Listening to @Poet go on for a few hours at Outlaw was pretty miserable. Wouldve been less painful to have completed it 
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Equally, I refuse to let his incessant negative rantings about Helvellyn '20 tarnish what was a wonderful day out with friends.
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I once ran a half marathon with the Mumps.
Silly boy who had an awful experience.
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Bala Middle 2011
This report just about sums it up for me Bala Middle Distance Triathlon - TORQ Ltd
Utter nightmare but proud to have finished - still got the finishers towel which is one of the more useful finisher giveaways I have had
4 degrees at the start, in June FFS
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Swim: Ironman Barcelona ā21 - google for the horror pics
T1: September 2018 Gauntlet - slipped and concussed in the freezing rain
Bike: June 2018 Gauntlet - too fucking hot, stupid mechanical, still too fucking hot, threw helmet into forest and screamed in anguish
T2: September 2018 Gauntlet - too fucking cold, couldnāt feel anything from hips downward
Run: Ironman Petts Wood 2020 - lost sanity, police slowed to laugh and take pics, tripped over kerb in the last 200m and injured myself
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weāve got a couple of them which we use in the campervan. As you say, one of the best giveaways.
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I remember that swim, it was also pretty choppy out there, had an ok bike leg then melted on the run.
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Not got a whole tri but the run from Hever Castle July 2018? Pure misery
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I thought it was June and September that year but I could be wrong? 30Ā° and 3Ā° respectively. Summer one was my only DNF so far.
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Could have been June, it remains my personal worst a half marathon by a long way. Hot, hilly, miserable.
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Swim: Challenge Barcelona (2012 I think) choppy and at least 500M long, WTF! I think only 3 people broke an hour, remarkably one was Skipper, and one represented Spain in the Olympic LD swimming event. Added at least 10 minutes to my time and just made me miserable as I knew I was swimming better than 1:18
Honourable mentions to Sunderland & Newbiggin from the early 2010ās, very choppy & cold North Sea swims. Also, Helvellyn in 2020, the cold.
T1: IM Hamburg, like the neverending transitition!
Honourable mention to Newbiggin above, windswept and sand blowing in your eyes, my helmet had gone, I presumed nicked or picked up by accident, started packing my stuff away as it was a DNS then noticed a load of stuff against the metal fence at the back of transition, including my helmet, so back in the race but had lost a lot of time.
Bike: IM Hamburg 2019, relentless, soul destroying, 5K+ too long, cobbles, railway lines, windy and warm next to the canal. Probably overbiked as well.
Honourable mention to Maastricht 2005, also 5K too long, cobbles, soulless, hot and Iām fairly sure the energy drink was just an electrolyte. Only improved by including a couple of the well known Flandrian climbs.
T2: IM Louisville 2018. Bike had been 6+ hours of misery in 11c cold & rain, I had 4 tops\jackets on and luckily had a pair of think winter\waterproof Rapha gloves Iād picked up in the sale in Chicago a week before. Sat there utterly miserable trying to dry out my socks and clothes and find the will to run. As it happens the run wasnāt too bad as the rain stopped and I managed about 3:50 which included a few minutes in the smelly blue bog 
Honourable mention to Barca 2014, fairly similar, ringing out my socks trying to get ready for the run after a downpour of biblical proportions!
Run: a few but 2023 Nice WC probably tops it, had been injured, baking hot and was stood on the road near the airport wretching and praying to be sick. Luckily the bike was mountainous otherwise it would have been a longer run than bike!
And to think I paid good money to enter all of these on my own volition 
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Great ideaā¦
@TROSaracen I loved the exmoor run, was the only course little old me as going to qualify for the worlds. I ran a 1:27 there from memory 
@Hammerer I as was at that midnightman, my second puncture was next to a volunteer who was trying to cajole me into staying as he was going to be out there all night, fair point, but I just though f*ck that, I am off home and going to save my Sunday.
Swim: One of my triās was in Lincolnshire somewhere, Belvoir Castle? it was an Oly, the water was so so bad you couldnāt see a damn thing, awful. Though I dislike swimming so much it could be any tri I have done 
T1: Possibly the outlaw that was hotter than the Sun, I had my best IM swim ever but then could not get my legs out of the wetsuit for love nor money
Bike: See above
T2: Probably Blenheim the year I ran out with my helmet still on, the bike should also get an honourable mention as begin rubbish there as well as it is just too tight for the number of people they put on.
Run: Alp Dhuez, I blow on the bike before Alp Dāhuez, crawled up it in the 40 degree sun trap that it is, including losing my drink bottles. But that was nothing compared to the run, I was always able to run off the bike, but I almost cried when I looked out and just saw the run course disappearing up the hill. Worse run by a long long way. Though the outlaw hottest day run also gets a mention as that was also pretty grim.
