Six weeks out from Ironman Tallinn, the plan was simple: find a middle-distance race on roads similar to the flat course in Estonia, and go test every piece of equipment properly after how badly Bolton went. The Cotswolds Classic - a well-run, non-branded event I'd done before - was exactly that.
A proper confidence boost
Non-wetsuit swim this time, deliberately, since it's genuinely useful practice if an Ironman ever comes in wetsuit-illegal too - about a minute slower than usual, nothing to read into. Then onto the bike and basically stayed in the TT position 90 to 95% of the ride. The number that actually surprised us both: 2:24 for the 90km, a huge PB, helped by the course but mostly by months of time actually spent in that position. Stomach held up fine, so I pushed fuelling a bit harder than planned - closer to 100g an hour rather than the 80-90 we'd targeted - and it didn't cost me anything.
Off the bike and into a 1:29 half marathon, right in the range we'd expected. No lows, no stomach issues, none of what had gone wrong three weeks earlier at Bolton - just a genuinely good day that showed the training translating into an actual result when nothing else got in the way. A big step, and proof the fitness is real.
Off to Mallorca
Four days later, a seven-day training camp in Port de Pollença, Mallorca - the kind of heat and hill exposure that's hard to replicate at home, with Tallinn's flat, cool course six weeks out. Arrived after a brutal 3am start and an early flight into 30-31°C heat. Day zero was all logistics: an easy spin that immediately caught a saddle bolt working loose (worth catching early, given how much time went into that aero position with Matt Bottrill), an easy 1,500m sea swim, and some proper mobility and spa work to shake off the travel.
Day one was the one I'll remember - up at sunrise for the ride out to the Cap de Formentor lighthouse, climbing and zig-zagging along some of the most spectacular roads I've ridden, cool early and properly scenic. Straight into a technical 1,500m open water swim afterward, practising sighting and buoy turns in real swell rather than a flat pool.
Day two is where the heat actually caught up with me - three hours on the bike and I felt genuinely rough on the climbs, nothing like the smoothness of day one. We cut it short rather than fighting it, then still managed an easy 30-minute beach-front run that felt surprisingly fine. Day three was deliberate active recovery - a bigger breakfast, a light 45-minute gym session, and actual time in the jacuzzi, which never happens at home when I'm always chasing the clock.
The big day, and a hard lesson
Day four was the one Andy had circled: a planned 6-hour ride that turned into 6 hours 45, around 140km and 2,500m of climbing, practising 90g-an-hour fuelling in 31-32°C heat and simply staying in an aero position for far longer than any actual Ironman bike leg would ever demand. I said some things about hills that day I'm not proud of.
Day five was supposed to be a double run day - a hilly tempo run on the same lighthouse road, then a second easier run later. We did everything right, carb-loaded the night before, hydrated properly in the morning - and still had to cut the run short at 13km when things weren't adding up the way they should have, a dehydration warning sign we took seriously rather than pushing through. We'd been tracking core temperature all camp (staying under about 38.5-39°C on both the bike and run), and this wasn't that - it was something else entirely, and worth listening to. We swapped the second run for an easy technical swim with some race-pace changes instead, and it turned into one of the more useful sessions of the week once we'd actually recovered.
The final full day brought it together: a swim, a flat 82km ride mostly in TT position that felt genuinely strong, then a 15km run at Ironman effort - 4:47/km, heart rate in the low 150s, which is about as close to perfect Ironman pacing as it gets. Andy cut it there on purpose rather than let me chase more.
What it added up to
A travel day home, prioritising sleep over squeezing in one more session, then back to normal life. One proper dinner out - fresh pasta, a glass of red wine - and a lot of daily tracking underneath all of it: HRV, resting heart rate, body weight, even lactate on a couple of the climbs, which sat right in the 3mmol range we wanted, controlled and sustainable rather than maximal.
The honest takeaway: Mallorca in August is hotter than Tallinn will be, which means whatever we found hard there should be manageable on the actual day. Fitness jumped noticeably over the week. Next up: the race itself.
