Tuff Arundel Assortment

 

The first thing I would like to say is a big thank you to the members of Tuff Fitty Tri Club for being kind enough to invite Steve and I to join them for one of their summer social sports evening at Arundel Lido last night. 

It was a bit of a come back in a way, although I had not really been far, but I had felt way off my usual self for a while and this was a chance to gentle myself back into a multi sport event. It was not a great challenge its true but having got through it without irritating any of my recent injuries made me feel much better. 

When the invite came along on a Facebook message I looked at it and thought immediately that it was something that I could do and it would be a gentle test of the Hamstring/Glute pain and tightness that had been keeping me off my usual training.

 

Anthony Towers running considerably faster than me

 

The Tuff Arundel Assortment was really just a social gathering but since Tuff Fitty is a triathlon club (that actually Steve and I founded twenty five years ago) then some sort of mini challenge was bound to be included. TFTC Chair, Clive Harvey and Glen Parisi were still planning the course when Steve and I arrived very early. The event had been posted as 1km run/200 swim/1km run/ 200 swim/1km run. It was the run that was being considered and after taking a test walk around the perimeter of the Lido complex they decided on each of the 1 km runs consisting of three laps, going from the front of the Lido, across the car park, through the gate on to the path by the river then back into the car pack and into the Lido to jump into the pool and do a lap of each lane before climbing out and doing the three lap run again etc.

 

 

Steve and I had decided on wearing our GB kit since in my case it was the only tri-suit I possess. I usually wear shorts and a light tee shirt for training and events since I feel like a jelly baby wearing a tri suit. However, this format called for a tri-suit because of getting in the water after running (twice). I wore my goggles on my head for the first run, where instantly I was last, in what was after all a fast twitch event. I don’t do fast if we are totally honest, so I was happy to see the rest of the men and women in the event disappear quite quickly. Then they started to pass me quite quickly too.

 

Steve stayed with me for the duration of the event and though I told him off several times for not leaving me; I was perfectly safe after all on a run course that would be run nine times. He stayed anyway and I know that he just wanted to make sure that I was ok because I had been a degree under for a while. 

There was lots of shouts of encouragement including two young boys who shouted at me every time I ran through the car park toward the river. My GB suit has BELT emblazoned on the front and the lads had fun changing the BELT to Usain BOLT every time I passed which put a smile on my face since there is just a bit of difference between me and the great Olympian in height, width, depth, not just speed. 

Everybody else in the field had finished the course before I even went out on the last three laps so there was a nice reception waiting when Steve and I crossed the line. So thanks guys for asking us to share your fun evening and also help eat your bar-b-que food. We really enjoyed joining you.

 

 

My favourite Fire Officer, Steve Jones, tending the flames on the Bar-b-que

 

 

Number Crunching: The Olympic Medal Table

 The 2016 Olympic Games will come to an end as this weekend also comes to an end. In UK time, the closing ceremony will start, as far as I can make out from the time table, at 8pm on Sunday night local time in Rio, and that I think is about midnight in the UK, so really as far as we can see, the fireworks will be finished for early breakfast time to us Brits.  

We have been shown the medal table every day and when I last looked Great Britain was in second place behind the USA. I had a quick check to see just how amazingly good that it by comparing the population figures. If we say that the UK population is a little over 65,000,000 right now, we should be quite extraordinarily proud of our athletes, since the population of the USA is roughly 318,000.000. Even with my poor grasp on maths, (The poetry, history and geography teachers wrote the kindest things on my school reports) means they have nearly five times more people in their country. Yet they have not won quite double the amount of medals as our young people have gathered in. That is more than impressive and I hope inspiring to the youth of our country.

Our little island stands directly above China on the table at this point and it would take a greater mind than mine to work out the difference between us and that enormous country’s population figures that must be changing like the waves on the shore but I wrote down from internet information that there were 1,357 Billion people a few years ago. 

The table below will already be out of date because of the latest events but it shows the figures I have been writing about.  

Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
USA	38	35	32	105
GBR	24	22	14	60
China	22	18	25	65

 

I have been feeling a degree under for about a month now and missed a number of training sessions for that reason. As I join some friends tonight in a little local social event at the Lido in Arundel put on by Tuff Fitty Triathlon Club, it should be easy-peasy but who can say. The format will be:  

1km run

200 metres swim

1km run

200 mtr swim

1km run 

 

I will try to think of the superb Alistair and Jonny Brownlee destroying the rest of the Triathlon field in Rio to win the Gold and the Silver medal. I hope a can be forgiven for changing a few of the great Bard's words as I did in front of our TV at home yesterday; ‘Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by these Sons of York’.

 

 

 

 

 

A Chat on Radio Sussex

Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee GBR 

Gold and Silver Medallists

2016 Olympic Games Rio 

 Yesterday whilst bustling around the house keeping some sort of order in a household that is dominated by our sport and the need to get favourite bike kit through the wash process and back on our backs for the next ride, my mobile phone rang. After the usual speed of light headless chicken search for the blinkin’ thing, I did manage to get hold of it before it told me that I had another missed call. It was a man from Sussex Radio. The guy who rang seemed not to have a clue about triathlon and had it seems dug my name out of their files of people locally who do know what they are talking about.

 

    Triathlon World Championships, Edmonton, Canada 2014

 

My last interview with them was last summer just before going to the Triathlon World Championships in Chicago, so I was fairly recent. Before that they had invited me on the station in 2014 to talk about why I was doing 75 mini triathlons leading up to my 75^th birthday. The answer to that, was to raise funds for The Chestnut Tree home for children with life shortening illnesses. 

The researcher opened the chat by saying that he understood that there would be two young chaps from Yorkshire competing in the Olympic Games Triathlon and did I know anything about that? So, I was just being used to give them a base for the event that was on this afternoon.

I explained first, that one of the great things about Tri was that it was age grouped all the way through and so one only competes against other athletes of the same age and that was hugely appealing, almost inviting. I went on to say that another great thing about it as far as I was concerned, was that you very often could do the same race, on the same day, as the huge stars of the sport like the Brownlee’s or Jodie Simpson or any of the rest of our top elite athletes.

 

 

Long Distance World Triathlon Championships, Sado Island, Japan 1998

He then checked on how long I had been competing in triathlon. I wondered if he was just winding me up because I was sure they had all my info in their files: Well if he was turning the wind-up key, then I fully fell for it. I dropped the modesty and told him that I had competed in all sorts of wonderful countries across the world, Japan, USA, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, France, Hungary, and Australia whilst representing my country in Triathlon World Championships. Another turn of the key in my back came next as he asked how I had got on with that, and had a won anything at all? So, I told him that yes, I had been age group World Champion 9 times at various distances and had a total haul of 15 medals from Worlds and 4 European AG wins, also 30+ National age group titles.

When the call came this morning from the radio station, they had got the age group thing straight and had invited a child of 10 on to contrast with my 77 years to show that it was a sport that welcomed all ages and the interview was conducted going back and forth from me to the 10 year old Tom, who was in his second season and who was utterly charming and spoke up for himself very well. They asked me the old sage things and asked Tom what he found so enjoyable. I had to smile when he was asked what he was best at and he said it was running and that he wasn’t so good on the bike because he hadn’t got stamina in his legs yet. As a parting shot to me they asked me what advice I would give to Tom and I replied that he would see the biggest improvement in his results if he worked very hard on his bike.
 

Children's Scootathon at Dorney Lake Eton

 

I posted on Facebook today that I had been on the radio and a friend of mine, James Hodge who had heard the programme made this complaint: I was listening and to my surprise you came over the airwaves. I was a little disappointed you didn't tell him how many Ironman races you had done. I also think he should have given you your correct title of World Champion Triathlete Daphne Belt but apart from that great interview x

So just to put thing right James, its 18 Ironman races, plus quite a lot of 70.3 events.

Perish the thought that it is getting closer to the time when I take up paddling at the waters edge, half a mile to the post box on a mobility scooter, hobbling to the front door. I intend to put that off as long as possible.

