We camped in the mountains overnight and started the next day with a 15km cycle. Then it was time to face my fear. The 67km kayak down the Waimakariri River – five and a half hours of non-stop paddling. Just think of all the piss in the boat! It went well for me, though. I capsized just the once. But it was here that I lost time to the eventual winner, a girl called Sophie Hart, who was phenomenal on the water. The 243km course is rounded off with a 70km cycle to Christchurch, where the race ends on Summer Beach.
I came second in a time of 13hr 22min. They presented me with a new kayak. I left it with someone with instructions to sell. Not sure what ever happened to it. Still, I’d broken one kayak in New Zealand, and now I was leaving them with another, so this was a restoration of the karma.
Things were now becoming slightly surreal with regard to my sporting endeavours. I’d turned up to this event on a whim, learned how to kayak in a few weeks, borrowed equipment and very nearly won the biggest endurance race in New Zealand. Where had this aptitude for sport been all my life? Sure, I’d captained the swimming club at university and in a small market town in Norfolk, but it was nothing to set my county on fire, let alone the world.
Had this talent been lying dormant, or had it just developed as I’d grown older? I have asked myself this question repeatedly, and still do. I think it must have been dormant, lost amid my pursuit of other goals. I could easily have missed it, had I not been open to trying anything and everything.
Talent needs work, though, in order to flourish. In 2000 I ran the 14km City2Surf road race in Sydney, and I was overjoyed to finish in 1hr 14min. Of course, that was by no means fast (although I didn’t think that at the time!), but it gave me a taste, and I worked and worked. Three years later I ran my first marathon in 3hr 08min. So I worked harder still, and then I tried cycling and worked at that. Another couple of years and I was cycling across the Himalaya. And now, less than a year after that, I was winning a kayak in New Zealand and attracting the attention of helicopters.
Hard work and an open mind – it’s the only way to realise the potential that is inside every one of us.
I left New Zealand for Australia to go cycle-touring around Tasmania with Helen and Billi, who arrived with a broken hip – my muppet soulmate. It didn’t stop her, though. She strapped her crutches to her panniers and gritted her teeth. Your body is capable of more than you could ever think possible.
Then I headed to Argentina to see Tina. I flew in to Santiago, from where I took the stunning bus ride over the Andes to Mendoza, Tina’s hometown. There were ten days until Easter, which was when Tina and I had planned a cycle tour in the north of the country. Until then, Prem and I decided to head south into the beautiful lake-riddled landscapes of Patagonia. It was like being in New Zealand again. Our route took us through a small town called San Martín de los Andes, where we stopped for the night. This place satisfied my passion for breathtaking mountainous scenery, so the next day I decided to do some exploring. I relieved Prem of his panniers, and we headed out into the Lanín National Park, Lanín being the volcano that dominates the area.
I was cycling off-road when a jeep pulled up alongside. The passenger spoke to me in Spanish, and I told him I didn’t understand a word.
‘Are you training for the duathlon tomorrow?’ he said in English.
‘No.’
‘Did you know there was one?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want to take part?’
‘Why not?’
He told me to report to a hotel in the town, where all would be explained, which I did once I’d finished my 100km ‘scenery’ ride. The race turned out to be the Green Cup World Championships, the culmination of a series of Green Cup events held round the world. It was an off-road duathlon on foot and mountain bike, and I signed up. The organisers had flown in the winners of the qualification races. As I watched the professional athletes holding court at the press conference, I started to feel a little daunted. And then confused. There was a briefing, but it was all in Spanish. I managed to find someone to translate parts of it, but little details, such as the route and the rules, remained a mystery.
This one was definitely for Prem. Free of racks and panniers, I wanted to put him through his paces. The race was held in the National Park and comprised a 7.5km run, a 30km bike and another 7.5km run. Not very far, but it was technically quite tricky, off-road through mountain trails. On a lovely sunny day, I toed the line with a few hundred others. I took the lead from the outset. And I never lost it.
