The architect of my return was Neill, aka Wetwipe, who was doing the race himself in 2011 and who began a long, wearying campaign to get others to do it with him by bringing the subject up every five fucking minutes. Joe was the first to cave in, his resistance worn down by being of an age where he can sit on the train with his flies open and people assume it’s absent-mindedness rather than a bold sexual gambit. Then I caved in, then Andy Golden and finally Tony Nutt, a once excellent athlete who has gone to seed and thus goes by the nickname of ‘Prolapse’. Tony now spends so much time on golf courses that he could launch his own range of golf balls – and I think I can speak for many of my friends when I say that, at some point, we’ve all wanted to club Tony’s balls. We were, of course, accompanied on this trip by the hubbly-bubbly coven of witchy gossips that comprise our wives, girlfriends and Joe’s daughters, all attempting to get their five portions of fruit a day via the medium of pomegranate margaritas.
Having raced somewhat haphazardly in Lanzarote before, I chose my kit for this race with great care, designed to give me the best possible result and, more crucially, beat all my mates.
• My Kuota Kaliber time trial bike with deep-section Spinnergy wheels designed to eke out those few extra seconds when I’m not toiling into a head wind.
• A Giro aero helmet which was nicely aerodynamic but which is so tight on your head it leaves your ears feeling like a couple of braised lamb chops.
• A bento box fitted to my bike, which is ideal for storing energy gels where you can easily reach them and then squirt the contents all over your hands in comfort.
• An Ironman Lake Placid finisher’s cap so that, no matter how bad you are looking, people will know you’ve done this sort of thing before.
• My Aquasphere goggles, which give you excellent visibility under water, although to be honest this is not always a good thing.
• Some large wrap-around sunglasses, perfect for seeing in very bright conditions and hiding large parts of your face when you are in pain.
Being a highly organised group, we contrived all to end up staying in completely different hotels, and I thought ours was fine until Nicky let me know different by writing the word ‘knob’ on my head in SPF50 sun cream while I slept on a pool lounger. We all managed to get together for meal times, though, all except Neill whose obsession with his hygiene meant that pre-race he would only eat in his own hotel, earning him the nickname of ‘Bin Laden’ for his refusal to leave his compound. On the drive to the race registration, which took place in a broom cupboard at Club La Santa, we noticed that most of the people out cycling appeared to be leaning at 45 degree angles thanks to the raking crosswinds. That made me wonder whether my selection of wheel was indeed worthy of the word tanned into my forehead.
Race day dawned with my watch alarm going off at 4.00 a.m. Pointless, really, because I’d been waking up every half an hour since midnight anyway. Setting the tone for the day ahead, I stepped out of bed and straight on to the inner-tube dust cap I’d lost the previous night, causing me to hop around the room in agony. Then came the attempt to force down a bit of breakfast, which always seems to be something of a trial before a race. Normally, I have no problem wolfing down food at any hour of the day, but immediately before a race I struggle to swallow even a slice of toast unless I’ve chewed it about 50 times and then put it through a blender. As I was staying very close to the start line, it was just a short walk to the gallows, er, transition, where I stared fruitlessly at my bike for a while, bending over it pretending to make minor, but obviously crucial, technical adjustments, all in a bid to look much more professional than I actually was. Then it was wetsuit on, hat on, goggles on and a waddle into the water to stare into the distance in a manly fashion.
Remarkably, considering the beach was populated with 1,500 people all dressed in identical black rubber wetsuits with orange hats, I found Joe, Tony, Neill and Andy and wished them all just enough luck to ensure they finished behind me. There’s an odd atmosphere at the start of any Ironman when 1,500 people are standing there with identical expressions that say, ‘Oh, Christ, it’s finally here,’ but I didn’t have time to ponder this for long because somewhere, a gun went off and 1,500 people all jumped on me. It’s hard to describe a triathlon swim in any detail while still maintaining the rip-roaring pace of this book, so I’ll just say the words ‘sighting’ (which is looking up to spot the course markers), ‘scrappy’, ‘turn buoys’ and ‘gob full of salt water’ and you’ll get the picture. However, I emerged Kraken-like from the depths in 59 minutes feeling well pleased with myself … for the final time that day.
