This time last year, I was nursing bad tears to my adductors, glutes, quads and some others whose names escape me. I limped round Crystal Palace sprint triathlon in 1:35:22, made the semi-final but no further in the Zwift Tri Academy due to the injuries caused by overtraining, and began to wonder if I was making a terrible mistake. I began to put weight back on, became glum at my idiocy of thinking I could become a serious athlete at 63, and just generally felt an all-round failure. Then with my club, Ful-on Tri, I went to Eastbourne for the standard distance, still limping a bit but in spite of that managed to qualify for the European championships in my age group. And I began to feel a bit better.
This weekend it is Crystal Palace again. And last Monday I did Thames Turbo sprint, the traditional London League season opener. A Bank Holiday is always a working day for me and I did indeed have to go into work at The Tablet right afterwards to help get that week’s print edition out right after the event, through the driving, freezing rain. Last year I had intended to do this triathlon but just couldn’t get it together to override the ongoing injuries, get up in time to cycle over to Hampton open air pool and then make it into work afterwards to commission, write and edit my pages.
In the end, this year was amazing. I did it in around 1:25 and came fifth in my age group, the over-50s. So that was even with competing against young ones. (Maybe Thames Turbo will introduce an over-60s one day.) Until last year, this event was my first and only triathlon. I last did it in 1989. Things were so different then. Timing was by stopwatch, everything was done with notebooks. None of the modern technologies existed – no mobile phones, no Strava, no smart watches. All the women leaped into the pool together. I came third lady overall, which looking back was majorly impressive. Thames Turbo did not exist, it was the Twickenham and Teddington triathlon then. Immediately afterwards, I gave up and took up ballroom dancing instead. At 29, I wanted to settle down and have a family and thought I had more chance of finding a viable partner on the dance floor. Even though this did not in the end work out as I had hoped, dancing was fun. I loved the competitions and now watch Strictly each year with great nostalgia. I am finding many of the movement techniques I learned – use of the standing foot, contra-body movement, correct breathing – can be taken forward into triathlon, particularly in running and in the pool.
I am becoming hopeful that an injury-free season might be possible. It is essential really, if I’m to have any chance of not coming last in the Worlds and Europeans in Spain and France this autumn.
One of the first things I did towards repeating the mistakes I made last season – in fact the whole last everythings of my entire life when it comes to sport – was hire a coach. James Riley is the men’s captain at my running club, Ranelagh and has his own coaching business, Run Unbound. I told him everything I could about my mental and physical failings, and try to follow his schedule to the letter.
It is hard because on a good day, with the adrenaline highs kicking in, I don’t want to stop. And that way lies more injury. As a recovering alcoholic of many years continuous sobriety, though, and with a decade of daily analytic psychotherapy on a couch in Kensington in my 20s and 30s under my belt, I have enough self-knowledge to better understand the value of delayed gratification than I did all those years ago. (I haven’t been in touch with my analyst for years. Would she like to hear from me I wonder? If you are reading this and have any views on this, do let me know! Ultimately her work and patience did succeed, but I think the results were not apparent at the time when I ended the sessions, even though strong foundations were definitely laid.)
So as you can imagine, I was a very troubled young adult. Even though to outward appearances I had a successful professional life as a journalist on The Times, things internally were difficult, even without the toxic substance of alcohol in my bloodstream after I got sober at 25.
So fast forward to the present, and suddenly I am wondering why on earth I stopped doing any proper exercise. I always knew that running in particular was like therapy for me – it works and has always worked on every level, mental, physical and spiritual. Yet I just stopped doing it, or anything else except basically walking a bit, here and there.
So now I have another chance, and what an amazing chance it is turning out to be. And some incredible things have happened over the off-season.
Qualifying to represent GB for British Triathlon turned out to be just the start.
Three companies are now sponsoring me – Caffé Torelli in Kew and Richmond, Sporting Feet in Richmond and Team CLS, on Zwift. And then I was just last week accepted as a “Sporting Champion” by Everyone Active, giving me free access for a year to their 230 training facilities – swimming pools and gyms – all over the country. Through weight training, Ed Stembridge at Performance Works is helping correct some serious posture problems that contributed to the injuries. And then there is the support of my husband, who at times finds it all a little amusing perhaps, but who is also crucial in helping to underwrite it all in terms of emotional, moral and all other support as well. So it is all still just starting really, and much could still go wrong. But I am beginning to feel a little bit better about myself and starting to see the bright side of the life I have lived to now, rather than focusing depressingly on the many mistakes. Bottle half full is the old cliché that applies here – as long as it remains just half full of water!
Placement 