Ironman World Championship, Kona, Hawaii, 2025 🌺
Yep, that’s me. Crying at 6am on the 11th of October 2025, on a beach in Kona, Hawaii. You’re probably wondering how the hell I ended up here?! 🫣🤣
Well… let’s go back to 2nd December 2024. That was the day an unexpected email from Ironman landed in my inbox, inviting me to race at the 2025 Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii.
The email came more than 10 months before race day. So I had plenty of time to plan the trip, book everything, train and, most importantly, massively overthink what the hell I had agreed to.
I didn’t actually tell many people. My family knew and a few close friends knew, but that was pretty much it. And none of them were particularly sporty, never mind Ironman people. So for months I was quietly carrying around this slightly ridiculous secret. I was going to Kona. 🌺
But to explain how I got that email in the first place, we need to go back a little bit further.
Nice, September 2024
Nice was supposed to be my first Ironman World Championship. I’d trained for it. I’d travelled there. I’d got myself and my bike to the start line.
And then I crashed my bike. That was it. Race over. DNF.
Not exactly the World Championship experience I’d imagined. After all the training, planning and excitement of getting there, suddenly it was finished before I’d had the chance to finish it myself.
I couldn’t change what had happened. But then, a few months later, that email arrived. Ironman was giving me another opportunity to race a World Championship. Except this time it wasn’t Nice.
It was Kona. 🌺
The place I’d watched other people race. The place I’d seen in countless Ironman videos and photos. The place with the lava fields, the Queen K, Hawi, the Energy Lab and that famous finish line on Ali’i Drive.
Kona.
Obviously I said yes. 🤣 And then came the: Oooohh. What have I done?!
Because accepting an invitation while sitting safely at home is one thing. Actually having to do an Ironman World Championship in Hawaii is quite another.
I knew I wasn’t going there to win anything. I knew I’d be slow. I knew finishing wasn’t guaranteed. And I knew there was a very real possibility that I’d travel all the way to Hawaii, spend an absolute fortune and come home without a finish.
But after Nice, I couldn’t turn down another chance.
So I had more than 10 months to prepare. More than 10 months to train. More than 10 months to plan everything. And, unfortunately, more than 10 months to question whether I actually belonged there. 🤣
Eventually October arrived. And suddenly this thing I’d been quietly thinking about for most of a year wasn’t happening sometime in the future anymore.
I was in Hawaii. I was going to race Kona.
But I was also totally alone , and felt just so lonely 😭 And now we’re back to that photo…
Race morning
3:30am alarm. That actually wasn’t the worst part. I’m pretty used to silly early mornings.
My transport to transition was slightly less conventional though. I got there on the back of a Harley-Davidson. 🤣
And before anyone asks, yes, I wore a helmet. Apparently you don’t have to wear one on a motorbike in Hawaii, but considering the rest of my protective equipment consisted of a tri suit, I decided perhaps a helmet would be sensible.
Safety gear?! Nope. 🫣🤣
I walked the last bit into transition and went to check my bike. And immediately heard something I didn’t particularly like. My brake sounded strange. Almost like it was catching or rubbing on the rotor.
Perfect. Exactly what you want to discover just before riding 112 miles across Hawaii.
The mechanic tent was packed and I didn’t have enough time to wait. So I made the highly technical assessment of: Hopefully it’ll be fine. What could possibly go wrong? 🤣
Bike checked. Bags sorted. There was nothing else I could do.
And then, about 30 minutes before the start, everything suddenly hit me. Eleven months of thinking about this. Nice. The crash. The email. The training. The travelling. The fear of not finishing. The feeling that maybe I wasn’t good enough to be standing there with all these incredible athletes.
And I cried. Properly cried.
That’s the photo at the top of this article. Standing on a beach in Kona, about to start the Ironman World Championship, thinking:
What the heck am I doing here? And: I don’t belong here. I will let everyone down again. I’ll be a disappointment. Again.
But eventually there was nothing else to do. I wiped the tears away, got myself into the swim queue and started.
The swim: 2.4 miles 🏊🏻♀️
First little problem. The Pacific Ocean was 27.5°C. Which meant a non-wetsuit swim.
I live and train in England. My open-water swimming involves wearing a wetsuit because otherwise I’d probably freeze to death. So obviously my World Championship swim was going to be without one.
