They say you never forget how to ride a bike. That's only true if you learnt in the first place...

Monday, 2 June 2014

I am a triathlete!

You might want to get yourself a cuppa now, before you start!

Today is a rest day (apart from the two netball matches I'm playing tonight, but, er, that doesn't count, right?) Yesterday was race day.  It started like a completely normal Sunday for me - I got up, went to church, busked my way through a few hymns, downed a cup of tea and then headed to Harringay Market for lunch.  Luckily, the pasta stall was there, so that sorted us.  Then it was home to make our final preparations and to book a taxi to Hyde Park (yes, I know, a taxi, but with the amount of stuff we had to carry, including wetsuits and extra pairs of shoes, cycling or public transport weren't really options).

Once we got to the park (in our MPV with blacked out windows!) we wandered down to the event area and on the way a chap asked us if we were doing the triathlon and, when we said we were, he wished us the best of luck. We stopped for a minute to put all the various stickers on our bikes, helmets and bags - we'd had to wait until we got there as it wasn't abundantly clear from the instructions which stickers went where, so we wanted someone else to copy or someone to ask.  While we were stopped, three people came up to us to ask us directions to the registration area, which made us very glad that we had done all of that bit on Saturday.

With all the stickers stuck, we made our way to the transition area and checked in.  We were allocated row I of the bike racks and told to find the next available space.  We were with other people who were in the same wave as us and, as it turned out, the people next to us had consecutive race numbers to ours.  We all got talking about why we were doing the race and whether it was our first and so on - it was really great to make some friends right at the start and that set all our pre-race nerves at ease a little.
Suited, but not booted!

Once we'd set out all our kit underneath our bikes, I had a realisation of something I hadn't quite bargained for - doing this triathlon was going to involve me going through the agonies of putting on a wetsuit in public. James pointed out that at least everyone was in the same boat, but I'm not sure if I'll ever get over it.  At this point I discovered one of the wonders of the modern world: Bodyglide.  This magic substance is a bit like vaseline, but comes in a stick (a bit like one of those stick deodorants that you wind up from the bottom) - you apply it to all your exposed bits before attempting to shoehorn yourself into your wetsuit and it makes getting it on and, crucially, getting it off considerably easier.

It was time to drop off our non-transition stuff in the bag drop and head to the start.  As we got to the assembly area, the wave in front of ours, all sporting orange hats, were just being taken over to the briefing area and then on to the pontoon.  At this point, we were next to a group of four or five Sikh guys who were all doing their first triathlon (James had to point out to one of them that he still had the stickers on the lenses of his goggles - it turned out he'd forgotten his prescription goggles and had had to buy some at the expo) - they turned out to be quite a feature of my race as I was neck and neck with them in the swim and saw them again at both transitions.

Soon it was our turn to head to the briefing area.  A man with a megaphone told us what would happen at the start and then we headed out onto the pontoon to get ready.  As we walked out, I suddenly felt very emotional, as I remembered why I was doing the race and all the work I'd put in to get me to that point.  We were allowed to sit on the pontoon with our feet in the water for a couple of minutes before being told we could lower ourselves in.  This is where it all went a bit wrong for me - I slipped as I was lowering myself and ended up more or less catapulting myself into the water, going a full two feet under the surface and eventually surfacing coughing and spluttering and with water up my nose.  James said later that he wondered what had happened to me as I was there one second and not the next.  In the end, I was alright and grabbed the pontoon as required a little while before the thirty second warning.  The ten second warning was sounded and then we were off!

We had been told by many a seasoned triathlete to expect a washing machine churn of arms and legs as we set off, with people swimming straight over others and doing everything they could to get an advantage.  It turned out that, in this instance, either we were so strung out along the pontoon that we couldn't get near enough to swim over people or none of us was competitive enough to be bothered about barging others out of the way.  In fact, the only person who barged me at all was James.  I decided not to barge back as it would be a waste of energy!  After the first 20 metres or so the split between the speedy front-runners and us not-so-speedy triers became evident and that was pretty much how it stayed for the rest of the swim.  One of the Sikh guys had to grab on to a kayak near the first buoy, but he made it in the end.  Otherwise, I didn't see anyone in any particular difficulty and we all made it back to the pontoon and up the ramp into the next phase, transition 1.

The way the timing system works is that as soon as you leave the water there is a timing mat that your timing chip communicates with, which means that from that moment the system is timing your transition time, until you cross the bike start mats.  This includes the run from the water to the transition area, which is something I hadn't trained for and wished I had.  The run was 300m in a wetsuit that you're trying to take off, barefoot and on a slippery blue carpet.  This took me a while.  Once I got into transition, I ran back to my bike and got the bottom half of the wetsuit off very, very easily (thanks to the Bodyglide) and then set about putting on my socks and cycling shoes, gloves, glasses, helmet and Marie Curie vest.  The one thing I forgot to do at this point was have a drink of water. D'oh.  I grabbed my bike and set off to the cycle exit from the transition area and ran down to the mount line (remember Jonny Brownlee in the Olympics? - I wasn't going to make that mistake!) to get onto my bike - then I was off.

