Accidental Ironman

by Brunt, Martyn

  And then there’s me, Martyn Brunt, currently awaiting the cannon’s boom while burdened with the weight of expectation and teetering on the edge of self-befoulment. Through years of self-sacrifice and gritty determination I have carved out a reputation as one of the sport’s top mediocre performers, whose only talent appears to be being able to tolerate limitless amounts of pain (although not my own). My kicking has seen off Monsieur Froggy and as the seconds tick down to the start it occurs to me to wonder whatever happened to Katie Laws who was the first girl I fancied at school, what the capital of Peru is, and is it just me who thinks that Alan Sugar looks like a dog’s bollock balanced on top of a suit? None of this has any relevance to the race I’m about to do, but it just goes to show how your mind wanders when you’re nervous.

  I check my watch, wondering whether to start it now or leave it until the cannon actually goes off so I will know to the precise second how much I’m failing my target times by throughout the race. These final seconds before the start are the closest you will feel to your fellow competitors, a kinship based on shared suffering, shared nerves, shared effort and the shared joy that completing this kind of event weirdly brings you. Triathlon is an egalitarian sport that makes little distinction between the poor (me), the rich (my friend Neill Morgan), the exciting (Jenson Button), the dull (Neill again), the upper classes (my friend Will Kirk-Wilson), the lower classes (anyone from Bedworth), the good (Chrissie Wellington), the bad (Ponce Armstrong), the old (Alistair Brownlee), the young (Jonny Brownlee), the fat (my friend Tony Nutt), the thin (Tony’s hair), the popular (Spencer Smith) and the friendless (me after this). I like to think that something we’ve got in common is a vague sense of wonderment about why we’re doing this. Why get up at 5.00 a.m. to go swimming? Why give up a nice cozy bed to go cycling for hours in all weathers? Why go swimming in a freezing lake? Why run so far or fast that you virtually collapse? Why give up your night out because you are too tired to move – or because you have to train the next morning?

  Like most triathletes in training for an Ironman, I never really dwell on ‘why’, being naturally more interested in ‘what’. What was my time for that last lap? What is the weather going to be like for the ride? What kit should I wear? What can I do to get stronger towards the end of races? What will happen to my weight if I eat that biscuit? What is the price of those wheels? The only ‘why’ that I’ve ever dwelt on is ‘why don’t girls seem impressed when I tell them about my marathon splits at the end of an Ironman …?’ However, at the start of any race there’s nothing like having the feeling you’ve bitten off more than you can chew to give you a moment of self-awareness and to question what on earth you think you are doing! Am I here because I want to fit in? There’s certainly part of me that enjoys fitting in with people whose athletic achievements I admire, and I enjoy listening to someone talking about being ‘on the rivet on the K10/10 in a 53/12’ and knowing exactly what they are talking about. Or am I here because I want to stand apart? Try as I might I can’t help but glow with smugness when I hear someone talk about going to the gym or jogging a Park Run as the pinnacle of their fitness without thinking ‘Christ, that’s not even a warm-up!’ And, yes, I confess to feeling shameless superiority when I’m out in public and I see the undulating blob monsters waddling their way into certain tax-averse coffee shops and fast food chain restaurants, taking pleasure in thinking ‘I’m not like you – and plug up your tophole fatty, you’re eating too much.’

  Frankly, I don’t know, but I wish I could understand, why I’ve been so cold while cycling that frost formed on me, so hot after running that I jumped into someone’s ornamental fish pond, and so tired I’ve fallen asleep in a plate of food. I’ve been soaked and sunburned; I’ve had heatstroke and hypothermia; I’ve crashed, fallen, punctured, tripped, collapsed, been hopelessly lost, had endless bollockings from my wife for being late for things, been lectured by a beach lifeguard for ‘causing distress to the public’ and cautioned by the police for exposing myself to a passing coachload of pensioners while urinating up a tree. Maybe by the end of this book my reasons for participating in this nonsense will be clearer to both of us (not that you give a toss probably but I’d like to know).

  And is it just me that wonders why, in the name of sweet baby Jesus, I’m about to do what I’m about to do? As the last few seconds of inactivity tick by, I can’t help but wonder how big Katie Law’s breasts are these days and whether anyone else out there is an Accidental Ironman.

  BOOM!

  Chapter 2

  Steve Elliot

  Craig Freer

  Mark Edwards

  Graham Harris

  Okay, there go the good footballers. I expected them to be picked first because, even at the age of seven, they have that easy ability to control a ball with their feet without looking at them, a handy turn of pace, the ability to make space for themselves and the confident swagger that comes with being good at something that everyone wants to be good at. The bastards. Steve especially has talent and will go on to play at county level and be scouted by Coventry City before vanishing somewhere into the masses of kids who don’t make it, possibly as a result of pissing his talent up the wall. He’s good, knows it, and behaves accordingly, treating weedier kids with disdain and having girls waiting to carry his bag for him. Craig too has talent and will also go on to play at secondary school and county level. He’s less showy than Steve but a more prolific goal-scorer and much nicer with it, which makes his loss to cancer as a teenager all the sadder. Every kid has their nemesis at junior school, and Mark Edwards was mine for a time. The same age as me, similar looks to me, same interests as me, lived very close to me and our parents knew each other, which meant we often went on day trips together. We were sort-of friends in an uneasy kind of way, but rivals too and the occasional fights between us tended to be more vicious than any fights with other kids. And of course he was a much, much better footballer than me.

