With the swim and mass-start punch-up gone, so were my chances of a good result and instead the race started as a time-trial with nationalities going off in groups. Alphabetically I was first man off in the GB 40–44 section and for two blissful minutes I was at the head of a phalanx of GB athletes storming up the road in Red Arrows formation. Then, teammate Dave Johnston worked out that I was going very, very slowly, at which point everybody buggered off up the road leaving me to ride alone, hacking up my innards like I was being exorcised. In many ways, the bike course was reminiscent of Ironman Lanzarote in that it was:
a) hilly,
b) windy, and
c) I was bloody awful.
Still, the scenery was lovely going through the desert and into the national park and it was nice to see old friends Roger Denton, Justin Littlechild, John Levick, Stuart Austin and half the field pass me, many of whom had time and breath to ask if I was all right as they whizzed by. I did manage to pass a few riders, including some Yanks who’d gone off too hard, some Japanese who were freezing to death and an Australian who was fat enough to smother a buffalo, but overall I was glad to arrive at T2 – which was actually T1 – and start shuffling. Despite feeling as comfortable as a woman at a Star Trek convention I started running surprisingly well and discovered that the only thing more satisfying than overtaking Americans is overtaking Americans who are walking.
At one point, I thought my running had been recognised by the crowds, who started cheering as I approached, at which point GB elite Rachel Joyce overtook me on her way to take victory and be crowned world champion, taking the applause and my dignity with her. I ran a fast final lap, mostly because I was being chased by a Canadian midget in alarming shorts, and it was with some relief that I crossed the finish line, collected my bike, caught the bus back to the hotel and went straight back to bed, all in one fluid movement. I had finished in 8 hours, 50 minutes slower than in Finland and so far down the field of finishers I could hear Tony Nutt laughing all the way from Britain. So it was that my attempt at world domination went the way of most evil geniuses and it was back to plan B with the Death Star.
Following my world-class world drubbing I wanted to head home with my tri-suit between my legs but no, oh no, no, no, Mrs B wanted to see the lights of Vegas and the sights of the Grand Canyon. I spent three days like a wet-lipped buffoon being frogmarched around casinos, watching my life’s savings (£40) go up in a puff of cigar smoke. I even gave her the shirt off my back, which at least upset the Americans by revealing a back so hairy that if I ever leaned against flock wallpaper I’d have to be cut free. And no trip to Nevada would be complete without being driven out to Eagle Point in the SNOW to see the Grand Canyon, sneezing and freezing my balls off on the walk up to the edge of the canyon, which I couldn’t look over because I’m scared of heights. Oh, take me back to Finland’s plains and never let me roam again.
Chapter 11
It is June, it is my final preparation race before Challenge Roth and AT LAST, after ten years of doing triathlons, I have FINALLY made it on to the podium at a race.
Actually that’s not strictly true, I was on a podium waaaay back in 2004, but rather than standing on it I was slumped on it looking like a deflated testicle having just completed my first ever Half Ironman seven minutes inside the cut-off. The race was my very first attempt at any kind of longer-distance race and it took place in the hedgeless flatlands of Belgium. My abiding memory of it was shuffling past mirrored shop windows on run laps through a high street with my red face, sun-blocked mouth and spotty shirt making me look like a clown having a heart attack. The other thing I remember was that on the race photos, you can see that the winners’ medal ceremony is GOING ON BEHIND ME while I’m still running! This humiliation led me to vow that one day I, too, would grace the podium. What I didn’t realise was that that one day would come about 3,650 days later after a decade of basically turning up and farting out races with deeply average results.
The scene of my 2013 ‘triumph’ was The Avenger Triathlon, a brand new middle-distance race held at Ragley Hall in Alcester. I’d set my sights on this race after finding out that one of the people helping to organise it was an old friend, Catherine O’Carroll, a woman who once conned me into running 15 miles to a lighthouse in Majorca with the promise of a bus back, only to discover once there that there were no buses – ever! In fairness, she also conned some Germans into giving her a lift back, and then said, ‘And my friend?’ whereupon I sprang from the bush I’d been hiding in and flung myself up against the car window like a giant, sweaty Garfield.
