Accidental Ironman (23 page)

Getting up at 4.00 a.m. is like rising from the grave and is done just as silently. Nicky was also awake, getting up with me to travel to the race with Mark and Jane, so we vied for the bathroom with me getting first dibs for once on the grounds of how arsey I would be if I wasn’t treated as the most important human being in the universe. Breakfast was a box of crushed cornflakes brought from home and some suspiciously watery milk purchased from a nearby delicatessen before I returned to the bathroom to try making a strenuous attempt to ‘lighten the load’ before we left, thus avoiding the horror of the race day Portaloos. This is, of course, futile because, as any triathlete knows, you only get the urge to go to the toilet once you have been fully zipped into your skinsuit and wetsuit. The car journey to the start was conducted in almost total silence with Nicky and Jane staying quiet, well used to what a pair of snapping turtles Mark and I both are on race day mornings, quite capable of starting an argument out of thin air. First light was just breaking at the transition area over 2,000 bikes and a dirty great canal.

By now tempers everywhere are fraying with the sound of bickering interspersed with nervous farting. We meet up with Joe and Julie and pose for some pre-race photos, mostly, I later learn, because we, and particularly I, look like a bunch of twats dressed up in track suit bottoms, slip on shoes, German flag socks and a beanie hat. We are then told to ‘sod off and cheer up’ by our wives and dispatched into transition to begin fiddling with our bikes. After pumping up my tyres and handing my track pump to a somewhat reluctant Nicky, I spot Mark running around trying to sort out a problem with his front tyre. Fortunately, bike mechanics are on hand, although queuing up for their attention as the clock is ticking down to your race start is about as enjoyable as having your pubes ripped out, knitted into a scarf and then wrapped around your neck to strangle you. Joe, meanwhile, is walking around in his usual state of semi-bewilderment, already clad in wetsuit and hat because his wave of swimmers is off before ours. I embark on the obligatory pre-race ritual of suddenly bursting for the loo as yesterday’s bratwurst mit kartoffelsalat decides that it would like to leave me behind. I am left musing that the person at the ITU who insisted tri-suits should have zips at the back has never been a triathlete, because if they had been they’d know that trying to unzip yourself inside a European Portaloo that looks like it’s been subjected to a dirty protest is about as easy as trying to carve a miniature crystal unicorn with your feet while sat on a bouncy castle.

Joe enters the water, turns to me, makes the sign of the cross and disappears into the murky deep. Mark is still running back and forth, so I wander over to where Nicky, Julia and Jane have stationed themselves on the canal bank to say a final ta-ta. Nicky has secured a good spot to watch us swim and come out of the water and is currently engaged in defending it with the same ferocity as the regiment at Rorke’s Drift, shoving any would-be space invaders down the bank and almost into the water. This is a reminder, if ever I needed one, of why I married her. A big cannon goes bang and Joe’s nightmare begins, while the next phalanx of swimmers is called up to the start line. The wave after that is mine, so it is time to cross the timing chip mat and enter the water. May the Lord have mercy upon my soul …

I am standing waist-deep in the waters of the Main Donnau Canal near Nuremberg in Germany. I am clad in a neoprene wetsuit, swim hat and goggles. Around me stand people dressed exactly the same as me – hundreds of them. Suddenly there is a loud bang, which is the start cannon for the wave in front of mine. There are so many swimmers in the canal that we are setting off in waves of a few hundred at a time – and mine is next. Some of us are standing near the edge on the sloping bank, others are bobbing about in the water, while yet others stay sitting on the bank silently listening to the power ballads being pumped out of the massive speakers attached to the bridge behind us.

When I can’t put it off any longer, I glide into the water with all the grace of a windmilling bag of bones, select my starting position to keep the majority of the wave of swimmers on my right-hand side, kick the nearest Frenchman as hard as I can, fart about with my watch to make sure it is working and then lurk like a wallowing hippo waiting for the cannon’s roar. Inevitably, my mind is wandering all over the place and I am trying manfully to get some kind of focus, repeating to myself ‘Don’t be so worried, you tart. This is the bit you like best. You’ve trained hard, raced well, and have avoided being mown down by a shithead in a van. You are here for your pleasure, so enjoy it!’ Yeah, right!

