Race Face

One week to go.  What's done is done.  Any attempt at improvement now is surely too little, too late.  The regrets start to take shape - the weeks of missed swim sessions, the lack of training structure, the all-too-regular food and wine indulgence.  What I do know is that I probably won't die, and barring an incident I'll finish the race.  What I don't really know is where I'll come or what time I'll post.  I like to think I'll get under 1:40, but looking at last year's results, that'll actually put me in the bottom 10%, and I actually think I'm better than that.  I guess there's only one thing to do, and that's to race.

Most important preparation - getting your race face on.  Let's see...

Too surprised. I don't want my rivals thinking I've wandered into the race by accident.

Too thoughtful.  Fine for the office, not fine for a triathlon.  It's no place for a ponder, it's all about action.

Too Brucey.  No-one wants a fat Bruce Forsyth in a wetsuit.

Too Easter Island.  Just plain weird.

Perfect.

Nothing New

"In the Philippines there are lovely screens to protect you from the glare

In the Malay states there are hats like plates which the Britishers won't wear

At twelve noon the natives swoon and no further work is done

But Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun."

      - Noel Coward, Mad Dogs and Englishmen

Across the many triathlon web sites and forums, there is one common maxim - "nothing new on race day".  That is, turning up on race day with clothing, equipment or technique that you haven't already put to the test in a non-competitive scenario is a recipe for disappointment, injury, or, worst of all, chafing. With this in mind, and only 2 weeks to go, I decide to make the most of the beautiful weather and do a bit of a dress rehearsal, with a 20k bike/5k run brick.

First decision - what to wear. In lieu of owning specialist tri-shorts (and being too tight to buy some), the choice is between cycle shorts and swim jammers.  On race day, I'll be wearing them under the wetsuit for the swim, so the cycle shorts are out, lest the padded rear become a sodden nappy.  The swim jammers, black and knee length, pass for cycle shorts anyway.  On top, it's whether to wear my running top, or my cycle top, or possibly whether to swap in transition.  I choose to wear my cycle top - snug enough to be somewhat indecent for a fatty - but lay out my running top alongside my trainers in my little transition area on the driveway, should I feel coy when the time comes.

Doing a swim leg is a little impractical, so I simulate it by standing in the shower so I can test riding with wet shorts. By the time I get out the door it's gone 11am, and the summer sun is high in the sky.  The ride takes me round my usual loop across Avon Causeway.  A swift and uneventful forty minutes later I'm back home, with dry shorts and unchafed loins. Great success! I gulp down as much water as I can stomach, switch to running shoes and head back out the gate.

I decide to stick with the cycle top for the run.  I figure that the ride will have shifted pounds off my stomach and I now cut a dashing, athletic figure.  A quick glance in a passing shop window confirms this to be most definitely not the case.  The elasticated waistband gathers the bottom of the shirt tightly - it does no favours to a man's stomach.  Regardless, I don't believe any cars crashed or veered violently at the sight of a wobbling gut approaching them, but I wouldn't have blamed them if they did.

It's hot in the midday sun.  I curse that I've left it until now to get out the house, and more than once I think seriously about stopping for a breather.

"It's a bit hot for that, innit?" says a man getting out his car as I pass by.

Yes, it is. Somehow I plough on - if I can't do it now, there's no reason to believe I'll magically pull something out the hat on race day.  I'm hugely thankful to reach the traffic lights at Beaufort Road and watch the Garmin tick over to 5.00km.  I don't run a step more than I need to.

So, distance: done.  Nipples: fine.  Clothing: verified.  All good to go.  Bring it on.

Frequently Asked Question

A popular question along the way has been "are you doing it for charity?".  It's a fairly automatic assumption - "fat bloke doing exercise? Must be for charity" - so my answer is always "No". Doing this triathlon has never been about novelty value.  If I wanted that, sitting in a tub of beans would have been easier and more delicious. What it has been about is driving changes in my life that needed to be made.

"What would be on your bucket list?" says Emma, as we drink in the evening sun, and the Pinot, in the garden. "Where do you want to go, what do you want to experience?"