Great start. 😬🤣
The water was choppy and there were some decent swells. I kept trying to sight properly, but the yellow buoys seemed to be doing something strange. One minute they looked miles away. Then suddenly they looked close. Then miles away again.
At some point I basically gave up questioning it and concentrated on one thing: just keep swimming.
Eventually, after 1 hour 49 minutes and 22 seconds, I was back on land. 3.8km done.
Swim: 1:49:22
Pace: 2:50/100m
Not fast. Didn’t matter. I’d made it out of the Pacific.
Now I only had a 112-mile bike ride and a marathon left.
Easy. 🤣
The bike: 112 miles across Hawaii 🚴🏻♀️
Strangely, the bike course was probably the bit I felt most familiar with. Before Kona I’d ridden the course on ROUVY loads of times. I knew the turns. I knew roughly where things were. I knew what was coming. And that was honestly one of the best things I could have done.
My plan was simple: take it easy. I knew this was going to be a very, very long day and there was absolutely no point trying to be a hero during the first couple of hours.
My nutrition plan was also beautifully organised. Two concentrated bottles of Tailwind, 8hrs worth of. Two bottles of water. Months of preparation. Everything calculated. Lovely.
A few miles into the bike…
BYE, TAILWIND. 👋🏻🤣
One of my concentrated bottles launched itself off the bike.
FFS. 🤦🏽♀️
So that was my carefully planned nutrition strategy out of the window within the first few miles.
I had a choice. Panic about it for the next seven hours, or eat and drink whatever I could get from the aid stations. Considering I quite wanted to remain alive, I went with option two. 🤣
I switched to the on-course nutrition, including Maurten bars and the new drink they were handing out. And actually, it wasn’t bad.
Luckily my stomach is basically indestructible during races. I can eat and drink pretty much anything without having tummy problems. For once, this was an extremely useful skill. 🤣
For quite a while, things were going okay.
And then came Hawi.
Oh good, now I’m dizzy 🫠
The climb towards Hawi wasn’t particularly steep, but it just seemed to keep going. Heat. Headwind. Gradual climbing. More heat. More headwind.
Somewhere around halfway up, I started feeling dizzy. At first I tried to carry on. Then it got worse.
I knew that ignoring it and trying to push through wasn’t clever, so I stopped. I took one of my water bottles and poured the entire thing over the back of my neck. Then I took the second bottle and poured that over my face.
Which was lovely.
Except now I was dizzy AND had no water. 🤣
All I could do was get back on the bike and hope I could make it to the next aid station.
Eventually I reached the turnaround at Hawi. And there was water.
Beautiful, glorious water. 😂
I grabbed loads of it, got some more energy bars and started heading back. Thankfully, once I was cooling down and heading downhill, the dizziness disappeared. I felt normal again.
Crisis over.
The rest of the bike wasn’t particularly dramatic. It was just very, very long.
The Queen K has a special talent for making it feel as though you’re going absolutely nowhere. Highway. Lava. Rolling hill. Highway. More lava. Another rolling hill. Repeat until your brain falls out from boredom. 🤣
Physically I was still okay. Mentally I was ready to get off the bloody bike.
Eventually, I did.
Bike: 7:51:12
My total elapsed race time after the bike was 9:49:31. The bike cut-off was 10 hours 30 minutes.
I’d made it with time to spare. 🙌🏻
That was huge for me. I’d always thought that if I could get through the swim and bike within the cut-offs, I’d have a good chance of finishing.
There was only one small issue.
I now had to do a marathon. 🫣
“Run”: 26.2 miles 🏃🏻♀️🤣
I’m using the word run quite generously here.
There was some running. There was a lot of walking. There was shuffling. There may have been something resembling crawling. And there was a LOT of swearing. 🤣
I also spent a considerable amount of time promising myself that I would never, ever do anything this stupid again.
The first section through town was actually brilliant. There were loads of people out supporting us and the atmosphere kept me moving.
Eventually, though, we left all that behind. And there it was again.
The bloody Queen K Highway.
The same road I’d just spent hours cycling along. Except this time I didn’t have a bike.
Fantastic. 🤣
Eventually I reached the Energy Lab. By then it was dark.
Surely it would finally be cooler?
Absolutely not.
The black lava had spent the entire day absorbing the Hawaiian sun and seemed determined to spend the night giving all of that heat straight back to us.
It was around 10pm and I couldn’t believe how hot I still felt. I was sweating like crazy.