BOOM!

Schwimmen.

At the moment the cannon goes, all nerves and thoughts evaporate in an instant. All that matters now is getting my head down, my arms up, and getting one final dig at Jacques Cousteau. My normal swimming style is to breathe every two strokes and sight (look where I am going) every six so that I don’t zigzag too far off course and swim into a bank or a boat, which I have seen done before and which made me laugh so much that I snorted sea water up my nose. As usual it is some time before I can settle into my favoured pattern because the first few hundred metres involve trying not to get booted in the face and wondering why everyone else except me seems to be unable to swim in a completely straight line. Consequently, I am sighting every two strokes instead of every six and trying to find a patch of clear water. Soon it comes as the people who have started off too fast fade and die and I surge forward like a scrawny version of
Free Willy
. Unfortunately, it isn’t long before those of us at the front of the wave are swimming into the back of the wave in front of us, so we have to keep our wits about us to ensure we don’t swim over the top of anyone – unless we were doing so on purpose because we are bastards, of course …

The swim is a single lap that heads up the canal for about a kilometre before reaching a turn buoy, then comes back the other way for two kilometres, around another buoy before an 800 metre dash for the exit. I know I am going well because I have swum through the wave in front, and the one in front of that, which contained Joe somewhere within its seething ranks. The fact that I have avoided getting into any bunches at all and haven’t made any kind of contact with a single other swimmer makes me seriously think I am on for a PB, so when I round the second turn buoy I strike out for the swim exit like a man running up his drive to escape Jehovah’s Witnesses. Exiting the water is never a graceful affair because you have just spent an hour lying down, and your sudden decision to get up causes all the blood to race out of your head and into your feet. I have never managed to look good coming out of a swim yet, and this is no exception as I clutch and claw at the carpeted slipway, trying desperately to get upright while looking even vaguely cool. As I run out of the water looking like a well-polished scrotum, I glance at my watch, which declares that I have completed 3.8 kilometres in 59 minutes, not a PB, but under the magic one-hour mark again and enough to make me grin like some kind of simpleton. The run through the changing tent is conducted with ruthless efficiency by everyone concerned except me as I spend five minutes flinging unwanted arm warmers and rain jackets all over the tent in search of gels to stuff in my pocket and my most precious possessions in the whole world, my pack of Jaffa Cakes. Then it’s out into the big, wide world of the bike racks to retrieve my baby and head for the hills.

Fahrrad.

Everything has its downside, as the man said when his mother-in-law died but they came after him for the funeral expenses, and one of the downsides to me having a very good swim is that I am being passed by the stronger cyclists in the first few miles of the bike course. It always takes me a few miles to get going and the start of any Ironman cycle feels weird as you slowly dry out after your swim. I can only liken the vaguely grubby feeling you get as akin to travelling on an Inter-City coach. The bike course at Roth has a reputation for being fast, with few hills and lots of long, flat sections. Chrissie Wellington, who remains inexplicably popular despite how rubbish she made the rest of us look before she retired, made mincemeat of the course a few years ago, which helped to cement its status as one of the fastest bike rides on the Iron circuit. Of course any course is fast if you are good – and not if you are not …

The Roth course is a two-lap affair through the Bavarian countryside and several Swiss-chocolate-box villages. Right from the word go, I find the route to be far lumpier than I was expecting. In previous Iron races I have always tried to have a good look round the bike course, even if it just means driving round in a car. This time, we hadn’t bothered and, while the course isn’t throwing up any major obstacles, I am growing disheartened quite soon into my ride, realising how slowly I am going and how many rolling hills there seem to be. I am now feeling really, really flat and not at all like I had in my warm-up races. I’m not particularly tired and nothing is hurting, I just don’t seem to be able to get going at all. Luckily I have a number of differences between UK and German cycling to distract me:

1.   The German road surfaces are as smooth as silk.

2.   Every village has a loudspeaker playing power ballads.

3.   The crowds love you, which makes a nice change from being howled at by hostile, large people whose only physical achievement is exuding enough body heat to keep a chair warm.

