After completing the Celtman Extreme Triathon (a tougher version of an Ironman due to hills etc) I applied and was selected for a sister race in Patagonia, Chile in December 2020. This was a classic case of taking the family on holiday…. and do a big race. The Patagonman XTRI soon looked iffy due to Covid, so I entered the Global Vitual XTRI Challenge for the training and also to add to my T Shirt collection for the £45 entry fee.
This is 14 virtual races comprising 4 swims, 5 rides and 5 runs with different distances and ascents. The routes are named after the 14 XTRI’s from around the world but were shorter legs than those races. The swims ranged from 1km to 3km length; the rides between 60km and 160km and up to 2200m ascent; the runs from 10km to 30km with 1500m up, so were not too bad.
The hardest part was fitting 14 races in and getting routes to meet the profile. Oh, and Covid ‘compliance’. As I did a lot of lockdown swimming, the swims were straight forward. The runs started well, along with the rides once my new shiney Cervelo Tri bike arrived. Along the way though, on the 15km run with Mike Lynch, I had a wee cow incident which set me back a bit. As physio, I cycled up the West Coast and Hebrides for 800km with Neil Burnett and Graeme Dunbar. This helped fix my sore legs and ticked off one cycle along the way, albeit going slowly with a sore chest on a fully loaded touring bike including hill kit and wetsuit.
In the end I did some events twice after doing 1200m too much ascent on the 20km run (read the race notes!!!). I re-did the 15km cow run giving the Glencorse Skyline route by extending an Alan Renville Strava route a wee bit, and carefully avoided Mrs Coooo along the way. Overall, I completed all 14 races covering just over 793 km with just over 14,700m ascent in the process.
I am not sure how many people competed worldwide but the FB race pages had folk from hundreds of countries and thousands of posts. My position for most events is within the top 150, doing better in the long runs with my best position being 68th and worst being in the shorter cycles (189th), noting a lot of folk did these on cycle trainers indoors! For those interested, XTRI and other virtual races are in the link. Of note is one event being planned for a climbing challenge with 10+ hill races with up to 6500m ascent!
https://raceid.com/en/races/7295/about
I am looking forward to my £45 T shirt arriving and hoping my deferred Patagonman race will happen in 2021.
Mark Hartree