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For my part of the Chestnut Tree Challenge, I will be doing five Olympic distance triathlons during the summer, one per month through to September.
An Olympic (or standard or classic) distance triathlon race involves a 1500 metre open water swim which is roughly one mile, followed immediately be a bike ride of 40k/ 25 miles and finally a 10k run, that’s a little over six miles.
A triathlon with an open or rough water swim is a daunting enough task for a young healthy person in their teens or twenties and would require a good deal of training and commitment to it for anybody.
The case for myself is that I took up triathlon at the age of fifty after years of being a coach potato, and that was twenty years ago. I have competed through all of those twenty years, many times taking my place on the GB squad in races in far away places like Japan, Australia the USA and Canada and quite a lot of the European countries for National, European and World Championships, needless to say, as the years roll by, it gets harder and harder to keep pushing myself on. When the going gets hard I tell myself that there are thousands of people who are not able to take part in sports like mine for a variety of reasons and that helps me push through the discomfort zone.
For the first three races I will be 70 years old and will pass my 71 birthday just before the fourth triathlon event.
The races I have entered are as follows:
May 28 The Little Beaver Triathlon at Belvoir Castle near Grantham. This race is a qualifying event for the World Triathlon Championships in Budapest and also for the European Championships in Pontevedra, northern Spain in June 2011.
June 13 the Royal Windsor Triathlon starts with a swim in the river Thames in the shadow of Windsor Castle. My husband Steve and I have raced in this event almost every year since it started and will both be racing this year. Windsor is our favourite UK event although the run section gets pretty hard the third time we have to run up the hill to Queen Victoria’s statue at the entrance to Windsor Castle.
July 4 the ETU European Championships in Athlone, Eire where the swim will be held in the river Shannon. The bike goes out towards Donegal and back again to run round the city centre three times before you reach the finish line.
August 8 Pier to Pier sea swim at Shanklin, Isle of Wight, will be our club open water swimming championships when we will swim roughly a two mile swim across the bay from Sandown to Shanklin.
August 15 The British Triathlon Federation National Championships at Milton Keynes will see me taking a lake swim to start the event before the bike and run sections.
September 12 will see the final of my challenges for the summer this time the ITU World Triathlon Championships in Budapest where the daunting swim will be in the River Danube bike along the banks of the river and lastly the run back into the city and around the historic centre for two laps to the finish.
In the autumn of 2009 I was laid low with a problem with the inner ear that caused me to completely loose all balance and was stuck in bed for several with nausea and all sorts of ear problems. At that time I though that it would be the end for me as a sports woman but after six weeks I slowly started to make a recovery and though I still had giddy spells, suffered from Tinnitus and had lost a degree or two of my hearing I fought my way back to fitness. For most of the winter, although I started swimming and running again, I avoided going out on the roads on my bike because of the fear of suffering a break in my balance whilst on a busy road. Now I have finally grasped the nettle and started riding out again, although I confess to a degree of nervousness in heavy traffic.
I thank heavens that at my ripe old age that I have been able to claw my way back from illness to a fair level of fitness and if anybody reading this page finds the things I am struggling to do at seventy the slightest bit inspiring, then please sponsor me in my quest to raise finds for the children of the Chestnut Tree House.
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