Fusion Triathlon Coaching

Just over five years.

That’s how long I was out of the swimming pool.

It’s a long time. And at times, I genuinely wondered whether my days of swimming were over.

I’m going early here — I’ve swum four times in four weeks, so this post could come back to bite me 😂 — but I’d forgotten just how good this feels.

There’s something incredibly peaceful about gliding through the water. Slightly out of breath. Feeling the density of the water in front of you. Trying to remember where to position your head, your hands and your feet, while simultaneously rotating, breathing and stretching.

Somehow, amongst all of that, everything else goes quiet.

Swimming is an absolute gift, my friends.

I genuinely don’t think it’s possible to hate swimming. If you think you do, I can promise you this — you’ll miss it when you can’t do it.

So swim. Run. Ride. Walk. Lift. Move.

Do as much as you possibly can, with what you’ve got, while you can.

You might not realise how lucky you are to be able to do it until, one day, you can’t.

And tonight, I’m just incredibly grateful that I can again. 🏊‍♂️🙌🏻

Not everyone wants to race a full Ironman.

And not every great race is one of the big-name events that gets talked about constantly.

So, here are 5 underrated 70.3 races that we think deserve a bit more attention — and might just be worth considering for the season ahead 👀

Great courses. Great locations. Great racing.

But, as always, this is where we hand it over to the real experts…

The people of the internet 😂

What have we got wrong?
What have we missed?
And which underrated 70.3 deserves a place on the list?

Have your say 👇

THE BUCKET LIST. 🌍

This isn’t a list of the biggest Ironmans. It isn’t about the fastest courses, the biggest prize purses or where the pros happen to be racing this year.

This is about experience.

The races with a story. A history. A location. A community. Something genuinely distinctive that makes them worth travelling across the world — or across the country — to experience.

Some are enormous. Some are beautifully local. Some are legendary. One takes you back to where this whole ridiculous sport began.

Five races. Five completely different reasons to put them on the bucket list.

🇩🇪 Challenge Roth — the cathedral
🇦🇺 Noosa — the festival
🇬🇧 Helvellyn — the gateway to extreme
🇬🇧 T100 London — the big-city experience
🇺🇸 Mission Bay — the pilgrimage

Not necessarily the best five.

Five I think every triathlete should experience.

Right then, internet. What have I missed? 👇😂

Ironman Tallinn was one for the ages yesterday.

It threw just about everything but the kitchen sink at Gordy.

A delayed start because of heavy fog. Rain. Hail. Severe winds. Cold. A race that disappeared off the tracker at midnight and briefly had everyone back home wondering what the hell had happened.

Meanwhile, Gordy Baird was still out there getting the job done.

And here’s the bit that makes this one particularly special:

Ironman Tallinn wasn’t just Gordy’s first Ironman.
It was his first ever triathlon.

No shorter-distance apprenticeship. No previous race-day experience to fall back on. Straight into 3.8km of swimming, 180km on the bike and a marathon — on a day when Tallinn decided to make him earn every single metre of it.

He stuck to the task.
He trusted the plan.
He kept moving forward.

And eventually, long after the tracker had given up on him, Gordy crossed that finish line.

Perseverance.

Continuing when circumstances give you every reason not to.

First triathlon.
First Ironman.

Job done. Boom. 👊🏻🔥

Congratulations, Ironman. Tallinn demanded that you earn that one. 🤙🏻

I tried to think of a more polite title for this one.

I really did.

But sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade.

😈 THE 5 BASTARDS OF TRIATHLON

Forget fast courses. Forget PB hunting. These are five races designed by people who looked at triathlon and thought:

“This seems a little too comfortable.”

Each is a bastard for its own very particular reason.

🇨🇭 1. SWISSMAN EXTREME
Welcome to your granny ring.

3.8km swim. 180km bike. Around 4,800m of climbing. Then a marathon finishing above 2,000m.

The scenery is spectacular. Which is fortunate, because you’ll be looking at it for a very long time.

🇮🇹 2. ICON LIVIGNO EXTREME
Apparently the Stelvio wasn’t enough.

Nearly 200km on the bike. Around 5,000m climbing. High altitude. Then a marathon finishing around 3,000m.

At some point you have to admire the commitment to making absolutely everything unnecessarily difficult.

🇳🇴 3. NORSEMAN EXTREME
The ferry jump is about to be the highlight of your day, mate.

Jump into a freezing fjord in the dark, ride 180km through Norway, then tackle a marathon towards Gaustatoppen.

Want the famous Black Shirt? Earn it.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿4. CELTMAN EXTREME
How do you like your jellyfish?