"I don't have one," I say. "If I don't believe in an afterlife, I can't believe that I'll be around in some form to regret the things I didn't do."

"But you might live that afterlife while you're still here," she says wisely, "someday it might be too late." I ponder for a minute.

"I don't think I'd have regrets about not going somewhere or doing something.  I'd regret not taking more opportunities to make life better for other people when I had the chance, because I was too lazy or too embarrassed or too afraid."

So, I can't pass up the opportunity. I hope you've enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy, these ramblings of mine. Even if you haven't, perhaps you at least appreciate my efforts to turn myself into a triathlete.  Even if, you hard-nosed bastard, you don't appreciate that, maybe you'll at least just think about how many lives are affected by the shadow of cancer (read this if it helps), and why I've decided to use this as a chance to raise money for Cancer Research.

If you're still having trouble (wtf?!), I'm going to make you a BOGOF offer. For if you help me raise over £300, I will also throw in the Pier to Pier swim the following week.  Yes folks, we're talking 1.4 miles of sea swimming.  That's three times further than I'll have to swim in the tri, and three times further than I've ever swum before in one go.  In the sea.  In a wetsuit.  I do not make this offer lightly, this is the stuff of nightmares.

From the stats, this blog has about 40 regular readers, so raising £300 should be a doddle. You can donate at JustGiving,

Thank you.

I Can But Travel

It's a strange thing.  I scoff down Sunday's breakfast and leave the house at 7:30am.  I sit in a variety of moving metal cases, until I magically find myself at my hotel room, just in time for Monday's breakfast.  I've slept only for about an hour.  To all intents and purposes, Sunday evaporated.

Lift music permeates the public spaces at Changi Airport.  Like everything in Singapore, it is spotless.  I head down the spotless escalators to the spotless platforms to get on the spotless MRT.  I get to the bottom, coffee in hand, only to discover the sign that promises a SG$500 fine for eating or drinking on the train.  Unlike "No heavy petting", such things here are not an idle threat, so I turn around and head back up to find a bin. The Mass Rapid Transit does exactly what it says on the tin.  It gets me from the airport to a 1 minute walk from my hotel in the heart of the city at a price that would barely get me to the end of the road on a bus back home.

For a Brit, the MRT map is a comforting glimpse of home.  The colonial days are recalled in Admiralty, Queenstown, Commonwealth; the people who made it in Braddell, Raffles Place, Clarke Quay; the home-from-home of Dover, Somerset and Kent Ridge.  The announcements on the train are made in clearly enunciated English that echoes the London Tube, including an almost verbatim "Mind The Gap". This morning, it's Monday rush hour, and my case just gets in the way.  Luckily, the English sense of not causing a fuss appears to be an export to this island, and legs are bashed and toes squashed with little comeback.  Opposite me, a tall lad looks even more tired than I do.  He yawns, and his eyelids slide shut, until he slowly topples forward on top of the small lady in front of him.  He jolts awake and offers a small apology before grabbing the hand rail.  If this is the start of his week, it's going to be a long one.

At Tanah Merah, I have to switch trains, and it's at this point that I get my first reminder of the relentless humidity of Singapore.  Weather forecasting is not an interesting job in this part of the world - it will be sunny in the morning, and it will rain in the afternoon.  Every day, it is 30 degrees Celsius.  Even the setting sun doesn't bring any respite.  If you're lucky, it might dip to 27 degrees in the night. I never get bored of telling this fact: the record - record - low temperature in Singapore is 19.6 degrees.  Benetton probably don't sell many jumpers here.  The humidity makes sweat spring immediately to my forehead.  It would surely be utter madness to attempt to run outdoors here.

Thankfully, the hotel offers a pool and a gym to negate the need to kill myself in the inhospitable climate. I arrive just in time to grab breakfast, at which point I note that the pool is right outside the restaurant windows.  I will need to choose swim times carefully if I'm not to put diners off their food.  My plan is to catch up on some kip before heading to the office, but something tells me that would be disastrous for my body clock.  Instead, I realise that if I don't get in some exercise now, another couple of days will have passed, albeit in fast-forward, without exercise.

