Road to Ironman Nice – Travel plans

Hi all, I haven’t made a single post here since Ironman Chattanooga last year. It feels like life keeps interrupting me, making it hard to find time to write things down.

I’ll do my best to keep everyone informed, and this will be a great thing to look back on in the future.

So, let’s dive into my upcoming adventure to Ironman Nice! Planning a trip can be quite a puzzle, with countless options at every turn. When I snagged my spot for Ironman Nice last year, I knew that the key to saving some money was to get everything sorted and booked as early as possible. Thankfully, I had a whole year ahead of me to make it happen.

Travelling:

What do you think about flying? Or driving? Or perhaps taking a train? Let’s see all our options for transport.

Taking the train sounded like a really easy option, and since working for a rail company it would hardly cost me any money. But this would take so much time. According to Eurostar, the journey from London to Nice takes around 9hrs. Which does not sound too bad, but I’d had to stay in London the night before and that adds to my costs, also travelling back after the race, I’m not too sure that I wanted to sit on a train for 9hrs.

Luckily you can take a bike on the trains. There’s absolutely no issues with that either.

At the end I’ve decided not to take the trains, simply because it’s a long time.

I considered driving as an option. Living in the South of England, I realized I wasn’t too far from the Channel Tunnel. So, driving seemed like a feasible choice. After checking Google Maps, I found out that the estimated drive time from my house to Nice was 14 hours. It was a bit longer than taking the train, but I liked the idea of having my car and being able to take my time to drive there and back.

However, I eventually decided against driving. The main reason was the thought of the long drive back home after the race. It seemed like it would be too tiring and I didn’t want to deal with the exhaustion of driving for such a long period of time. So, in the end, I had to rule out the driving option and look for alternative ways to get to Nice for the race.

Let’s fly.

I needed some time to make up my mind about which airline and airport to go with. With so many options out there, it’s nice to have a variety to choose from. Since I’ve flown with my bike a fair few times now, I did feel really comfortable sorting my flights out.

I was searching for flights from Heathrow, Gatwick, and Luton as they are the nearest airports to me and have flights to Nice. After that, I started looking into the flight schedules. Since the race is on Sunday, I made up my mind to fly on Wednesday. This way, I’ll have plenty of time to get settled and organise everything before the race. Finally, I stumbled upon the ideal flights from Gatwick, and they are operated by easyJet. I’ve actually flown with easyJet before when I traveled to the training camp in Lanzarote, and I must say, I had a great experience with them.

I’ll be driving to Gatwick on the 18th of September and will be leaving my car at one of the official car parks. Haven’t book this yet.

Bringing my bike along was quite affordable, as it only costs £45 each way. I believe that this price is very fair. For more details on easyJet’s bike policy, you can check out their here.

I can bring along a 23kg checked bag and a compact carry-on bag as well. The total cost of the round-trip tickets, including all the baggage and my bike, was less than £300, to be precise it was £299.08. Just to clarify, the bike alone cost me £90.

I’m flying out on Wednesday morning at 06.05am and landing at Nice at 09.10am. Then flying back on Monday afternoon, leaving Nice at 15.00 and landing back at Gatwick at 16.05.

Accommodation:

Deciding on accommodations can be quite a challenge, especially when you’re trying to balance comfort and cost. Since I’ve got my Ironman Nice spot for the race in last September, I had so many options to choose from and it wasn’t crazy expensive either.

Where does the Ironman village is located? It’s at Miroir d’eau on Blvd. Jean Jaures.

I did my best to search for a good place to stay, and I ended up booking two different accommodations right away. Luckily, both of them offer the option to cancel for free.

There’s this amazing apartment that has everything we need – multiple rooms, a kitchen, a shower, and more. If my sister and her partner and the kids decide to join us on this trip, it would be the ideal choice for our accommodation. Plus, it’s just a short 15-minute walk from the race village, which is super convenient.

I’ve got another option for accommodation, which is a regular hotel. It’s actually quite close to the race village, just a 7-minute walk according to Google. But honestly, both places are pretty nearby, so it won’t be a hassle to walk back and forth before and after the race.

The accommodations are located about 7km away from the airport, Nice is a small place, and it seems like we have a couple of options to get there. We can either take public transport, which should take us around 30 minutes, or hop in a taxi and reach our destination in just 15 minutes.

So, to sum it up, I need to sort out the airport parking and make a decision on the accommodation. I’ll make sure to finalise everything before the deadlines.

In my next post, I’ll try and talk about how’s my training been so far. A lot has changed since November last year, and I’m excited to share all the details with you.

Lots of love,

Gabi xxx