Some Sunday last January, Ironman CEO Scott DeRue was speaking with the 2026 IMD MBA cohort. You see, for most people Ironman is a self-inflicted kind of pain: You bring it onto yourself and, maybe, onto your family and close friends. That was just not enough for me, so I generously invited the MBA class to experience their own endurance event with a two-week, high-intensity sprint to make strategic recommendations for the Ironman Group. Yes, I am generous that way, and I'm happy to report that I'm still on speaking terms with some of them.

Anyway, as he addressed the class, Scott mentioned Club La Santa as an example of a wonderful partnership that the Group has with external organizations. That was the first I heard that name and didn’t think much of it.

Ironman CEO Scott DeRue addressing the IMD MBA class of 2026, telling them about Club La Santa.

Except that I was in the middle of deciding which race I was going to do in 2026. Now, I only do one a year, ahem except when I do two, and it needs to be before the summer. Recently, that has gotten me to Thun, twice, and Nice. But this year, those were not in the cards, neither was Roth in early July, because of calendaring conflicts. Frankfurt was full, so was Stuttgart, I toyed with going for the Frenchman as it seems completely over the top but it quickly became clear that there was only one race I could make work: Ironman Lanzarote or, more precisely, “Club La Santa Ironman Lanzarote.”

If your geography is as bad as mine, you might not know that Lanzarote is one of the Canary Islands, just like Tenerife. It’s Spanish but it’s off the coast of Morocco. Southern Morocco, in fact. It takes about four hours to fly there from Geneva, and therein lies the catch: You need to fly. I’m usually reluctant to fly for triathlons because of the risk of your bike not making it.

Lanzarote is reputed to be a tough course. Not for the swim, which is in the ocean (therefore, buoyancy!), wetsuit legal (more buoyancy!) and in clear water (take that, Ironman Texas). No, the swim is fine. But the bike has a lot of climbing, 2,500m of altitude gain over the 180km. It’s a hair more than Nice or Thun but climbing isn’t the only challenge: The course is also fully exposed and the winds are usually fierce. As for the run, well, it’s sold as rolling, which didn’t seem particularly challenging. Clearly, it was going to be a biker’s course.

Getting to the start line

Flying is a mess, especially lately. But I never expected it would be that messy. In the couple of months before the race, Leslie and I had our flight to Lanzarote canceled. Thanks, easyJet. So, now we’d have to connect in Madrid, thereby increasing the chances that the bike got lost in the process. And a couple of weeks after I fixed that flight, it also got canceled. So now we would get to the island in the middle of the night on Thursday morning. Not ideal.

Had I picked up running as a hobby, we would only need to take the shoes with us but noooo, it had to be triathlon …

And the bike logistics continued to stress me, so I made alternate plans, including inquiring if I could rent a bike on the island if mine didn’t make it. Also this created some tension which didn’t dissipate until Leslie, I, and the bike made it all safely to Lanzarote.

Arguably, there are worse settings in which to assemble your bike.

The race’s date might have been the only one I could make work, but it was not ideal by any means. Work was busy all the way up to departure time—in fact, I was on a session with the LEGO Group minutes before we rushed out of the door for our bus-train-plane 1-plane 2-taxi trip to the island. But we checked in at 2am on Thursday, as planned. So far, so good.

Lanzarote is my third Ironman in less than a year after racing Nice twice last year. Work made this training block shorter, though. I was also unable to hammer a string of high-volume weeks like a year ago. Instead, François and I opted for giving my body more time to integrate the training.

I didn't get as much volume in the last weeks ahead of the race as last year; also, I was alternating super heavy weeks with more manageable ones.

For the race, the plan was pretty much a repeat of my last two races: don’t burn matches on the swim, manage the bike, shuffle the run.

After a short night on Thursday, we got into the regular pre-race routine: register, assemble the bike, and shake the jet legs. I got a couple of swims—my first open water ones since the world championship in Nice; yep, I am that dedicated to the art of swimming. I also had a couple of rides and runs.

