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Hi Folks, Please see detailed below Frank Ferguson's report on his recent Ironman event in Germany.   Distances for Ironman:    Swim  ---  2.4 miles    Cycle  ---  112 miles    Run   ---   26 miles (full marathon) As you can see this is not a sport for the faint hearted and as you well know they only breed HARD MEN in Skerries Regards Paul Deans Paul, Many thanks for your good luck note. Overall the race was very hard. Temperature was 34 degrees with high humidity. I am swimming better now than last year and I was hoping to do the swim in 1.10 to 1.15 but the design of the swim course led to a very crowded swim and I ended up with 1.21. This was 3 mins slower than Austria last year.	The bike course had no really bad hills but there were a number of drags, wind, short sections of cobblestone (the worst riding experience you could imagine), and many sharp turns which slowed everyone down. Generally the bike was hard work in very hot conditions and everyone seemed to suffer. My bike time was almost 20 mins slower than Austria. I was ok for the first few km of the run but then felt awful and believed for a while that I would not be able to finish or would exceed 12.5 or 13 hrs. The heat and humidity took its vengeance in a hard way. I had to walk 1 km. With an amount of effort I recovered and got going again. I finished the run in 4.06, which gave me an amount of satisfaction. I came in 26th in my age group out of 100 starters and 91 finishing (my run was 16th best of the 100 in my age group). Overall I came in 673 out of 1800 starters. My time was 4 mins faster than Austria but the course was a lot harder. The quality of entrants was very high as Germany is the strongest Ironman nation in Europe and they all came for Frankfurt's 1st Ironman.	The support around the course was fantastic with an estimate of 150,000 to 180,000 spectators. Some of the hills had crowds like the Tour de France. The organisation in nearly all areas was brilliant. The facilities forcompetitors were superb. To sum up, a very hard day. In the early stages of the run I told myself (more than once) that it was time to find another sport, which did not involve such levels of pain. When I crossed the finish line the pain seemed less significant. I have had no after effects from the race other than minor muscle stiffness in the legs. Recovery appears to be good.   I look forward to seeing you soon and filling you in on the details. Thanks again for your message, Very best regards, Frank.