Accidental Ironman (24 page)

All is
wunderbar
until about the 20-kilometre point when, on a particularly long, straight and monotonous section of towpath, I start to feel pain. It doesn’t seem to start in a particular place but radiates from my hamstrings until it encompasses the backs of both legs, my arse cheeks, my heels and my feet. I have no idea what is causing this because I haven’t been going too hard, I’ve had my gels and energy drinks when I had planned to, and I haven’t been anywhere near the naughty house of ill repute round the corner from the hotel. The pain isn’t enough to stop me running, and it’s nowhere near as bad as the cramp attacks I suffered in my early Ironmans, but it is just a wearying, sapping sort of pain that feels like I am being eaten from the toes up by a gummy crocodile. By 30k, my legs feel as though they have as much actual power as the two sidekicks who sit either side of Alan Sugar on
The Apprentice
. However, I keep myself moving with a vow that I have never walked in an Ironman, and I am not about to start now. Then I remember that I had to walk in my first Ironman in Canada and it takes as much willpower as I can muster not to say ‘Sod this then’ and just have a stroll for a while. I may as well have done because I was genuinely being matched for pace by some Dutch bloke who was power walking the whole course.

After 35 kilometres, I finally spot Steve Mac coming the other way as I head along the return leg of the towpath. He gives me a friendly shout and I reply by asking him to cook me a chicken bhuna, proving that, no matter how much pain I am in, I can always find time to wring the last drop out of an old joke. The pain by now is getting unbearable and I almost have a pretend toilet stop at one of the plastic toilet cubicles on the side of the course – ‘pretend’ because I don’t need the toilet, I am just looking for an excuse to stop without obvious dishonour. However I remember a message I saw when I did Ironman Lake Placid that seemed appropriate and which helped me to pass by. In US races they encourage people to leave motivational messages written on big cards on the side of the road to help the athletes draw some inspiration. Most of them are just bollocks like ‘Never let go of your dreams’ and ‘Chase the sun’ but there was one, nailed to a tree, which said ‘Pain is temporary – disgrace lasts forever’ and I owe whoever wrote that a beer because it is a motto I have called on many times since.

With 5 kilometres to go, I enjoy another huge boost when I run into the market place in Roth. The run route takes us on a full lap of the square, which is lined with tables, all facing the runners, all full of very pissed Germans singing and shouting and waving beer glasses. Amidst all the cries of ‘Zooper Marteeeen’ I hear a familiar Cornish voice shout, ‘You look terrible but keep going.’ As I pass by a large, plate glass window I study my reflection and note that I am now covered in sweat, snot, dead flies and a semi-digested paste of melon and gels, with a face that looks like an angry, sunburned tortoise who has just stubbed his toe. All this makes me wonder whether the girls at the knocking shop would still want to rub my loins if they could see me now.

Abschließen.

As if Solar Hill, the Lände and Marktplatz Roth weren’t enough, the finish line at Roth is brilliant beyond words, consisting of a big red square packed with literally thousands of cheering spectators. I don’t know what it is about triathlons that appeals so much to spectators in Germany but they generate an atmosphere like no other place on earth and appear to absolutely love the sport, joining in the celebrations at every opportunity. Just like people do in Britain of course … No matter how grim I was feeling two minutes before, the adrenaline rush is unbelievable and I fling my cap into the crowd, almost skipping across the line.

And there it was – race done. One minute I was just an ordinary bloke, while the next I was an ordinary bloke with a medal and a T-shirt. My finishing time in the end was 11 hours 15 minutes, well down on my best time but much better than my last performance in Lanzarote. To be honest, I felt neither happy nor sad about my time, I was just glad to get it done and keen to take steps to stop the pain that was pulsing through the lower half of my body. That said, I have never, ever experienced an atmosphere like the finish line at Roth. It was like winning the lottery, the Olympics and
The Price is Right
all rolled into one. I stood still for some minutes after I crossed the line just gaping in awe at the thousands of people cheering us all home. I wonder what the German is for ‘gob-smacked’?

If I thought things at Challenge Roth couldn’t get any better, I was much mistaken for two reasons:

1.   The recovery tent – after collecting my finisher’s T-shirt (another one to be used for intimidatory purposes) I shuffled through to the area where the food is laid out, massages are provided, dry kitbags are stored and, if you are lucky, toilets are not foul and reeking. Usually, when I have finished a race like this I struggle to eat much and it is either soup or chocolate milkshake that I need to help restore me to the bosom of humanity. Often at finish lines you get neither, but at Roth I got both, plus a cup of tea, a pint of Erdinger and just about any foodstuff you can possibly imagine. It was like walking into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Even now I’m wondering if I dreamt it.

2.   The naked unisex shower tent – I know that Germany has a far less repressed attitude towards nudity than we do in Britain, but this was my first direct experience of it and it was a little difficult at first to take in that the changing tent was communal, that every man and woman in it was naked, and that absolutely no one could care less. The various shower rooms were separated between men and women, but aside from that it was do-as-you-please, although I think the organisers could be fairly sure that there was absolutely no one in the change tent who had the energy or flexibility to get up to anything sexually untoward. It was a very liberating experience, although it took me ages to get Mark out of there.

Mark had finished ahead of me, which ensured I got a lift home, and we both emerged from the change tent to meet Nicky and Jane with distant smiles on our faces. We settled down at a bar near the finishing chute to watch people finishing and listen with wonder to the genuine hysteria of the crowd each time an athlete crossed the line. After 13 or so hours, India’s number-one Steve came over the finish line and disappeared in search of a biriyani. A short time later, it went dark, the clock ticked over 14 hours and Joe emerged from the shadows to wend his way finishwards. We had all done it.

