Accidental Ironman (8 page)

If you’ve ever heard of me before, it’s probably because you have read a column I write in a monthly magazine called
220 Triathlon
(the 220 being the number of people who read my column, timesed by ten), an opportunity that came my way after winning a readers’ competition to see how many knob gags one person could fit into a single paragraph. Despite appearances I am not a professional writer – which you may well have worked out for yourself if you’re still with me this far into the book – and I’ve had several jobs in what I laughingly call ‘my career’ so far, all of them crap. However, these days to keep a roof over my pretty little head I have a job that involves helping to convert old railway lines into cycle routes, and travelling round the country identifying places where new cycle paths and bridges can be built. This obviously sounds like a lot of fun – and it is, I won’t lie. The organisation I work for is a charity called Sustrans, which is responsible for creating the 14,000 miles of the National Cycle Network, and as its development manager I spend most of my days on a bike, riding around looking at places where cyclists have a hard time as a result of the design of roads and speeds of traffic, trying to see what can be done about it. Admittedly, I’m usually riding round on a Brompton folding bike that makes me a figure of fun to schoolkids and the occasional commuter on the trains I catch but, as I recently pointed out to one gentleman with a face like a dog’s bum with a hat on who suggested that my 6 foot 3 inch frame perched on top of a mini-wheeled roller skate made me look like ‘a twat’, in my world it wasn’t as hopelessly twattish as wearing an ill-fitting Marks & Spencer suit on a train with 300 identically dressed people who all wish they were doing something else other than spending 40 hours of misery a week in a corporate shitfarm.

Going to work for Sustrans was a complete departure from the previous jobs I’d had, which all involved working in ‘head office’ type roles for large corporations, doing things so pointless that if I tried to explain them you’d be asleep before I reached the end of the sentence. A great test of this is whether or not you can explain what you do for a living to your mum. Mind you, based on what she’s heard from me, my mum thinks triathlons basically involve cycling around in a leotard, shitting in hedges. However, something happened to me while I was training for Ironman Lake Placid a few years ago that changed all this, which is that I got banned from driving. I’m at pains to point out that I was not banned for drink-driving or insane speeding, but under the totting-up rules that come with regularly acquiring three points on your licence thanks to driving through speed cameras at 5–10mph over the speed limit. The camera that did for me was in Melton Mowbray, which I was only passing through because I was off to do a triathlon at Rutland Water called The Vitruvian. It was about 4.00 a.m. and I was peering for road signs when a flash alerted me to the fact that the speed limit had just dropped from 40mph to 30, and with 11 points already to my name, I’d just fucked my driving licence into a cocked hat. I subsequently had to appear at Melton magistrates court and stand before three very stern looking public servants who pronounced the death sentence until reminded that this wasn’t an option any more. I hoped that transportation to Australia would be next, but instead I got a six month suspension and told that if I drove during that six months I could go to prison. My prosecutors did not look amused when I said, ‘I thought all the prisons were full’ and it was with their dire warnings ringing in my ears that I subsequently drove all the way back to Coventry …

Fair dos, though I didn’t drive after that and I have no complaints because I deserved it, having driven like an arse for many a moon. Not one to have his stride broken, I took this as an opportunity to do some extra cycle training by riding to work every day. What I hadn’t considered, though, was that commuting by bike through towns during rush hour is very different to Sunday morning training in country lanes, and the roads these days are just about safer now than in the Middle Ages when we slept on straw and were regularly attacked by marauders. The longer I went on cycling every day, the more I realised how bad it could be trying to get around on a bike thanks to the way roads were designed and the way some drivers behaved, and the more I resolved to do something about it. Consequently when my six months’ ban was up three important things happened:

1.   I didn’t bother getting another car because despite the difficulties with cycle commuting, I was better off and less stressed than when I had a car, and if anything was getting to places earlier.

2.   I decided to leave my job and get one that tried to improve the lot of cyclists in the UK.

3.   I ended up spending a fortune on chafe cream and Anusol to get rid of the bad case of arse-biscuits (those small but painful lumps that appear on your chuff) I’d acquired through cycling every day.

