By Dylan James

Copyright walesonline

Tenby triathlete Finn Arentz has smashed his own Welsh national Ironman record by 20 minutes, but said seeing his brother cross the finishing line meant more to him on the record-breaking day in Denmark. Competing at Ironman Copenhagen, Arentz delivered the performance of his career, and finished the race in just over seven hours and 50 minutes. His previous Welsh record saw him post a time of just over eight hours and 10 minutes, so he convincingly bested the previous effort. Arentz kicked off the race by clocking just shy of 50 minutes on the 2.4 mile swim, before completing 112 miles on the bike in four hours and 16 minutes. If that wasn’t speedy enough, the Tenby triathlete proceeded to cover the marathon distance (26.2 miles) in only two hours and 40 minutes. However, being the modest character he is, it wasn’t the personal triumph that meant most to him – it was watching younger brother Frank complete his first Ironman. “If I was asked whether I was more emotional at my own finish line or at his, it was definitely watching him cross the line,” he tells WalesOnline. “I was more proud of that than I was of my own accomplishments, rightly or wrongly, that’s just the way it went, maybe I was just high on blood sugar, so I had more ability to feel anything at that point! It was fantastic and he is a good lad, he’s annoying as hell a lot of the time, but actually, which brother isn’t?! “And actually having him around was really nice, so it was just nice for him to actually execute everything well and to get what he wanted and for him to be really happy afterwards too.” Finn trained younger brother Frank for the race in the Danish capital, but as well as watching his sibling cross the line in his first-ever Ironman, it was a monumental day for Finn himself. Going into the race, he says, the record was at the back of his mind. “It’s notoriously a very, very fast course,” he explains. “People have gone really quick there before, so it was at the back of my mind. I’d had a bit of a rough year up to that stage. I had some health issues and training hadn’t been great and things, but I had a good month or so before that one. “I was hoping – you always tell yourself, best-case scenarios in your head prior to a race to try and get yourself in that mindset of if you visualise it and you think you can do it, you’re so much more likely to be able to do it, even if you’re not necessarily quite there. “To be honest, if anything, I exceeded my own expectations of myself time-wise. The race around me was just really fast. That kind of dragged me along a little bit. It’s actually weird crossing a line. It was mixed emotion because I crossed the line and thought, wow, rapid time, unreal. “Part of me was also – it was actually only enough for 13th on the day. The field was really strong. It was such a fast day that part of me was like, I’ve done what I would have deemed just a couple of years ago – this incredible feat – but now it’s… not dwarfed, but you’ve got guys going a fair bit quicker on the day, so I think, gosh, there’s still more to be had there.” Completing an Ironman in itself is incredibly taxing on the body, but beating a national record requires some serious mental grit, which would have been tested as the body started to wear. “People think Ironmans are easy,” says Arentz (although we’re not sure we agree with that!). “Because they’re low-intensity. They’re never easy. They’re more comfortably uncomfortable. You’re able to keep going, but you’re always in a decent amount of discomfort. “You’re always just having to force down gels and eating. Often you don’t really want to. You’re having to force feed yourself, feeling like you’re going to be sick and it just stays there. Teetering you on that edge the whole way is not particularly pleasant. “But the last few miles, I had quite a bad blister on my foot. I was also getting this weird foot cramp. Every time I went around a corner, I was worried my foot was going to… I was like – there’s no way I could blame foot cramp. Of all the things that go wrong.” After months of preparation, Arentz opened up on the mix of pain and pleasure as he strode to the finish line: “It’s funny… the two kilometres at the end, you’re like – this is absolute hell. I feel awful, terrible. Then when you’re 500 metres from the finish – I feel great. “It’s amazing – ‘I can keep going. This is so fun.’ You’re going at the same pace. It’s funny how the mind plays tricks on you like that. There were a few things going through the head, but actually, it was probably the best I’ve felt on an Ironman run altogether.” Afterwards, it was a takeaway feast with Ironman debutant Frank to refuel and relax after a tough day in the sporting arena. “Eat everything in sight, in essence,” he says, when asked what he did after the race. “Got a takeaway that evening and had four portions or something outrageous. Just whatever you can get your hands on, really. “And there was two of us, my brother staying in the same accommodation – so it was just carnage. We must have gone through 15,000 calories between the two of us just that afternoon. It was mental.” Speaking about his record-breaking achievement, Arentz says it’s a funny feeling, as he pushes to better himself again. “It’s not that I feel a fraud with it, but it does feel like pretty much any other national record has got a time that’s a fair bit quicker,” he says. “There just happens not to have been someone from Wales in the modern era with all the faster aerodynamics, the super shoes, all these things, that has ever gone that fast.” However, as the athlete provides his answer, he checks himself and recognises what he’s achieved. “But actually sometimes, you’re right, you need to take a step back and think, of course, I’m immensely proud of it,” he continues. “It’s great. When I was an 18-year-old getting into the sport, if you’d ever have told me that (this) was on the cards, I’d have been like, ‘that’s absolutely unbelievable. That’s so cool.’ Even just to have that initial record, if I ever got that, there would have been a time where I would have happily retired after that and felt like I’d done everything I’d ever wanted in the sport.” Obliterating his previous record by a stunning 20 minutes didn’t come without a bump in the road, though. Arentz suffered five chest infections in a matter of months prior to achieving this record. “I think I had about five chest infections in about five, six months, which is obviously not ideal,” he explains. “I’d get over one, a course of antibiotics, and then two, three weeks later, I’d just get another. “Obviously, every time you get one of those, it’s like, when it’s day-to-day as a non-athlete, it’s a pain in the arse, but not the end of the world. Whereas, as an athlete, to a degree, it’s a bit more because you’ve got a full week where you can’t train.” Arentz likens training to revising. When he was sidelined with the infections, he wasn’t able to a revise for the exam that everyone else was working towards – the Ironman race itself. “I had blocks of consistency, but then just periods where I was just sick, really sick in bed,” he says. “It wasn’t anything serious as such it was enough to stop me from training, enough for me to not really get any results earlier in the year. “I got sick. I tried to race Ironman Austria in June. On the day before the race, one of these chest infections came on. The morning of the race, I’m coughing up green phlegm. I couldn’t even start the race. I was extremely disappointed. I’m geared up to that and then to have that happen.” But it wasn’t just infections that stopped Arentz from getting into his stride (quite literally). “I’ve been crashed into in the year as well. I’ve been this half Ironman in Gran Canaria,” explains Arentz. “It was a multiple lap course, and an age group just pulled out on me. I hit a cone and went flying and just crashed. It was really bad. “I’ve done one other race in Swansea where I got around, but not particularly well. I’d just come off another bout of illness. I was a bit like – this year’s just gone horribly! Then to finally have that (record) was good, to be fair. “Just managed to turn it around, which physically is always doable. It’s more mentally that’s quite difficult when you feel like you’re set back after set back. Trying to come back from that is harder than anything, really.” Looking to the future, Arentz, who hails from Tenby but currently lives in Nottingham, would love to race Ironman Wales in his hometown. The Welshman has indeed done it four times before (three as an age-grader, one as a pro), but there has been no professional male race in Tenby since 2022, and he says it wouldn’t be fair to race in an age group. Plus, he’d just get disqualified anyway, being a pro. “I can tell you, hand on heart, 100%, if there’d been a male professional race any of the years, including this year, I would have been there,” says Arentz, speaking passionately. “I would have prioritised that race. That’s the single most important race to me. If you ask me any race you want to win, including Kona (World Championships), I’d say I’d rather win Ironman Wales. That would mean more to me than any records or anything. To me, Ironman Wales is the one that got me into the sport. “It’s the one I watched my dad and my uncle and various friends do as a teenager. That’s what got me into it. I know that course inside out, and it’s just in the support and everything, just family being there, friends being there, everything. It’s just to cross the line first there. “To me, although it’s silly, because it’s actually a relatively low-key race that isn’t that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, to me, emotionally, it would mean more than winning anything else or doing anything else. If I was to say I had one goal in my career to do, it would be to win Ironman Wales. “As a professional athlete, that would be the pinnacle. That would be what would mean most to me. That would be the one you ask, are you happy post-race? If I won Ironman Wales post-race, I guarantee there’d be no answer other than 10 out of 10, happy. “Even if I hadn’t had a great race, even if no one else decent had shown up, even if overall there’d been a poorer performance than what I’d done in the past, that would emotionally, for me, mean so much.” For now, Arentz looks ahead to Ironman Arizona, but it’s clear that the day he dreams of most is a return to Tenby – to take on the race that ignited the fire inside him – a feat that would mean even more than the World Championships. He’ll continue to chase records and compete around the world, but for Arentz, crossing the finish line in his hometown would be the ultimate victory. — Professional shots of Finn have been supplied by Huw Fairclough. Check out his Instagram page by clicking here.