So that was it. I never did find out exactly what I should be called for finishing the race, but it didn’t matter. Challenge Roth was a fantastic race and probably the most enjoyable one I had ever done. I will never forget the feeling I had while cycling up Solarberg as long as I live. As I sat drinking the pain away and boring the crap out of everyone with my minute-by-minute breakdown of the race (I wish I had written it all down, it might have made a better book), a huge fireworks display erupted overhead. Sitting drinking Erdinger and watching fireworks with Nicky and with our friends I came to the realisation that this was probably as good as it was ever going to get. I was never going to be an Ironman winner and, in all truth, I’m not sure I want to be looking at how the professionals have to live their lives to achieve success.

I saw a DVD many years ago called
What it Takes
, following the great Canadian Ironman World Champion Peter Reid through a year of training and racing. Instead of inspiring me, it scared me witless looking at the sacrifices he was prepared to make. I was now in double figures for the number of Iron races I had done and my times had improved over the years, but never to the point where I was going to be in with a serious chance of qualifying for the world championships in Hawaii. The more I sat and thought about it, and what it would take to move up to the next level, the more I realised that I wasn’t sure that’s what I really wanted to do with my life. Bashing my head continually against this brick wall seemed less and less appealing. Suddenly, the thought of not doing any more, and doing shorter races for fun instead, didn’t seem such heresy. I guess this was the point when I realised that Challenge Roth would be my last Ironman. I was tired, I was happy, I knew that it was never going to get any better than this and I’d only started this whole triathlon business by accident in the first place. I quietly informed Nicky of my decision, which delighted her to the point that she loudly informed everyone else of my decision there and then to make sure I couldn’t go back on my word.

Of course, that raised the question of what I was going to do with my time now that it would not be devoted to the all-consuming Ironman training? Equally importantly was, how would I avoid ballooning back up to being a fat tub of lard once I’d consumed all the food I could get my hands on? More crucially still, it begged the question of how I would avoid getting dragged back in to the world of Ironmans when I have friends like Neill who appears to be some kind of paid agent in the employ of Ironman Lanzarote. I therefore resolved on the following:

•   Stop buying crap - Triathletes are a salesman’s dream because we buy things that are new whether we need them or not, and we will spend anything from a few quid on a new energy bar that tastes like a Glade PlugIn to thousands of quid on an endless pool that makes you look like a salmon trying to wriggle upstream to spawn. I am as guilty as anyone for buying overpriced junk such as a ‘hydration system’ which was basically just a plastic bag with a straw in it. From that moment on, I vowed I would not be paying one thin guilder for a carbon skinsuit or the latest piece of twat-dazzling technology for my wrist. The less stuff I buy, the less tempted I will be to use it.

•   Stop buying race photos - Race photos generally make me look like a man as cheerful as Andy Murray in an Ingmar Bergman film. My only visible six-pack is on my forehead when I frown. Despite this, several of them adorn walls in my house. If I stop buying them, I will not be tempted to keep doing races in a bid to get some better ones or find that mythical creature – the photo I look good on.

•   Stop looking at Facebook - Facebook is basically just a list of invitations to develop a gambling addiction and pictures of cats with fruit on their heads. It has, however, been a boon to triathletes wanting to bullshit about the amount of training they are doing with endless messages like ‘Just done a great kettlebell class’ or ‘New Park Run PB this morning’ and ‘Nice 50-miler this morning despite the rain’ that could be summarised by a single post saying ‘I AM BETTER THAN YOU’. The net effect of these messages is to increase my guilt if I haven’t been as far or as fast as other people’s Facebook statuses allege, which leaves me with a choice of either trying to match these lies or just ignoring them and having another bun. From now on, I decided it would be buns all the way.

•   Do shorter distances - So far I have existed largely as a Lidl-strength triathlete happy to climb hills on my bike at the speed of a Stannah stairlift. I know I shall never be a Brownlee but I seem to finish higher up the pecking order in shorter races – Half Ironmans particularly – than the full monty ones, so I decided that stepping down a distance and having some success would be a good way to ensure I am not drawn back to the underworld of 140.6 miles.

•   Train for quality not quantity – this is something my coach Dave had drilled into me since he first saw that my idea of a training ride was 75 miles on my own without stopping, drinking, eating, or varying my pace by 0.1mph. My ‘less is more’ approach would mean stopping one of the 5.30 a.m. swims that I do each week, which have dropped Nagasaki-like into my morning slumbers for the past eight years, and taking a more sedate approach to cycling to work through the school run.

•   Lay off the booze - alcohol gives me super-powers such as approaching women in pubs and making toast at 3.00 a.m. On the downside, it seems to make me more argumentative and uncoordinated with a mild notion of invincibility, and has led to me logging on to the internet late at night and entering some stupid race or other in a fit of bravado. So from now on I would replace the value-brand lager that I normally enjoy outdoors, seated in an underpass with my dog, with things that are isotonic, hypotonic and hypertonic, which I did once know the difference between for about ten minutes.

Now that I have returned from Germany and set about the task of sticking to these promises, I have absolutely no idea how I will get on with them, or whether the absence of Ironmans in my life from now on will prove too difficult to cope with. However, whatever happens from now on, I’ll always be an Ironman – even if I am just an accidental one.

2.00 a.m., November 2013

I have just entered next year’s Ironman Lanzarote. Oh, well