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Joker 
You cheered me up no end 
I wish Iād not seen my pal from Derby, like. It was so easy to walk with him
@Doonhamer - The swim was good. And the first bit of the bike until the main road, then the rain started. Getting back to T2, where Iād put my shoes in a (bright orange) Sainsburyās carrier bag, some absolute 
had taken the bag off and my shoes were absolutely sodden 
So that peeved me off even further and I didnāt want to run in them. Looking back now, I wonder if it was the referee who took the bag out, as could be classed as āmarking transitionā 
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Not a triathlon but my first 100TT. Pleasantish first hour, then the rain started hammering down.
Should have canned it, but it was my first so there was a determination to finish and tick the box. Ground away for the next 3.5 hours in abject misery as roads flooded etc.
Finally ticked past 90, 95 miles - the end was near, and I started to feel happy Iād toughed it out, character building etcā¦ā¦even managed to raise the pace lateā¦.then I smashed into a pothole hidden by flooded roads.
Double pinch flat front and rear, new Zipp Super 9 disc at Ā£1500 cracked and DNS. Garmin registered 98.5 miles ridden.
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Fark!
I shouldnāt but
sorry but that tops the lot so far
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My only 100 mile TT is by far the hardest race Iāve ever done. I put the front wheel in the wrong way around so the speedo sensor didnāt pick up and I had no idea what pace or distance I was doing. Rather than stop and switch the wheel around which would have cost 20 seconds and truly didnāt occur to me I ploughed on using perceived effort.
I gave it absolutely everything in the last 25 miles, so much so my eyesight was failing towards the end and I was truly spent. I had to sit for an hour afterwards before I could drive home. I had a TT target of sub five. Time: 5:00:23. FFS.
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Haha, similar for me in a 50 on the A19, it was warm and I donāt think I started hydrated but a single bottle would have been enough except that after about 10 miles with only a mouthful drank it popped out of my cage on a shitty bit of tarmac at the turn. I stopped and went back for it but the lid had cracked and come off and it was pretty much empty.
Battled on and was probably on for a decent PB and 1:57āish, despite the time lost retrieving the bottle and risking my life! Then with 10 miles to go I could feel myself running out of energy and slowing down, desperately dug in for the last 3-4 miles but went over the line in something like 2:00:25
Even just leaving the bottle would have probably got me my first sub 2.
The finish was a layby about 3 miles short of Dishforth and I slumped on the ground still with my aero helmet on and laid there for about 10 minutes while I could see stars and my vision had been going as well!
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So many to choose fromā¦thatās actually not true, but with so many races (430 senior races, 108 podiums inc Cat and 18 wins) it has not always gone wellā¦
Swim: 1st triā¦absolutely paralytic, volunteered to get a free trip hope from belfast to attend airborne forces dayā¦got picked up from Pitts Rd, fast asleep on a pile of chutesā¦became hypothermic in the swimā¦just about survived and got round (long story)ā¦
T1: IMChā¦terrible swimā¦pouring with rainā¦freezing coldā¦and had the tv camera crew two feet away whilst i struggled to sort myself outā¦
Bike: Leading race until puncturing 1 mile from T2 in Milton Keynesā¦or, being knocked off in the World LD Champs in Fredericia, getting back on and discovering later that iād lost all my nutrition. Begged a couple of jelly babies from the TM only to get DQād.
T2: Leading race from the start only to get to T2 and discover two bikes racked and 2 runners way down the roadā¦Grrrrrā¦
Run: IMCh wasnāt pretty. Was leaning over barriers feeling sorry for myself at halfway when Mrs eJC said āif you pull out now, not only will you never forgive yourself, but you will never do another IMāā¦
Post race: Staying in Dorchester for IM UK. Booked a table at the chinese opposite the hotel for post race. Race start delayed by two hours due to fogā¦double puncture on the bikeā¦resultant slow performanceā¦then discovered I needed a 45 mile detour to get to hotel and thus foodā¦Chinese now shutā¦Sunday night in Dorchesterā¦had to beg scraps from a family who had just eatenā¦
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This is a great thread and been thinking about mine.
Swim - Wensleydale Full Cheese 2014 - Semer Water was really rocky, shallow, very duck poo dirty (loved the hilly ride). Slateman has to be the coldest swims I have ever done.
Not quite T1 - Harlech sprint 2012, we were allowed to change at the side of the pool as the weather was so bad and as I got back from the bike leg was told the race had been cancelled. A mate got blown of his bike into a ditch at the side of the road.
Bike - Roth 2016 - 3 punctures (I know that has been beaten on here) before Iād even got to Solarer Berg. Luckily had taken 3 tubes and there was still a decent crown first time up that incredible hill
T2 - Outlaw 2015 - having heard the stories of how hot it had been the year before, almost had hypothermia after the bike (inappropriately dressed) and struggled to change for the run
Run - just so many, but a tie between Roth 2016 due to the heat and no shade along that very long canal that just went on forever and Wales 2023/Western Australia 2023 when I had a knackered knee so really shouldnāt have done either and in both of them needed to hobble the second half of the marathon. I swore no more IM unless my knee is sorted and I can at least do the IM shuffle, as it was so miserable knowing just how long it was going to take to finish at my hobble pace (I was being overtaken by others walking). So I would say the most miserable part of any triathlon I have ever done was the last part of the last one I did !
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