Brighton and Hove Triathlon Sept 15th 2019

Brighton and Hove Triathlon was a qualifier for the European Standard distance Triathlon in Tartu, Estonia 2020 and that alone was a good reason to do it. I had already qualified for the European Sprint Distance triathlon in Malmö, Sweden 2020 earlier in the year, so that would start to make 2020 look interesting.

The main reason to take part in this race is another reason entirely. The race director John Lunt is my oldest friend in the sport of triathlon. My first multi discipline event, was one of the earliest events that he put on, it was also my first swim run event ever. That was the Damp Dash at Kingston about thirty years ago. I had entered the half distance race 400 swim/5km run but it was cancelled due to a very low entry.

John rang to tell me that, I tried my best the chicken out of the whole thing but John talked me gently into doing the full distance event 800 swim and 10km run, after I told him that I had only just learned to swim front crawl and that I had not been running very long either, just a few months. He didn’t say goodbye to me until I agreed that I would see him in the morning on poolside.
Photo here was at Johns Run2Music Brighton run. I got conned into going dressed as Madonna, ridiculous I know.

I had a wonderful time at that race and was hooked straight away. He was nice, His chief aide, now wife of many years Nicola, was so helpful and all the young athletes told me that I was doing well as they passed me on the run. It was all so friendly and such fun. Since then I have lost count of how many of John’s races I have enjoyed but his races alone must amount to well over a hundred. Of course John Lunt is so well known in the sport internationally, now having also masterminded the 2012 London Olympics triathlon and the Commonwealth Games blah-de-blah-de blah.

Brighton and Hove is a fairly new event; I think only four years old. I have done three of those four anyway. Why, because I know that it will be a professionally run event. The whole team are brilliant. It has a sea swim twelve miles from my home just along the south coast and I love the sea. The bike ride is dead flat, and in laps of Hove Kingsway, a big wide road with lots of crowd support and the run is along the classic promenade, all of which also makes it a perfect event for beginners and old hand alike. It is a fun race but it is also very strictly controlled and that is comforting to beginners, particularly young women and the children in the races put on to encourage new triathletes into the sport. There is even a scoot-a-thon the day before for the teeny weenies.

 

Last September I was not even the oldest competitor because my friend Geoff Geering was doing the sprint distance in the 85-89 age group, whilst I did the full standard distance in 80+. There was an even older man at 87, who I think did the super sprint distance though I am not totally sure, but certainly showing triathlon to be a sport for all ages and categories and leanings. All triathletes.

 Geoff and I were both interviewed the day before for BBC TV that added to the fun. I think my finish time was 3.45.20 and my husband Steve, was a couple of minutes slower…. which was not altogether popular. We were not racing together, because we were in different wave starts. All told though, such a fun event in marvellous situation. Brighton and Hove seafront is picture postcard impressive. I was born in Brighton. Little old Brightonian me, pre-war by a couple of weeks.

dafbelt.blogspot.com

BTF National Aquathlon Championships, Arundel, West Sussex September 8th 2019

My next race was the National Aquathlon Championships in Arundel on next Sunday after the Lausanne Worlds.

Steve was away working but thought he was safe enough trusting me to get to and from this event on my own, since it is not much more than two miles from our home as the crow flies. My friend Birgit, who runs with us regularly on Sunday’s normally, came to support me from the sidelines, so I supposed that she did not trust me not to get in trouble with Steve away! It was kind of her and she took some photos as well as shouting in support. She was still to be there for the awards and take more photos which would be useful.

The open water swim section of the Aquathlon was in our friendly River Arun starting at the Black Rabbit Pub at the end of Mill Road in Arundel the swim distance was only 750 metres and the race organiser Mick Dicker of  Raw Energy Pursuits had his fingers crossed that the timing information for the ‘Slack water’ timing of the tide was correct. I say this with the certain knowledge that the wicked River Arun has a will of his own; he is not a trustworthy chap. In fact from experience we are all aware that there is always a little movement going on in that water. The swim would go toward the sea on the right hand side on entering the water for half the swim and then come back on the opposite side of the river crossing in to the finish at the Black Rabbit. I love the feeling of moving water. There were wetsuits.