My Spanish may not have been up to much, but I could tell that the question on everyone’s lips that morning in this small town at the foot of the Andes was: ‘Who is this girl?’ I’d beaten the professionals they had paid to take part. I’d beaten the girl who had won it the previous year. I was a cycle-tourist who had pitched up the day before. And I loved it. I also remember it just not being that hard.
I knew nobody in San Martín de los Andes, but all that changed at the after-race party. Everyone wanted their picture taken with me, and I was draped in the Argentinian flag. They presented me with a big cup (still got it) and a bouquet of flowers. There would have been prize money too, but because I wasn’t a pro I wasn’t eligible. I gave the flowers away, but I stuffed the cup into my panniers, loaded up Prem and headed off the next morning. I remember cycling on the road south to Bariloche and people leaning out of the window as they drove by: Beep! Beep! ‘Hey, Chrissie!’ I was quite the local celebrity.
By Easter I was back in Mendoza, just in time to go cycle-touring with Tina and another friend, Rata, around the desert landscapes of Salta and Tucumán in the north of Argentina. Then, in the second week of May 2006, after twenty months away, I flew back to the UK. I couldn’t wait, but not because I wanted to resume my job, particularly (in fact, I knew now that a career in the civil service was not for me). I couldn’t wait because I was desperate to throw myself into triathlon.
Within ten days of my arrival, I was lining up for a race – the National Sprint Championships in Redditch. It was a miserable, rainy day in the West Midlands, and as far as I was concerned, that was as good as it got.
As usual, I had borrowed equipment. First, there was the road bike. Paul Robertshaw, the very man who had introduced me to the idea of triathlon at the Birmingham Running and Triathlon Club two years earlier, lent one to me. It was a purple Klein, and this was the start of a special relationship. So: road bike, check. Now I needed to get hold of a wetsuit. Mark Hirsch, also of the BRAT club, had a spare. I tried it on the day before to see if it fitted, and it seemed all right.
It was definitely a day for wetsuits. I had recced the course with Rachel the day before. Her heavenly wedding on the beach in New Zealand five months earlier seemed a long way away. Let’s face it, I’d been spoiled rotten with the life I had been leading and the places I had cycled in the previous couple of years, so I couldn’t help thinking, as the rain teemed down in Redditch on the morning of the race: ‘This is just not that exciting, is it?’
When I put the wetsuit on that morning, it suddenly seemed a lot larger than it had the day before. It was quite obviously too big. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed. I climbed into the freezing water of the man-made lake in Arrow Valley Country Park, just before the gun went off. My wetsuit flooded on the spot. I couldn’t swim, I couldn’t breathe, I could barely lift my arm – and when I did it just let in more water. As the other girls disappeared into the distance, I realised I wasn’t even going to be able to finish the swim. Maybe I should have soldiered on, but it would have taken me an age to swim the 750m, and at that time I wasn’t altogether passionate about drowning in 14ºC water in the pouring rain in a wetsuit that didn’t fit. So a kayaker pulled me to the side. Race over.
Not that it put me off even slightly. Three weeks later, on 11 June 2006, I was lining up for the Shropshire Triathlon. This one had qualification for the Age Group World Championships riding on it. Ever since Ellie Rest, from the Serpentine Running Club, had qualifie
d four years earlier, the idea of representing Great Britain had fermented in my mind. The more I had raced over the years that followed, the more serious I had become about the idea.
So serious, indeed, that in the build-up to Shropshire I bought Paul’s Klein for £500 and called it Calvin. The night before the race, he taught me how to mount and dismount in my new clip-in shoes. I even borrowed a wetsuit that actually fitted. The sun was shining brightly for this one, and I felt in much better spirits. I took the lead on the bike and never let it go. And with that win I achieved my goal – a passport to the Age Group World Championships, which were being held that September in Lausanne. I won a mountain bike, which I gave to my mum, and I also won the right to buy lots of GB kit. I bought my race suit, and my proud parents bought me the full tracksuit as a present. My excitement and pride were uncontainable. I was going to the World Championships!
