Daf'sDiary: Unexpected lockdown contact.

My age group swim start at the ITU World Championships in Edmonton Canada 2014

I was contacted via Messenger yesterday by female triathlete who had just read a very old article about me in Triathlete magazine.

I sent her my phone number and asked her to ring since I find it so much nicer to actually hear a real person rather than text messages.

She phoned me a bit later on and we had a good chat that gave me quite a lift discovering that I had not to have been totally forgotten in the last year, though I don’t know how helpful she found the chat from an old timer like me. I asked her a few questions to start with since if she was asking for advice, and guidance, I needed to know her age, history and experience in our sport and also find out if she belonged to a tri club which she did. Her main aim for this year was the Weymouth Ironman 70.3 which was postponed, like so many other races last year including all of mine.

In one way, her start in Triathlon was similar to mine in that her age is in the latter half of the 45-49 age group and I had started at the very beginning of the 50-55 A.G. thirty years ago so just a few years start age difference. She had a running background whereas I had not done anything since my childhood and teenage dancing days. She told me that as far as her swimming was concerned that she was in fact a strong breaststroker and when I said that she did need to learn front crawl sometime, definitely for long races since breast stroke in a wet-suit gets very tiring toward the end of a long swim especially if there was the possibility of looking at full Iron distance in the future. She said that she hoped to get around to learning front crawl, which would make her flatter in the water as soon as the pools re-opened. The leisure centre closures at had been a real pain since it needed to be done. It is possible that that change of stroke may not be possible in time for her big race this summer. I had had to learn front crawl myself, having also been a breaststroke/back stroke swimmer, before my first triathlon event, The Damp-Dash Swim-Run in Kingston-Upon-Thames, an 800 swim/10km run. After that, with my husband’s guidance and coaching, I had thrown myself headlong into the sport and competed in fifteen events in my first year.

Edmonton 2014 well ahead in AG after the bike, it was very cold and some stopped to put a coat on.

The woman had taken part in only two Olympic distance races, and being very happy with her performance in those, had then bravely entered the Ironman 70.3 race in Weymouth! Atta girl eh?

We talked about a number of areas of the sport before she asked me if I had any advice to give about nutrition! There I had to tell her honestly that I was not the person to ask about that, since my eating habits are as far away from the triathlon training normal as it was possible to be. When I told her that commonly, on at least the five week-days, that I only ate nothing until dinner at early evening time; what people used to call ‘tea time’ when I was young.

There was a short silence before she said “What? You mean you don’t eat breakfast?”

My response was the honest truth, “I don’t eat breakfast normally or before training, or before a race, even a long-distance event”.

I told her that I had ‘Pasta-ed Out’ after a couple of years of trying to eat sensibly, for a triathlete, and that I had got a to point that if I did try to force down a breakfast of any kind before a race that I would throw up before the race even began, often at the point where Stephen zipped up my wetsuit that we quickly came to call, ‘Zip-up-throw-up time’.

She was even more taken aback, when she asked about the traditional carbo load the night before the major event, when I confessed that I take a late lunch, about 2pm and that would be a salmon fillet or monkfish with mashed potatoes. Then nothing until I finished the swim, gone through transition and was comfortable out on my bike section when I would have my drinker containing cold coffee and honey, and would take water at aid stations have one slurp and throw it back at the end of the aid area, as to food, I ate jelly babies because they do give me some energy but they don’t make me nauseous. In an Ironman race I would take a few salty crackers in my bum bag out on the run course.

The first long race I did, Steve had copied other more experienced athletes and cut up pieces of power type bars and stuck them on the frame of my bike and put gels in the little bag on my bike. He set my sports watch to peep at twenty-minute intervals when I was told to pull a piece of sticky bar off the bike frame and eat one piece. In the first long event that was in Nice by the way, the watch peeped the first time and I dutifully picked up a mouthful square of Power Bar. I looked at it and felt a wave of revulsion sweep over me and I throw it on the road and pedalled on. That was repeated every twenty minutes!

At that race, by the time I got to the second aid station, they were out of bananas or anything else but water. I took the water, drank and threw it back down on the grassy bank. It was the same at every aid station and I admit freely that I was right at the back of the field in days when there were not may women over fifty at all. By the time I got to the distant point where to course crossed back over the gorge to start the return on the other side, there was a man standing on one side of the bridge with his arm stretched right out offering something that I could not make out when I first saw him. As I got closer, I reached out to take whatever it was that he was offering since I was starving by that point. It was a gift from heaven to me a Lion Bar. I wolfed it down greedily and felt much better. Ever since then I have taken jelly babies for my race food.

I told my new triathlon friend that you just have try to find what suits you, and it may well be Power bars and Gels which do suit the majority of people. Not me and my iffy tummy though. She told me that she was a vegan and so she too wanted to be careful as to what she could eat. My main meal is usually fish and a pile of salad or chicken breast and salad or if not, salad it would be lots fresh lightly cooked vegetables. Steve and I may drift off our strict diet at the weekend and in normal times are likely to go out at the weekend and have a very late morning full English breakfast in a café after which would not have lunch. A big roast lunch or dinner is virtually unknown in our house and having mentioned this week that we had not had the full English treat for almost a year now. I offered to take care of the Saturday meal this weekend, by making beans on Welsh Rarebit on toast, a rare treat. Steve jumped at that offer and it went done very well.

I hope she found something useful in the things I told her. I think my advice to do as much bike work as she possibly, could is the best advice since in all the years that I have checked out result sheets, the people who improve their overall time and positions are the people who improved their bike times dramatically. I also recommend that right now, doing as many other classes as possible from the thousands that are on offer on You Tube, to make sure that she stayed supple and keeps everything stretched and moving as best as possible. I am doing lots of those, and again find something that suits you and your body. Knowing your body and your own mind is hugely important. Doing long distance races, it is most important to keep your head on straight and stay focused.

It is heart breaking right now not to be able to swim, but it is the same for everybody unless you are brave or foolhardy enough to get in the sea in winter. That is not for me though.