Daf'sDiary: Work and play with Daf and Steve Belt

Work and play: The photo above is of me taking a rest to admire the scenery above St Anton, Austria.

A ridged training regime is not always possible, as every athlete knows at some time or another and certainly over the thirty years that Steve and I have been enjoying the sport it has been closer to a pipe dream.

My husband Stephen in a forth generation antiques dealer and for all of his adult life a buyer transporter and shipper. Steve and I have been married for over forty years and have been sharing our lives for a few years more than that.

For twenty years or more I went everywhere with him whether that was working at our business base, buying antiques and packing them into 40’ containers to be shipped mainly to clients in the USA and Canada or many other parts of the world or otherwise travelling through Europe in the truck.

In those days I did the map reading when needed off the motorway, but more often than not Steve knew the way because of his years of experience driving. In those days on long journeys I would read to Steve as he drove until audible books came along. We worked side by side for many years until first Steve’s father died who had done all the office work which then fell to me. The final end to most of my journeys with Steve abroad came much later when his mother needed a carer for the last twenty years of her life and that fell to me totally at first but later she needed more care than I could manage on my own and professional cares came in twice a day toward the end. I had been the main care for my own parents for years but they were not so hard to look after; I just did the laundry, shopping, housework, doctor and hospital visits.

I still go with him sometimes and if he is working, say in France at the main Antiques fairs I still go along and ride my bike or run while he is working with clients. That is a real treat to go cycling where there is so little traffic compared to West Sussex.

So it is often difficult to keep to any kind of rigid training schedule. When we are both home we can manage a timetable. We swim at 6.30 am three times and week and our club Swim session is early on Saturday evening. Saturday morning we ride our bikes, in summer riding out on the roads but during winter rather than getting an old bird like me soaked to the skin we mainly ride on our turbo trainers doing a long session Saturday and a couple for shorter workouts when we can fit them in during the week. Our main run is on Sunday morning and other times we do a shorter run straight after swimming in the mornings.

As to other training…. Steve lifts furniture on and off trucks and into containers. That is enough weight lifting for any triathlete. I did lifting until it was not possible with home life.

I do some stretching and have an exercise ball and some small weights. I still do all the office work for our business.

As sample of our life on the road; Last September the week after the Brighton and Hove triathlon on September 15^th, I went with Steve on an extended work schedule. The next day we sorted out our journey in the office before we left for the Chanel Shuttle and the rest of that days drive to Reims where we stayed over night.

The next day we drove as far as St Anton in Austria and took a day off there. So it was a two night stay with a day in the middle when we walked our legs off which was a close to training as we were going to get. The next morning we got another much shorter brisk walk in before driving to an overnight stop a few hours west of Venice.

The next day was Thursday and we drove the rest of the way to Venice. Venice is a challenge for truck drivers to make deliveries to, for obvious reasons. We have to park the truck up at a place called the Tronchetto where we had arranged for a barge to meet us to unload and go by the waterways as near as possible to the delivery point. That all takes hours and then you have to load to goods a few pieces at a time on to a large trolley to the door of the building in the centre.

We arrived to fine that everything had to be carried to the third floor. I counted a different amount of steps each on each ascent to help me not think about how hard this was. I made it between 87 and 93 wide worn stone steps each time. It was interesting though and of course we were getting paid to spend the day in probably the most amazing city in the world so looking at it like that… Perk! In actuality hard work but a mind expanding important educational experience.