  Darren Rose

  Guy Slater

  And there go the goalkeepers. Again, no surprise that they have been selected by the respective team captains picking their teams from the knot of pale, scrawny schoolboys standing on a muddy football pitch behind the main school building. Teams need goalkeepers and these two seem keen to do it, although Darren is actually quite good. I am not good as a goalkeeper, being poor at catching, kicking and throwing and disliking being in the way of a wet leather ball that assumes the weight and velocity of a small planet when slogged at you from ten yards away. Guy was my best friend at junior school, which meant we spent a lot of time riding bikes together and fighting. A local farmer’s son, I can still picture him wearing the same baggy, grey home-knitted sweater to school every day (this was the early seventies when homemade clothes were standard stuff). Why he wanted to be a goalie I can’t imagine and we lost touch soon after we went to different secondary schools, though his absence from any First Division teams throughout the eighties and nineties suggests he may have dropped his interest soon after – as well as seemingly dropping every cross I recall him flailing for.

  Timothy Lloyd

  David Homer

  John Kerr

  Craig Burden

  Fair enough, these are the fast running kids who seem happy enough to peg it up and down the pitch all afternoon. Timothy is the short, squat, burly type of sprinter; David the tall, long striding choppy-handed sort; John his short-arsed equivalent and Craig the bandy-legged sort who looks like an egg-whisk when he runs. Every team needs players with pace, although ball control is definitely a secondary consideration to speed with these four. Tim is a nice lad whose mum knows my mum and who regularly plays at my house, David too is an inoffensive, slight sort of kid who seems more keen on being a runner than playing football. John is a spiteful little turd who should change his first name to ‘Juan’, while Craig is the other candidate I have for ‘best friend at school’ and is one of those cheery rascal types who always seems to be up to something but gets away with it by being che
eky and funny. He also has an older brother who is his chief supplier of Penthouse and Knave magazines.

  Robert Greenway

  Christian French

  Richard Lee

  Paul Randle

  Hmm. These are more your solid, workmanlike types, not particularly skilful but able to control a ball, pass it, and head it without squinting or shrinking their heads into their necks like a turtle. I’m not particularly surprised these have been picked ahead of me because they definitely try harder than I do and get more involved in any game of football than I do. In my mind’s eye both Robert and Christian have massive heads (physically I mean, I’m not suggesting they bragged a lot), which may account for their abilities in the air. I don’t remember much about Richard and Paul other than a vague memory of them believing that they were much better at football than they actually were. Paul went to the same secondary school as me but we were in different classes so we might as well have been different Zimbabwean political parties for all the contact we had with each other.

  Michael Morton

  Paul Morton

  Kevin Harborne

  Harman Howland

  Shaun Lester

  Okay, I had maybe half-hoped I might have been picked ahead of a couple of these because I am slightly self-delusional and because we’re now getting down among the crappier choices. None of these five has any particular footballing ability although, to be fair, they are at least keen on the sport. Kevin particularly wants nothing more than to be a professional footballer and lives near Coventry City winger Tommy Hutchison, making him a popular supplier of autographs, written in suspiciously childlike handwriting. Sadly, he is denied his dream by being as good at football as Girls Aloud are at potholing. Michael and Paul are the most competitive pair of siblings since Venus and Serena Williams, and it’s a toss-up whether it’s safest to have them on opposite sides kicking lumps out of each other, or on the same side kicking lumps out of others. And each other.

  Mitchell Edwards

  Robert Fox

  Darren Miles

  Shaun Moorcroft

  Now I’m worried and any ego I had developed by the age of seven has been seriously bruised that I have not been picked in with this group. Mitchell Edwards can run fast but isn’t interested, Robert is ponderous and couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo, and Shaun’s only claim to fame is to be a cousin of Great Britain’s star Olympic runner and Coventry Godiva Harrier Dave Moorcroft. (As an aside, I now know Dave well, having become a Godiva Harrier myself, and he tells me there is no Shaun Moorcroft in his family, the little liar). Every street has its trouble family, and the Mileses are the trouble family in ours. Of the four sons, Darren is the worst so I can only assume he has been picked ahead of me through fear, although his team will soon be a man down after he gets sent off for hacking someone down, calling the teacher a wanker, or just jumping over the fence and running off.

