Deva Worlds Triathlon Championships Qualifier. Chester

Deva Worlds Triathlon Championships Qualifier. Chester.

It has been a while since I left a piece on this my diary page.  I was told that I should not post a page daily anyway because it would be less likely to be read if it was an every day thing.

Since the triathlon season has now started with a bit of a bang, I decided that I would give the whole thing a rest and that would allow me to actually get some worthwhile training done for the races I have so foolishly entered when I am easily old enough to know better.  Couple this with the fact that my husband has, after a quiet start early this year, suddenly become so busy that neither of us can find a moment to attend to anything less important. 

                                             Panarea one of the Aeolian Islands off Sicily

Steve, my husband/coach has had one long working trip abroad on top of the next starting at the beginning of May when I went with him for two weeks whilst he was working in France and based mostly in one spot. As he knuckled down to endless work, driving back and forth to the South of France chasing after clients who were on a buying trip from the USA to visit all the enormous antiques fairs in Beziers, Avignon and Montpellier, I went out on my trusty bike every day, on my own, on the blissfully quite roads of the Route des Grandes Crus of Burgundy and other equally beautiful roads.

 Biking on almost empty roads in rural France is like being in biker’s heaven for as long as it lasts. I stayed behind in a gîte a little way outside of Beaune, free to come and go at whatever hour I fancied, eat when I was hungry and rest as I pleased.

That time stood me in good stead for my first important event just two days after our return from France. We traveled up to Eton Dorney Lake near Windsor for a sprint race that was a qualifier for the sprint race at the World Triathlon Championships that will be held in Rotterdam in September. Tagging along to that was Kathy Azapardi who has been filming me on odd occasions for a motivational piece that she and a couple of colleagues have been working on that will conclude their course at Brighton film school.

Kathy stayed with us overnight before that event for the sake of simplicity, since it meant the Steve knew well where he was driving to and so would save Kathy having to find her way there as well as a bit of fuel using her own car. She had already requested and been given permission to do what filming she needed during the event by Human Race CEO Nick Rusling.  The Eton Sprints is a perfect venue to use for beginners since it is entirely traffic free making nice safe bike and run courses and a less scary first open water swim for the hundreds of new triathletes taking up the sport I have loved for donkeys years. I did get my qualifying slot for the worlds so I was happy with that.

Steve then had another long drive on a two truck job taking furniture to a big house on the tiny island of Panarea that is one of the Aeolean Islands off Sicily. This turned into a much longer trip that was planned when the ferries there went on strike and Steve and the other guy driving the second truck were stranded there for several days.

It sounds like fun but it was a difficult job because the load could only be driven off the ferry and on to the dock side and that was only small. The two truck loads of goods had to be unloaded piece by piece onto tiny little three wheeled motorised carts that in turn took the goods up dirt tracks to the house awaiting the delivery. The owners were not there, only their team of staff, so that took a great deal of time and was more than a bit testing.

 

Both Steve and I found that he did not get much in the way of sympathy for his plight since it is hard to feel sorry for somebody stuck on a paradise island that everybody else would love to spend a holiday on. The sad fact is though, that one does not get paid during spells like that but your outgoings do mount up since you still have to eat and find somewhere to stay.

And so my man had to wait on tender hooks to see when the next ferry from Naples would arrive that would start him on his much delayed journey home. It was an edgy time for me too wondering how the rest of the trip would go now that, previously laid plans were all abandoned.

Amazingly after and overnight ferry ride and two very long days driving Steve made up one of the lost days and did get home ready for us to make our next journey to the next triathlon event.  For Steve it would be an event that he had hardly been training for due to that work hold up. He did get a swim and a short run on Panarea but it is just a pretty pile of rocks so mountain hiking was all that was available.

So after Steve had unloaded his return load picked up in France, we left the next day for Deva Triathlon and the Roman City of Chester, way up in the north of the UK level with the north coast of Wales and Manchester. Deva Victrix, or simply Deva, was a legionary fortress and town in the Roman province of Britannia on the site of the modern city of Chester.

