ROAD TO IRONMAN EPISODE 4: INTO THE MOUNTAINS 

Published: 10/09/2026 | By: David Van Wetherill

How do you train for an Ironman when your arms will eventually have to swim, cycle, and then carry you through a marathon on crutches? With IRONMAN Kalmar approaching, David Van Wetherill took his training into the mountains. From the Alps and Pyrenees to the summit of Kilimanjaro, July became a final endurance block built around cycling capacity, crutch strength, elevation, patience – and learning when not to force the way. 

There comes a point in every endurance build when getting fitter is no longer enough. Much like HYROX, an Ironman asks you to distribute fatigue across multiple disciplines rather than survive one. You need to find out what happens when you're tired, what happens when the road keeps climbing, and what happens when the session becomes hours rather than minutes. 

July became the biggest and most unconventional training block of my Road to an Ironman. The plan changed. Instead of another conventional competition, I went to the mountains. There wasn't always a spreadsheet telling me what to do next. Increasingly, my calendar became my training plan. 

I went there looking for fitness. I came back having found something much bigger.

Why The Mountains? 

By July, I knew the area I most needed to build was cycling capacity. The full Ironman bike leg would demand far more than anything I had completed at Bolton, and every unnecessary bit of energy I spent on the bike would eventually have to be paid for when I picked up the crutches. 

So I headed somewhere that doesn't allow you to fake cycling endurance: the Alps and the Pyrenees. 

The training camp evolved as I travelled. The objective on the bike wasn't simply to accumulate kilometres; it was to create sustained load. Climbing forces you to work continuously. When the road points upwards, there are fewer opportunities to hide. You settle into an effort, control your breathing, manage your legs and learn very quickly what happens if you get overexcited early in the climb. 

That felt directly relevant to long-course triathlon. The mountains were lessons in pacing, effort and patience. 

The Tourmalet 

The longest ride of the block was around 60km up and down the Tourmalet in approximately 3 hours 30 minutes. The distance doesn't tell the whole story. Climbing creates prolonged resistance, while descending adds concentration and bike handling when you're already fatigued. Throughout all of it, I still had to think about hydration, nutrition and how much energy I was spending. 

That became one of the most useful benchmarks of the whole Ironman build, not because an Ironman course would look like the Tourmalet, but because the mountain gave me nowhere to hide from my own pacing. 

Push too hard and the climb exposes you. Ride intelligently and the effort becomes sustainable. There is a difference between being capable of producing more power and deciding that producing more power is actually useful. That distinction became increasingly important. 

Training For Life 

Between travel, I fitted in pool lengths, gym sessions, yoga and sauna whenever time allowed. It wasn't perfect periodisation; some weeks the opportunity dictated the session. If I could get into a pool, I swam. If I had access to a gym, I worked on the strength and muscular balance I knew I needed. Yoga gave me an opportunity to work on mobility and slow down in a schedule dominated by movement, while sauna became another part of that wider recovery routine. 

Crutch movement is incredibly push-dominant. Every step repeatedly loads my shoulders and triceps. Add HYROX movements and everyday crutch use and there was already an enormous amount of pushing in my week, so some of the most important gym work was actually the opposite. 

I prioritised my shoulders because their durability would be critical in August, but deliberately balanced all that pushing with pulling exercises for my back and biceps. Rather than simply trying to make the muscles doing the pushing stronger and stronger, I wanted a more balanced upper body capable of tolerating months of unusual loading. 

Single-leg strength, controlled loading and mobility continued alongside it as I rebuilt around my replaced hip. 

The challenge was consistency without rigidity. What does my body need most today, and what can it recover from tomorrow? That's perhaps one of the most useful things this period has taught me: a training plan is valuable, but real life doesn't always respect one. 

Missing the perfect session doesn't mean abandoning the goal. Sometimes you simply find another way. 

From The Bike To Crutches 

Once I had tested the bike in the mountains, another question remained: could I create one final endurance stimulus for the upper body before beginning to taper? 

That was where Kilimanjaro entered the story. 

The rationale was simple. Several consecutive days moving uphill on crutches would mean prolonged time supporting my body through my arms and shoulders. It wasn't designed to mimic a marathon perfectly — nothing could — but I hoped it would introduce the kind of accumulated fatigue I might experience late in an Ironman: the point where strength is no longer fresh and movement becomes about efficiency, patience and continuing despite fatigue. 

Kilimanjaro Changed The Pace 

HYROX asks for intensity. Mountains ask for patience. The higher we went, the less useful urgency became. You cannot race altitude, and you cannot persuade a mountain into moving faster. You can't spend all your energy because you feel good for ten minutes and assume there will be no consequence later. 

That made Kilimanjaro surprisingly relevant to Ironman preparation. Long-course endurance is often an exercise in resisting impulses: don't swim too hard simply because the start feels exciting; don't chase someone on the bike because they pass you; don't forget to eat because you're concentrating on performance; and don't mistake what you can do now for what you should do if you still need your body several hours later. 

The mountain made that lesson impossible to ignore. The first lesson of “all ways” 

For most of this journey, my mantra has been simple: Winners find a way. That philosophy has carried me through surgery, crutches, HYROX, marathons and triathlon. But the mountains began adding something to it. There is rarely only one way. Sometimes the way is faster, sometimes it is slower. Sometimes you go around, sometimes you stop, and sometimes you need another human being beside you. 

Kilimanjaro made that last one particularly obvious. 

Chase Nothing, Find Everything 

I went into the mountains believing they were preparation for an Ironman. They were. Physically, I came away having tested the bike, accumulated long-duration endurance, placed huge demands through my upper body and learned more about pacing. 

But something else happened too. The mountains changed the question. Instead of constantly asking what I could conquer next, I began paying more attention to what the experience itself was trying to teach me. Some things don't have to become anything. They can become what they become. 

A training camp can begin as preparation for a race and become something much bigger. A mountain can begin as physical conditioning and end as perspective. You can go somewhere looking for performance and return having found patience. 

Chase nothing. Find everything. The Ironman was now only two weeks away. The work was done.