I also fancied giving The Avenger a go because of the usual triathlete’s reasons:
• Alcester is relatively local to the cut-price cack-hole that I live in, otherwise known as Coventry.
• There were a number of people I knew doing the race, including a bunch from my tri club, although, sadly, my old chum Tony Nutt had withdrawn after someone stole his tri-shorts off the washing line. I think it was the theft of the 12 pegs required to hold them up that really hurt him.
• The omens for success were good leading up to the race because I’d done three Half Ironmans already in the run-up to Roth and managed to crack them all out in under five hours, the most recent being the Cotswold 113 race, which I’d done just a week before and managed to take advantage of a notoriously fast course to record a new personal best of 4 hours 48 minutes.
• My friend Neill, Welsh Druid chieftain and sales consultant, used his mystical ‘Dai Lama’ powers of prediction to foretell that I would come second. At least, that’s what I thought he meant when he said, ‘You’re a loser.’
• It was a new race and thus good to support to help get it established on the triathlon calendar. And, with it being a new race, there was a chance the field of competitors wouldn’t be as large as usual, giving me a much better chance of finishing higher up the leader board. This last one should henceforth be known as ‘the real reason’, because it is.
I’d also indulged in my very first aquathlon shortly before the Avenger and, while not exactly enjoying the experience, it gave me a much-needed reminder that longer-distance races are where it’s at for me, because I sure ain’t got the speed needed for the short ones. It seemed odd to be doing my first ever aquathlon after so long in the sport that my early results were written in Latin, and it’s not exactly ideal preparation for 140.6 miles of toil but, to be honest, I’d been training hard and just fancied a bit of fun. An aquathlon, for the unenlightened, is a swim/run event that sits alongside duathlons as a sort of weird hybrid version of triathlon. I’m not sure why I had particularly avoided aquathlons up to this point, although I have consciously avoided duathlons, having done one at Ashbourne in the build-up to Ironman Canada. I entered under the pseudonym of ‘Captain Pornoshorts’ in honour of an infamous pair of lunchbox-revealing, electric blue tri-shorts I used to wear. The absence of the swim, the only bit I’m any good at, made it a miserable experience for me and meant that, on balance, I’d rather be locked in a flotation tank being pumped full of manure until I drown, than do another one.
At the aquathlon I also sort-of fancied my chances a bit given that I had been doing very well in the swim leg of every triathlon I’d done lately, having even led out of the water a couple of times, although the fact that I haven’t gone on to win a single sodding race suggests I’m more Jan Sibberson than Chrissie Wellington. Again for you non-triathletes out there, Jan was an Ironman who won the swim leg of every race he did, setting world records in the process, but was then handed his beam-end in a high hat by the others on the bike and run. Like Jan, maybe I should market my own range of wetsuits, though in my case instead of ‘Sailfish’ they should be called ‘Shitcyclist’. On top of my swimming form I’d also been running very well and added a second British title to my 2013 roll of dishonour, that of National Masters 10,000m track champion, with a performance that had even Mo Farah worried – worried that the credibility of his sport was being undermined by the fact th
at a title could be won by some shuffling twit who crossed the line sounding like an asthma clinic.
So, in my mind, the calculation went:
New age group + no cycling + swimming well + running well = medal.
Right? Er, wrong. What I hadn’t considered was that with a 750m swim and 5k run the event would attract a lot of athletes who specialise in short, fast races as opposed to some gangling Ironman in training who’s turned up on the off-chance. I realised things may not be about to go my way when I entered transition and saw that people seemed bemused by the presence of a pair of cacky old trainers that looked as though they’d been selected merely because the owner couldn’t be bothered to swap the lock laces on to some better ones. Ahem. Things got worse when I set off in the swim where, instead of assuming my usual place at the front of the pack, I got pummelled and then left for dead by a massive shoal of sprinting piranhas. I came out of the water thoroughly chastened, huffed my way into the one and only transition and farted about putting socks on while everyone else donned their trainers and legged it up the road. Yes, that’s right, I put socks on, and you may well be thinking ‘tart’ but the skin on my feet is smoother than an otter in a car wash and I wished to keep it that way. The 5k was fast and furious and I spent the entire run behind the same runner, inching closer with every one of my so-called strides. My target, however, wasn’t about to let some lanky tosser come past and stayed ahead of me down the finishing straight, over the line, through the drinks station and over to the electronic results van. For my part I finished in 32:50 for thirty-sixth place blah-blah-blah who cares, I didn’t win.
