What a weekend....

What can I say? For the first time since we inadvertently stumbled across the world of triathlon (via the Lanzarote Ironman in 2005) I have been truly blown away. Last night Helen and I marshaled at Double Iron UK from midnight to 6am and were fortunate enough to witness one of the most inspirational and pioneering sporting events this country's likely to have seen in a very long time.

Rewinding a few hours... we arrived in Nottingham at 8am on Saturday morning as part of a large Leeds & Bradford Triathlon Club contingent taking part in the National Team Relay Championships. We had 11 teams of four with each person taking it in turns to swim 500m, bike 15k and run 5k... although that may sound easy, the fact that the distances are so short and you have a decent rest between each (1st person swims, 2nd person swims, 3rd person swims then 4th person swims before moving on to the bike) means that 'absolutely flat out with a total disregard for pacing' is the order of the day... just ask Ben G at the end of the run ;) As a club we had a fantastic day with all the teams doing well and a perfectly positioned tent / illegal BBQ allowing us to relax and eat in the sun / rain whilst cheering on our club mates. In fact, I had planned to spend most of today's entry chatting about yesterday... until the events of last night knocked everything for six...

Arriving at the Friary Grange Leisure Centre at about 8.30 last night it wasn't much different to rocking up at a fairly low key local triathlon. Our friends Steve and Lucy Haywood were organising the event, we knew a couple of the competitors and seeing as we were 'in the area' we'd offered our services as marshals.... within a few minutes though the enormity of the challenge faced by these athletes was all too apparent. The first swim wave had gone off at 6am yesterday morning (it's probably worth pointing out that as I write this at 6pm the following day some people may still have four hours to go!!) so by the time we arrived they'd been going for over 14 hours... but with a 4.8 mile swim and over a hundred cycling miles behind them the majority would still be riding through the night before embarking on not one but two marathons!!! For the first couple of hours or so we hung out with our mate Pauly P who was acting as part of the support crew for his fellow Oxford Tri member Hanno Nickau. Pretty much every athlete had their own dedicated crew made up of friends and family, who would be ready and waiting at the end of each 14 mile bike lap or 2k run lap with a predetermined spread of food and drink. I'd hazard a guess that an event like this would require 15-20,000 calories to complete, it isn't therefore a case of legging it through aid stations grabbing a quick gel and a couple of twiglets...

At midnight Helen (see today's pic) and I were sent to the turn around point of the 2k run loop, tasked with taking down numbers in order to help count laps (42 x 2k) and to offer encouragement through the long dark night... the athletes were responsible for all their own lighting etc as they made their way along the narrow forest path in the pitch black conditions and every few minutes we'd see a bright white light winding its way through the darkness before calling out a race number and disappearing off for another 10-20 minutes. There really is no way in which I could adequately describe our experience, the only way to understand would have been to actually be there but over the next five or six hours we got to know each individual torch and voice as if they were family, without ever being able to make out faces or even bodies... just a light and a voice... Sometimes athletes would have stopped at the race HQ for a rest/feed and would take longer than normal to return but sooner or later we'd recognise the bobbing of a light or certain accent and we'd tick off another lap and offer some encouragement before once more being returned to darkness.

By 6am (24 hours in to the race) and having been up at 5am the previous day we were both really struggling to keep our eyes open so with 16 hours of racing left for the athletes and a long drive ahead of us we decided reluctantly to call it a day and head back to Leeds. I can't think of a way to describe how attached we'd become to all the competitors, with the sun coming up and faces being added to the names & numbers we knew so well leaving them all was one of the hardest things either of us have done in a long while. In the course of a few dark hours these pioneering individuals had inspired us more than I could ever describe... as we headed north and shouted a final few words of encouragement out of the car window I was moved to tears by their wonderful human spirit.

Sitting back at my desk in Leeds I have a renewed feeling of deep motivation to in some way challenge myself... inspired greatly by the 47 individuals and one relay team who stepped up to the double ironman plate this weekend. I imagine the results will be available sometime this week via the Enduroman website but this event was so much more than a set of split times it was all about a group of athletes facing a challenge which, a bit like Ironman 30 years ago, truly was a step in to the unknown... amazing!

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Just to briefly touch on where I'm currently at training wise... with five weeks to go until my final 'A' race of the year (The Vitruvian - National Long Distance Triathlon Championships) I'm keen to finish the season with a bang. Last year I placed 20th out of about 700 finishers and 6th in my age category with a time of 4:16:46. My target this year is therefore to get closer to 4.10, inside the top 15 overall and with any luck sneak in to the top five 30-34 men. I pb'd at the Pool Triangle (20k hilly bike TT) last Wednesday with 30:31 and felt good on Saturday so feel like training is on track but there are two goals of my athletic lifestyle that I consistently missed during the initial 50 weeks to Kona... 1. to get 56 hours sleep per week and 2. to give up refined sugar.

I'll talk more about them next week but will use tonight's post to commit to achieving both those goals every single week from now until the race.

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See you in seven,

Tom