It all started when Merijn and myself were discussing racing strategy’s for Merijn his Vichy Ironman 2022 race. We agreed upon a “wild” plan, that upon completion of that Ironman we would enter one of the extreme races the following year/2023.
Fast forward to the end of 2022 and Merijn and myself were sitting behind our desks trying to register/enter: Norseman, Swissman and ICON.
One would think that only few crazy people enter such a mad endeavour, but the fact that we had to enter ballots etc. to stand a chance to start at the race (with 1 to 25 oversubscription) learned us differently.
Luckily we got selected for entry at the ICON 2023 edition. From that fall 2022 day on, we knew we had to train….a lot.
The 29th of August I headed direction Italy. After a stop in Luxembourg I had agreed with Pieter-Jan (my Support during the race) to pick him up at Innsbruck Airport.
After a day long drive we arrived at Livigno. We came from the Swiss side, so just out of the last tunnel we drove into this beautiful Swiss Alps scenery. Not aware of where I was at first, but driving for kilometers along a big lake, only later I realized this was the Lago di Livigno. So the we are, first encounter with raceground:
Next morning Pieter-Jan and myself had agreed on what we thought was a good training & acclimatization exercise: a early morning swim in the lake. What we had missed during our deep sleep at night is that by now (30th of August) it was freezing at night. So our first warm-up exercise that morning was getting the car de-iced:
After this and driving to the lake the swimming could start. With around 11 degrees water temperature we new this could get the first serious hurdle & was definitely a reality check into the race. It was time to get the right/calm/easy breathing in place and try to swim some 200 meters. Actually this went very well:
Finisher photo after 18 hours, 15 minutes and 54 seconds :