Deva was again a qualifier for the World Championships in Rotterdam at the end of the summer race season but this time the qualification would be for slots in the Standard distance race. The event tee shirt has the date on the back but it does not show that it was held on June 4^th 2017. What the shirt shows is;

IV VI MMXVII

 It was a superbly organised event with the best goody bag we have taken home in many years. These days our sport is much more about making as much money as possible and less and less is given out to the participants. At Deva as well as an excellent quality event shirt there was also an embroidered hand towel, a fine medal and umpteen sachets of this and that sports nutrition products.

The 1500 mtr swim was in the river Dee and very well marked with huge buoys. The Bike ride was a one lap undulating course in the surrounding countryside and indeed passing right by The Trevor Arms at Marford where we stayed during the trip. The whole event was extremely well marshalled and with the competitors name clearly on the race number you got shouted at by name which was great.

Having done a handful of less important events before Deva came along offering slots in the World Championships, and having done the sprint qualifier at Eton with no adverse nervous effects at all, I was more than a little alarmed when after registration for the event and a pleasant lunch in an Italian restaurant, and drive around the bike course, that when we got back to our room, I suffered panic attack, something that I have not had in a very long time. I would not have said that I was particularly nervous consciously but there it was; unmistakable.

Poor Steve was as alarmed as I was as I puffed and panted and struggled for breath, feeling so tired and having waves of nausea. It lasted for about two hours until I fell asleep. Steve said he could not believe that I passed from struggling for breath, suddenly into a peaceful sleep. HE, did not sleep, he was wide awake. Then he watched in amazement when I woke, got up and made a cup of tea as if nothing at all had happened. I slept well and woke up feeling fine. Steve had not slept well at all.

We drove to one of the excellent parking areas and walked our bikes and bags to the race venue and waited for our wave that was all competitors over fifty and the last wave at that at 9.30 am. Having had such a scare with me the evening before, Steve stayed right beside me until we had jumped into the river and swum the hundred metres to the start point. Then with a final reassurance that I was fine, we began our race.

 Steve always does a race prediction for me and this time I had emailed it to my sister and family since they were coming from forty miles away to watch our race. They would then know when to expect me. My swim was fourteen seconds faster that he predicted. My bike was just over a minute faster than he said but my run was slower.

During the run section I felt that the strain of the panic attacked had reduced my energy level but still the total time for my event was twelve seconds less that he thought so no complaints since that was good enough to give me my Worlds slot so mission accomplished. 

Swim: 37.46

T1: 4.36. I had a real struggle getting my left foot out of my wetsuit!

Bike: 1.38.55

T2: 4.05. Somebody had taken my bike place on the rack and my stuff was everywhere, I had to get a marshal to help.

Total, in spite of trash transition times: 3 hours 43mins 48 seconds.

Sports Massage Chatter

Although the alarm still went off at 5.30 am today, we did not rush around checking swim bags to see if everything that should be in was in there, neither did Steve start to get our bikes ready for a training ride. Sadly no, to both of those options. Instead we started checking paperwork and making sure that the last job we have to finish before we throw our stuff in our van and head for France, was all ready to finalise. There is still too much to do and just these last two days to get it done in. So after a morning cuppa we got on with sorting things out from the total mess that Steve had in his bag, into something presentable enough to hand over to the shipping company. We finished the big sort out by just after 7.30am and Steve left for work, reminding me that I had an appointment with our sports massage therapist at 9am.

 

 I buzzed about like a honeybee on drugs and was sweet smelling and reasonably tidy when I arrived outside Vicky Vickery’s home salon and 8.50am. Of course it is not easy for the poor girl; for a start I am not twenty one any more and as she has been trying to put my decrepit old body to rights, I am still training as much as I sensibly can, whilst not pushing her work back a couple of visits at a time.

Chattering to her take the mind of the discomfort as she attempted to un-tighten all the muscles that are so regularly put to use. Today involved a complete ironing out of my entire lower body and legs. She knows that although I was a late starter, as far as triathlon was concerned, that as a child and teenager I was a dancer and that is the base of my muscle strength. Then, even though it seems as though I had a thirty year lay off from dancing classes; that is not a full truth. During my first marriage, after producing my lovely daughter, school runs etc. etc. I still walked briskly and reasonable distances, I taught my daughter and her two cousins to swim in weekly trips to the pool and went horse riding. So it is not really that surprising that if you add a number of year’s of a regular weekly evening of folk dancing; that I could take up a new sport at fifty as I did. 