We were going to wait until later in the day to drop off the bike but we got kicked out of our hotel room by the cleaning person, so I was among the first to drop it off, and the experience was  weird. The marshal gave me a hard time with my stickers. I had trimmed them, which he didn’t like. Then he wanted the two stickers on the helmet to be switched (because now we have two, but they don’t tell you which they want on the front and which on the side, then they had me flip the ones on the bike from vertical to horizontal). First race ever where I get any trouble for my stickers, but man did they dish it out.

Dropping off the Px in transition early. Note the crappy sticker job on my seatpost after all my skillful origami got rejected by the head marshal.

After these adventures I prepared my nutrition: three flasks with five Maurten 160, totaling 200g of carbs each. I’d be using two of those on the bike, one on the run. For the bike, I also got four bottles with ~100g of Sponser Ultra Competition in each. So, I had 800g of carbs with me in addition to what I’d pick up at aid stations.

Quality Swedish gels is what's on the menu for tomorrow.

We ended up quite a bit on our legs on Friday, with some 30k steps in total. Arguably that’s quite a few steps for a race eave, and I could feel my left hip tensing up. Oh well. I did some stretching and we went to bed early. I wasn’t particularly apprehensive, and I had a good night.

Race morning. Our hotel was super close to the transition area.

Race day started at 04h15. We had a morning plan, which we followed to the letter. The hotel had breakfast ready starting at 04h, which I particularly appreciated after our hotel in Nice last year—making that story short, our niçois friends fully acknowledged that there was a race, understood the starting time, but didn't change the breakfast hours that day. Those fellas also refused to let us bring our bikes in our rooms … and charged us extra for safekeeping them in some meeting room. French hospitality at its best, I guess. Seriously, do yourself a favor, if in Nice, do not stay at the Westminster. In fact, given the new political landscape in Nice, do yourself a favor, do not stay in Nice. But that’s a different topic.

Race-morning frenzy in full swing in the transition area. You can feel the tension in some people; luckily, I wasn't feeling particularly stressed.

Back to Lanzarote where, in fact, I’d highly, highly recommend that you stay at the Fariones. So, anyway, at the Fariones triathletes are clearly welcomed and I enjoyed a few Nutella crêpes before heading to the transition area where I double checked the bike, dropped my nutrition, set up my Garmin, and checked my transition bags. I was seeded right by the pros’ bikes, so walking out of transition I could admire their bikes. But let’s get one thing straight: if I’m slow on the bike, it’s not because my Px is worse than their stuff! No, no, I’ve already bought all the toys. No, there are no more excuses, if I’m slow it’s because, well, I’m slow.

In Lanzarote there are four sea states: green, yellow, red, and jellyfish.

Anyway, by the time I was done, perhaps one hour before race start, we went back to the hotel for final prep. That was not in the plan, but since the hotel was so close, we went for it. It was perfect; much better than hanging out at the start for an hour.

Hanging out with cool people on the start line.

Swim – 1h14m56s – 1m54/100m

Another welcomed difference with Nice was that the race start wasn’t cordoned off. That means that Leslie was able to come with me all the way to the start line. That was the best part of the morning: hanging out with my beloved as the nonsense was revving up. The second best part of the morning, and I know you won’t believe me, is that during all that time we never, ever heard AC/DC’s Thunderstruck. Yup. First race in my 20 years of racing that that happens, but I swear it’s true.

Off to work. Photo credit: Sportograf

The pro men started at 07h00, followed by the pro women five minutes later. Another five minutes and age groupers were corralled in by waves according to our predicted swim time, sub-60 minutes, sub-70, sub 80, and so on. I went with the sub-80 group. Soon enough, it was my turn to hit the water.