 

 

 

 

 

Future Olympians

 

My eyes are completely square now that I have had them glued to the big arse telly that we have been watching the Olympic Games on. It is so inspiring and not only because Team GB have been so successful this time. British Cycling and Gymnastics has been the stuff of heart attack’s with the tension and has obviously gained enormous popularity from the 2012 games in London. I have nearly burst with each medal won by our hardworking Olympians. 

It was pleasing to hear that the young American gymnast Simone Biles say that she has worked so hard after being inspired by the previous Olympic games. We can only hope that our own youngsters in the UK will be inspired in the same way. 

I am feeling blessed that I have two nieces, well, great nieces actually, since they are my Brother’s grandchildren, Hannah Monks and Lauren Monks. The younger niece Lauren has been very successful during her childhood as a gymnast and has recently, inspired by her elder sister Hannah’s success in the Volleyball world, also switched to that sport. I hope maybe this will make life a little easier for their mother, my niece Sarah who with her husband have given these girls every ounce of support they possibly could which has meant driving great distances to take the girls to games, training, competitions and matches, committed to doing whatever they can for their girls; And of course they have been shouting at the top of their voices from the side lines.

 

 

They live at the other end of the country to me but I try to keep up with the news and hope it helps that I am very interested in their progress. I have them both as Facebook friends and the FB link helps enormously to keep me in touch. Just to show the level of youthful enthusiasm, here are some sample private message exchanges over the last couple of years between us. Bless them both.

 

oxoxoxoxo 

Hannah: Hi Auntie Daphne, this is the link for my volleyball matches my first game is it at 9am this morning against Scotland west and I have another at 2 against Wales, I also have games tomorrow and Sunday if you can't watch today and if the link doesn't work then let me know so I can tell the team manager, hope you enjoy it xx 

ME: That’s great, I love seeing what is going on in your world. It is YOUR World. XX

Hannah: Hi AD my team and I are unbeatable in this tournament, we have won 5 out of 5 games including the favourites to win the England cadets, we are now through to the final today against Scotland west so will be coming home with a medal!! Hopefully a gold!! The game will be live at 12:20 and would love for you to watch it is still the same link as before, just click on the volleyball stream, would love for you to watch!! I will be playing in the number 12 shirt in red or white x

ME: Hi Hannah, I have been thinking about you and Lauren and hope that these Olympic Games have been an inspiration to you both. XX A.D. XX

 Hannah: Hi AD The Olympics have been amazing. Me and Lauren are always talking about making it one day! I have been selected to represent England in a tournament which is a mini Olympics for young Athletes. I will keep you updated throughout. XX

 

 

Me: Love to hear how you are getting on since you both have great potential AD xx

 

Their Granddad will be proudly watching them from Heaven

Being contrary now and then

 

Usually when I walk or run in the woods that I love close to my home, I am on nature alert and love to spot a lapwing of hear a woodpecker drilling at a tree, rather than pop ear buds in, but every now and then I do just that, if I am deliberately trying to get my mind off something that has been bugging me. Sometimes when my hubby is away and I go for a run on my own, I may use the ear buds for an intervals workout as I run ; Maybe walk the intro, then run the main song and start walking again at the fade out point. That works for me and gives varied interval timings too. I like to be on my own sometimes. I like to be quiet sometimes and sometimes a distraction works for me. It does seem wrong somehow to listen to music when the music of nature is available but now and again I will break with convention and do just the thing that I frown upon in others. My own contrary rules on that day. 

 

 

Blakehurst III - Meandering with Muses 

The sight of somebody walking the countryside

Seems odd when they have music in their ears playing

Maybe one walk in five, I too the country sounds denied

Pretty songs well sung and sweet words of love saying. 

This different beauty helps to think in altered ways

To calm and sooth away the pressures in my life

Bombarded with visions for eyes and ears as music plays

Alone, I’m free to sing along and so melt off all strife. 

 

Ghostly haunting images as ‘She moves through the fair,

The swan in the evening moves over the lake’

Lifting this spirit to a peaceful place with clear thoughts where

Kindness bears aggression away for dear heavens sake. 

I walk on this real world beneath a steep slope pressed

By millions of sheep hooves into slipped hillside steps

‘I didn’t mean to hurt you’, dead John sadly stressed

‘I didn’t mean to make you cry’, in only his, well timed reps. 