Cold water. Jellyfish. 200km bike. Mountains. Remote terrain. Scottish weather.

How do you like your suffering?

Celtman offers the tasting menu.

🇫🇷 5. ALPE D’HUEZ LONG COURSE
Nothing but net.

And by net, we mean climbing.

118km bike. Around 3,200m ascent. And towards the end?

21 hairpins of Alpe d’Huez.

Because putting transition somewhere flat would be showing weakness.

These aren’t simply the longest or the hilliest races. Each has its own unique ability to make a rational human question the sequence of decisions that brought them there.

And if you’ve looked at these five and thought:

“I’d quite like to have a crack at one of those…”

Congratulations.

There’s a non-zero possibility you’re a sadomasochist and simply haven’t realised it yet. 😂

👇 Which bastard are you taking on — and which one have we missed?

140.6 miles is never easy.

But some IRONMAN courses seem determined to make absolutely certain of it. 😂

🔥 THE 5 HARDEST IRONMAN RACES

After our 5 Fastest Ironman Courses post proved surprisingly popular, it seemed only fair that we went looking at the other end of the spectrum.

This list combines our coaching experience, course profiles, route characteristics, typical race-day conditions, mean finishing times and years of watching athletes discover that not all 140.6 miles are created equal.

Our five:

🥇 IRONMAN Wales
Nothing here is free.

🥈 IRONMAN Lanzarote
Welcome to the wind tunnel.

🥉 IRONMAN Malaysia
Congratulations. You’re now soup.

4️⃣ IRONMAN Lake Placid
You wanted flat? That’s adorable.

5️⃣ IRONMAN World Championship — Kona
Welcome to the bonk factory.

Wales takes our top spot because it simply refuses to give you a break. Sea swim. Relentless bike profile. Tough run. Welsh weather waiting in the wings in case you were beginning to enjoy yourself.

Lanzarote brings the holy trinity of climbing, heat and wind.

Malaysia asks whether you’d like your Ironman served at approximately the temperature and humidity of a slow cooker.

Lake Placid combines a beautiful setting with a bike and run course that steadily sends the invoice for every pacing mistake you’ve made.

And Kona? Heat. Wind. Humidity. Exposure. History. Pressure. The Queen K doesn’t particularly care how impressive your FTP looked back home.

There are other legitimate contenders — and that’s where the argument gets interesting.

👇 What have we got wrong?

Which IRONMAN course deserves to be in the five?

And, more importantly…

What’s the hardest one YOU’VE raced?

COMMIT. TRAIN. EVOLVE.

Well done champ 👏

🏊‍♂️🚴‍♂️🏃‍♂️ WANT TO GO FAST? PICK YOUR BATTLES.

Here’s something endurance athletes occasionally don’t like admitting:

Not all IRONMAN courses are created equal. 😂

Yes, you still have to swim 3.8km, ride 180km and then make a series of increasingly questionable life choices for 42.2km.

But if you’re chasing a first IRONMAN finish or hunting a new PB, course selection matters.

So we went digging.

We looked at:
📊 Race and projected average finish times
⛰️ Course profiles
🌦️ Typical race-day conditions
🏊 Swim characteristics
🚴 Bike speed and elevation
🏃 Run-course difficulty
🧠 And our own experience coaching multiple athletes specifically for each of these races.

Our Fusion Five for speed:

🥇 Barcelona — The King of PBs
🥈 Copenhagen — Fast. Smooth. Reliable.
🥉 Hamburg — Flat, fast and built for speed
4️⃣ Tallinn — Incredibly flat. Incredibly fast.
5️⃣ Kalmar — The Swedish speed classic

Does entering Barcelona magically make you fast?

Sadly not. We checked the small print.

You still have to do the training. 😭

But for a first-timer, the right course can remove some unnecessary difficulty. And for an experienced age-grouper chasing 15, 20 or 30 minutes, choosing a course that suits the mission can make a very real difference.

Because ultimately:

Courses don’t set PBs. You do.

But there’s absolutely no rule saying you have to make it harder than it needs to be. 😉

Which course would YOU pick for an all-out PB attempt? And which one have we criminally left off the list? 👇

The finish line isn’t built on motivation.

It’s built on repetition.

With Stuart Martin

Coaching isn’t just built on qualifications.

It’s built on thousands of training hours, mistakes, setbacks, victories… and stories like this one.

I thought it was worth sharing here too.
https://fusiontri.wordpress.com/2026/07/27/the-day-i-beat-the-ironman-world-champion-technically/