After the return to transition in the pub car park we were straight out on the 5km run. No chance of getting lost on a run route we often use. Straight along Mill Road toward the town and Arundel castle lower gate. Then turning back along the opposite side of the road, on the lovely tree lined moat path overlooked by my favourite Castle trying not to trip over ducks etc. Then there was a section that was off road on the paths that wiggle around Swanbourne Lake and finally back down the road to the pub again and the finish line.

It seemed that most of the marshalling was done by Littlehampton based Tuff Fitty Triathlon Club of which Steve and I were the founders 25 or more years ago so I knew just about all of them which was a great comfort to be among friends.

On my training runs with my husband we take each day as it comes. Sometimes, if we have been working hard on the bike or even just plain working hard at work we will do our run training as a jog between a couple or three lamp posts and then a walk to the next. That works for us oldies quite well and in the end there is not much difference because we don’t tire so quickly. I wouldn’t want anybody to think I was some sort of Super Woman because I am not.  What I am is just somebody who enjoys the life I have fallen into and what I enjoy about it most is that Steve and I do pretty much all of it together. Sure its getting harder as we get older but it is still very satisfying to get through races.

 

However for this event with a mostly flat 5km run I set myself to run as much of it as I could so that meant all the flat sections and I only walked the short uphill path around the lake so it was my best run for some time.

 

That made me National Aquathlon Champion again.  There was no competition in my age group, so some people would not think it has any credit but I don’t see it that way. I was very happy to stand on the podium. I can’t remember which years but I think I have gained that title a handful of times over the years. I only enter it when it is either close to home or convenient in some other way, maybe fitting in with a work trip or a weekend away. It is still a good little training day and always enjoyable and satisfying. Next year it will be in Worthing and I would not miss that one either.

ITU World stand. dist. triathlon Championships: Lausanne, Switzerland 2019

ITU World standard distance triathlon Championships: Lausanne, Switzerland 2019

On August 27^th we drove to Beaune, in Burgundy for a last couple of days training before the World Championships. All we did was a couple of really nice familiar bike rides. We know that area well, having been there for work and sport bike holidays on umpteen occasions, this time we did a quiet and ultra pretty canal ride that we like, it 

has a café and a bakery at the far end.

Then on 29^th we drove just 200 km to Lausanne through the Forêt du Jura and a little way further on to Cully, where Steve’s nose for something different found us booked in to, Auberge Du Raisin, a quiet place a few miles outside of the city. It was perfect for us, he had chosen a large attic room where we could spread out and relax. Steve had been influenced because of its highly rated restaurant. It was a mere two minutes walk down to the lakeside and the fabulous views there, close to the ferry point for lake tours. Steve likes to stay somewhere quiet since he knows me well enough to want to avoid having me get nervous before big events. Calm, calm, calm is the key.

When we went in to Lausanne for me to register or the event, it seemed, through talking to other competitors, that some swimmers had already found out that there was a strong current for the swim. That had seemed obvious to Steve and I, since the race first came into the picture for us. We were aware that the River Rhône entered Lake Geneva at one end of the lake and exited near the city of Geneva. The Rhône is not just a little stream, so there is bound to be a strong flow. Our home is in Littlehampton on the south coast of England, where the River Arun, that is the second fasted river in the UK, joins the English Channel; so even though I am quite old and do not swim that fast, a strong current would not cause me to get my panties in a tangle.

On Sunday September 1^st, having checked my spot in transition added my drink to the bike and in my case a handful of Jelly Babies for the bike course section I have to add that not everything works for all. I never eat before a race. I don’t eat breakfast normally. There was a long hanging about time before the wave starts and in the hour before the first wave, it was announced officially though not altogether unexpectedly, that it would be a no wetsuit swim. That was a disappointment to some but something that I was perfectly happy about.

For the first time at Worlds, I was competing in a new age category of 80-84 after my 80th birthday two weeks before. My opposition was American. During the course of the event my husband/coach Stephen, shouted at me every now and again to let me know how far ahead I was. The first time, he said I was 27 minutes ahead but later on it had stretched to almost an hour. He did not give me updates out on the run course and I found out later that he was so pleased and excited that he left me to it and went for a burger! We found out later that  the nearest woman had not made one of several time cut offs and had been withdrawn. I was the only female in that group to complete the course and so I became World Champion again.

