify for the world championships in Nice, having come extremely close to qualifying in St Pölten 4 weeks earlier.
As this was a combined City Break and race, and due to lack of accommodation in Elsinore, we stayed in the center of Copenhagen, very close to Norreport station. Nørreport is on a direct line to Elsinore, just a 41 minute journey, with trains leaving every 30 minutes from around 4am. If I did the event again, I would still stay in Copenhagen rather than Elsinore.
The venue was excellent, really well organised and all very compact. An odd aspect to this race is that race number does not need to be worn on the bike, and helmets can be left on the bike rather than in transition bag. On the day, I chose to keep my helmet in my transiton bag as it is what I am used to, but it is worth knowing in advance to see if it could make T1 quicker.
Having looked at previous results, I was pretty sure that a 4h37m would be good enough to qualify for Nice - given the nature of the course I was confident that I could do this time, however, it is very much a lottery who will turn up on the day.
On Sunday, the weather was pretty much perfect, around 19 degrees at 0830, warming to 24 degrees by midday, with light winds
The Swim course looked really complex, however, in reality it was a swim round the edge of the harbor, with a dog leg into the middle to make up the distance. The water was 17 degrees and very pleasant, and the slightly salty Baltic water, was lovely to swim in. I felt that the swim went well (for a slow swimmer like me), my sighting was good, and I covered 1938m in 33m40s @ 1:44/100m which is a HIM PB for me.
T1 was a longish run from the water to transition zone, I overtook loads of people on the run, grabbed socks and helmet and then ran 800m to my bike, again passing a load of people
A really nice flying mount onto my bike, and onto the cycle section. The first part was into a gentle headwind along the Baltic Shore line, followed by a rural zig zag course, on gently rolling terrain. It was not a technical course, however there were a lot of junctions, which caused minor bottlenecks at a couple of points.
Drafting!!! For the first half of the bike, I was riding with 2 others, we were abiding by the rules, maintaining 12m gaps, while pushing each other along at a really nice pace, however at km 60 we passed a group of 5/6 people drafting blatantly, they then latched on. It made maintaining the gaps very tricky and the further we went, the bigger the group got. On the inclines, i would open up a gap, however, after a bit the pack would catch up again, and 20+ riders in tight formation would pass me, and since I didn’t want to draft (or be penalised) after a couple of minutes I would then make my way back to the front of the pack. Eventually a motorbike passed and the group stretched out and I was finally able to break away, with the other 2 riders who I had been with since early in the race . I would rather race my own race rather than pulling along a massive group, It seemed to be that the along with guys I was riding with initially, we were doing all the work and the drafters were doing enough to stop us breaking free.
My overall bike was 2h15m (in line with BBS estimation) at an average speed of 39.7kph. Garmin reported 553m elevation, around 50m less than the official IM guide, but there were no hills of any note, in fact, despite using an 11-23 cassette, I didn’t have to move to the small chain ring at all. My power (AP241w and NP252w, IF 85%) were fractionally up on St Pölten. My Heart rate 159 bpm average (Z4) was a little higher than St Pölten (155bpm, Z3), I suspect that this was due to the flat course, with no free-wheeling downhill.
Overall I was pleased with bike, it is a stunningly fast course on good quality, smooth tarmac, it lacked the pure visual appeal of St P or Switzerland, but it was enjoyable none the less. It is a course that rewards a good aero position as 99% is on the aerobars - I made a change to me TT bike setup, going from a 75mm 6% drop stem to 100mm 17% drop, according to BBS my CDA went from 0.24 to 0.23
Next the run 3.5 laps around the Castle and town, this must be one of the best events for spectators, as runners pass multiple times on each lap. As a competitor, I really enjoyed the run, it had lots of variety and excellent support. Initially I was concerned that I had over-biked, but quickly settled into a rhythm around 4:20/km, which I held pretty consistently throughout to finish in 1h31m, with a 1m20s positive split, and 40s faster than St Pölten even though the course was 300m further (20.74km) and tougher due to cobbles, gravel and some tight turns. My average HR was 161bpm, which is in Z4, again a little higher than St Pölten
On the run, I was trying to predict what my finish time would be, I estimated somewhere a little above 4.5 hours. After I crossed the line and looked at my watch I was ecstatic to see a time of 4h28m2s, I had just hit my theoretical best possible time… surely this was easily good enough for Nice: I checked the Ironman tracker, and my heart sank when I saw that I had finished 19th in my age group. But with 100 places and a late qualifying event, there was still a chance.
I spent the rest of the day with the family, returning to Elsinore at 1800 to get my bike and attend the awards ceremony ahead of the slot allocation. It was great to see Fenella Langridge, a former Salisbuy Tri Club member, coming second and continuing her journey to become a future world champion, and to see Holly Lawrence claiming all 4 continental titles.
Then the slot allocation started, for the women, in each age group, a few slots were rolling down, but with a couple of exceptions not massive - the hall was full, a lot of people were clearly hanging around in hope of a slot. Eventually the slot allocation for men started, AG 50-54, with 10 slots rolled down to 15th place, now my AG 45-49 with 13 slots, most of the top 12 took their slots, just 2 roll downs, not looking at all good for me, suddenly places 12 to 14 all skipped, one more and I would be safe, then 16th rolled down, I WAS IN. I got the very last slot in my age group.