 

 

My own voice tremors with each brisk fast walkers stride

My playlist echo’s my life, ‘I can hear the wind change’

‘I can tell when something’s not right’, he and I sing with pride

Leaves fall, a shadow cast by a circling Kite seems strange. 

Climb toward the trig point I pass through a gate and sing

Two unnoticed blackberry gatherer’s turn sharply at the sound

The dog and me equally unembarrassed by that chance thing

A string of racehorses gallop past and this time we turn around. 

 

 

Asked by a jeep-ed gamekeeper to stick to the path, me and dog

Thirty thousand young pheasants have been put out for the shoot

Ear buds placed, notebook and pen in hand, I sit to write by a log

Beauty and violence even here, shown hand in glove and welly boot. 

‘Cry me a river’, Lulled back to my soooo preferred day dreams

Turn back through the woods to come face to awesome face

With a stag, bold as brass, raised to full dignified height it seems

As in life, ‘If it wasn’t for bad, you’d be good’, he holds his space. 

 

The stand off lasts, I face him, he faces me, both still as still could be

He in majesty, dog statued in the moment,  ‘Tremulous and tender’.

Then he is suddenly gone, I am left with lead, bags and whistle to see

Such a fleeting joy for me, the end of my jaunt today thus to render. 

 

These are better days than those when stuck at home deep in work

But for the notice, warning of ‘Forest Operations’, and that word,

‘Obey, all signs’, interrupt my reverie, as I, drenched in pleasure, shirk

Wearing no watch, carrying no phone, into the car, the dog I herd.

 

 

 

Simple Manners Please; Gathering winter fu-u-el

It is only mid August but already the sun has started its journey south and sunrise is now not until gone 5 a.m. I know that because I am up at that time. We have been blessed with a few days of sunny weather but it will not last long and soon we will start to move slowly into autumn. 

I can’t believe that it is already time to order some winter fuel again, but that is what I found on today’s page in my desk diary. So I looked up the company on Google and rang one of the numbers listed for the company. On answering the young man asked me firstly for my post code and then a few seconds later he asked my name and the first line of my address, then for my account number. I did not have that to hand so he found it using my address. Then he told me that he would put my through to another office that dealt with my area. After being transferred, I started at the beginning again this time with a young woman speaking to me. After getting through the few questions she then told me when we had last placed an order, only slightly cloaking the hint that it had been some time since we had ordered from them. She came back on the line after a moment or two and asked how many litres I required and I replied that I didn’t know that either and had not been asked that before and that we just wanted the tank filled please, and that I supposed it would be about the same amount as it had been previously as shown on our account. She then told me that I was just too rude and disconnected my call!

So, I started again using the number that I had dialled previously and when the man answered I started again by telling him that I just wanted to order some domestic fuel for our home and told him politely what had occurred when I had been transferred to the other office. “Wow” he said, “That is so rude, unbelievably rude, I do seriously apologise”, he said that he would have to put me back through to the same office but took a while and when he got back on the line he told me the name of the assistant that had spoken to me previously should I wish to take it further. I told him that I just wanted to order the oil and that I did not have time to make a big thing out of it since we all have bad days now and then. He apologised again and put me through. 

 

I don’t know for sure, but it sounded like the same person who had hung up on me who this time told me that the call must have been disconnected somehow! I thought but did not say that all I wanted was the fuel and not an argument, that’s how wars start for goodness sake.

This time the young woman was polite, even when I mentioned that I had previously been instructed to ask for the smaller truck to deliver since we have a narrow driveway and she said, “That’s fine, it says that on your delivery details.”

 

She went on to ask how I planned to pay and I replied that they usually sent us an invoice. That was met with the information that because it had been some time since we last ordered we would be required to pay on or before delivery. 

This is a company that we have used as long as we have lived in this house which is about twenty four years. However, I asked her if she would give me a moment to speak to my husband who was sitting next to me and passed this on to him. He said we would pay on delivery and that was found to be fitting for the company. The young woman told me the price plus vat and said that they would let us know by email when delivery would be made. 

Although my heart rate had become more rapid during this quite long process, I had remained calm and polite, if despairing of the manners and manner of people like this.