There were only four men (of seven) in that age group who finished the race in the cut off time and only one of those was faster than me. So I was unquestionably my category winner.

 

It was a very hard event. I would say the most challenging ‘Worlds’ that I have ever race in. After over a week of very hot calm weather there had been heavy overnight rain and by morning the conditions in Lake Geneva were rough.

That did not lower the water temperature however. With the water conditions most people were not happy about. The bike course was very hard and hilly with challenging climbs and a couple of dangerous descents. I saw one man hit the metal barrier on a descending corner so hard it made a dreadful clanging thud and he flew over the barrier quite close to where I was climbing upwards on the other side. He landed with a thump and was lying on the road screaming as I rode on. I know that sounds mean, but there were people there and they were already quickly attending to him.

I had prayed for a thunderstorm or at least rain for the run but unfortunately my prayer passed unheard and the sun came out and returned to the oppressive heat of the previous days. I have never experiences such a hard run as this one which had six ascents of the park paths including sets of  STEPS surrounding the Olympic Museum. The downhill sections were a relief, I love running downhill but it was mostly in the heat of the sun. It was a great relief to get to the blue carpet of the race finish, knowing that I was World Champion in my age group and pre-qualified for 2020 worlds in Edmonton, Canada. A race I have done before in 2014.

Lausanne Distances: 1500 metres Lake swim/ 40km bike ride/10km… though it seemed much further!

Dafs Diary Restored

                    Trying not to look too short next to Human Race head honcho Nick Rusling

June, July and August 2019 Update

At last I have got myself into Blog action again and to save anybody trying to work out when I last posted a page on Daf’s Diary, I can tell you that it was seven whole months ago. The main reason this page has been sleeping, is because at the end of May 2019 I decided that since the summer was going to turn me into an octogenarian, that I had better try to make sure that I had done everything I could to give myself a fair chance to complete the heavy programme of events that I had set in stone at the time.

My looming 80^th birthday was not the only major hurdle to climb over whilst time moved on toward the horizon. Steve and I would also reach our 40^th wedding anniversary on May 30^th. That was as amazing as me being and eighty year old woman. Both seemed impossible to believe. It seemed to cause something of a stir within my sport also, which I found a little baffling since being in my last year in the 75-79 age group seemed to pass without impressing anybody very much and yet just a few more months later appeared to be something of note.

In the 80-84 age group then, I was qualified now for The ITU World Triathlon Championships for 2019 in Lausanne on September 1^st. I really wanted to take my place on the GBR team for that. I also received a letter from my governing body on May 28^th to say that I was also qualified for the European Sprint Championships in Malmö in 2020 that was from the results of the Eton Sprints earlier in May. 

                  Being interviewed for Wiggle Sports on registration day for Windsor Triathlon

My races in two June did not go according to plan and that was disappointing, ultra disappointing for me actually. The first was Windsor Triathlon that I have competed in over twenty times, so it can be said that I know that event well. In fact I did win my age group in the event against the odds, so it was not all bad. About two thirds of the way through the swim, which was in the River Thames that does have a strong current after all, a wave of faster swimmers were passing me and I suffered an almighty punch in the back of my head that caused the lights to go out momentarily.

 I have no idea how long for but enough time for Steve to get seriously worried and when my head bounced back to the surface, the first thing I focused on was my husband taking his shoes off on the river bank obviously just about to jump in to save me.

I swam to the bank spluttering and stopped there holding my head and trying to recover my composure. I stayed out of reach because Steve wanted to pull me out. I did carry on but very slowly, aware as he was, that I was shaken but otherwise fine, all things considered. Steve was still shouting at me when I got into T1 and bellowed that if I was stupid enough to carry on, I must at least wear my Gortex bike coat. It did lash rain for 99% of the race but thanks to my warm and waterproof coat, I did not freeze to death. In fact I really enjoyed the run section that went into Windsor Castle grounds and gave the competitors two chances to run The Long Walk as it is called.

