Tim Don Does Full Ironman In Las Vegas

Published January 9, 2015 04:45PM

Great Britain’s Tim Don, who won his Ironman debut in Mallorca back in September, took part in a fun and unique event with Polar in Las Vegas. Read about the iron-distance challenge from DCrainmaker.com below.

This year, as a promotion for their V800 multisport watch, Polar announced a rather unique twist on the iron-distance race format. Pro triathlete Tim Don stepped up to give the Las Vegas strip a glimpse of what a 140.6 triathlon is all about… well kind of. Since this was a solo event and not an actual competition with traditional swim-bike-run venues, the PR folks went all creative on us and threw together an interesting variation.

For starters they kept all three events centered around the CES venues. This year, CES expanded its physical presence into a few different locations around town, mainly because of the tremendous amount of show floor space required to house all the new technology being shown. With attendance at greater than 150,000 attendees and 3,600 exhibitors the Consumer Electronics Show is massive and has outgrown any single location, hence the perfect opportunity for, well, a triathlon.

Kind of a mashup of a point-to-point race and an out-and-back course, they split the locales over two locations; The Sands Convention Center and the Las Vegas Convention Center. Given that those two points are only about 2.5 kilometers apart, at best, and with no large bodies of water anywhere close by, the creativity started early in the race.

The carefully choreographed plan called for an early morning swim for Tim in the lap pool at the Venetian, a well known landmark on the Las Vegas strip. From there he would bike a bit to get over to the Polar booth at the Sands, where he would quickly mount his bike on a stationary trainer and knock out the rest of his 112 miles. And as if that wasn’t mind-numbing enough, he’ll then do a quick T2 of about 2.5 meters and jump on a treadmill for a quick marathon. And all that would wrap up with a short run back out into fresh air for jaunt to the finish line at the Las Vegas Convention Center, where there are a gazillion people assembled, maybe not for this unique 140.6 finish, but they will be assembled there nonetheless.