Thankfully there were aid stations roughly every mile. So my strategy became extremely sophisticated: get to aid station. Ice. Drink. Food. Keep moving. Repeat. Again. Again. Again.
Eventually I came out of the Energy Lab.
About six miles to go. Roughly 10K.
And for one brief, stupid moment I thought: 10K?! That’s nothing. I can run a 10K with my eyes closed. I’ve probably managed 10K super drunk before. 🤢🤣
Nah.
Not in Hawaii.
Six miles left and absolutely nothing in the tank
I was done. Completely spent. My legs had had enough. My brain had definitely had enough. And suddenly I genuinely wasn’t sure whether I was going to make the finish.
I kept looking at my watch trying to calculate how much time I had left before the 17-hour cut-off. Unfortunately, after swimming 2.4 miles, cycling 112 miles and then spending hours on a marathon course, my ability to perform basic maths had disappeared.
I wanted to sit down. I wanted to cry. But I knew that if I sat down, my legs were so finished that I probably wasn’t getting back up again.
So sitting wasn’t an option.
Fine. I’ll cry.
Except apparently I couldn’t do that either. No tears. Nothing. I was too bloody exhausted even to cry. 🤣
And that’s when my brain somehow reached the most logical conclusion it had managed for several hours:
Oohh I hate this. I can’t sit down. I literally can’t cry. So there’s no point giving up, is there? I’ll just walk the bloody 10K.
And that’s exactly what I did.
One foot in front of the other. I didn’t need to be fast. I didn’t need it to look pretty.
I just needed to keep moving.
“You’ve made it!”
Eventually I reached the last part heading back towards Kona. There were medical teams around, a few spectators and athletes who had already finished.
And they started telling me: “You’ve made it!”
I didn’t believe them. 🤣
I kept looking at my watch. At one point I had roughly 500 metres left and about 25 minutes.
For reference, sitting here now with a functioning brain, I am aware that walking 500 metres in 25 minutes is not particularly difficult.
At that moment?
Absolutely no idea.
How far is 500 metres?! 🤣🤣🤣
I genuinely couldn’t work it out. But everyone kept telling me I’d made it. So I decided to trust the people whose brains were apparently still functioning.
Then I made the final right turn.
Ali’i Drive. 🌺
And everything changed.
Lights. People. Noise. The finish line.
After almost 17 hours out there, I could finally see it.
And suddenly it didn’t matter that I’d walked most of the marathon. It didn’t matter that I’d lost my nutrition bottle. It didn’t matter that I’d been dizzy at Hawi. It didn’t matter that I’d cried before I’d even started.
It didn’t matter that I wasn’t fast.
I was going to finish the Ironman World Championship in Kona.
After crashing out of Nice. After getting that email on 2nd December. After more than 10 months of quietly wondering whether I was actually capable of doing this.
I had made it. ❤️
16 hours, 43 minutes and 37 seconds.
Just 17 minutes and 20 seconds inside the official 17-hour cut-off.
And to finish it all off, I got my lei from the newly crowned World Champion.
Not a bad end to the day. 🌺🤣
So… did I belong there?
It’s taken me nearly 11 months to finally sit down and write this. Well mostly copied it from the race review I put on Facebook back in October 😱🤣
And looking back at that photo of me crying on the beach, I wish I could tell that version of myself what was going to happen over the next 17 hours.
Not that it was going to be easy. Because it bloody wasn’t. 🤣
I’d tell her she was going to lose one of her nutrition bottles almost immediately. She’d get dizzy halfway to Hawi. She’d spend hours walking through the Hawaiian darkness. With 10K left, she’d be convinced she wasn’t going to make it.
She’d be too exhausted even to cry. And at some point she’d lose the ability to understand whether 25 minutes was enough time to walk 500 metres. 🤣
But I’d also tell her something else.
Keep going.
Because eventually you’re going to turn right onto Ali’i Drive. You’re going to see that finish line. And you’re going to realise that all those months spent wondering whether you belonged there didn’t actually matter.
I wasn’t one of the fastest athletes in Kona. Far from it. My race wasn’t particularly pretty.
But I swam 2.4 miles. I cycled 112 miles. I covered 26.2 miles on foot.
140.6 miles in total.
And I did it within the official cut-off.
After not getting the finish I wanted in Nice, I was given another chance at a World Championship.
This time, I finished it. 🌺
Maybe sometimes that’s all that really matters. ❤️
Gabi x
