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It is so long ago now but, in 2019, I said in this column I would train up and enter my first triathlon.
The whole of 2020 was pretty much a wipe out for casual triathletes like me. They got the Blenheim Palace Triathlon on but not much else and, as a token acknowledgement of my intention, I did stick in a long-range entry for a ‘sprint’ triathlon – if this is a sprint, 400m swim, 28km bike and 7km run, show me the stayers’ race – for a weekend this May when there is not much horseracing on.
But a bit like an after-dinner speech which you accept eight months in advance slightly hoping it will never happen and that either the dinner will be cancelled or the world will end in the intervening period, the Beyond Cotswold Triathlon has rather crept up on me.
It is still a bit cold for outdoors swimming training (what kills you, I find, doesn’t make you stronger). I have forgotten everything that Olympic triathlete Vicky Holland taught me in a swimming lesson at Bath, the initial inspiration for me to have a go at a triathlon. And my wet suit (£20 from a west-bound M5 motorway service station) is missing, possibly still in storage after moving house, possibly disintegrated by now.
My bike squeaks a lot and the application of hoof oil, the only lubricant round here, has done little to quell it. It is prone also to punctures from flints on the roads round here and a wicked chill wind at the tail end of winter hasn’t made for pleasant training runs, early spring hasn’t made riding it much more fun either. The running has been fine but there has been a shortage of time what with Cheltenham and Aintree and the school holidays.
Just about the only positive is that in the intervening two years I slipped from one age category to another. It is, I feel, better to be young in an older category (55-60s) than old in a younger category (50-55s) which, relatively speaking, means I will have youth on side.
I have had the emails from the organisers about what to wear and how the event will proceed in a Covid-compliant way – a staggered instead of mass start and 2m social distancing in the water, 10m on a bike, 2m running. This could play to my favour as anyone wanting to over-take me on the second leg, if I am not already at the back, will pretty much have to leave the road to do so.
I have no idea about transitioning from one leg to the next, but extricating one’s self from a wet suit with the zip at the back on the run without assistance is something one imagines not even Houdini would have found easy.
In an attempt to be slightly proactive, though, I ordered, online, a ‘tri-suit’ which, I believe, you wear throughout the race, under the wet suit, on the bike and on the run.
With a view to catching up Amazon, if an item is being sent by Royal Mail these days you get a text and email saying when it started its journey, when it will arrive and when the postman is anticipating his coffee break. You are informed almost every time your package goes round a corner. This does little to manage expectation and one is whipped up into a frenzy of excitement by the time it arrives which, nine times out of 10, can only be met by disappointment.
The package immediately aroused my suspicion when it arrived in something not much larger than an A5 envelope, weighing not much more than an ounce, and all I can say is that ‘suit’ is something of a misnomer in this instance – it’s more like a leotard with a bit of extra padding in the crotch area, just enough to make it feel like a wet nappy after the swim, for the second phase.
I am not totally sure what I am wearing but, resolutely, I am not wearing that.