 Alarmingly though, over the next couple of weeks, little bits fell off my teeth and when I finally got an appointment, almost 5 weeks later, the dentist had to patch up and repair four broken teeth! He asked me if I had been in an accident or if anybody had hit me; I bluffed through that questioning because it was too long a story and he would probably only have told me that it was time to retire, which would have annoyed me because if you get punched in the head and bang your teeth together, it is not your fault and in the middle of an open water swim with hundreds of other people trying to take the shortest line, it is not their fault either or anybody else’s nor does it have anything what so ever to do with my age or ability.

The second of my two June races, Ironman 70.3 Haugesund in Norway also went terribly wrong which was such a shame because both Steve and I had looked forward to our first holiday in Norway tremendously. The race director Ivar Jacobsen, had been very kind and responded himself to all my questions about the event before I entered. He used my story….

(Mad old bat of nearly 80 doing triathlon) on the race website and during the week approaching the event in Haugesund, I gathered loads of new friends and on social media too because of that. That much was more than fun, it was heart warming.

                                                Registration for Ironman 70.3 Haugesund

This was something that I had trained so hard for and was looking forward to enormously but in the run up to the event, I had trouble with my gears and as many times as it was corrected it didn’t last long. Come race day the weather was far worse than I had endured at Windsor. Before the swim start there was a Hollywood movie quality lightning display with ear shattering thunderclaps. 

Still I enjoyed the lake swim and once out on the bike course still in torrential rain, thunder, fork lightening and streams of water flowing over the road. My bike gears started to play up again, until after less than twenty miles there was nothing left and my little legs were spinning away on not exactly any gear at all and I was out of the race. We do all our training together and at a point where he should have seen me and did not, Steve came back to find me in a concerned state, and we both turned back to the race base. 

Such a shame, it really is, but I try not to get too down when a DNF occurs as they do for everybody from time to time but it takes strength of will. Things happen, get over it! After all, we had enjoyed our holiday there much more than we had expected Norway is so stunning, beautiful and interesting as are its inhabitants.

July it cannot be said was uneventful. That is not something that describes my life at all. Triathlon is an important part of me and it keeps me healthy, there is no argument against that statement. Yet my heart and mind are full of other things that also give me pleasure. 

                                              Ironman 70.3 after bike racking, Haugesund 

Before we left Norway, we went to the Viking Village where I think much of Norsemen was filmed and we had a great time there. We were a group of very different people who all get on so well. Apart from Steve and I, a good friend who swims with us 3 times a week came along, as did a club friend of ours who also runs with us on Sundays who drove there with her mother who we all call Mutti, even though she is not old enough to be mother to us all she seems to like the familiarity of the group.

During July there were two theatre visits and an art house film showing White Crow (ballet story of Rudolph Nureyev). There was only one local sports event ten minutes from home Dawn on the Downs, a 12km trail run. That was very pretty as well as a useful bit of training, as were a couple of sessions riding loops of Box Hill that is a fun place to train and very convenient for the purpose since it has good car parks, a very nice cafe and a visitor centre. Then add that once per month we hold a poetry meeting in our home, just a small group who read their own work and enjoy listening to everything else and discussing all work that is brought.

                         Louis Arriving on a previous birthday bearing gifts.

Training continued in earnest during August over all disciplines with the ITU World Triathlon Championships approaching in one month’s time. As it happened I was very glad to have something serious on the horizon to focus on since my daughter’s dog Louis, who was more a member of family than simply a pet, died on August 8^th to totally devastate everybody.

He was eleven years old, the best trained and most well behaved dog on earth. He came to stay with us, if every my daughter Jacqueline and her husband Martin were away on holiday. The day I heard about his demise I just sat a read through all the poems that I had written about my walks and adventures with the dear little black spaniel Louis, alias the Prince of Darkness or plain old Black Bum if he was having a mad day. Keeping my mind on my training was the only option.

 

My eightieth birthday came only a week later. We started that with a 1500 metre pool swim instead of a structured training session. After that we did a short bike ride followed by just a 3 km run. This left no time to think before we had a late 2pm birthday lunch at the Parsons Table in Arundel. Jacqueline and Martin did their best to put on as cheerful as possible faces for my big day. 

More to come about the 2019 season very soon.