Before the crowds. Before the race.

On Sunday, thousands of people will line the streets of Tenby for IRONMAN Wales. There'll be music, cowbells, nervous families, ridiculous amounts of Lycra and that incredible atmosphere anyone who's experienced the event will recognise immediately.

And somewhere amongst it all will be Justin Riele, hopefully somewhere near the front.

But this week I got to photograph him before any of that, and strangely I think that's what I've enjoyed most about the whole experience.

There was no crowd, no race number and no result yet. We had a coffee, wandered around Tenby taking photographs and talking about life, sport and business, then headed back to his Airbnb while he prepared his bike for one of his final rides before Sunday.

It was all remarkably normal, which seems slightly ridiculous when the man you're having coffee with can swim 2.4 miles, cycle 112 and then run a marathon considerably faster than I could probably complete any one of those things. 😂

It also made me realise that by the time Justin walks onto North Beach on Sunday, most of the really difficult work has already been done. Thousands of training miles, early mornings, nutrition, sacrifice and endless repetition, and in Justin's case two horrible crashes, four broken bones, surgery, rehabilitation, getting fit again, another crash and somehow finding the determination to do it all over again.

Sunday is simply the bit the rest of us get to watch.

As a photographer, that's made me think about what I'll actually be looking for this weekend. Of course I want the spectacular stuff: the swimmers from North Beach, bikes flying through Pembrokeshire, the agony and elation of the run and hopefully Justin fighting for the win.

I'll also be desperately trying to photograph my son Olly without becoming an embarrassing emotional wreck behind the camera. 😂

But I know myself well enough to know that I'll spend just as much time watching everything else.

The nerves before somebody enters the water, someone finding their family in the crowd, a volunteer helping an athlete who's struggling, or that moment when someone who's spent a year wondering whether they can actually do this suddenly realises they're going to finish.

The bits between the obvious bits.

That's increasingly where I think my photography lives, and spending a few hours with Justin before the race reinforced it for me. His achievements are extraordinary, but I found the normal bloke behind them every bit as interesting.

His wife arrives in Pembrokeshire on Friday and then, on Sunday morning, he'll stand alongside some of the best triathletes in the world and we'll finally find out how this particular chapter of his story ends.

I really hope it's the ending he's come here for.

But right now, nobody knows.

And I quite like the fact that I've been able to photograph part of the story before we know how it ends.

See you Sunday. 📸

Martin | Darth Marty Media
Photography That Starts With People.