The other thing that distracts me is anticipation of the famous Solarberg climb. It is not especially steep or long and the views from the top are not spectacular. What makes it so special is the MASSIVE crowd that gathers there and lines the road ten deep either side, leaving you a narrow tunnel to ride through. As I approach the foot of the climb, the crowds begin to thicken and the roadside barriers begin to get narrower. I see a solid wall of people ahead of me so prepare to swing right to follow the road round – only there is no road to the right, and I watch in genuine disbelief as the rider in front of me disappears into the smallest gap imaginable between two people in the throng. It is my go next and as I get nearer the gap opens and the crowd swallows me up. I am inside a tunnel of bellowing Germans clapping me on the back, throwing beer at me and screaming that I am ‘Zooper Marteen’. This is honestly the most fun I have ever had on a bike and I grin my way up the climb, not quite believing what I am seeing.

I had heard about crowds at the Solarberg hill before the race, but nothing can prepare you for the sheer thrill of riding through a narrow tunnel of thousands of people cheering and sloshing Erdinger on you. The Solarberg comes near to the end of the lap and it gives me a much-needed kick up the backside, because I have been struggling up to this point. The effect on my speed is not instantaneous but I definitely start to pick up, although it still takes me over three hours to do the first 90k and my dreams of a sub-6-hour bike seem about as realistic as seeing Nigel Farage at the Eurovision Song Contest. I ride past Nicky, who is cheering me on at the halfway mark, and put on a temporary burst of speed to try to impress her – and just sort of keep it going. Having already been around the loop once I am conscious that I am having a much better time on the second lap, not least because I start to overtake people. Whether this is because I have sped up after a shocking first lap, or because they were slowing down, isn’t clear. Either way, while not exactly ripping it up I am definitely shifting and feeling much better about it. Solarberg comes round a second time and the crowds are a bit thinner, many people clearly having wisely decided to go and watch the leaders who were now on the run rather than hang around plotting the physical decline of 2,000 also-rans. There are still plenty there to give me an Erdinger shampoo, though. About five miles from the end Mark comes whipping past me in a frenzied battle with some Italian, and then with less than a mile to go a cyclist comes inside me on a tight bend, overcooks the corner and rides straight into some hay bales at the side of the road. As he sprawls on the tarmac, I notice his name is ‘Knut’ – and who am I to argue?

Rolling in to transition, I notice that I have ridden the second 90k some 15 minutes faster than the first, for a 5:50 finish – not exactly earth-shattering stuff and down on my best times, but still under the six hour mark and respectable enough for a cycling bellend such as myself. I also notice that the cloudy, slightly breezy conditions we experienced throughout the ride have given way to sunshine and heat. It is now 2.00 p.m., the sun is high in the sky and it is about to make its presence felt. I wobble through transition on jelly legs, handing my bike to a stranger who I hope has something to do with race. Collecting my bag full of running kit and melted Jaffa Cakes, I settle down to make myself look more presentable, asking a glamorous helper named Heidi to slather me in factor 50 sun cream. I could have done it myself but at my age you have to take your kicks where you can get them. I’ve never seen the point of rushing helter-skelter through transitions in Ironmans. Sure, if you are Chris McCormack or Cameron Brown on your way to victory, then I can understand why you’d barely let your bum touch the chair, but for anyone who is arriving in the change tent at the same time as me, we’re more off the pace than the Lib Dems, so grabbing a few extra seconds can’t really do any harm. So it is, then, that I make sure I drink my drinks, eat my food, swap my socks for some lovely dry ones, do my laces up carefully and fall on my backside at a sensible pace before emerging blinking into the sunlight to begin the marathon.

Laufen.

Das shuffle would perhaps be a more fitting description than calling what follows ‘running’. Nicky, Jane and Julie are waiting near the timing mat and I get a full volume shout of ‘GO ON BRUNTY’ from Nicky, which has my left ear ringing until the 21-kilometre mark. After an initial bit of running down some roads and through some woods the course takes us off down the wide, gravel towpaths of the Main Donnau canal. I start quite brightly, making good and steady progress over the first 10 kilometres, picking off runner after runner. In the dim distance I can see the familiar shape of Mark and his bolt upright running style but resolve to bide my time and reel him in gently rather than repeat the mistakes I had made in my warm-up races.