The swim is a beach start with two 1.9-km laps that are separated by a few steps on the beach—in triathlon jargon, that's called an Aussie exit. We headed out west, turned a first buoy and a second one quickly after before having a long leg east, which meant into the rising sun. Luckily, that didn't really impede sighting.

The swim course is two laps with a few steps over the timing mat in between.

In fact, it was all good. Good visibility, salt water, no waves, no current, no wind, wetsuits, ... perfect conditions for challenged swimmers like yours truly. There was a bit of contact but not bad.

My right goggle took some water and I had to empty it three times. I also lost my nose clip during the second lap, but I didn’t suffer from it.

Also good news was that I didn’t hurt my broken finger (for the first time in three races, yay!). On the other hand, I never managed to find a good pair of feet to draft off of, so I did my thing and that was that.

In the closing bit of my first lap I perceived some fast swimmers on my left. I only got a couple of glimpses of them, but I suspect they were a group of pros finishing their second lap. Again, I didn’t get a good look, but what I saw was essentially bubbles: They seemed to be so high in the water and so horizontal that you could barely see their profiles. What you saw was a line of bubbles overtaking you blazingly quickly. Humbling, all that stuff. Humbling. And cool!

Swim exit. Photo credit: Sportograf

Overall, I finished in 75 minutes, my least-slow swim since 2018. Champagne, people, champagne!

Bike – 6h26m20s – 175W AP / 195W NP

I had a fairly quick transition. Still, I took the time to check that I didn’t forget anything. I had meant to put some bandaids on my foot after I got a blister from trying out a new pair of running shoes five days before but I couldn’t find them. Since I knew I had some bandaids in my run bag I went without. I got some extra sunscreen from a volunteer, and off I went to get my bike and climb that super steep exit out of transition.

The bike is a single loop that spans the island with a couple of out-and-back sections.

The bike in Lanzarote is no joke. Lots of climbing, lots of wind, lots of sun. And it starts right in the first kilometers out of town, with some 300m of elevation gained in the first 12 kilometers. That first climb is also into the wind, so the first forty minutes were slow.

A lunar landscape is what you get for most of the ride. Photo credit: Sportograf

And that was only the beginning as the whole day was in lava fields. The wind was always present with gusts exceeding 30 km/h coming from the north, north east. Oh, and lots of sun.

The first two-thirds of the course concentrate most of the challenge with the most climbing and getting into the wind. The last third is much faster.

In anticipation for the wind I had opted for a shallower front wheel and no disc; I rode a Zipp 606 Firecrest setup. It was probably a good call. I could have managed the disc, but there were a few times where the side gusts had me get out of aero and I was glad I didn’t have a deeper front.

The descents weren't nearly as technical as Nice's. Photo credit: Sportograf

The course was very well managed by a gazillion of courageous volunteers who were in full sun exposure all day. The roads were closed, and the volunteers did a phenomenal job signaling turns.

The backdrop at Mirador del Río is simply phenomenal. Photo credit: Sportograf

There were three out-and-back sections; those were depressing—you entered each seeing the people in front of you exiting them and then it felt like forever before you yourself were exiting. Altitude wise, the course peaks at 600m right past the halfway point, at 98km, in Los Helechos and the northern-most point is at 110km at the super scenic Mirador del Río.

Then we did a 180º, starting the way home (big morale booster!), getting the head wind to become a tail one (even bigger morale booster!!), and topped it off with long, non technical descents.

In short, we transitioned from grinding our way up to blitzing our way down, at least for the next 10 km that, provided you could manage the side gusts giving you the occasional fright, were guaranteed to put a smile on your face. There was one last out-and-back section at 150km to kill any remaining fighting spirit that we might somehow have preserved until then, and it was all downhill from here.