My joy was short lived, though. I was waiting at Snow Hill station in Birmingham for the train back to London that evening when I took a call from my mum. She had bad news. Nanna Chris, her mum, had died. I sat down on the bench, stunned, as the tears welled up. Suddenly, all excitement about the future evaporated, and memories of the past flooded back. How quickly emotions can turn. I thought back to our first Christmases at my grandparents’ house in Halstead, Essex. My morning walks in the woods with my grandad Sid. The hours my brother and I spent playing in their big garden. When I was a girl, Nanna Chris used to call me Zola Budd, because I ran around so much and never wore any shoes.
That proved prophetic because, even if I was not exactly running barefoot, I had made it to the World Championships with a minimum of equipment or method. Paul knew I needed a coach, so he rang a friend of his called Tim Weeks. Tim was a very good Olympic-distance athlete, but his competitive aspirations ended prematurely when he was hit by a car while cycling. He was reluctant to take me on because of his workload, but Paul persuaded him, apparently, that I had a shot at winning in Lausanne. So Tim set me a ten-week programme, which was compromised by the fact that I could do barely any running. I had a pain in my sesamoid, which is a bone in the ball of your foot. It had started in Nepal and never gone away. It was thought to be a small stress fracture. Tim sent me for physio at Parkside Hospital in Wimbledon, which was where they first diagnosed a weakness in my core, my glutes and hamstrings, which I still have to work on today.
I had very little money, but Tim was kind enough to accept a nominal fee for his services. His programme had me training twenty-five to twenty-eight hours a week. I was back at Defra now, and every spare moment outside work was devoted to training or socialising. A typical day saw me bike to the pool first thing in the morning, swim 6km, bike to work for a 9.30 a.m. start, work a full day, bike home, exchange Prem for Calvin, bike to Richmond Park, cycle round it four times, then be home by 9.30 p.m. Repeat five times, then really up it on the weekend. One bank holiday I cycled with a friend to Brighton and back (a hilly 120 miles), then went to the pool and swam 5km. It was a lifestyle that demanded considerable reserves of energy, which, fortunately, I have always had, but the drive and determination that has shaped me from my earliest years was even more important, insisting that I complete my programme even when energy levels were waning.
At the end of July, without tapering my training schedule, I took part in the Salford Triathlon. I pitched up the day before on my bike with a rucksack, having slogged it up to Manchester by public transport. Tim told me I looked exhausted, and went off to get me a cup of tea. By the time he returned I’d fallen asleep on the sofa. He had organised for me to compete in the aquathlon that afternoon, and woke me up half an hour before the race. Despite my lack of run training, I came third, then went straight to bed. When I arrived for the triathlon itself the next morning, he told me I didn’t look much better. I was determined, though, and I won by nine minutes. I stayed to watch the elite World Cup race that afternoon, and my time would have placed me among the top-twenty professionals. Tim was beginning to look excited. I set my sights on a top-ten finish in Lausanne, and maybe a podium place in my age group (25 to 29).
But it was the age group of my grandad Harry that was the cause of family celebrations before then. On 11 August he entered the 100-plus category. Grandad (he was my dad’s father) was born and bred in north London and was a massive Spurs fan – which meant I was too. He had seen them win the FA Cup in 1921, before Wembley had even been built. In addition to his telegram from the Queen on his hundredth birthday, I managed to get Spurs to send him a carriage clock and a card signed by the players.
Three weeks later, I flew out to Switzerland for the Age Group World Championships. Easy had lent me his iPod and told me to listen to a song by Eminem. The flight out was very early in the morning. I remember taking a cab from Clapham to Gatwick in my GB tracksuit with the song playing in my ears: ‘You only get one shot, do not miss your chance . . . this opportunity comes once in a lifetime. Yo.’
Never a truer word spoken.
But there was still an experimental feel to my preparations. The start time for the 25-to-29 age group was 12 noon, which is unusual. All my previous races had started at the crack of dawn. It meant I didn’t know what to eat or when. And, of course, I had borrowed a wetsuit. This one fitted, although I tore it slightly in my rush to put it on. Muppet. There was a small hole in the arm the size of a penny piece. Enough to let water in and to throw me off mentally.