So when I say cycling rules my life more than anything else, it’s probably true because it accounts for work time, playtime, commuting time, training time and toilet time. I now have seven bikes in my garage, each with a specific purpose – road racing, triathlons and time trials, commuting, mountain biking, winter training, turbo-ing and unfolding so I can perch on top of it to be mocked by schoolchildren. I’m not ashamed of having this many bikes, in fact I’m quite proud of it, and my only real fear is that one day my wife will sell them for the amount of money I told her that I’d paid for them …

I am currently typing while sat at my dining room table wearing nothing but a pair of split-sided running shorts, long compression socks and nipple tape – and if that mental image doesn’t put you in the mood for romance, nothing will. The reason for this singular look is that I have just returned from training with my running club, and the stench emanating from me is enough to drive away even my usually loyal Welsh Springer Spaniel Freddie, a creature frequently to be found with his nose up his own arsehole.

Running training kills me. Tonight’s session was two one-mile laps out on the road at 5.45-a-mile pace, followed by eight times around the 400m track at 80 seconds per lap, before going back out on the road to repeat the two miles at 5.45 pace. Of course, what this turned into was the first mile at 5.30 pace, the second at 6 minute pace, then the eight 400s at a pace progressing (regressing) from 72 seconds up to 85, before going back out on the road to run another mile at 5.59 pace and the last at about 7 minute pace, by which point I am running like I’ve tipped a bag of crisps down my bum-crack. To make matters worse I am doing this session with my running club Coventry Godiva Harriers. Godiva, as it shall henceforth be known, is the real deal when it comes to running clubs, with a wall in the clubhouse covered in photos of club members who have been Olympians. My running companions tonight included my friends Emerson Combstock, Pete Banks and Noel Edwards who have all represented England at distance running, Iwan Jones who has represented Wales, Zara Hyde-Peters who has run for Great Britain and Ian Gower who looks like he comes from the same planet as the Klingons.

The wider training group contains people who have won marathons, cross country races and various national championships, others who represent their counties, and several youngsters on the cusp of breaking into the international teams for European and Commonwealth games. To make matters yet more intimidating, this training session is being watched over by Dave Moorcroft (Commonwealth gold medallist, Olympian and former 5,000m world record holder), Colin Kirkham (ran the marathon for Great Britain in the 1972 Olympics) and Bill Adcocks (ran the marathon for Great Britain in the 1968 Olympics and broke the course record for the classic Athens marathon course, which he subsequently held for 30 years). And then there’s me, huffing along at the back like an overweight stalker – and despite my angular physique, in this company I look distinctly overweight. The session is presided over by running coach Mike Peters, himself a sub 2.30 marathon runner and Stuart Pearce lookalike whose training sessions are guaranteed to turn me into a gastropod, in that by the end I am slow-moving with a slimy sheen.

Being able to run a long way without turning into a human daddy-long-legs is a vital part of training for an Ironman, so training sessions such as the one I have just endured must be completed if I am to have a hope in Roth. I put myself through this torture about three times a week, one consequence of which is that, thanks to my massive capacity for sweating, my kitbag now smells worse than a wrestler’s loincloth and nothing I do can shift the stench. I even tried spraying it with Nicky’s perfume but all that happened was a sailor followed me home. Running with this bunch is a far cry from where I started back in 2002. As I mentioned earlier, neither of the schools I went to were big on athletics, my junior school because anything other than football might as well have been pressing wild flowers and stamp collecting, and my senior school because only team games could turn you into the kind of upstanding member of the community that would make the school proud – solo sports were the preserve of loners and tomorrow’s book depository gunmen. Consequently, I did not grow up having much to do with the athletic world and missed out on the halcyon days of the sport when boys raced boys, girls raced girls, and horses raced through your digestive system. This is a shame because in international terms this was a golden era for British athletes with Steve Ovett, Seb Coe, Alan Wells, Daley Thompson, Tessa Sanderson, Steve Cram, Brendan Foster, Peter Elliot and Fatima Whitbread all achieving world class success and, in the case of Fatima Whitbread, some top quality schoolboy jokes.

