Ironman Barcelona - October 5 ‘25 - Race Report from Rupesh

Race information

What? Ironman Barcelona
When? October 5, 2025
How far? 226km (3.8km swim, 180k cycle, 42.2k run)
Website? https://www.ironman.com/races/im-barcelona

Goals

Goal	Description	Completed?
A	Swim : Sub 90	No
B	Bike : Sub 6:30	Yes!
C	Run : Sub 4:30	No

The road to Ironman Calella Barcelona 2025 – The Coach & The Training Block

This year I trained very differently from my last three Ironman races. I met Rishi Sareen (with whom I trained for Ironman Calella, Barcelona) at the Goa triathlon 2019 organized by Enduro Sports which was a 70.3 distance (113 km) for which I enrolled on a whim (with hardly any training). After a very tough swim, burning from jelly fish stings, when I went struggling on my rusty rented bike, I saw Rishi pedalling in front of me wearing sandals on a similar rented bike as mine. We started chatting all the way on the bike and then the run (I was quite amused that he was running with a hairline fracture in his knee). I discovered that he

Had a convincing answer for all my questions (within my limited scope of awareness of the sport at that time) about triathlon from open water swims to bike and gear. (I still have tons of questions and every single time I have never failed to get an extremely logical, convincing answer from him)
Encouraged me to train properly and race. (On hearing that I had not done any open water swims before that race, did not own a bike and had hardly done any long rides)
Introduced me to the world of Ironman races (was hearing the word for the first time from him) and was in awe of the fact that he had done the (full distance) Ironman race at Philippines.

So soon after that Goa race I registered for Ironman Bintan 70.3 and completed it in over 8 hours. After this I naturally wanted to go the full distance and asked Rishi whether he would train me for one. That’s when he connected me to Kaustubh Radkar with whom I trained till 2024 (three Ironman races - Tallin 2022, Kalmar 2023, Emilia Romagna 2024). All this while Rishi had always had my back when in doubt with his crisp deeply researched answers, (from which race to register next, logistics of travel, packing the bike, visa, nutrition, and what not), he has been my personal triathlon chat GPT.

In the meantime, Rishi completed his fourth Ironman race at Calella Barcelona 2024 (a spectacular sub 12 hour finish) and after a chat with him I too registered for the same for 2025. He was always of the opinion that I wasn’t pushing myself enough in training. After constantly pestering him to train me, he finally (reluctantly gave in) and agreed to train me for Ironman Calella Barcelona. The journey with Rishi as coach was tough, gritty but extremely rewarding and can be summarised as follows:-

To me, every single workout felt curated, tailor made. I had been previously used to getting workouts one week in advance and following it precisely. Rishi had a very different (and I thought a rather bolder approach). My plan for tomorrow would come only after today’s workout was completed and a feedback was given. The questions were always “how was it”, “how are you feeling”; every single day and after 8 months of training, what particularly stuck me was that this approach of “one on one” training demanded a significant time from the coach as well to remain deeply invested in my progress.
Any important decision or discussion would always be over a call. Rishi would meticulously walk me through the steps, and only then the decision taken.
Lots of swimming every week. Lots of very specific paddle work in each swim (the paddle too being very specific!). Swim builds aerobic endurance and was supposed to reflect positively in my run and bike and boy, it did! As the Boss says - The swim was the rest and the recovery.
Lots of focus on improving my bike split (which eventually paid off). I was made to understand clearly the importance of being aero (Rishi must have told me this no less than hundred times in our chats), of low cadence – high power bike workouts, every bike workout came with a specific cadence and nutrition guide, so much so that a -free cadence ride - was a rare treat
Workouts were always designed around life and work – this was not only new but also a life saver for me!
And finally always (always) quality over quantity in training.

Pre-Race Days

Ironman Calella barcelona was a mixed bag of expectations and emotions

On one hand, I was super confident of my training block, but on the other hand

A chest infection just 2 weeks away from travel date, with a slow recovery, residual cough etc making me seriously doubt whether I could pull off this 16 hour race especially the swim.
A seriously damaged derailleur and hanger of the bike discovered on arrival at Calella- probably from mishandling of the bike bag by the airline during travel. (As if by some curious foresight Rishi had shared the location of a bike shop a week in advance of my travel date, just walking distance from my hotel) I rushed to the bike shop and gave it for repair.
Severe cramps in both the calf muscles on the first day at Calella during the first and only practice swim in the sea - on hindsight this could have been completely avoided, as I was sleep deprived, jet lagged and tired (from the long journey and standing in the immigration queue for over 3 hours at Barcelona airport) and should have got into the water later when I was better rested and relaxed.