Being a natural blond with baby soft skin, I am prone to getting sunburn if I stand for too long under a neon strip light. As such, the prospect of spending several hours with my lily-white shoulders exposed to the north African sun means I have to apply sun cream liberally or, better still, get someone else to apply it for me. In the transition tent at Lanzarote there were several people walking around with industrial sized bottles of sun block slapping it all over anyone who wanted it. I made it known to one of them that I needed basting, and she duly obliged. Unfortunately, what I hadn’t realised was that my wetsuit had rubbed the skin under my arms during the swim, and as soon as the suncream touched the unseen red raw spots by my armpits I took off like a windmilling firework, scrabbling at my shoulders trying desperately to scrape the cream off.
Things did not improve on the bike and I realised I may have made a miscalculation in my choice of wheels when I was whizzing down the road to El Golfo and the crosswinds nearly blew me into the lava fields. The sheer effort and concentration required to stop myself going face first into a load of razor sharp rocks was beginning to get dispiriting and my progress got slower and slower as I tackled first Timanfaya and then Famara – although my spirits were raised briefly when I positively flew up the hill to Teguise leading me to shout, ‘I am a CYCLIST!’ before turning round at the roundabout into a howling gale. This proved how wind-assisted I had been, leading me to mumble, ‘I am a FAILURE.’ Then something happened that has never happened before or since – having reached the top of the mountain at Haria, I stopped my bike, climbed off and sat down beside the road. In all the Ironmans I’ve ever done, I have never stopped once, not even for a wee, preferring to carry out the foul deed while conducting the freewheel of shame and peeing down my leg. However, this was different because, even by comparison with being the victim of a hit-and-run a week before Ironman Florida, something happened in the run-up to this race that shattered my world so completely that I wasn’t bothered if I never did another second’s worth of triathlon in my life, and now was the time it chose to hit me.
Throughout this book I have talked at length (and hopefully with just the right amount of pride) about the various members of my family, but there’s one member I haven’t mentioned so far. She was born in 1963 with the then little-understood condition of Down’s Syndrome, a chromosome defect that leaves people with mental and physical disabilities. This was a time when many disabled children went into homes or were not given opportunities to integrate into society, but she was taken home and brought up in a loving environment by parents who doted on her. Although they were warned by doctors that she would probably not live past the age of four, she defied the odds by learning to walk, then talk, then read, then write and a thousand other things. Though nothing at all was expected of her, she went to school, learned to paint and draw, play music, do her sums and charm absolutely everyone she met with a dazzling smile and cheeky laugh. Her name was Nichola (known as Nicky, though not to be confused with the other, more vocal Nicky Brunt to whom I am married) and she was my sister.
When I was born five years later, she adored me from the word go and we grew up as close as it’s possible for a brother and sister to be. As I grew older, despite being her ‘little’ brother, I effectively became her big brother and protector, getting into more fights than I can remember with any kids who ever mocked her or stared at her for j
ust a little too long. For her part, she started a job in a workshop and, while continuing to live at home with my parents, built a fulfilling and independent life for herself. Even when I left home, started a job, bought my own home, got married and so on, I went home to see her all the time to plague her when she was trying to watch telly, tease her about boys at work who had asked her out, and generally annoy her the way horrible little brothers are meant to do. When I took up triathlons she became my biggest fan and I would give her my finisher’s medals to hang on her bedroom wall after taking them to work to show her friends what her brother had done. I can honestly say she never did a second’s harm to anyone in her entire life – except when, in early 2011 at the age of 47, she died, and broke her little brother’s heart.