Anyone wanting to qualify for a big event like the World Championship or Kona take note: I was 7s behind 18th, who was 5s behind 17th, who was 20s behind 16th, who was 20s behind 15th. Every second counts, YOU DON’T HAVE TIME FOR A SINGLE WASTED SECOND.
My swim is still my weakness, no one ahead of me swam slower than me, when I look at the average time of the people ahead of me, I am giving away 4 minutes. Excluding the swim, I was in 12th place in my AG.
Transitions are really important, my total transition time was 7m2s, the 8th fastest in my AG, not too bad, but still 42s slower than the best in my AG, that would have moved me up 3 places.
Other interesting points: I was faster overall than 1 pro, my bike split was faster than 2 pros, my bike split was less than 10 mins slower than Javier Gomez. I don’t think that there is much to come off my bike time.
I think that there is still a little to improve on my run, looking at others around me, I should be targeting around 1h27m. However, I have nailed my run fueling strategy, sip of water and half cup Redbull at each feed stop, with a gel every 30mins. I find that my energy levels feel pretty consistent, but remains to be seen how a full IM run goes.
One concern was how would the Vaporfly 4% hold up on mixed tarmac / Gravel / Cobbles - answer is resoundingly positive - I think that these shoes come into their own when you are tired, I can just maintain my performance for longer.
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Great report
We’re swimming and running at the same pace …
Your bike is a standout for sure…
A HMPS girl qualified at that race, had a bad swim but ran 1:22…!
Strewth…
Well don’t for sticking at it, you are obviously determined to qualify !
Nice report Matt. Nice to catch you a few times, and great to hear you got your slot. (We left after our clubmate claimed her F40 slot for 1st in AG as we had a dinner reservation!)
Copenhagen was the same. Definitely think it’s worth leaving the helmet on the bike where possible, as they arent short runs around T1.
Really?! It was way too hot (for me) for a race in northern Denmark. I think it was hotter in the sun at 7am than it was in Bahrain! I was absolutely cooking!
I didnt find this too bad in general, but do recall you coming past at about 65k with a decent chunk of people on your wheel. The worst example I saw was on the final main stretch back into town…I was riding along solo, and had been for ages, and then a massive group of about 10-15 came past. I actually shouted WTF. At that point a moto came past, just as I was swamped, and I was really worried I was going to get caught up in a penalty situation, but it must have been a press moto as it was just taking loads of photos and then sped off.
Disagree with this, at least compared to my last three main races of Mallorca, Copenhagen and Bahrain. Roads here were not that great. Better than the UK on the whole for sure, but not “European fast”. I’ll use that as a bit of an excuse maybe!
Totally agree with this. They were great. The one drawback I have is the compromise on transition time. I annoyingly have low ankle bones, and whilst I’ve never had an issue with that in any pair of running shoes, it does cause pain in the left shoe of my (first pair - remains to be seen if my second pair are similar) vapors. I therefore have to stick a gel pad over my ankle bone. I prepared it with K-tape, and it only added about 5-10s, but overall did mean my normally speedy transitions were not as fast as normal. On that note, the only surprising bit from your report is you waste time with socks on the bike?
Anyway, great job, and we’ll no doubt catch each other again in Nice!
It was good putting a real person to a forum personality
I guess that it is warmer in Switzerland for past month, so getting acclimatized to the heat, it felt really pleasant… Nice in early September is likely to be much warmer
I think I must have passed you around the small climb out of Elsinore. Picked up the first drafters as we came along the coast towards Elsinore. By the time I came back to T2 I had dropped them and there were only 3 of us, It would have been a T2 nightmare if 30 bikes arrived together, there must have been a queue for the bike collectors
I guess I spent most of my time in the middle of the road passing slower riders (certainly true early on). The only issue I had with the road surface was the drain covers were not flush with the tarmac, otherwise no real problem. The flint road surface is not as smooth as the tarmac you find elsewhere in Europe, but didn’t see many potholes etc
I put on socks in T1 rather than before the run, they are really short and only take a couple of seconds. I am quicker now at putting on the Nike VF, need to get the lace tension right and they go on pretty quickly now. I really fumbled around getting my wetsuit back into my bike bag, certainly a couple of seconds lost here
See you in Nice, maybe a TT drink afterwards
I hate to say I told you so, but on this occasion life really did get in the way big time. I did the swim bit within the first week or two, but since then, I’ve barely had 5 mins it seems. Anyway, done now. Appreciate that ship has long since sailed, but it might be of interest for someone considering the event in the future
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Great report, thanks for sharing. 
Odd that your swim cap pops off even when you double up?!?
Good luck for Nice!
Think @Matthew_Spooner got himself a shiny new P5X for the race 
Yes great report Stenard. Quite a polished blog you’ve got there. Very detailed! 
Hamburg was the first time my swim cap has stayed on in a Full since 2011! I think rubbing the inside of it against a post before the start helped to ‘key’ the surface.
He must work where they have those gold bars with the eagles on them hidden away; will they notice one missing? 
Its a P3X, much cheaper than P5X
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Soz pal
I thought it was a new one on Strava.
Looks bloody nice 
Isn’t the P3X technically a newer model than the P5X? At least in terms of release date…