Joe's page
Joe Sutton is raising money for Hope and Homes for Children
Participants: Joe Sutton
Story
Friendly lot these
triathlon folk, I thought, as one chap told me how much more buoyant he was in
his new £200 wet suit. I anxiously handled
the sleeve of my £15 suit as he said this.
This conversation tool place about 100 yards from the end of
whilst we were treading water in the azure* seas of the .
(* azure, in this sense, is generally recognised as a colour somewhere within the spectral range of dirty dishwater. In a students’ house. 6 weeks old.) Racing in the sea is generally easier, I find, if you can swim in a straight line. Also being able to see helps. I won’t repeat here my salty language when I arrived at the starting buoy thinking it was the finishing mark. Great! An extra 100m swam on top of the 800 I’d already done.
My wife said I looked shattered when I got out the water. To be fair I had recovered from the swim about halfway through the run. I had recovered from the cycle by about Tuesday. I am still recovering from the run now. At least I’d done better than the 4 people who decided they had had enough and got picked up by a boat.
On to the cycle ride. Weeeeee. I overtook someone at the start and then didn’t see anyone for 10 mins. It was like training, only with wet shorts. And then….zoom, someone on a very smart bike zoomed past me, and then another, and then another. Eventually we got to a hill, where smart and expensive bikes might as well have been 1970s choppers, and it was my turn to go past them. Unfortunately the hills then started to slope in favour of gravity, and also in favour of expensive smart bikes. This cycle (see what I did there) continued for the rest of the race.
Zooom. Into transition. Discard the bike, trainers on, off I go. Someone once said to me “think of the cause” when you’re doing these events. The “cause” at that time was the monumental burning pain in my chest and the promise of a pasty at the end of the race. Orphaned children didn’t get a look in. Blimey the run was painful. On the last 2km, some Welsh chap ran past me. He looked about 50, but probably started the race aged 32. “bloody wind in my face all the time,” I think he said in a sing-songy voice. “can’t talk now, “I replied “busy”. Why was I being overtaken by someone 15 years older? This was the spur I needed as I zoomed past him, through the rapturous crowds at the finishing line, into the waiting arms of a sugary drink. thank you for your sponsorship!
800m swim, 22km cycle, 5 km run in 1hr35.
(* azure, in this sense, is generally recognised as a colour somewhere within the spectral range of dirty dishwater. In a students’ house. 6 weeks old.) Racing in the sea is generally easier, I find, if you can swim in a straight line. Also being able to see helps. I won’t repeat here my salty language when I arrived at the starting buoy thinking it was the finishing mark. Great! An extra 100m swam on top of the 800 I’d already done.
My wife said I looked shattered when I got out the water. To be fair I had recovered from the swim about halfway through the run. I had recovered from the cycle by about Tuesday. I am still recovering from the run now. At least I’d done better than the 4 people who decided they had had enough and got picked up by a boat.
On to the cycle ride. Weeeeee. I overtook someone at the start and then didn’t see anyone for 10 mins. It was like training, only with wet shorts. And then….zoom, someone on a very smart bike zoomed past me, and then another, and then another. Eventually we got to a hill, where smart and expensive bikes might as well have been 1970s choppers, and it was my turn to go past them. Unfortunately the hills then started to slope in favour of gravity, and also in favour of expensive smart bikes. This cycle (see what I did there) continued for the rest of the race.
Zooom. Into transition. Discard the bike, trainers on, off I go. Someone once said to me “think of the cause” when you’re doing these events. The “cause” at that time was the monumental burning pain in my chest and the promise of a pasty at the end of the race. Orphaned children didn’t get a look in. Blimey the run was painful. On the last 2km, some Welsh chap ran past me. He looked about 50, but probably started the race aged 32. “bloody wind in my face all the time,” I think he said in a sing-songy voice. “can’t talk now, “I replied “busy”. Why was I being overtaken by someone 15 years older? This was the spur I needed as I zoomed past him, through the rapturous crowds at the finishing line, into the waiting arms of a sugary drink. thank you for your sponsorship!
800m swim, 22km cycle, 5 km run in 1hr35.