It is true that I am getting old, but this sort of thing happens all the time now. What happened to good old fashioned civility? 

Some company’s have pre-recorded messages saying that the call is being recorded for marketing purposes, well I hope these calls were recorded but I very much doubted that anything would be done. 

Please people, please, let us all make an effort,  as am I, to just be calm and polite to people we have to speak to, in whatever situation we find ourselves. Good behaviour should be taught in the home before our school days. At Sunday school? I was always sent on Sunday afternoons but think that may well be a thing of the past. Then it should be reinforced at school and surely on seeking a job, we should know how to conduct ourselves before being let loose on the public and should be properly trained at the company we are employed by.

Manners folks, manners.

 

Good Days and Bad Days

 

  Simon Lessing, Mark Allen and Me at the World Championships Awards in Edmonton, Canada

 

Having had a disappointing three or four week period health wise, it was so nice to get back on my bike this morning. We just did a steady little bike ride to see how it went and I didn’t feel any worse at the end of it. We all go through bad patches with either injuries or bugs. I have only been very slightly under the weather; I’d say not more than a degree under but it has hung around for about a month now. Then there has been that hamstring that has been tender and aching, oh yes and the knee that started to swell after the Windsor race in June. Then there were the glands under my chin popping up, the daily morning headache and sore throat. 

The list actually goes on a bit more but we will leave it at that. Yet during that time I had a couple of good runs and some swims that I was more than happy with. There was a half ironman race in Poland on the horizon; I had entered it at the beginning of December last year having watched a full length video of the race and thought that it might suit me even though it has been eight or nine years since I did that distance. The bike profile had not looked much different to our rides locally at home. As sometimes happens when a race becomes a qualifier for a Worlds event, they changed the bike route to make it harder. I admit that I had worked myself into a bit of a state of worry about it and when all these little problems and niggles started I seriously started to think that they were all in my head. 

We had booked a super holiday for the trip, with some exceptional stop overs included in it that I have already talked about. It was a great holiday. Then after a couple of bad nights sleep, I woke up extra early on race morning and told Steve that I was not doing the race. It just seemed completely dopey to do a race that I had absolutely no confidence about, when I was not feeling very good anyway. The thing that bothered me most was that my friends would be disappointed. That would just have to be something that I accepted and was still able to think that I had made the right decision under the full set of circumstances. My husband/coach/best friend’s reaction when I told him I was not going to race was a glance in my direction as he said in a completely calm voice, “OK”. He didn’t try for a moment to change my mind. He did start, and was first in his AG out of the water. After the race was over he told me that he was glad that I had pulled out, because he said I would not have liked the bike ride at all and probably would not have made the bike cut off and that would have made me feel worse than I felt anyway.
 

 

                                                    Ironman racing with two broken toes.

Today, on the eve of my seventy-seventh birthday, I am still not in great form so it was not all in my head, caused by worry after all. I have lots of friends who have times when things are not going well or when an injury keeps them out of training for a while. I know from experience that these things do pass in time and if you have a lick of sense, you know that it is not any use trying to push yourself through those times. A few of my training pals have been sweetly sympathetic to me and some have not known what to say, so have said nothing. Both of those reactions are fine for me because I have had my great moments in the past, some may think that I am stupid to think that there are any more satisfying times ahead given my age, but I am still looking forward to enjoying more of the sport I love. I have two more events that I am really looking forward to this summer, stupid or not. We all go off the boil sometimes and I will just simmer along for the present.

 

 

                                                   Clearwater, Florida on another good day. 

The last few days of being glued to the TV watching the greatest athletes in the world perform to their very best is hugely motivating and tremendously lifting. We can all follow our dreams but we must know and accept that those dreams only come true when the work has been done and the time put in. Every day cannot be fun but some moments are worth every second of toil and disappointment along the way.
 

 

The top photo here is with John Lunt at my very first race, the Damp Dash at Kingston. This last, very happy picture was taken by my photographer daughter Jacqueline Rackham on the last day of the 75 Mini Triathlons I completed for charity in 75 days during the summer of 2014. This was my 75th birthday.