It is hard to describe how I felt in the weeks after her death but ‘numb’ seems to be most appropriate. I remember that I didn’t cry, because as painful as this was for me, it was infinitely more so for Mum who had now endured the double loss of my sister and my lovely dad, who had passed away nine months earlier at the age of 80. Someone had to deal with the million things that had to be dealt with, and that someone was going to be me, although I spent the next few weeks very much going through the motions when it came to life in general. In truth, I didn’t want to go to Lanzarote, let alone do an Ironman there, because my mind was all over the place and I genuinely didn’t give a toss about the race, or indeed anything. It may have been tiredness that finally brought the emotions to the surface, or it may have been the inevitable low spot you suffer during an Ironman, I don’t know, but when I climbed off my bike at the top of Haria I could barely see through the tears that had suddenly welled up. I sat down on the side of the road and, I don’t mind admitting, I cried my eyes out. After a decent period snivelling, I’d like to say that images of my sister urging me to carry on came into my head, but in truth I just got cold, deciding that I might as well ride down the other side of the mountain. Whether through catharsis or just warming up a bit, when I reached the bottom I was feeling much better and so carried on, not racing though, just pedalling and trying not to have any more self-pitying breakdowns. Although I was feeling better, I still wasn’t feeling good, and cut an uninterested figure when Andy passed me and Neill rolled into transition just behind me. It took me 7 and a half hours to complete the bike course, and wearing an aero helmet for that amount of time leaves you with a headache that feels like you’ve tried to headbutt a comet.
Fortunately, the sight of my friends buzzing around me stirred my competitive soul and, on setting off on the run, it wasn’t long before I steamrollered over the top of Andy. I was about halfway back on the first lap of the run when I saw Neill chugging towards me in the other direction.
‘How far to the turn?’ he yelled, with dreams of catching me burning in his eyes.
‘Just round the corner,’ I lied, hoping to make him inject some fruitless yet debilitating pace into his running, and loped off laughing. My jollity was short lived as I turned to complete the first of the three laps to hear that winner Timo Bracht had already finished and had done so in a new course record, making me feel distinctly inadequate and also making me want to grab hold of the announcer and pull his backside out through his nose. Further up the road I spied Neill trying to extricate himself from a roadside Portaloo while battling cramp.
‘It was miles to the turn, you bastard,’ said the Welsh one, which cheered me up enormously. Soon I also spotted Tony – walking – and ran alongside him to tell him I was on my last lap, news he greeted with a heartfelt ‘Piss off.’
It’s hard to describe the monotony of a marathon so again, through the medium of word association, I will merely say ‘heat’, ‘gels’ and ‘burp’ and once again you should get the picture. Finally, I saw the finishing chute and there, waiting at the end, was Kenneth Gasque, smiling like a benevolent assassin. I crossed the line in 13 hours and 10 minutes, a new personal worst by a margin that not even a handshake from Kenneth could assuage. At the finish, all I could manage was some tepid soup made of cardboard and boiled socks before shuffling out of transition, swearing on everything I hold sacred that I would never, NEVER, come to this bloody island again. Would I do this race again? The short answer is no. The long answer is nooooooooooooooooooooo.
While I was waiting for Neill, Andy, Joe and Tony to finish (which they all did, and all behind me ha-ha-ha!) I got chatting to a fellow Brit called Dave Fenton, a fireman from Worcester, who had finished at the same time as me. As we stood and nattered about the ups and downs of our day, Dave revealed that a couple of years previously he’d had a skiing accident that nearly killed him and which left him partially paralysed. Doctors had given him fairly low odds of ever walking again – and here he was finishing his first Ironman, vowing to come back the following year to beat his time. Dave and I have subsequently become good friends, and I owe him a big one for telling me his story at that moment because it didn’t half snap me out of my self-pity and made me realise that if my sister taught me one thing in life, it’s that life is what you make it – so stop wallowing and get living. Despite a crap performance, I’d still bagged another Ironman finisher’s medal and, on arriving back in the UK, almost the first thing I did was to go and visit my mum, hang the medal on my sister’s bedroom wall, and quietly close the door behind me. Wherever you are sis, that one was for you.
