“I feel like an Ironman”.

Those were the words of Michael Eliades just days after he’d put his body on the line in the Ironman 70.3 Weymouth.

The ‘70.3’ reveals the miles covered by the competitors in the swim/cycle/run event but what the title doesn’t convey is what those taking part had to go through to get to the finish line on the Dorset coast.

Eliades, a member of Tri Team Glos, takes up the story.

“The two-kilometre sea swim had to be cut to 1,000 metres because of the conditions,” he said. “The water was choppy, it was windy, it was raining, the water was freezing. A lot of people pulled out.”

And that was just the start because the bike ride was just as tough.

“It was a 56-mile ride,” continued Eliades, “with 4,000 feet of climbing, it was really hilly. It was up and down, up and down. It was raining, it was freezing cold. People were just getting off their bikes and getting escorted back to the start.

“They were just shivering on the side of the road, they’d had enough.”

Thankfully the weather relented for the final discipline – the run – but after the swimming and the cycling it certainly needed to.

And let’s be fair, running a half marathon after you’ve been swimming and cycling for some four hours-plus isn’t easy.

And it was made all the tougher for 35-year-old Eliades because he had injured his hips ahead of the big event which meant he was able to do little or no training in the three weeks leading up to the race.

“I couldn’t get my running together because of my hips,” he explained, “but in my head I was telling myself I just needed to finish.”

And finish he did in a very respectable time of six-and-a-half hours, all the more respectable when you consider that it was only the second time he’d ever taken part in an Ironman.

Eliades, who lives in Gloucester and works at his dad’s barber shop in Cheltenham, told The Local Answer four days after the event: “I’m a bit tired, it killed me! It was hard work but I’ve done it, I must be an Ironman!”