After a 6 hour train trip zooming across the length of France we (Rachel Hall, Lance Keeson) arrived in Aix en Provence. After negotiating the ruck sacks and bike box from Eurostar, up and down escalators on the Paris metro and finally the TGV I was feeling pretty proud, but this was a temporary state as I soon realised when the TGV whizzed off into the distance that there are 3 train stations in Aix en Provence and we were 20 mins drive from the apartment. Fail!

The next morning was registration & briefing day. The main street in Provence had been transformed into an Ironman expo with kit and merchandise everywhere as we played spot the Ironman tattoo between panic attacks about Lance having a fit for race medical certificate and how I was going to get 20k from the start to the finish with no public transport or shuttles. The medical was avoided by a late BTF join up – we’ll come to the second bit later.

Registration was a very chilled out affair, no ID required, a few signatures and boom the rucksack & transition delights were in. Lance’s hands. The briefing was equally relaxed- a quick PowerPoint presentation of the athletes pack that we’d read a hundred times before we arrived. Our previous experience was Austria where the registration was uber strict & run like a military operation, with a face to face briefing by the race director, so this felt very different. With all that done it was time to explore and try not kill the credit card on new kit and to eat our body weight in lovely French bread and pastries. Continue reading →