Rugby greats wearing new badge of honour
After a rugby career that included 75 caps for Wales and three Grand Slams over a near 20-year period, you would expect Ryan Jones to put his feet up after retiring... not a chance. The former Wales captain has transformed himself into an Iron Man. Gerain
FORMER Wales captain Ryan Jones has, if anything, stepped up his training regime after hanging up his boots and is one of a growing number of our international rugby stars who has become an Iron Man.
Jones has joined Shane Williams, Ian Gough, John Davies, Paul Arnold and Richard Webster in completing the mind-blowingly brutal Iron Man Wales.
Held in Tenby in September, the event consists of a 2.4-mile sea swim, followed by a 112-mile bike ride and finished off with a 26.2-mile marathon.
One thing that is the same, however, is that they all share the same coach once more in the form of former Royal Marine Dylan Morris.
The 44-year-old, from the Amman Valley, set up a specialist cycle and triathlon training company, Cycle Specific, in 2014 in Cross Hands, and uses his military training to help prepare his charges with near-military precision.
He says: “I decided, if I was going to do it then I was going to do it properly.
“The right studio with the right appearance, with the right wattbikes with VO2 testing, blood lactic testing, full body composition analysis, so we could offer a full sports science proposal, similar to what Team Sky does, but for the everyday person.
“I looked at what I had learnt in the Royal Marines; training in the face of adversity, determination, being unselfish, all standards of the Royal Marines. I’ve brought that and embedded it into what we do at the studio.”
Of his remarkable record of helping former rugby stars, he says: “The Ospreys player Shane Mackintosh was the first top-class rugby player that I helped and then I was lucky enough to work with Paul Arnold, and his wife, Jane, Richard Webster, Shane Williams, Ryan Jones, Ian Gough and most recently John Davies, the former Wales and Llanelli prop, who makes the journey up from Cardigan every week.”
Explaining why so many former rugby stars take up the new sport, he says: “There’s no doubt that they miss the unity, the training, the camaraderie that they had in rugby, but now it’s a very trendy thing, to be involved in an Iron Man is the graveyard of exrugby players now.”
And he is quick to point out that it is not just rugby players queuing up to tackle one of the toughest events going. He says: “It’s what the London Marathon used to be; it’s the new badge of honour. The amount of people who are now doing Iron Man is an unbelievable phenomenon. It’s probably helped by the fact that we have Iron Man Wales in Tenby just 40 miles down the road. Apparently it has the highest number of local entries in any iron man anywhere in the world. They are drawing big numbers from the locality.”
So who actually uses his services? He says: “In the past three years we have grown from, in the first year, 15, the second year 70, to this year, 120, some were doing overseas iron men but 100 did Iron Man Wales.
“The youngest were in their mid-twenties and the oldest this year was Peter Herbert, a former Wales sports scientist, who is now 70. Unfortunately he had to pull out of the event due to injury. The eldest to compete was 66.”
Suggesting an Iron Man is in reach of most people, he says: “There is something there for everybody. As long as people are lucky with their health and they train intelligently, I would say that anyone could do an Iron Man.”
But what of the commitment needed? Dylan, who has completed an Iron Man himself, says: “If you want to be very competitive you need to be doing between 10 and 20 hours’ training a week, but you can achieve it with eight to 10 hours a week. That’s two to three swims a week, at least six hours on a bike and two to three running; depending upon how strong they are in each discipline.”
And what are the returns apart from a great physique?
He says: “It’s a great event for a start, I think there’s over 50,000 spectators down there on the day, the crowds are amazing. The swim for me is horrendous. The bike for me is a pleasure, I absolutely love that, however, it is one of the hardest bike courses in the world, and the run for me, again, was a real challenge; carrying old niggles and injuries. Overall, it’s an amazing event.
“Ryan Jones sums it up best. When we went to the briefing he said it’s like being in the Vale leading up to playing England. And the atmosphere in Tenby on the day was equivalent to him facing England in rugby at the Millennium Stadium, it was that good.”
He adds the most important factor in becoming an Iron Man is willpower.
He says: “It’s incredibly arduous, but I guess that’s where the Royal Marines’ spirit pulls you through.”
And it is equally difficult to predict who will or who won’t make the grade.
He says: “You can never judge a book by its cover. You can’t tell what the engine is like inside a person when you first meet them. At the end of the day, once you pass five hours it’s all a mental game. That’s what the difference is. It’s the mental strength that gets people through.”