We had been told that the bike course was flat.  This was lies.  It is fair to say that it wasn't mountainous or even particularly hilly, but it definitely (definitely) wasn't flat.  I headed out down Serpentine Road and then along the bottom edge of the park, round the corner over Serpentine Bridge and then heard someone shouting my name - it was James coming back the other way, about half a lap ahead of me.  I made it to the first turning point, near Speakers' Corner and negotiated my way around the 180 degree turn - the bit I'd been dreading.  I headed back along the return part of the lap, past the fantastic Marie Curie supporters and navigated around the other 180 degree turning point at the end of the first lap - this one felt much tighter and I only just made it.  I passed James again in more or less the same place, so I must have been just about keeping pace with him, even though I appeared to have given him a head start.  After the second lap, I headed back up Serpentine Road towards the transition and heard another person shouting my name - it was my friend Cecile, who had just arrived to support us.  I stopped just before the dismount line (the chap behind me got it wrong and went over the line - I don't know what happened to him) and ran back into the transition area.

Once in transition, having racked my bike, my first priority was to have a drink and an energy sweet.  That accomplished, I switched shoes, took off my helmet, glasses and gloves and swivelled my number belt around so that my race number was on my front, then headed for the run exit, just after which I saw Cecile again and gave her a massive high five.  After a couple of hundred metres, I realised I was in trouble.  I think that sitting on the bike for a while after swimming had taken its toll on my lower back and I found that I had a pain just above the base of my spine.  Walking didn't really hurt so much, but running did.  I carried on walking a bit and running a bit for the rest of the first kilometre or so and then, all of a sudden, it eased off and I was able to run the rest of the way.  Just after I'd got my mojo back, I shocked some Spanish speaking supporters (who were supporting everyone, but in Spanish) by thanking them, in Spanish, for their support.  On this part of the course, I was heading more or less due west along the southern side of the Serpentine and, given the time of day and the time of year, the sun was full in my face for that whole long stretch.  I was overheating a bit, but thankfully respite was just around the corner (literally) in the form of the shade of some trees.  I went past the Marie Curie supporters again, who were all shouting my name, which was written on my vest and printed on my race number, and blowing whistles.  Once I'd got over the Serpentine Bridge, I turned right towards the finish.
Just finished - that "laugh
or cry" moment.

As I drew level with the grandstand, the finish line commentators clocked me and gave me a shout out, which was very sweet of them, but they weren't done with me yet.  I saw James and Cecile shouting for me at the turning point into the finishing straight, and as I turned in, the commentators started interrogating me - they announced my (full) name, the crowd were cheering, I was waving, and then they asked me if it was my first triathlon.  Frankly, at this point, I had no idea.  In fact, if they hadn't just told me who I was, I don't think I'd have known.  My brain kicked in and I managed a thumbs up and as I crossed the line with my arms raised in victory, they shouted in unison "You are a triathlete!"

Then I promptly burst into tears.  Bearing in mind that I'm not allowed to watch the London Marathon or any Olympic medal ceremonies on the television any more because I'm such a sap, this was not entirely surprising.  Fortunately, there was an ambulance lady just after the finish line who, having established that I was physically OK, gave me a big hug.  She is awesome.

The Lambrusco, pretzel and Ribena party (with Matilda).
I somehow got myself around the corner to get my medal, have my timing chip removed and then have my picture taken with a big cheesy grin by the event photographers.  I met James and Cecile and then we were off to find our bags and bikes.

We finished the day with a lovely picnic in the park with our friends Cecile, Matilda, Anna and CĂ©line, who had all brought food for us and, in Cecile's case, Lambrusco.  Oh yes, classy beings that we are, we were drinking mini-bottles of Lambrusco, from the bottle, on a park bench. Cecile said she only just stopped short of getting straws...

We spent a while watching the inline skaters doing their tricks on Serpentine Road, but soon it was starting to get dark and chilly and it was time to go home.  We headed for the London Hilton, just across Park Lane and managed to get both of us, all our kit and both of our bikes into the back of a black cab at the taxi rank, thanks to the extremely accommodating driver, who knew exactly how to fit everything and everyone in and wasn't at all fazed by the situation.  Soon enough, we were home and sleepy.  A very long day.

Quite a lot of things surprised me about the event - the main one was how spread out everyone was on the cycle course, as I'd expected it to be a lot busier.  Another was that to finish the cycle in the time I managed, I must have been going at twice the speed of my average commute (although I wonder whether I was faster or slower than the person who reportedly did the cycle on a Boris bike).  I finished in 176th place in the women's open super sprint and in 35th place in my age group in a little over an hour and a half.

Several people have asked me what's next. The first thing is, of course, the London to Brighton Bike Ride, which is now less than two weeks away. After that, we'll see.  So far today, three opportunities have presented themselves - another triathlon, a longer open-water swim and playing American football (no, I'm not even joking).  Other suggestions are, of course, welcome!

Today, I feel surprisingly OK, although a little tired and a bit achy.  I'm anticipating that, as is usually the way, I will be a lot more achy tomorrow.  Whoopeedoo.

If you haven't had the chance yet to sponsor us (or you wanted to wait to see if we'd do it!!), it's definitely not too late.  Our fundraising page will be open for a while yet at www.justgiving.com/bbjatriathlon, so you can go there at your leisure to make a donation to Marie Curie Cancer Care.
Classy Lambrusco in the park, with Cecile (why am I
clutching those pretzels for dear life?)

James and I would both like to thank everyone who has supported us during this journey, whether by making a donation, by sending us a message, by asking us about our training or simply by thinking of us - it means a lot to us and we couldn't have done it without you!