Ironman Leeds: RAF man Jack Stead joins 2,500 athletes for gruelling 140.6-miler in triathlon capital

Yorkshire’s triathlon hotbed - which produced the Brownlee brothers and countless other Olympians - stages its first 140.6-mile Ironman event.

More than 2,500 entrants will dive off the pontoon into Waterloo Lake in Roundhay Park for a 2.4-miler followed by a 112-mile bike course through North Leeds and then a 26.2-mile run around the residential areas of Rounday and Gledhow.

The word gruelling doesn’t do it justice, and yet joining the likes of 2023 Ironman world champion Sam Laidlow and British stars Kieran Lindars and Kat Matthews, is an encouraging 56 per cent of the field racing their first Ironman event.

Among that number is Jack Stead, 25, from Howden, just along the M62 from Leeds.

Stead might be more familiar to the social media generation as JackTriathlon, his name on YouTube and Instagram where he has built quite the following documenting his journey into the sport. A team sports player when he was growing up, Stead joined the Royal Air Force upon leaving college, and worked for seven years as a communications infrastructure technician in the RAF, based in Cyprus.

“About two years ago I was going for a course in the military to try and progress my career,” says Stead of how his journey into endurance events began.

“It was a hard, physical endurance course. But I got Covid the day before I was supposed to do it, so it absolutely ruined everything and left me with nothing to work towards and left me a bit stagnant.

“I found an Ironman 70.3 in Nice, France, and signed up for that.

“It was horrendous, though, really, really tough - and yet I still got hooked after that.

“I was running around at 22 years old being passed by 70-year-old Frenchmen, so it was a bit of an alarm bell. But it inspired me, looking around seeing all these people still competing at that age.”

Stead has done four 70.3 events (half-distance) and only one full-distance 140.6 race before, in Germany, which took him nine and a half hours.

He has been building up to his Ironman debut for the past six months, but was deployed in Qatar and because of the 45 degree heat, had to do most of his training on the turbo trainer in his apartment.

Since returning to Howden a month ago he has reconnoitred the Leeds bike course a number of times.

“The hills, Black Hill Road especially, are really tough,” he says. “I took my mates and they had to get off their bikes!

“The ambition on Sunday is to get round, soak up the atmosphere, the people around me coming to watch which I’ve never had before at a race; family, friends. There’s going to be a lot of points where I’m mentally challenged thinking I’m not going to finish this, so getting through it will be a big, big win.”

Beyond this Sunday, becoming a professional Ironman triathlete is a target, but so is getting more people into the sport.

Stead has been filming his training and his life and will make a documentary of his journey.

“I’m not just leaving the RAF to race, I’m doing it to try to document other people’s journeys, professional triathletes, and help them tell their story over social media and build their following.

“Because it is so niche, and the community is so close, people get behind it more and follow my journey more on social media.

“Everyone cares and is invested. Other sports are a much more diluted space. From an amateur perspective I don’t think there’s many people doing what I’m doing, helping people get into triathlon.

“I’m not just narrowing myself to triathlon, even though my name on social media is JackTriathlon. I want to share everything about my life.

“I don’t know where I’m going to be next year let alone in five years,, I just want to do something I enjoy. Say yes to every opportunity that comes.”

Before that, it’s 140.6 miles around Leeds, and then into Headingley for a celebratory drink or two.

“I think that’s why they’ve come to watch, I’ve promised them a beer afterwards,” says Stead. “They might need to wheel me in though after what I’ll have been through.”