In the beginning there was triathlon

 In the beginning there was triathlon

Thirty years ago when Steve and I first took up triathlon there was only one triathlon club within ten miles. We went to one of their meetings, but I was not confident enough to just get in and do a formal swim set with such experienced swimmers and we were not that bothered about joining a group in the beginning anyway.

There was just Steve and a young friend of ours, who also worked for us part time, James Clarke. It was a natural thing for James to start doing because he was already good a good swimmer and runner from his school days that were not far behind him. His only form of transport was his bike and that was actually a racing bike. It was through him that we got the triathlon bug. He had bought a magazine into our home and read an article about the Hawaii Ironman World Championships in Kona to us.

In the back of the 220 Magazine there were a couple of pages listing where events were being held. One was near us. Steve entered James and we both went to watch. Steve was a good county level swimmer as a teenager and had done a little running when he was swimming competitively. Anyone can ride a bike of course.

I started trying short runs with Steve since I was trying to lose weight and get some fitness back after a more of less thirty year break. I was a fit dancer as a child and a teenager, who could swim breast and backstroke. Anyone can ride a bike.

So James did a couple of triathlons, then Steve did a couple with James. I was team support and casual photographer. I had to learn to do front crawl, and that took me three months to get a continuous mile. 

The hardest part of learning to swim front crawl as we all know is breathing into the water. I did breathe into the water already doing breast stroke, so really the only thing I had to do, was turn my passable backstroke over, in a manner of speaking. 

I did my first event early the next year; The Damp Dash at Kingfisher Centre in Kingston-Upon-Thames (Steve’s home town). It was a Duathlon; an 800 mtr swim/10km run. The race was the brain child of John Lunt, now one of the best known race organisers in Europe. I have lost count of how many of John’s races we have done. John was race director at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Most races were a little cheaper we found, if you were a member of the BTA (BTF now). Steve and I took coaching courses and we formed a small club with the few people that were swimming with us and gathered new members quite quickly. 

Almost everybody was new to triathlon including a whole family that swam with us. We called them the Fish Family, and that was a fair enough name for them. There were twin women, who both had children and both had taught their already fit kids to swim well.

Several of the children still swam with us, until the recent state of affairs that has closed the Littlehampton Wave swimming pool doors for a while. They are a delightful group of young people who have grown up before our eyes. They are now, a swimming teacher, a nurse, a carpenter, a mechanic, all responsible adults with children of their own and we still love them all, they are like an extended family to us.

 

Hopefully we will see the light at the end of the tunnel before our usual club outing to the Pier2Pier swim on the Isle of Wight in August. It is about a two mile sea swim and a fun day out that we all love. Fingers crossed anyway and that hope goes for all our swim friends.

Maybe we had all better, cross legs and toes and eyes for a while. A prayer might not go amiss either.