- But Kona is not even close
to the hardest IRONMAN courses out there.
That is 6,000 feet high.
You finish at the top of the mountain.
Grab a compass, get your favorite Billy goat,
hitch a ride, see if you can finish.
What's up, trainiacs?
So over the last few weeks, I've been thinking,
you know what, hey, guys, gals,
all the trainiacs of the world,
I think that the bike is probably my strongest suit
in a race.
Take half IRONMAN Austin out of it.
However, typically the bike is my strongest discipline,
so I start Googling.
Well what is the hardest IRONMAN bike course
because eventually I want to qualify for Kona.
It's years away, but I gotta start thinking
about where it's going to be,
and what starts coming up is hardest IRONMAN courses period.
It's not what you think.
Kona, easy peasy.
Granted, the conditions, the heat, the wind,
the humidity is tough in Kona.
What's really tough about Kona
is that you're racing against 60 and 70 year old
men and women that are grandmas and grandpas
that can blow you out of the water,
and when they go by ya, it ain't cool,
and you start pushing yourself,
so you burn a lot more matches in Kona
because there's just that many more people
that are pushing you out there.
Leads to more blow ups, but Kona is not even close
to the hardest IRONMAN courses out there.
We've got five here that are brutal tough.
IRONMAN, sure.
These courses, no.
You do not want to be doing these.
Now for starters, IRONMAN Wales is ranked
as the hardest over average course on trirating.com.
It's got a minus 27 and a half minute rating,
which means that on average,
it takes people, say 27 and a half minutes longer
to do that race than others,
and almost all of that additional time happens
on the scenic bike, going past castles and iconic landmarks
on the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.
Well, it might be scenic, but it's got
almost 6,800 feet of climbing.
Kidding me?
That's a lot of climbing.
The next hardest race is Challenge Madrid.
We're going off the board here, we're talking Challenge.
You might not have heard of them lately,
but they're still around,
they're still kicking, they're still fighting,
and if you go into Challenge Madrid,
odds are you're going to fight to finish.
It has a minus 14 minute and 19 second rating
on trirating.com, but it's not really that rating
that makes me want to include it
in this list, it's the DNF rate of 34% of the pros.
If you are a pro and you're at the start line,
look to your left, look to your right.
One of the three of you is going down
before the end of the race.
But here's where we get into the iconically hard races.
You go to Kona and people that qualified for Kona
at IRONMAN Lanzarote, small island off the coast of Spain.
Theoretically, you'd think beautiful place
to have an IRONMAN.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Probably the hardest IRONMAN branded race that's out there.
The swim is really nothing to be worried about,
but IRONMAN Lanzarote is known,
for years, as long as it's been around,
for having one of the hardest bike courses out there.
It's hot, it's hilly, it's windy.
It's got 8,369 feet of climbing,
and that alone is one hard bike,
let alone having to run a marathon after.
And then the thing about the marathon is
that it's kind of deceivingly hard.
It's two loops, the first one a 30K
and the next one of 12K,
but both loops are along the sea front,
os you're exposed to the wind and the sun,
and they call it scenic.
I, coming from my experience in IRONMAN Campeche,
where I had a very similar run, call it death.
It was not enjoyable.
No, wind, heat, hot, sun, not a good place
to run a half marathon,
especially after climbing 8,369 feet.
Thanks Lanzarate.
And Lanzarate had a minus 19 minute rating
on trirating.com last year.
Now we're going to start going off the board
to completely different races.
The second hardest for my money
is the Norseman Xtreme Triathlon.
Now there are a bunch of Xtreme triathlons
all throughout Europe that are designed
to just beat you into the ground,
but the Norseman is probably the most famous.
It's a cold water swim, for starters.
People have to wear gloves and booties and caps,
and there's actually a five part series
on the Norseman's website about how to swim in cold water.
Before you even go there, they're like listen,
this is going to suck.
We're aware of that.
Here's how you can just not drown.
The bike then has over 12,000 feet of elevation
to contend with, and it is a nine hour
and 45 minute bike cutoff time.
That's the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.
You could support crew a friend,
watch them get out of the swim,
go watch all three Lord of the Rings movies,
chill out, grab a meal while you're doing it,
and then go catch them for the run,
and the run out starts out fairly unassuming
for the first 25K, fairly enjoyable,
but at 25K, it starts creeping up
and you start approaching Mount Gaustatoppen,
and what happens in the Norseman
is that kilometer 32 and a half and 37 and a half,
there are cutoff times.
Only the first 160 athletes are allowed
to finish the true Norseman course.
That is 6,000 feet high.
You finish at the top of the mountain,
and at the end, the athletes are literally climbing
up rocks, they're mountaineering.
They're not running.
This isn't a running finish.
This is a mountaineering finish.
This is a Billy goat finish.
They rock it.
But don't worry.
If you don't make those cutoff times,
they still let you finish the race,
you just have to go and run a solo,
boring, desolate, flat loop.
You don't get the enjoyment of climbing a mountain.
And the hardest triathlon of all.
Get this, it's called the Brutal in Snowdonia.
It seriously sounds like Game of Thrones,
like ooh, Snowdonia.
You don't want to go there.
Targaryens were banished there decades ago.
Now at first glance, race director Claire Smith
is a very unassuming lady.
She looks quite lovely, but she has created
one of the toughest courses.
It's been called the hardest triathlon in the world
by 220 Triathlon Magazine, it's awful.
The weather's awful, the air temperature averages
about 14 degrees, just like the water.
The bike has around 10,000 feet of climbing
and the run has 4,000 feet of climbing,
but that's not a run.
That again, is on complete rock trail.
Grab a compass, get your favorite Billy goat,
hitch a ride, see if you can finish.
Oh, and if the IRONMAN distance Brutal
isn't enough for you, there's a double Brutal.
You can do it, you can do it twice.
A 4.8 mile swim, a 224 mile bike,
and then a, I think it's a 50 something mile run.
I don't know, it's damn long and it's damn tough.
220 Triathlon actually rates the isolation
and the mental battle factor of the Brutal
as both 10 out of 10s,
so if you're looking for a challenge,
five races for you.
You don't need to go to Kona.
Just go to one of these.
Odds are, it's probably easier to get in
because nobody else wants to.
There you are, triathletes,
your masochistic fix for the day.
If you haven't subscribed already, please do so,
and if you have a sick and twisted friend like you,
who is potentially sick and twisted,
share it with them and say hey, gotta race for you.
You never know what will happen.
Shivers.