News / Aloha to world champs for Ironman Davie
A SHETLAND athlete is enjoying an “unbelievable” experience after securing a place at the Ironman world championships in Hawaii this October thanks to an outstanding performance at last weekend’s triathlon in Bolton.
Davie Williamson came second in the 18-24 age group and 46th overall in a time of 10 hours, 24 minutes and 34 seconds for a 3.9km swim followed by a 180km bike race and finished off with a marathon.
The 24-year-old naval architect, who now lives and works in Aberdeen, said he was chuffed that months of hard training had paid off.
“I always knew that if I could do ten and half hours then I had a good chance to hitting the podium,” he said.
“The swim was two 1.2 miles loops. I am not the strongest of swimmers so I planned to take the swim easy and make sure I was still fresh when getting on the bike.
“I came out of the water in ninth position in my age group and managed to get a fourth place in the bike race. It was a very hilly course, one of the toughest courses in terms of the terrain in Europe.
“During the second loop I started thinking about the marathon I still had to do, so I eased back a bit. I still felt fresh, as all the training has been paying off.
“I knew I was high up in my age group coming off the bike. I managed to complete the marathon in three hours 29 minutes.”
Williamson said he had neither run a full marathon before nor taken part in a long distance Ironman competition before.
“My running training wasn’t where I would have liked it to be due to injury, so getting that result in the marathon was particularly pleasing. I can definitely still improve on that time.
“Qualifying for Hawaii feels pretty good, it still is kind of unbelievable,” he said.
Williamson will take it easy for the next two weeks to recover from Bolton before sitting down with his coach to draw up a training plan for Hawaii.
As part of his preparation he will be participating in the middle distance Scottish championships in August.
His full results can be found here.
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