Putting aside the pain of a sports massage, I have to say that I always enjoy talking with Vicky, since she and I do share a number of interests apart from sport; namely books, movies, TV, theatre, and Vicky like me is open to new ideas. This morning we were talking about which ballet or opera’s would a suitable starting point for somebody who has wide like and dislikes in the world of the theatre and fancies trying something a little more serious.

 My own view is that on the ballet front is ‘ The Nutcracker Suite’ is a ideal first stop on the journey because the story is easy to follow and has such variety with all the dances of the last part of the ballet, not to mention colour and beauty, or Romeo and Juliet where everybody is familiar with the tragic tale that is just a sad beautifully danced. Opera wise, the number one first opera HAS to be Carmen surely, I know that is what Steve would say for sure. Or as a lighter start G & S’s Mikado colourful funny and delightful music.

Vicky told me today that she has started running again with a friend and don’t blame me for that. You may be better blaming Steve of any of the other triathletes she pummels regularly and she is far from new to all sorts of sport but just a few years out of serious practice. She is a very focused young woman and as sharp as a tack.  

Swim Training, Bike Training, Run Training and Toilet Training

It was a nice surprise for me that Christine Holyoake, my newest triathlete, made an unexpected appearance at this morning early swim session even if she was just a tiny bit late for the start. None of the few women that regularly join me in those sets seem to have quite got to grips with The Warm Up. So the swim set starts with a bit of a bang and then they wonder why the first item on the schedule seems a bit hard. I usually swim at the back but this morning I was pushed forward by Bekka and Christine and so it was me who had to try to keep up with Lane 1 drop out, Sandra. I have no chance of keeping on her feet so to put it simply, Sandra was impossible to draft even though I tried my best, I could not hold her feet even for one length. Bex and Christine then swam behind me and strangely enough I felt ok today.

After the first swim which was : 300 then-

200

200

300

200

200

300

Christine, who is German, performed a demonstration of how good her colloquial English is by looking at me as if I was the lead monster in a horror movie and grumbled loudly “Blimey, you’re just a torturer”. And later she said that she had been wondering to herself during the set, why she had looked forward to coming over to train with me again when I was so cruel. Later in the changing room, I told her in front of witnesses, that there was a simple fact that she had not yet grasped, and that was that actually she doesn’t have to do what I tell her.  Just after I made that announcement I thought of my mother who would so often say ‘Don’t do as I do, do as I tell you’. Not quite the same I know but that was where it flipped me to.

Steve and I hit the Arundel run again today and he was not comfortable at all but this week he is working long and hard to get things that need to be completed at work finalised.

I know that I have been training hard, but had enjoyed the swim set and the run was not too bad really, even though my legs reminded me that we have trained every day for a while. We will be missing out this Saturday because we will be on the road most of the day and somehow that is tiring, even though not much is being done, apart from watching the road. 

Yesterday the little boy next door wandered in through our garage and back garden with a bit of help from Steve, who had been talking to his mother, Hannah. Steve told little

Héctor to go in and find me, show me his new tractor and ask to see my teddies. I have a terrific collection and each time I think about selling some of the special ones or giving one away here and there I have a moment like this when it is good and helpful to have them to engage with a little person through. Hécto,r is only a wee mite and is big into cars and trucks, so I didn’t know how teddies would go down with him. I wished I had a camera in my hand when I showed him the first group of them, because his little jaw dropped and he was frozen for a second or two which was a lovely thing to see, the wonder of a child. I asked if he wanted to see some more and he literally had to climb the stairs to see the others with me.

It was on the way back down the stairs that this next subject came up. He is the cutest little pixie and had to come down the stairs on his bottom, feet down a step first then slide off the step. I was of course in front of him. At that point, he told me that it was squashing the poo in his pants!!!!!!????????? So… where I am going with this is; that it had me wondering why it is these days that parents do not toilet train their children, seeming to me to leave it until they are approaching school age. 

