PALAKKAD: Balaji Rajasekharan from Palakkad won the Ironman title at the long-distance triathlon event held in Kalmar, Sweden recently. Balaji has been working as an enterprise architect at Volvo Trucks in Sweden for the last 15 years.
In the annual competitions held in Kalmar, 39-year-old Balaji completed 3.8- km swimming, 180.25-km cycling and 42.2 km run in 14 hours and one minute against the maximum allotted time of 16 hours.
“Earlier, I used to run and take part in athletics. However, since I lived in Palakkad town, I did not have access to ponds and therefore I was weak in swimming. Anyway, I joined the Triathlon Cub at Skovda and began to practice along with the others. I practised for 10 hours every day to prepare for the race. Earlier, I had participated in the Half Ironman competitions held in Jonkoping for three years consecutively which gave me confidence. Ironman 70.3, also known as Half Ironman, consists of a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bicycle ride, and a 13.1-mile run,” Balaji told TNIE from Sweden.
“There were strong waves, and swimming in the deep sea was challenging and I also suffered from sea sickness. I had practised and therefore I was sure that I could complete the 3.8-km distance in 1 hour 35 minutes but due to inclement weather the waves proved tricky and I took two hours and eight minutes. However, I could make up for the loss of time in cycling and running events.
Similarly, there were heavy winds and my knee pain posed a problem for cycling. But I could complete the distance of 180.25 km in six hours and 56 minutes and 42.2-km run in four hours and 38 minutes and complete the event within 14 hours and one minute,” said Balaji.
In all, 2,200 participants from 63 countries competed in the championship which is one of the difficult one-day sports competitions in the world. Around 1,600 participants had managed to finish the championship within 16 hours.