My swim wasn’t great. After 1.5km of splashing in Lake Geneva, I was well behind the lead girls. But once aboard Calvin, I started passing a lot of people. You can’t be sure who is in your age group, though, because of the different start times. Each athlete has their age group inked on their calf, so you have one eye on the road and one on the back of people’s legs. I felt really strong, and I think I took the lead on the bike. My policy was simple: overtake everyone I possibly could. It’s not a complicated battle plan, but it’s one that has served me pretty well ever since. My run felt strong, too, even though I had done next to no running in training.
I crossed the finish line in a state of excitement. I felt I’d done well, but I still didn’t know how well. Georgie and Tim had come to watch and were beaming from ear to ear.
‘How did I do? How did I do?’ I gabbled at Tim.
‘You won!’
‘What? My age group?’
‘Yes. But you might win overall, as well!’
I fell to the ground and burst into tears. This was beyond my wildest dreams. I had hoped to sneak onto the podium for my age group, maybe, but to win my age group was another thing altogether. As for being the fastest woman in the entire field in a race that had the words ‘World Championships’ in its title – this was ridiculous! It hadn’t even occurred to me. I felt as if there had been some sort of mistake, as if this were an accident. Surely someone would come along and say, ‘Actually, you haven’t really won. Sorry. As you were.’
But, no. Moments later, I was confirmed as the winner of the 25-to-29 category – by seven minutes. And when every last athlete had finished, it was confirmed that I was the fastest woman – by four minutes. In an Olympic-distance race, those are huge margins. I’d not just won, I’d smashed the field!
There was something very definitely unusual about all of this now, about my body, that hapless collection of skin and bones I’d spent so much of my life despairing of. It appears it had all the while been harbouring a world champion. Now, at the age of twenty-nine, that world champion had finally stepped out.
Almost immediately the thought occurred to me that I should consider turning pro. I still enjoyed my work at Defra – I was considered something of an authority on post-conflict reconstruction, and I helped shape Defra’s policy priorities as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review. So I was still operating at quite a high level, but I wasn’t altogether content. Most of all, the sabbatical had not quashed my doubts regarding rhetoric and action. If anything, it had deepened them. What I was doing was so far removed from my work on CWASH. I was
becoming increasingly despondent at how little difference I was making on the ground. It was all talk.
So I was already craving a fresh direction in my professional life. And the feeling that it was the end of an era was heightened when Prem and I were forced to go our separate ways. The week before Christmas he disappeared from his usual spot outside the office. Naturally, I took the matter to the highest level, and I watched, horrified, the CCTV footage of some bastard cutting the chain and making off with him. I was devastated to lose such a dear friend after all we’d been through.
All in all, I became very receptive to the idea of becoming a professional triathlete. Tim Weeks agreed that this was the way forward, but he was very busy and had a lot of things happening in his personal life. He confessed he had taken me as far as he could at that particular time. So he suggested I seek out a man by the name of Brett Sutton. He had coached Tim Don, who had won the elite World Championships in Lausanne the day after I’d won the age-group race, and, through Tim Don’s manager, Tim Weeks put me in touch with him. I had never heard of Brett Sutton, but Tim explained to me who he was.
I was granted an audience – or a week’s trial, to be precise. I had to make my way to Leysin, a mountain resort in Switzerland, not far from Lausanne. This was where Brett Sutton could be found. If I could convince him I had what it took, then the chances were I had what it took. It sounded like a rite of passage, a mission to test my worthiness. And that’s exactly what it was.
8
The Wizard of Oz
In order to reach Leysin, you have to take the train from Geneva to Aigle. It’s a grim, serious-looking chuffer, usually plastered with graffiti, but it is the views of the mountains and the lake that make it so special.
When I took the train that first time, though, the scenery was lost on me. Night had fallen, and I was completely oblivious to everything but my reflection in the train window. Fair enough. I knew this week was not about admiring the view. The focus was going to be on me, on my body, on my mind. Dispassionate self-analysis was the order of the week, so all that beauty in the darkness beyond the window could wait for another day.
Life Without Limits, A Page 10