Out of gear, out of the saddle! The wisdom of bringing a 1X setup to Lanzarote is questionable, but where would the fun be otherwise? Photo credit: Sportograf

Power-wise, I did  175 watts AP / 195 watts NP, which bought me a 28.2km/h average over the course. Max speed of 75km/h. All told, I was hoping and expecting to go faster, but I knew that pushing any harder would hurt too much on the run. At least I had no problems assimilating my nutrition and even getting some more water and electrolytes from the aid stations.

Making it to T2. Photo credit: Leslie Farnsworth

Run – 3h38m22s – 5m19s/km – 257W AP / 261W NP

I made my way back to town, heard Leslie in the final meters before hitting transition, dismounted right at the line, and shot through the short, steep downhill ramp into the transition area. Did I mention that the ramp was steep? Well, wearing bike shoes on the plastic-tile floor, I almost tumbled; a nice reminder to cool things down a bit while I re-racked my bike. I switched my gear to my running one, put my bandaids on my boo-boo and hit the run.

Mid-afternoon Canarian sun is baking, and the whole place is getting toasty. Photo credit: Sportograf

The run course is a three-lap affair by the sea shore. You start with a 21-km lap to the airport followed by two shorter ones. On each lap, you get a little elastic ribbon to signal the lap you’re on: yellow, red, blue. It’s depressing when you just got your yellow one to see people with a full rainbow around their wrist, but it gets better as your collection grows.

The course is advertised as rolling, and François and I had a good chuckle at that. “Yeah, right, 230m of elevation gain over a marathon, let’s call that rolling.” Well, except that that climbing is concentrated on a handful of hills; trust me, when you’re in the middle of those, it doesn’t feel particularly flat!

After a hard day on the bike, temperatures now flirting with 30 celsius, and in direct sun exposure all the time, it became clear that 5min/km was not in the cards, so I did what I could, walking the aid stations. My foot injury wasn’t a problem, neither was the tight hip I was feeling a couple of days before the race. No, this one was just a matter of seeing what you could make stick when your body was ready to be in the hot tub.

I usually run with a cap, so the hat was a first … and it's a keeper. Under the unforgiving Canarian sun, its extra protection was wonderful. Photo credit: Sportograf

For once, I didn’t get lost into too much computations on where my current race pace would get me. Once I knew that I couldn’t hold the planned 5min/km, I really focused on just keeping a shuffle going—there’s really not much of a difference between 4:55 and 5:10 but a massive difference between 5:xx and walking. So I walked the aid stations, but nowhere else.

It was my second run with a new type of shoes, still sticking with Asics Metaspeeds but going from their Edge model to my first pair of Sky. Although I had taken a bit of a gamble racing in those after just one 24km run a week before, there was no problem and I like them much better than the Edge. Clearly that was a big booster.

Halfway through. I need a kiss, please! Photo credit: Leslie Farnsworth

But the biggest booster was seeing Leslie twice on each lap. I’d see her, grumble about how tough it is, get my kiss, and off I’d go with renewed energy and a fighting spirit. I loved it!

Rallying on the third lap; almost there! Photo credit: Leslie Farnsworth

On my first lap, the aid stations had cool water and, had I known that would soon stop, I would have enjoyed the cool drinks much more. Soon all liquids, water, Coke, and electrolytes were lukewarm, which was really not great. I relied on coke for fueling, also getting some gels out of my flask, but my stomach had enough of the gels. It’s a lot of gels after a while. I picked up a couple of bits of orange at aid stations and lots of ice, but I never tried the 226ers stuff that the course organizers provided.

Even painful experiences eventually stop! Photo credit: Sportograf

Collecting my lap ribbons felt like an eternity, but I eventually completed my third lap, and at that sign that says “laps one, two, and three to the left; finish to the right” I took a right. That one is such a good feeling!

11 hours 32 minutes and 8 seconds of pain, 3 seconds of absolute delight. Photo credit: Sportograf

And, and?

All right, so 1:14:55 swim + 5:52 T1 + 6:26:19 bike + 6:41 T2 + 3:38:31 run = 11:32:11

And where does that fit in the big picture, you ask? Well, let’s do the numbers. Which would you like?