I finished feeling the same level of disappointment as when I realised Cape Town wasn’t a place that is full of superheroes and, while the aquathlon was an interesting experience, it was too short to be of any real use for Ironman training. Furthermore, because there is no cycling, there is a distinct lack of opportunities to faff with your kit in transition – there’s only so long you can stare at your trainers before you start to look like a simpleton.
I was much relieved, therefore, to return to my natural habitat of a longer-distance race at The Avenger, where not only did I have lots of opportunities to mess about with my kit but also to make some much-needed adjustments to my bike to make sure it was set up correctly for a hilly-ish course. In these financially straitened times I have taken to doing my own bike maintenance, as well as saving money by sourcing and producing my own race-day food through bin-scavenging, roadkill and good, old-fashioned thieving. I cut a noticeable figure in transition attending to my bike in my usual fashion, thumping away at the rear-mech because I always work on the basis that there is nothing on a bike that cannot be improved with a five pound lump hammer. While I was laying out my kit I went through my usual pre-race routine of looking skinny and trying to make sure all the people around me could see that I was wearing a T-shirt with the words ‘Ironman Lanzarote’ written in large letters on the front. You might feel that this comes across as a bit of hopeless posing in a bid to give myself some much-needed credibility and to intimidate those around me with my experience – and you’d be right. But don’t be too judgemental about it, because it is what every single triathlete does, all the time, and the correct selection of race-day T-shirt is an important skill that must be finely tuned over many years.
Triathletes are a terrible bunch of posers really, which is surprising because what we’ve got going on isn’t a particularly great look. When knocking about just before races or out among the general population, the ‘look’ for Ironman competitors tends to involve a sun visor hat of the style that lady golfers used to wear in the eighties, cycling sunglasses, a CoolMax T-shirt from the most appropriately impressive race you have ever done, knee length shorts, a pair of compression socks and open-toed sandals. Ideally, you will also be carrying a race-branded rucksack and sipping energy drink from an SIS bottle. The selection of T-shirt is vitally important and you need to practise to get it right. Turning up to a sprint-distance race wearing an Ironman Hawaii T-shirt, or wearing your GB kit for a local race, will make you look like a knob. You need to select a shirt that shows you have done a race harder than the one you are about to do, but not too much harder.
I realise that I’m making the world of triathlon sound like it’s got more secret recognition symbols than Freemasonry, but that’s only because it has. For example, if you haven’t done a race harder than the one you are about to do then you should wear the best T-shirt you’ve got, although when it comes to ‘best’ there is a strict hierarchy of T-shirts that you must follow, starting with non-triathlon races at the bottom (running races, cycle sportives and the like) followed then by sprint-distance triathlons, then Olympic distance and so on though the distance ranks. However, a sprint triathlon T-shirt trumps a marathon T-shirt even though the latter is longer because any triathlon is deemed harder than a job, and everything trumps a Park Run T-shirt because triathletes assume the majority of Park Runners only do them on doctor’s orders. There is, however, one absolutely golden rule which must be obeyed – no matter how unsuitable your chosen T-shirt is for the race you are about to do, it MUST be from a race you have actually done. Wearing a shirt you haven’t earned is the greatest taboo in triathlon and being unmasked for claiming a false achievement is likely to see you driven out of town by a mob brandishing burning track pumps. The hierarchy of race T-shirts goes roughly thus:
T shirt
What you think it says
What it really says
Any T-shirt from a 5k, 10k, or half marathon running race
I am a proper runner
I haven’t done a triathlon
Finisher’s T-shirt from a sprint triathlon
I am a triathlete
I am a novice
Marathon finisher’s T-shirt
I am an endurance athlete
I am a crap cyclist
Finisher’s T-shirt from an Olympic-distance triathlon
I am a better triathlete than anyone wearing a sprint triathlon T-shirt
I am either too old or too young to do anything longer than two and a half hours
Ironman 70.3/Middle distance finisher’s T-shirt
I am a proper endurance athlete
I haven’t done an Ironman
Something wacky or adventurous like Xterra, a Channel swim, or Land’s End to John O’Groats bike ride
I am the real deal
I also haven’t done an Ironman
Non-Ironman Ironman such as the Outlaw or, er, Challenge Roth
I have definitely done an Ironman
I still haven’t done an Ironman
Ironman finisher’s T-shirt
I AM AN IRONMAN!!
