Ironman and me

I was one of those kids in school – maybe you were one too; if not, you definitely knew the type. In a junior school where sporting ability seemed to be valued above academic prowess, I won the much coveted 'sportsman of the year' award in my final year. In high school, I represented (and often captained) the school in football, rugby, tennis, cricket, athletics, basketball and, of course, swimming. In short, I tended to be pretty good at anything I tried.

But swimming was the one I took seriously and trained hard for. By the time I reached around 17 and it was clear I was never going to become an Olympic champion swimmer, I started to lose interest and 'sized down' from the excellent regional club, City of Chester, that I trained with and swam for to the local Mold swim club. On the noticeboard at the sports centre in Mold is the first time I remember seeing a triathlon – it's easy to forget just how young this sport is sometimes. My interest was piqued and I decided I'd be pretty good (how much do I wish I'd started back then, but I guess things happen when they happen for a reason) but I never got around to it.

Around the same I first became aware of Ironman due to the legendary race of 1997 when the coverage of Sian Welch and Wendy Ingraham racing for the line on hands and knees (neither could stand without their legs buckling) was shown around the world. When I learned what they'd just done – 3.8km swim, 180km bike and a full 42km marathon – I was amazed that any human could push themselves like that. Then, to want it so bad you'd actually crawl...and all this was for FOURTH PLACE!

Skip forward a few years and I spent the Easter before my uni finals working in Portugal. Each morning, I'd get up and do a small swim in the hotel pool and one of the guys working there asked me to do the swim leg for a team triathlon against other hotels. Unfortunately, I had to leave the weekend before.

Finally, as I've explained before, the perfectly timed combination of a get fit kick and an invitation to be part of a media team to cover the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge did see me enter my first tri and, as I've said before, I was immediately hooked. But, even then, it was always going to be a sprint here, maybe an Oly distance there...Ironman was never on the cards.

As the months passed and I enjoyed tri racing and training more and more, I guess I started devoting a little more time to it here and there. I remember turning up to swimming one night and one of the girls there who is into multisports herself asked how my training was going. Ok, I replied, telling her the run and ride volume I'd done that week. 'You're training for Ironman,' she said. I was; I just didn't know it yet.

As I've said, I love everything about triathlon and read anything I can about races, athletes, training protocol, supplements etc. I can name the last 20 Ironman World Champs in order off the top of my head and so I spent a whole day last October following the World Champ race in Kona online. I was nervous, excited...it was like cup final day. That was when I knew I was going to race IM this year.

It's funny how things change incrementally, so you never really notice how far you've come. I think it's important to look back and appreciate that journey and your achievements. I bought my first old, secondhand bike from a friend I'd met doing the Adventure Challenge who was training to do his first Ironman. The night I went to see the bike, he was heading out for a 26k long run. “There's a word for that, mate – madness,” I said at the time. Now I just call it Tuesday.