Mark Davies - Ironman
On Sunday 4th August, whilst most of us were contemplating turning over in bed to catch a few more hours of beauty sleep, followed by either a day of rest or a club run somewhere, Southport Cycling Club’s Mark Davies was up at dawn to prepare for the UK Ironman Race in Bolton. For those of you not familiar with this extreme event, it involves a 2.4 mile open water swim, followed by a 112 mile cycle race, followed by a 26.2 mile full Marathon Road Race.
So it was at 6 a.m. that Mark entered the water in Pennington Flash which fortunately was a surprisingly warm 21 degrees and he completed the swim section in 800th place out of 1650 entrants, in a little over 1hr 18mins.
A quick change into cycling kit saw him heading towards Rivington to begin a 3 lap route, taking in the climb over to Belmont on each lap, before riding the rolling terrain used on regular Club runs around the Lancashire lanes. On reaching the foot of the Belmont climb for the third time he was grateful for a big cheer from half a dozen of his club  mates who had ridden over to give him some encouragement. Despite a 20 minute delay with a puncture, Mark completed the cycling leg of the race in 7 hrs and 1 minute and improved his overall position to 794th.
Another quick change into his running gear and he was off to Bolton to contest the hilly marathon course. It was at this point that the day of sunshine made way for the normal summer service with heavy rain which at least kept Mark cool during the run. Slowly but surely he was able to reel in some 150 of the competitors in front of him and he finished the Marathon in 658th place with a time of 4hrs 27 mins.
Sadly  however, Mark missed out on his target time of sub 13 hours by less than a minute and would have been well inside this measure but for the unfortunate mechanical with the bike. A great achievement because Mark has now completed his 9th Ironman Event and can relax for a while before planning and training for No 10…
Watch this space, because I believe Mark may have inspired at least one other club member to have a go at this event next year, although the majority of us have more sense.
Words by Peter Gawthorne, pictures Kevan Evans and Marks family. Posted 15/08/2013
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