Héctor was a bit of a surprise to me since he is such a bright little boy and can hold a fair conversation, so I thought he was a bit late on the toilet scene.  I know that the training takes time and a lot of patience because I have been there and done that and maybe I was just very lucky with my little girl, who was completely out of nappies very early.

Is it clever brain washing by the baby goods companies telling mothers to take their time and wait for the child to be ready? There was no such thing in my child’s early life as disposable nappies. I had to wash them; and perhaps that was the kick up the bum to young mothers in my day. Maybe that was a job we made an effort to get out of having to do. Wiping poo-ey bottoms was never a job I looked forward, to so I made to time to do the training. It is really not that hard.

Taking a Life Lesson from a baby girl called Catie-Ross

Our day started with a quick cuppa and before you could say knife, Steve had both bikes out and had checked them over ready to cram in another bike ride, even on the busy work schedule he has this week before we have to leave for long drive to France for two weeks work there. Isn’t it great at this time of year when the sun is already up, brightening our world before six o’clock in the mornings. I relish this time of year with all the trees looking splendid in full glowing bright leaf. The Swallows are backs too. We were out running a week ago when I spotted the first one and shouted to Steve who was just ahead of me, that it was officially summer now because I had just seen a Swallow, of course he shouted over his shoulder that one Swallow doesn’t make a summer, with which three more swooped by and he had to admit that I had made the right call. I have not yet heard a cuckoo but a friend on FB posted that he had so there you go.

We were out on our bikes and today I only wore one base under a lightweight running coat, having looked at the little brass dial in the garden that read 9° C. The mistake I made was not slipping a thin pair of gloves on over my wrist supports and it was not long before my fingers were really cold. As we rode down toward the sea there was not the tiniest flutter in the trees which is unusual since generally of late when we have ridden out, there has been a head on wind in at least three directions. Still, as still could be and sunny; maybe the end of the world came in the night and this was heaven. Maybe it was the stillness that had the squirrel confused; he was sitting in the middle of the road, as still as the leaves on the trees, when we rode up behind him and he jumped out of his fur as Steve rode by within inches of his tail.

As we rode, it was so quiet that we could chat about last nights TV and that was also a change because when Steve is in front of me out on our bikes, I can’t hear him when he talks on a windy day, I am just a bit hard of hearing and any other noise, means I can’t hear what people are saying to me. We have been watching series 2 of Fargo which is the blackest comedy I can ever recall seeing. We have loved the Minnesota characters accents and the utterly amazing cast, who are playing it all dead (in more ways than one) straight. Ted Danson is great, and Patrick Wilson; who is a Broadway musical man, so what is he doing in the macabre offering. Kirsten Dunst, is simply brilliant and Jesse Lons Plemons is also astonishing. I really should not pick out members of cast for praise, since they are playing a team game there. It must get awards I would think or maybe we are behind the times and the show already has had awards thrown at it. My favourite laugh out loud moment was when ‘Bear’ told the pretty young girl who he was just going to drive into the forest to murder, to put her safety belt on! And of course Zahn McLaron, who kills more people per episode than Keanu Reeves in John Wick 2.  There is ‘Black’ and there is dark black, this comedy this series goes: black, blacker, blackest. Fargo passed the ride for us today and we just managed to get around our quick, flat bike route from home before groups of children started to appear on their way to school. Pleased to have another ride tucked under our belts.

Steve buzzed around at speed getting ready to dart off to work as I gathered bike clothes up off the floor to take out to the washing machine. A quick coffee and then we were both out again, Steve to work and I had a couple of shop calls to make, one at the handicraft shop and one in the village. 

On checking my email, after I had got tidied up, there was an email from some client friends in Raleigh NC. They are the favourite uncles of little Catie-Ross. Her Uncle Ben has been sending photos of this little mite ever since she was born. This little girl has a lot to teach the constantly complaining people of the world. Born with a hole in the heart the little pet has hardly known a day in the comfort of her family home. For most of her short life she has been in and out of hospital and had far too many operations than a baby of this age should have to suffer but they are life saving. The strange thing is that she is always smiling. Tubes everywhere and she has laughed and giggled her way through the heartbreak of watching her fight for her life and never giving up. Poor little girl, she has never known what it is like to not have tubes all over the place, not to have what we know as normal comfortable night of sleep. Yet she smiles and giggles endlessly on. The rest of us suffering a few aches and pains, that we endlessly complain about can learn a thing or to from this wee baby. Her Uncle Ben and her bloodline Uncle Ross, who she is named after, have done a splendid job supporting her and her family and offering themselves as often as they can as the front line baby sitters that she has so much fun in the care of. Well done Ben and Ross.

Bank Holiday and Journey preparations

This morning was very quiet at the pool first thing and it seemed that some people were using the Bank Holiday as an excuse to miss the swim session.

Even so, there was a man swimming, exactly where I usually glide along; the whole open side of the pool was empty and this stranger wants to swim in MY water, typical.

There was an empty lane the other side of the lane that Steve and the guys thrash along in, so I moved over to that.  

Always 100’s on Mondays and Steve had planted a schedule at the shallow end for me to work to, except that I was’ Little Billy No Mates’ today, so I set about knuckling down to swim but swam the set of 15 x 100 but on 2.30 rather than the 2.40 as shown on the schedule. That did not give me much of a rest but my theory was that I would not keep the lane to myself for very and so it was best to get as far through fifteen one hundreds as I could before anybody else joined me in that lane. I got to the end of the set before the serious invasion started as the late sleepers drifted in one at a time. Steve had a handful of his usual gang to work with, and they just get in and get on with it, with little or nothing in the way of socialization. Steve finds the session most satisfying because they all work so hard at the sets and improvements are shown as evidence.

We had hoped for a short bike ride before Steve had to get it to work but it was looking like rain and a bit blustery to boot. We opted for hoping that the bad weather would pass and that we could get out on the bikes a bit later but at this time it doesn’t look any better; darker if anything and I don’t expect Steve home any time soon.

Other than that, I have been sorting out anything we want to take with us when we go off to France. If Steve and I do a theatre trip to London we will travel light, usually very light; one flight bag between the two of us. This next trip has a number of needs. Firstly it is a work trip for Steve. We will be traveling to our base there with the truck and Nigel our driver/packing man. We will go there in our little van, Petra the Peugeot, and so can throw in everything we want to take, sports kit, bikes, everyday clothes and just a few smarter going out to dinner with clients clothes, though even that is nothing fancy. 

So I have to pack a mountain of work clothes, because although it is a work trip he will be with clients for some of the time and so needs to look half tidy for that. There is a trip within the trip, when everybody but me will go to the big antiques fairs in the South of France. These are held on consecutive days and they will all be gone for four days and nights. 

That leaves me free to work on whatever project is next on my list without any interruptions. I can get on well when there is a bit of peace and quiet. That does not mean that I will not still be training but it does mean that I choose where I go, which bike route and how far, though the when, will still be first thing in the morning to get that part done and have the rest of the day for myself. The cycling is wonderful with masses of country roads and very little traffic. There are hills to one side of the town and flat-ish farm land on the other side. I do all my running in the vineyards and that is sheer joy. The old town centre is five minutes walk away and has ancient walls, where there is a hour walk around the complete battlements path. Lots of great old and interesting things to see and the town has literally dozens of nice restaurants and café’s. 

Where we stay is not luxury accommodation but it is very comfortable since it is a good sized converted barn that sits to one side in the large garden of the owners of the property who have been renovating the main house as long as we can remember, whilst living in the cottage all those years themselves. It has a high walled garden and a locked gate at the front and electronic shutters so I can close myself in at night. Sometimes when we stay, since we have been there many times, there the owners go away and leave us with the three house and an acre of pretty garden. We can drive the truck inside the high electric front entrance gates so it is nicely secure.

Steve is dreading the trip because it is such hard work with long hours; I on the other hand am looking forward to a super biking holiday and doing some writing, maybe enter a poetry competition or three.