I haven’t been to Hawaii
Double Ironman finisher’s T-shirt
Ironman is for wimps
I’ve given up trying to get to Hawaii
Ironman Hawaii world championships finisher’s T-shirt
Top this you bastards
This T-shirt cost me so much money I may have to fake my own death and move to Venezuela
Resplendent as I was in bright yellow Ironman Lanzarote T-shirt I wasn’t alone. For one thing just across the way I saw Dave Fenton, my fireman friend and the man who single-handedly got me back into triathlons after making me feel like a self-pitying goon, who was also wearing his Day-Glo Ironman Lanzarote T-shirt, making him look like a barrel-chested canary.
The swim in Ragley Hall’s ornamental lake was in two waves – ladies, relays and men 45 and over in the first, men 44 and under in the second. Yours truly lined up in the old gimmers wave, going off first, I assume, because race organisers reckon we’ve been up half the night anyway going to the toilet. Entering the water at the start of a race is always a reflective moment because it is literally the point of no return. While on the bank you still have an opportunity to fake an injury or just slink away unseen from the crowds of identically dressed frogmen, but once you start to wade into the water, you are committed to th
e contest. No matter how cold the water feels; no matter what you put your foot on – or in – under the water; no matter whether your goggles leak or your swim cap rides up your head and makes you look like Papa Smurf, you have to keep going because there are people behind you queuing to follow you in. Backing out now would be something you would never, ever live down. Like every swim start, I was presented with a choice of slowly immersing myself under the water over the course of about a minute, letting the cold water seep into my wetsuit like the icy claw of death, or just simply plunging head first into the water and running the risk of having the breath knocked out of my body and ending up with a face more numb than Audley Harrison’s. As usual I opted to stand waist deep for a few seconds until the cold water started to hit the small of my back and make me swear, then pitch forward quickly into the water and start windmilling furiously, shamed by all the people around me who have just dived in and are in danger of making me look like a coward.
I spent the usual, nervous pre-race minutes treading water while trying to pinch a metre or two over the start line without trying to look like I was. Then, as ever just at the moment when I was about to start my watch, the klaxon went and the cold, the leaky goggles and whatever I put my foot in were instantly forgotten as we headed off haphazardly towards the first buoy. At the first turn I realised to my horror that I was in the lead. Normally, you would think that this kind of endeavour would be a cause for celebration but it meant that, on a swim course I had never done before, with the entire wave behind me, all the pressure of potentially leading everyone the wrong way was on my shoulders. I was enormously relieved when a thump across my legs told me I was being overtaken and I could get on someone’s feet and indulge in some massively irritating toe-tapping. The swim course was over two laps and, as we passed through the start area, we were close to the bank where I could see some people I knew standing watching me. The fact that they were not making any kind of encouraging gestures suggested I was flying, and you could almost see the expressions on their faces saying, ‘He’s going well, the wanker.’ By now I knew there were at least a couple of swimmers in front of me that I could see, and there’s always one stealthy type who has somehow snuck past on my blind side. I was convinced that one of the swimmers ahead of me was my mate and watery nemesis Keith, so I set about hammering it after his distinctive form, determined not to let him beat me out of the water and thus claim any bragging rights. I emerged from the water in fourth place behind two relay swimmers, neither of whom was Keith, and a woman/mermaid who must have done the 1900 metre swim in about 23 minutes flat. After chugging my way round transition, I was off on the 56-mile bike course, seeing Keith arriving out of the corner of my eye just as I was leaving – blimey, I had been quick!
Accidental Ironman Page 16