To those of a certain generation ‘Ironman’ is a Black Sabbath number from their ‘difficult second album’, Paranoid. To those of another, it’s the film featuring Hollywood’s reformed-bad-boy Robert Downey Junior. But to those of the middle-aged-wanna-be-fit-and-relive-your-lost-childhood generation, Ironman represents a whole different kettle of fish, in fact a whole different world of hate and pain. A world condensed to three disciplines – 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile cycle and 26.2 (never forget the 0.2 as they are the hardest of 0.2 miles) run. I can now personally confirm that everything you’ve heard or envisaged about this event is absolutely true, not a word is a lie and I’d go as far as say not a single word is even […]

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Swimmer – Saturday 10th July 2010 Forget the World Cup. Don’t even consider the Tour de France. This Saturday saw your intrepid slippery fish take to the water in both his first ever official swim race and first ever attempt at the 3.8k Ironman distance. Surely an event worth noting. Tony-triathlete-Marsh, Grant Wyatt and I were competing in the 3.8km race (57 entrants) with Paul Broomfield taking to the water for the first time this year in the 1.5km one against 53 other participants. 22 degrees potentially made wetsuits unnecessary for the proper swimmers (Paul) but the rest of us were happy to bubble and boil away for the reassurance of the additional buoyancy. […]

…certainly not one year wiser. Yesterday saw your intrepid local triathletes compete in this year’s New Forest Swashbuckler (Half Ironman Distance of 1.9k swim, 56 mile cycle and a half marathon to end with) and it’s not a pretty story with a cuddly happy ending. All was going well as Jonathan and I met at 3.45am (yep, you read that correctly) and hit the M3 in a journey we’d completed several times, latterly only the day before for registration. There’s no way we could get lost as there was no-one else on the road, right? Wrong. Can you believe it we got horribly lost, ending up on the wrong motorway THREE times before finally getting back on the M3 at […]

Running around the City at 12.15am trying to remember where I’d parked the car wasn’t perhaps the best of training ideas for the night (morning?) of an event but at least when I found it and realised there was already a frost on the windows at least knew it was going to be a cold one… And so it proved to be. Bl**dy freezing in fact with a chill wind that absolutely cut through you, only for the intermittent rain to finish you off. Nice. And don’t forget the hail. I kid you not. Hart Sprint Triathlon is a relatively inexpensive and cracking wee event run by Hart Council just down the road in Fleet Leisure Centre. Attended by about […]

Hillingdon 25M Time Trail – 21st March 2010: Well, at least I was only over taken by two other riders… This morning saw Johnny and I enter the first Time Trial race of 2010, the West London 25 mile TT, my first proper cycle race ever, and I kid you not we were almost the only ones not racing on a time trial bike, with disc wheels and aero bars. Why, most of the other participants even raced in aero helmets ferchristsakes! Daunted is not the word but, as with most of these events, it turned out to be not too bad at all and the fear of anticipation is greater than its reality. An out and back course into […]

Is that the time? 02.38 and there’s precious little chance of any kip. Perhaps caused by having a few swift pints with the boys to calm the nerves, maybe brought on by a last minute carbo loading session of industrial sized quantities of pasta and garlic bread or simply the burning knot of fear in the pit of my stomach together with the recurring vision of being ‘swam-over’ and deposited at the bottom of the lake. Yep, that’ll be it then. Sunday morning saw your favourite gang of intrepid adventurers, Stu Hart, Jonathan ‘the butcher’ Greaves and little ol’ me, embark on the next chapter of physical pain and heart-break by attempting the ORCA Sprint Triathlon at Eton’s Dorney rowing […]