Team Geared Up

DUBLIN, IRELAND (Team Geared Up) Eimear was on to let us know that Alan Ryan (her husband?) had just broken the Irish Ironman distance record in a time of 9 hours 17 minutes and 12 seconds in the Quelle Challenge in Roth Germany. Congrats to him!! That’s kinda incomprehensible to us mere mortals really……

Alan’s race report appears in full over on Triathlon Ireland:

I knew my swim did not go well. It hasn’t been good of late and consequently I did not expect to catch Trevor Woods or Mark Riseley (the other two Irish who started in my wave on the bike). I know Mark won’t mind me saying this, but when I came upon him going up the Solarer Berg on the second lap, it gave me a great boost. And then to pass Trevor a little later – well I knew for me anyway - the race was now on. The lads are both very strong runners and I knew I had very little chance of holding them off in the marathon. Still, I decided to put the hammer down in an effort to get a few minutes head start on the run –you never know.

Just to scare you completely Alan’s splits read like this: 1 hour 5 for the swim, 5 hour bike and 3 hour 6 minute marathon. And the story also appears in today’s Evening Herald. If you ever manage to get your hands on a copy of the Stone Mad DVD then you’ll realise the effort put in by Fergus and Alan Ryan on their journey to their first ironman in Austria in 2005. This was a documentary showing their training and build up to it. It’s brilliant viewing, you’re guaranteed to watch it and enter for one………at least that’s what happened me………… ;-)

-Aisling-

Image from Triathlon Ireland.