Race Hub · First-timer's guide
IRONMAN 70.3 Swansea
Sunday 11 July 2027. A sheltered swim in the Prince of Wales Dock, a 1.5-loop bike that hugs the Gower's clifftop roads with over 1,000m of climbing, and a flat two-lap run along the bay to the Marina finish. Here's the real course, and a pacing plan built against its actual elevation, not a flat-or-hilly guess.
The Bike Course
Clifftop views, and you earn them.
IRONMAN route this as 1.5 loops through Mumbles and along the Gower's coastal clifftops before swinging through rural Swansea and back along the bay. The official GPX gives it 1,082m of climbing across 90.1km: no single monster, but repeated 60 to 70m climbs that stack up, with the biggest around km27, km55 and km70. We pace you against the elevation from the official IRONMAN bike GPX, so you spend your matches where the course actually demands them.
Pacing Calculator
How do your numbers stack up right now?
Built for first-timers. You don't need to know your FTP. A couple of honest inputs and we'll model your day against the real Swansea course.
Your Critical Swim Speed. We add for open water & wetsuit.
Don't know your CSS? Click HereUsed with your weight for a power-to-weight read. Not stored anywhere.
Average km/h on a recent long ride, of similar race distance and terrain, at race pace effort.
Your standalone half time, h:mm:ss.
Recent Swansea race days have ranged from 7 to 28°C. It can do anything; check the forecast and pick honestly.
Power-to-weight body composition
Swansea climbs all day, and on the hills your speed is governed by power-to-weight: the watts you can hold for every kilo you carry up the road. Same power, less weight, and you go up faster, which is why body composition matters more here than on a flat course.
These are just mathematical outcomes from your height and weight, not a judgement on your body, and the maths can't tell how much of your weight is muscle. Any change should come from better fuelling and training, never restriction or dropping weight for its own sake, under-eating to chase "race weight" costs you more fitness than it buys. Whether it applies to you at all, and what a healthy target looks like, is exactly what our coaching team, with Adam on nutrition, work out with you 1:1.
Don't go it alone.
These headline numbers are a great start, but race day is bigger than a set of splits. What gets you to the line ready, and across it in the best possible shape, is a coaching team in your corner: mapping and running the whole journey with you across training, strength and conditioning, nutrition and race-day strategy, built around your life and adjusted as you go. That is exactly what Team TC does.
Apply for 1:1 coaching with TomBefore race day