Chapter 10
Still with me? Well done you, you have the kind of tolerance for tedium that will make you the perfect Ironman. Although I write regularly in 220 Triathlon magazine, it’s always a genuine surprise to me that people read anything I have written because while Pushkin could write a classic like The Captain’s Daughter in his second language, I can’t even write a shopping list without putting a stray apostrophe in the word ‘eggs’.
Before we plunge into the world of training for Ironmans and, more specifically, the looming black cloud of Challenge Roth, which is drifting inexorably towards us (me) like a bank of fog, we must talk about my international stardom.
‘Must we?’ you are no doubt thinking.
Yes, I’m afraid we must, because this may well be the only book I ever write and this is, therefore, my only chance to tell the world that I have represented Great Britain not once but FIVE times thanks to taking up triathlons. I have graced such events as the European Championships and World Finals a hatful of times – always assuming it is wee Jimmy Krankie’s hat we’re talking about. Be honest, if this were you writing this book and you had a chance to tell a somewhat captive audience about how you took on the world’s finest athletes standing erect, swathed in a union flag and with ceremonial sword in hand shouting, ‘Come and taste some British steel, foreign Johnnies,’ then you’d probably try to find a way to shoehorn it in, too. Not that it is entirely irrelevant to the world of Ironmans because, as we shall see, the races I have taken part in are all ‘Long Distance’ championships and thus the experience between me bumbling along Iron-distance courses in my spotty Cov Tri skinsuit, and bumbling along them in my GB skinsuit, is a shared one. There are some differences between ‘Long Course’ and Ironman distances but I sense your boredom threshold is already being challenged and trying to point out the differences would be like a drunk priest trying to explain the immaculate conception on a broken Etch-a-Sketch.
Triathlon is one of those sports that gives you the opportunity to spend more time on foreign soil than Julian Assange, with plenty of chances to don the red-white-and-blue if you can meet the qualifying standard and have the same attitude towards accumulating massive debts as Fred Goodwin. They are not the cheapest affairs in the world, and once you’ve paid your race entry fee, booked your flights, sorted out your bike transportation, arranged your accommodation and purchased your kit (yes, purchased your own GB kit!) then you’ll have just about enough left to buy a couple of flapjacks, or a semidetached house in Nuneaton. I first became aware of racing for GB back in 2006 when, fresh from my new star-status as Ironman finisher, I went to the Belgian to
wn of Brasschaat to take part in a middle-distance race known as the Superman Triathlon Vlaanderen – or ‘zooperman’ as the locals seemed to call it. Having thoroughly enjoyed it, a bunch of us, including the Steves, Tigger, Mark, Keith the Wookie, Joe (accompanied by an unspecified number of daughters), Tony No-Nutts and an Ali-Bongo style magician called Martin Burder, vowed to return the following year. We then learned that it was going to be used as the venue for the ETU European Championships, so if we wanted to race we’d have to qualify through our respective national bodies. This was England for most of us, the planet Tattooine for Keith and the Magic Circle for Martin. Fortunately the process for qualifying was fairly slipshod and involved us all submitting times for previous races over that distance. Every single one of us got in, although some of the results-fiddling made Robert Mugabe look like a rank amateur.
So it was that in 2007 I lined up in a GB skinsuit for the first time, sharing the moment with a bunch of good mates. It was a memorable debut and we all performed well, having been collectively warned by the team manager the night before that she’d ‘heard about you Cov lot’ and expressly forbidden from going out boozing, a lecture that would have carried more weight had it not been delivered in a bar she had just found us in. I remember my introduction to international racing being one of slight disbelief that here I was, last pick at school football and deemed shit at sports by old big-nosed Williams, representing my country and lining up against a bunch of overseas athletes be-decked in their national jerseys. The standard was much higher than I was used to from previous races but I gave a good account of myself, particularly on the run where I even overtook some elites (aka professionals), although in fairness they were about three laps ahead of me by the time I joined them on the run circuit. I have absolutely no idea who won the race but in the far more crucial Battle of the Friends, Steve Howes inevitably finished first, Mark was second, I was third, Magic Martin fourth, Tigger fifth and after that who gives a shit, although Nutty was definitely last.
Accidental Ironman Page 14