Emma’s Blog: From Fitness Fanatic to Ironwoman – The Final Update

Profeet run technician, Emma Kirk-Odunubi has finished her journey from ‘Fitness Fanatic to Iron Woman’ as she completed her first Iron-distance triathlon last month. We’ve been following her journey on our blog all year and now it’s done!

What an incredible, but painful day

Wow. It’s done. What an incredible but oh-so-painful day. I’ll never forget this day for a very long time, so here is how on 4th November 2016, my Indoor IronMan triathlon went:
“I was up at 4am to fuel with some trusty Weetabix and jump in my Uber to the Olympic Stadium. There’s something so special about that place for me and there’s no other place I’d want to have done this IronMan challenge.

The Swim

“And then just like that, it was 5:59am and I was standing at the edge of the pool contemplating my life choices! The lifeguard blew the whistle and – boom! – off I went.

The lengths were long. My front crawl is about as fast as sloth on sleeping tablets, so breaststroke it was! Long slow strokes, but covering decent distance – the first 1000m took 30mins. The next two kms flew by and then it was the last 100m. I completed in 1h55m, but all I was thinking of was how excited I was to never swim again!

The Bike

After a quick transition shower and change I was on the bike by 8:15am. This was actually the most enjoyable stage for me. I was able to turn my legs over at a steady speed with no pain. Plus I managed a cheeky picnic for fuel at this point, with jam sandwiches for instant energy, plus bananas and satsumas.

I was so grateful to be joined by my fellow NRC pacer Chewy for the final stages of the ride. He cheered me on and kept my mind distracted, for that I’ll be forever grateful. But seriously, the pain throughout the bike means I have purple-bruised hamstrings and groin to show for it! I tried everything to try and get more comfortable: sitting on trackies, even my scarf at one point! The pain was real, but I completed the bike in exactly five hours.

The Run

On to the run – the final third of this epic challenge. It was now 1.15pm and I was tired. My quads started severely cramping in the first five minutes, so Chewy joined me to walk, then run the first 5k.

At this point I stopped and walked again. My hamstrings started to kick in and scream. I walked for another five minutes and tried to hold a steady run. From this point it was walk some, run some and that successfully got me to half-way in 2h19m.

I took a toilet break and then it was back on the treadmill for the LONGEST three hours of pain ever. I’d worked out that if I could maintain a brisk walking pace of 7 km/h I would be able to finish in three hours, but by this point my ankle, both feet extensors, left quad, right hip and abs were hurting.

Somehow I managed to keep moving – I don’t know how! The final three km arrived and I was surrounded by friends. Distracted by their chatter I suddenly realised I only had 500m to go. At this point I just thought ‘I must finish running’, so in true Barry’s Bootcamp style I finished the last 100m at 12.5km/h and was ELATED!

The Finish

I’d done it. 12h53m for my Indoor IronMan. What did it teach me?  That the body is capable of incredible things. That the mind is always stronger. Oh, and that I’m not doing another any time soon!

Congratulations to Emma for this huge achievement – well done and we hope the recovery goes well!