In the gym, the treadmills have TVs attached.  Having no headphones, I skim around the channels trying to find one that I can watch without needing sound.  Eventually I settle upon what appears to be a K-Pop version of Saturday Kitchen.  The guests eat and drink behind a dazzling barricade of overlaid text,  scrolling, static, horizontal, vertical, big, little, red, green, blue, pink, yellow.  I have no idea what it says, except for the odd English word - "OK", "Wow", "Vicky". Still, everyone, presumably Vicky included, appears to be enjoying themselves enormously.

Next to me, an ageing Asian man plods away, just a little quicker than walking pace.  The clock on his treadmill shows that he's already been going for 30 minutes. I hop on and strike up a good pace.  I don't know if they're pumping oxygen in, but I feel extremely lively for a man working on little sleep.  After 15 minutes, I promise myself to not push it, but the lad is still going.  After 20 minutes, I'm ready to stop, but still he continues.  It's getting personal now.  I get to 5K in 26 minutes, his clock is now at 57 minutes, and while he's slowed down a little, he's still going.  I give up.

And now it's all starting to kick in a litttttttttttttttzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....................

Rubber

First thing Saturday morning, I turn up at The Wetsuit Centre. It's a warehouse full of wetsuits.  It sells the wetsuits.  It sells very little beside wetsuits.  The staff there are hugely experienced in wetsuits.

"What can I do for you?," says the guy behind the counter.

My cerebellum fuses slightly at the question.  Surely - surely - I cannot say "I want to buy a wetsuit".  If I am not there to buy a wetsuit, or he to sell me a wetsuit, clearly one or both of us is in the wrong place.  My mouth hangs open for a second, unsure of quite what to say.

"I want to buy a wetsuit," I say.

The chap doesn't even blink.  What a fucking champion.

Fast forward, 10 minutes later, to a changing room.  Ella has come along with me, because my mother always told me never to buy a wetsuit without a 6 year old in tow. They're useful for their straight talk.

"Dad, you look really fat," she says, as she slaps my rubberised stomach. It doesn't even need saying.  There are many many garments I shouldn't wear, but skin-tight neoprene is right there near the top, especially after the excesses of April and May - holidays, parties, business trips - have taken their toll on my figure.  I pull at the material around my sizeable midriff, and it causes a puff of air to ripple up the chest and fart out the neck.  Ella is delighted.  We'll take it.

Fast forward, a day later, to the beach.  I can put this off no longer.  If I am to compete in the triathlon, I have to face the prospect of an open water swim.  I can't remember the last time that I actually swam in the sea - perhaps as a child.

It takes a good 10 minutes to actually get the wetsuit zipped up.  It really is pretty snug - if not indecent, at least indignant.  Luckily, I've chosen the seclusion of the western end of Hengistbury Head beach, where there are few passers-by to witness my indignity.  After a bit of wriggling and shoulder dislocating, the zip pulls into place.  Goggles on, I wade into the water, pleasantly surprised by the insulation provided by the wetsuit.  I walk in until the water is up to my chest, and then lower myself, bobbing up and down on the swell, which is not insignificant.

Frankly, I'm nervous. Any time I can't immediately touch the bottom I have a minor panic. After a couple of minutes, I stick my face in the water, and I'm greeted with an olive green wall of water.  Visibility is perhaps a metre.  The brine is as disgusting as I remember it.  I start gently breaststroking towards the groyne, which feels utterly futile - whatever motion I can muster is insignificant to the tidal forces that are pushing and pulling, rising and falling.  This isn't much fun.  I change to a front crawl, and it's better, but in my nervousness I'm breathing quicker than normal, and it's hard to establish a real rhythm.  It doesn't help that each passing wave drops me and smashes my face into the water whether I like it or not.

After a few minutes of backwards and forwards between groynes, I'm still alive and decide I shouldn't push my luck, so I head back to the safety of the beach, satisfied with my orientation session.  But clarity comes to me that, really, this is my challenge.  Until now, I've considered the swim a bit that I'll simply tolerate, something to get out the way so I can crack on with the fight for time on the bike and the run.  Based on this, swimming 750m in the sea is going to be an achievement in itself.