Long Distance Triathlon Championships: Sado Island, Japan 1998

When I was in Japan with the GB team in 1998 for the Long Distance World Championships, we were looked after amazingly well. We stayed in a Ryoken Hotel, a traditional type of Japanese hotel complete with slippers, kimonos, sleeping on rush matting, sliding doors and of course the Grand Bath.

We were taken everywhere on a Karaoke bus with our own courier. One of the things she told us on one of the journeys was that there were a number of shrines where people went to visit and pray for a quick death when the time came. Another thing that same helpful lady told us was, that we should not fold a kimono or dressing gown for that matter across our bodies left side first and then the right because in Japan the robe is only folded that way after death. I have worn my dressing gown with the right side folded in first ever since.

                 Poster that hangs in our hallway covered in signatures of team mates

She taught us to count to ten, get to know the sign for Women and Men’s toilets and every day she showed us a snack that we could buy that would be to us a ‘Recognisable, edible food’ she would pass it around the bus so we could all try it. She took us to a tea ceremony lesson. I had such a fabulous time in Japan, even though it was one of the very rare times when Steve was not with me. My team manager Ian Pettitt assembled my bike for me because I couldn’t do it and dismantled it again afterwards. Steve does everything for me for races but it was too expensive for us both to go to Japan.

We were made so welcome. At the local school every child had an adopted athlete and somewhere out on the course one of them would have your name written on a board, they would know your number and shout encouragement in Japanese as you passed by tooting hooters or banging drums. The whole stay was wonderful.

On the GB age group team there were only two Gold Medal winners, myself and another woman who was I think, in the Royal Marines, Jeanette Beaton who was in a younger age group 20-25 years. On the BA flight home the plane was quite full but not completely, there were only a few spare seats. Ian Pettitt, the team Manager and Ron Feeney, a steward who was also on the GB team, asked everybody to move seats so that on the long flight home, Jeanette and I had three seats each and could therefore sleep lying down. It was such an honour, utterly amazing.

Stay with me on this next wander because it is going somewhere. Don’t you think it is so cute when you ask a child how old they are and they say “I’m four and a half”. Kids all do that don’t they? They want to claim as much maturity as the possibly can. Five and three quarters, six and quarter, or nearly seven. They do it to sound older of course. Then we don’t do it again until we are very old when at 88 or 89 they will proudly announce “I’m nearly ninety”. Well I cannot believe that I am as old as I am either, I certainly don’t feel it, fair enough, more aches and pains than when I was younger but not too bad, still enjoying life very much indeed.

Next Tuesday I will be seventy seven and a half. Yes, this is a new game for me it’s called ‘have as many birthdays as you can before you pop your clogs’, so ‘Half Birthdays’ are in from now on.

My best friend from school died of Cancer well before she was thirty. My husband’s first business partner was murdered at twenty nine. A guy in our same antiques business, worked with us helping with our collections when we were busy, he drank himself to death, also under thirty. He was a terrible hypochondriac and always said that when he did die, he wanted his headstone to read “I told you I was ill”. Always a funny guy. He left a sweet little girl behind.

A couple of people I know and I suspect my own family, would like me to stop what they all call “All this silly nonsense”.

I’ll tell you what; I would rather keel over at the end of a race, purple in the face and sweating like a pig, than suffer years of illness and an unpleasant end in a nursing home or like both of my parents after years in and out of hospital. I will never forget standing by both of them for weeks on end at the end of their lives.

Make the most of the time you have on this beautiful planet.

                                          I think this photo was in Perth Australia