So when I did the athlete check-in on Friday morning, I wasn’t sure I could race - both calves were painfully sore even to walk (and the anxious mind playing tricks dint help either) and there was this uncertainty of whether the bike could be decisively repaired.

Had my fanboy moment on meeting Milind Soman who was also doing the race with his wife Ankita Konwar. It was inspiring to see his level of functional fitness at 60 years of age.

Thankfully all my issues resolved over the next 2 days – the calf cramps gradually disappeared and the tenderness completely gone on race day morning; the bike got repaired on Friday evening from the nearby bike shop.

As per Rishi’s suggestion, I took the bike for an hour’s test ride and all felt good. Saturday morning – a short 45 min ride and an easy 30 min run to get the aerobic engine going. No more swims. Had a video call with Rishi and went through the packing of transition bags in detail. Bike check in and transition bag drop done on Saturday by 6.30 pm.

Ironman Barcelona - The Race

Race Morning

Surprisingly, on Saturday night, I managed to get a good 5 hour sleep, only to wake up in the morning to find that it was cloudy, windy, cold and raining. We had breakfast (rice, 2 slices of bread with butter, eggs) by 6 am and went to the transition by 7 am, set up hydration bottles, nutrition on the bike, and wore the wetsuit. Since practice swim at the race start was allowed before the race start, I went in for a dip which was good as it mentally prepared me for the cold and the choppy sea that day.

I got into the holding area between the 1.30-1.40 swim start. I took my first energy gel exactly 10 minutes before I went into the water and then in no time, the race was on.

Swim [3.8km]

The sea being choppy, the swim was quite tiring, expending more energy than usual with each stroke. With the first few strokes, the target for the swim that day became clear in my mind- survive the choppy sea, without deviating much from the course. Given these conditions, I was very happy to finish in 1 hour 36 min - my personal best in Ironman swim by about 8 minutes. (All the paddle work in training paid off)

T1

took about 7 min 30 seconds and off I went on my bike

Bike [180km]

Three things to summarise here

The bike course was very technical- lots of turns, roundabouts, sudden narrowing of roads and potholes. The first and the last 2 km inside Calella town were narrow, bad roads with speed bumps where, we had to go very slow. Apart from umpteen roundabouts, where you had to slow down, at numerous places, the road was suddenly narrowed down at many places with barricades to allow vehicular traffic on other sides. Another disappointing fact about the course was the Badalona climb which was a steep uphill for about a kilometre, but the downhill was a bad road with lots of potholes and one had to come down slowly and carefully.
That Barcelona has a flat and fast bike course is an outright lie. There’s nothing flat about this course. It’s a continuously rolling course all through.
It rained about 5 times on the bike that day and with the rains came the winds which didn’t help either.

Now despite all this, to be honest, I enjoyed each moment on the bike thoroughly and I came out glowing at the end of the bike! What contributed to a fantastic 6 hours 15 minutes bike leg for me (again a personal best time by over 35 min) were the following

Being aero (Rishi’s mantra chanted into my ears more than a hundred times)
Using cleats (I had a terrible phobia with these and was using them for the first time in the race)
Lots of specifically “low cadence - high power” work on the bike – what appeared as a form of torture in training turned out to be a winner on race day!
Spot on nutrition – 80 g carbs per hour – countless times attempted in training to tame the gut paid off wonderfully on race day.

T2

Took about 6 minutes

Run [42.2 km]

The run was a three loop run course of 14 km each.

To summarise

The first loop went well with the elation of having completed a good swim and bike. 2. Ran the second loop chatting with some Indian athletes and thus maintained the pace
Ran the last loop talking to myself and struggled to maintain the pace. By this time I was taste fatigued from al the gels, electrolytes and coke and could hardly get in as much fuel as I wanted to. But I was expecting this and focussed on moving ahead.

Managed to finish the run in 5 hours 2 min - again a personal best run time by about 20 minutes.

The finish line

There is no feeling that can come anywhere close to walking on that red carpet of an ironman finish line with the Indian flag waving high, knowing that I am one among the 3200 athletes from 101 countries (the stage couldn’t get any bigger than this!) with a finish time 13 hour 9 min (my personal time by about 70 minutes)

For me this was HUGE!

From a point of whether I would be able to start the race (infection, bike damage, cramps) to a personal best time I hadn’t even imagined, I am immensely grateful and in awe of Rishi’s training magic (my dear brother, take a bow!); I am also reminded of the importance of showing up every day, the power of discipline and consistency, of doing your part and leaving the rest to HIM, of trusting the process and not having expectations about the results, of the power of prayers and positive self-talk, of keeping your mind always open to suggestions and new learnings; I feel humbled.

Pics from the event

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