Birthday Triathlon Tradition

In our thirty years of training and competition it has been a tradition that we have held quite firmly to, that birthdays must be celebrated with a triathlon. Today is my 81^st birthday and like every other birthday between the two of us we set out to chalk up yet another celebration event. Of course, the best thing would be to walk to the start line of a big event somewhere else in the world and without looking through umpteen diaries, the one that popped into my mind today was when we had flown to the USA to compete in Ironman Lake Placid years ago when that was held exactly on my birthday that year.

For my 75^th birthday I did a charity set of 75 mini triathlons in my home town of Littlehampton in West Sussex. My husband did most of those with me then also. The daily tri was a 1000 metre swim, a 12-mile bike ride and a three-mile run. We started that challenge on June 1^st and finished the 75^th on my 75^th birthday, well over £3000 was raised for the Chestnut Tree Children’s Hospice.

I’m not 21 anymore, it’s true, nor in fact was I ever 21 for triathlon purposes since I didn’t start that lark until I was 50 years old. Today’s birthday is not a special age or a special event; just another birthday.

 

Steve set the alarm for 5am, 30 minutes later than of late, since the days are starting to be a bit darker at the 4.30 am that we have been rising at, but it is two months on from the longest day after all and high tide was around 7.40am. We started our triathlon event just before 6 am.

I have finally given in to the good sense of friends, family and race directors who prefer me to wear a wetsuit for open water swimming, so I slathered myself on Huub Luub and put my wettie on before we left home.

The sea was 20 degrees and just a bit short of high tide when we started our swim. It must be because of the ultra-hot weather over the last couple of weeks but the water was crystal clear and had a weird magnifying effect so that it looked as though you could touch the sand, even when you were quite a long way out.

It was a beautiful swim even though I saw lightening strike a long off on the horizon. It was raining when we got out and so we did the run next, in the soft misty rain and went home to finish the event on our turbo trainers indoors; more to avoid getting the bikes wet than ourselves since we were wet already but not cold. Great start to my special day. Card opening was next.