I used to love watching Daley Thompson and Steve Ovett in particular – Daley because he was the greatest ever, and Ovett because I much preferred him to Seb Coe on account of his apparent unpopularity with the media. Identifying with the anti-hero is something I’ve done my whole life, which is why I have the friends I have, I suppose. Despite being interested in athletics, this didn’t translate into me actually getting off my arse and doing anything about it. It wasn’t until I was 35 that I entered my first ever race. At that time I was working for Lord Vader of the Empire, also known as Barclays Bank, and in a bid to make ourselves feel that our working lives were even vaguely worthwhile, a bunch of us decided we’d go and do the Great North Run for charity. At this particular point in my life I was suffering from a medical condition known as being a ‘fat bastard’, tipping the scales at an impressive 15 stone, but still looking good – for someone twice my age. I wasn’t particularly conscious of having got overweight and I didn’t achieve it by anything as remarkable as a junk-food diet. I just steadily ballooned over a period of about 15 years until, by the time I was in my mid-thirties, I had achieved a waist size of 38 inches and I couldn’t walk along any beach without fear of feeling the thump of a harpoon in my thorax from a passing Norwegian whaling ship.

In truth I probably thought I could do with losing a bit of weight and the Great North Run gave me a mission, a vision, a target, an impetus and lots of other wankybanky phrases we were indoctrinated with at that time. My favourite was a poster on the office wall of a soaring bird of prey with the title ‘Good Managers are like Eagles’ – which was true, because you wouldn’t have found either of them in that office. I set about training for the run by making my first mistake and joining my local gym, a costly place that was harder to leave than the Freemasons. However, they had treadmills aplenty and big screens showing Jamelia and Pussycat Dolls to distract me. I then went and bought a pair of trainers from JJB Sports (my second mistake) and began my self-created training plan – mistake number three. When I started I could literally run on a treadmill for five minutes before I had to stop, and with my ponderous pace and slowly undulating flesh I looked like a human lava lamp. However, the next time I went I ran for six minutes, then seven, then eight until after a while I was all the way up to an hour. I don’t remember what my pace was, or even considering that such a thing as pace existed, but I don’t recall ever considering running outside at any point, or doing longer than an hour, which was the maximum time setting on the treadmill.

When it came to doing the Great North Run, we all arrived at the start line in Newcastle at the same time as 40,000 other people, and I committed a sin that would come to enrage me in the future when others did it – I went down to the front of the race. My logic for this was that with the channel of competitors stretching back half a mile I’d end up going through the wall twice just to cross the start line. It never occurred to me that I would be getting in the way of lots of others, and indeed for the first mile I didn’t because, committing mistake number four, I went off at the same pace as everyone around me. A slight tightening in my legs, chest, forehead, groin muscles and teeth told me after a couple of miles that I had gone off too fast and what followed was a kind of slap-footed shuffle through Tyneside while being quite rightly jostled by people trying to get round my girth. Despite the abominable preparation and poorly executed race strategy, I somehow contrived to cross the line in Gateshead in 1 hour and 59 minutes. This came as a revelation not just to me but also to my wife, who wasn’t expecting me for another hour and who memorably said, ‘What are you doing here, did you pack in?’ My debut running time, coupled with having beaten all the other Barclays runners, convinced me that THIS was the sport I had been searching for all my life, that I was obviously a natural and that the world of running now consisted of me, Haile Gebrselassie and Paula Radcliffe in that order – mistake number five.

There are any number of sensible moves I could have made at this point, such as joining a running club, trying another half marathon or perhaps something shorter, or going to a proper running shop and getting some proper shoes rather than ones sold by some grunting teenaged host-organism for acne because ‘they’ve got big heels innit.’ My actual next move was to enter the London Marathon. The year was 2003, notable for the triple tragedies of the invasion of Iraq, the death of comic genius Bob Monkhouse, and the opening of Birmingham’s Bullring shopping centre. It was not notable for an unheard-of runner shocking the world by winning the London Marathon in a pair of shitty old trainers. Quite why I thought doing a marathon was a good idea is lost in the mists of time; however I do recall a couple of things about my pre-race preparation: