Ironman World Championships 2025: My Race Day in Nice

22nd September 2025
Author: Dan Blake

Ironman: the only sport where you pay hundreds of euros to swim without a wetsuit, cycle up a mountain like you’re in the Tour de France, and then finish it all off by running a marathon in the sun while wondering if McDonald’s delivers to the finish chute.

Here’s how my day (and week) in Nice went down.

Pre-Race Build Up

I gave myself 10 weeks to train specifically. Why? Because I learned the hard way that 14 weeks is basically just two months of feeling permanently tired and slightly grumpy. Add in a family holiday, and I wasn’t about to turn into that dad who schedules swim sets in between sightseeing.

The Nice course is savage — 2,500m of climbing on the bike. So most of my build-up was:

✅ Long hill efforts in Zone 3 (aka “the pain cave”).

✅ Turbo trainer rides with no fan or doors open (basically my own budget version of a heat chamber).

✅ Testing how much fluid I could drink before my stomach rebelled.

✅ Eating 130g carbs per hour because apparently that’s the new normal.

Training goals were simple:

1. Don’t melt in the heat.

2. Don’t die on the mountains.

3. Don’t bonk (carbs = life).

4. Work out how much water I actually lose per hour (spoiler: too much).

5. Don’t sprint the first 10k of the run and die later.

6. Teach my body to suffer for 6–9 hours straight.

Easy, right?

Race Week

Tuesday — flew into Nice. Midday flight = no silly 4am alarms. Immediate sunshine. Immediate tram scam. Standard.

Apartment? Lovely. Bike built. Food bought. All good.

Wednesday — rode up the mountain to check gearing. Probably not wise to do 90k three days before an Ironman, but hey, when has wisdom ever featured in triathlon training? Tried the new Absolute Speed BTA system (cheers Vince 🙌). Very aero, very pro, very unnecessary for someone who just wants to survive.

Thursday — token easy 10k run and swim. Zero drama.

Friday — family arrive! The girls, the sis and bro-in-law, and their two kids. Lovely chaos.

Saturday — a quick swim/bike/run at 9am, done by 10:30. Rack the bike, eat Haribo (don’t judge, stomach was dodgy and simple carbs never let you down). Dinner = pasta at an Italian. Pretend I’m calm. In reality, I’m just lying awake at night thinking about random things like “did I pack enough gels?” and “what happens if I just lie down on the bike course?”

Race Day Morning

5am wake up. Slept maybe one hour. Pretty standard. Double peanut butter + jam bagel and two coffees = human again.

6am: cruising down the Nice promenade on an e-bike at 18mph, absolutely loving life and briefly considering doing the whole Ironman on it.

6:15am: into transition. Check bike, fuel up, spend forever in the toilet queue.

7am: family appear just as the pros start swimming. I’m still waiting around because my age group is second-to-last.

The Swim

7:40am: swim start. Non-wetsuit. My worst nightmare. Cue flappy-armed chaos. Within minutes, I’m swimming past people doing breaststroke. At the World Champs. Still not sure how they got here.

1:04 later, I’m out. Happy enough.

The Bike — AKA “Tour de Nice”

8:50am: onto the bike. Draft fest.

The course = 180km of mountains, 2,500m climbing. My plan: drink loads, eat loads, don’t blow up.

Setup:

✅ 2 × 500ml bottles with 90g Precision Hydration carb mix + sodium

✅ 1 × 500ml bottle with 12 x Precision Hydration PF30 energy gels

✅ Additional fluids picked up on course - 4 litres of PH1000 electrolytes

Climbing felt good — passed loads of athletes. Ate 600g carbs in 4 hours (the same as 15 cans of Coke). Healthy.

Then, the fun bit: 30k descent. Until the guy who’d been sucking my wheel all day clipped me while dodging a crash. Nearly lost it. Confidence rattled. Still, survived.

Rolled back into town dreaming of McDonald’s.

Bike done in 5:23 — 8 minutes slower than planned but not bad considering I nearly died.

The Run — The Longest Marathon Ever

14:20: off the bike, onto the run. Legs fresh. Too fresh. Watch-checking every 200m to make sure I wasn’t going too fast.

Course: four 10k laps along the seafront. Flat but windy. Hot (28°C).

Straight away — stitch. Toilet stop didn’t fix it. Couldn’t take on water or electrolytes. Coke became my saviour.

Half marathon done. Mind already blown thinking about the fact I had to do another one.

Family on the sidelines kept me going. Alpha State athletes tracking me live. And thoughts of Max, my dog — I actually cried a bit mid-run remembering our runs in the woods. That weirdly helped me push.

Word on the street: I’m in 4th. Final 5k = absolutely brutal. Dehydrated, hurting, still can’t drink water. But Ange is shouting at me, Ellie and Ben run alongside, and I find a gear I didn’t know I had.

Through the funnel. Done.

Run time: 3:03 Overall finish: 4th in the Ironman World Championships. Just 10 minutes off 1st.

Final Thoughts

Not a podium, but a trophy — and exactly what I came for.

Ironman is not about the perfect day. It’s about surviving, laughing at the chaos, and realising that eating 600g of carbs in one bike ride is basically a superpower.

Next up: Half Ironman World Championships in Marbella this November. Bring it on 👊

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