New Years Day Turbo session tradition
It has been a tradition for Stephen and I over the last thirty years or more to start each year well. Since we caught the triathlon bug, our method of celebration has been to set ourselves a sporty task. In the early days we would put together a home stitched Olympic distance triathlon to celebrate birthdays and special occasions of all kinds. Then we started to test our metal further as we got sucked into longer events, quite quickly leading to Ironman events. Then the usual thing for a way to mark a special occasion would be a birthday ride or if it worked at the time a long swim or run.
Over time and with the growth of triathlon clubs in our area, we found other friends who were daft enough to join us on these torture sessions, that worked to remind us all that we would at sometime during the next year be on the start line for a major event that, although the elite athletes would complete the swim, bike and run in something close to eight hours that it would take longer as you moved up the age groups. Stephen has completed well over thirty Ironman or Iron distance races in our many years chasing finish lines. My own score is of these astonishing races around the world is about half of Steve’s at around eighteen monumental events.
For a good number of years, we gathered a number of other friends who shared our love of long distance events and for a while we had to move the New Years Day long turbo training event to larger premises. Quite a lot of times we did that with ours friends in our business warehouse, a couple of times it took place in a local school hall and later we met for the 6 hours test in the Fire Station in Arundel, somewhere with a large screen TV for required. And a tea and coffee station to make sure that we all had a few comforts to help us get through the ride.
Of course, this year was a bit different and we have been out of touch with many of our old training friends, many of whom have worked our other ways to celebrate that did not involve pushing yourselves to uncomfortable limits, though some still did do something still as testing.
And so it came to pass, that Steve and I found ourselves with our own company this year since we are in one of the UK’s Tier 4 areas of lockdown. Not to be crushed at the thought of not being able to get together with any of our friends, we took a slightly softer option. This morning Steve has moved all the furniture downstairs, so that we would not be restricted to the small TV upstairs in our little box room which at this time of year is also something of an ice well since it has no form of heating at all. He has busied himself dismantling our turbo bikes and bringing them all downstairs bit by bit. Then putting down floor coverings, before reassembling our turbo bikes in front of the bigger TV. Since 2020 was such a misery of a year for all we also thought it would ne a pleasant change for two oldish triathletes like us with me at 81 and my once toy boy husband now at 70, to forgo the six-hour training video and allow themselves something marvellous to watch, that would still take us through a fair amount of effort. Because one of things that brings smile and tears to both of our faces is a really good musical classic, we didn’t have any arguments in selecting the 25th Anniversary production of Phantom of the Opera, recorded at the Royal Albert Hall. This amazing production had the absolute dream cast, of Ramin Karimloo, Sierra Boggess and Hadley Fraser. It was a good three hours long including all the speeches, credits and introductions at the end from Andrew Lloyd Webber, and encores sung with four well known ‘Phantoms’ from various productions worldwide, and of course the original Christine Daaé, Sarah Brightman.
No matter how many times we have watched this legendary show we have always end up in tears, yes both of us. The first time we were in stunned shock.
So having peddled our was through full show itself and all of the over the top show biz stuff afterwards we needed something lighter to finish off our new years toil with and Steve turned to a couple of episodes of Norsemen to give us a good laugh to conclude the morning toil. Job done. Onwards and upwards hopefully for everybody.
Happy New Year to all our friends and family.
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