  And so, we are down to the last two, and their names are Andrew Owen and Martyn Brunt. The former is a timid but funny kid whose Italian mum used to stand at the school gates at home-time shouting: ‘Annderrrew, Annderrrew, hurrrry up or you getta no sweets’ and who had, according to Andrew, a ‘wooden buster’. And then we have Martyn, the worst footballer you will ever see in your life. Not only does he not particularly like the game, but he lacks even the most basic of skills, seemingly unable to control his feet without having to stare at them, unable to summon up the energy to leave the ground when jumping, and believing that the best tactic is simply to follow the ball around the pitch – or more accurately follow where the ball has just been around the pitch. Andrew and Martyn are the last two kids standing on the muddy pitch behind the main school building. The team captains would be quite happy not to select either of them but are forced to by the PE teacher, so it’s now an exercise in damage limitation. Which of these two will be the least inept? The captains are receiving words of advice from their assembled team about the various pitfalls of picking either one of them, and in truth whoever is picked will have as much impact on any game as Darren Anderton had on, er, any game. However, it does matter. It matters very much to Andrew and Martyn because neither one of them wants to be ‘Last Pick’ – the lowest of the low, rejected by all. Whoever is picked will sprint over to their new team, pathetically grateful for the crumb of consolation they have been fed. Whoever is not picked will not even have their name called out, they will just be stared at accusingly by the captain lumbered with them who will just say, ‘Come on then’ before turning and running off. And then it comes …

  Andrew

  If you grew up in the early seventies as I did, then this particular form of torture may be familiar to you. PE lessons consisted solely of football played between teams of about 25-a-side with a ball so heavy that if punted at you it would probably take your head clean off your shoulders. Teams were picked by choosing two captains (normally the two best players) and lining them up facing the clutch of skinny, malnourished bags of bones they had to choose from, whereupon the captains would make their selections by pointing at their chosen players with increasing indifference as they went through the ranks. Inevitably the best players got hoovered up first, and then so on until it was just me and some kid with a built-up shoe. This sadism was presided over by the PE teacher, Mr Williams – football fanatic and all-round bastard, and possessor of a tiny head yet enormous nose with cavernous nostrils.

  Mr Williams was Welsh and, this being the early seventies meant that Welsh rugby was in its pomp. Mr Williams, though, was from north Wales and a ‘devotee of the round ball’, which meant we got nothing but football all year round. This was pretty good news for most kids because it was the era of the first superstar footballers of Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal, with players like Kevin Keegan, Lou Macari, the Greenhoffs, Steve Heighway, David Fairclough, Sammy McIlroy, Charlie George, Malcolm Macdonald et al, struggling to get off the ground under the weight of their sideburns and growing perms so big that they obscured entire stands. Even Coventry City – my team – had a couple of good players, with Ian Wallace and his huge, ginger, bepermed scalp dazzling defenders, along with the aforementioned Tommy Hutchison, who could probably still get in the side now if he fancied it.

  This football focus also had its drawbacks. My school, Allesley County Primary, lay in a village right on the outskirts of Coventry and each year it would hold a school sports day full of such athletic events such as the 100m sprint, long jump into a dogshit-filled sandpit, shot-put with a beanbag, high jump over a couple of poles and a rope, and a longer run of some unspecified distance that involved a lap of the playing field. No training was done for this because Mr Williams didn’t like anything that wasn’t football, so our school was not generally a hotbed of athletic achievement. In fact, about the only non-football exercise we got as kids in the early seventies was from trying to outrun creepy TV celebrities. We did get to have a go at the occasional alternative sport and I vividly remember that in the wake of Virginia Wade’s win at Wimbledon we had a ‘tennis lesson’ – which involved trying to hit an airstream ball against a wall with a wooden paddle. If you managed it twice you could have lessons, and if you didn’t it was back to the classroom and don’t let the doorknob hit you in the arse on the way out. Needless to say I was back inside doing times tables before you could say ‘Navratilova’ and a possible future tennis great was lost to the sport, athough sitting on ‘Brunty’s Bulge’ doesn’t sound quite as appealing as ‘Henman Hill’.

  What I’ve done in the past couple of pages is to try to set the scene for the rest of this book (and, perhaps, pique the interest of any passing psychiatrist) by underlining that, from a very early age, I was deemed as being shit at sports. Mostly this was because I was shit at sports, although I grew up slightly resentful of the fact that I was deemed shit at sports because I was shit at football. It was some years before people learned that I was also shit at rugby, cricket, hockey, athletics, squash and tennis. Whether I was shit at them because I
already lacked self-belief in my sporting abilities, or because I was genuinely shit at them, is one of those chicken-and-egg debates. Actually, no it isn’t. We’re friends now and I can truthfully confess to you that I was indeed shit at sports.

  Things did not improve when I went to secondary school – although at least I was spared the hated football, because at my new grammar school they didn’t play it, no doubt considering it a pastime for pikeys and chavs. Instead – horror of horrors – they played rugby. I didn’t think it was possible for me to dislike playing any sport more than football, but I quickly realised how wrong I was the first time we were made to play rugby. It took precisely one lesson for the sports master to work out exactly who were going to be the gentlemen in the team in the years to come and who was going to be condemned to fruitlessly farting around on the outfield with the ‘other ranks’ for the next fifteen school terms. The rugby team at school seemed to be populated entirely by thick-necked, slow-witted types called Ollie or Will, and their attitude towards those of us who weren’t interested in rugby – as well as their general attitude towards girls, art, music, any sport that wasn’t rugby, anyone slightly camp and thus a bit gay, and anyone with vaguely dark skin – did not make me yearn for their company.