Chillin' at the finish line for a few minutes. Photo credit: Leslie Farnsworth

There were 1,339 starters and 1,098 finishers (that’s a 18% drop rate; source).

I finished 234/969 males (24%); 27/165 finishers in M50—54 (16%) or 27/196 starters in M50–54 (14%).

… and done. Now, where's that hot tub again? Photo credit: Leslie Farnsworth

Starting in 2026, Ironman also includes an age-adjusted finisher rank; mine was: 152/1,098 (14%). For reference, the last world championship qualifier was #53, so a loooooong way up the rankings.

Now, we can also break down these results by sport and all sorts of things, but let’s stop the stats here. This is not baseball.

Comparable training volumes as previous years got me somewhat worse results. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

The quick take aways are:

1. I really need to learn to swim, since I was the slowest of the top 50+ in my age group … Well, that’s what I say after each race. But screw that. The big thing isn’t to swim better, it’s to bike better. I’d better get my bike game a big kick in the butt.

2. On the nutrition side, even though I managed to go through most of the gels, it’s too much. Fewer gels, more liquid carbs.

3. On the logistics side, was the whole fly-to-race ordeal worth it? Well, Lanzarote was a lot of fun! And, yes, for me it definitely was worth it. First and foremost because I’m happy to have raced a full-distance tri in the middle of a busy time at work. But also because the experience was much better than I had anticipated.

It’s a shame that 2026 is the final year organized by Club La Santa. Out of all the Ironman-branded races I’ve done, this one was the least corporate, more community-oriented one by a mile. That seems to align well with Scott’s plans for the Group, and I hope that somehow their partnership will continue.

Merci

I went for a ride two days after the race. As I was taking off my bike shoes post ride, I found those band aids in their wrappers that I had prepared; they'd been in there the whole time. Darn, think of all that extra weight that I carried on race day; no wonder I was slow!

The Px gets a well-deserved shower.

To all the volunteers, Club La Santa, and Ironman, thanks for the show; it was wonderful!

Thanks, François, for putting together the multi-month tortu— training plan. We got it done!

Thanks, Bertrand, for taking care of me. There was a time last January, after three weeks of sciatica, that was rather touch and go, but you got it all sorted out!

Thibault and Will at TNCE—you are absolute champions! Everybody, if you’re Lausanne based, TNCE is the bike shop. These fellas love my Px even more than I do and are consummate pros. Rockstars!

Thanks also to Dalsace, Amit, Houville, Louis, Francis, and Alyson. Stéphane, we didn’t get to ride much this year, we’re going to need to fix this, but your support was great all the same!

Oh, and thanks to my favorite MBA cohort of all times—IMD MBA cohort of 26, you’re phenomenal!

As for my Leslie. I adore you!

With the woman of my life.

Three-time world champ and second-on-the-day Patrick Lange collects his world championship slot. Yeah, that dude biked two hours faster than me and topped it off with a 2h33 marathon. They're a different species. 😂

The best part of the trip.

Last ride at sunrise. What a place!

Packing up the Px.

And in our series “how did he manage to embarrass himself this time?” …

I never manage to get a good finishing picture. It just never happens despite my best efforts. But this time I tried particularly hard and a couple turned out ok. Progress!

A minute after crossing the line, the volunteer who greeted me asked if I wanted to do a couple of extra pictures since I had gone down the chute so quickly. Sure, why not? So, I walked to the side of the finishing arch so that the photographer could shoot people arriving, waiting for a gap in finishers. And I’m standing there for a minute while this athlete is celebrating, all the while thinking I’m well outside of the frame. At some point, the photographer looks up to me and signals me to step further aside. It turns out that I was in his frame the entire time. Yeah, that wasn’t glorious. Sorry, 1236, for photo bombing your finish. I hope you got a couple of shots without the creepy impostor …