13th June 2014 five days later .......

TRIATHLON(G) DAY

So it is all over and my body is slowly returning to some form of normality. I think terror not nerves is a more apt description of my feelings as I stood with 239 other wet suit clad bodies. I seemed to be behind the curve all the time and not quite in control of the situation. I had driven up the day before to stay with a friend who had been expecting three of us so decided to use the food we would have eaten that evening for the picnic after the event. My jangling nerves made me extremely hungry and although I had taken along familiar cereal for the morning I had not taken pasta with me. I had several spurring on messages one of which reminded me that I should be eating heartily. There was no pasta in the house and I was wilting with hunger so suggested we went to the previously good pub. I ended up with a bowl of barely cooked risotto followed by a bowl of cereal when we returned to the house. I then proceeded to get into a flap about the rest of my team and the bike all fitting into one small car and arriving in time for the race. Totally unfounded but I was having to worry about something otherwise the thought of the swim was going to keep me awake all night. I didn’t need that as there was a fox in the garden and the resident dog was doing good guard duty so sleep was sporadic anyway.  In the morning after finishing my packet of cereal and a couple of eggs we were almost off but my friend, who was kindly driving and whose car we had emptied of large garden pots to refill with my Triathlon stuff and the picnic, misplaced her car keys. My blood pressure was zipping along but I tried to keep very serene(!) Leila, Angus and the bike were at Blenheim Palace in very good time and calm and composed. I was already in a bit of a spin when we eventually arrived as we tried a few entrances before finding the right one, seemed to park about five miles from the Palace and my wristband would not do up. I managed to swap it and in my haste and anxious state I put the new one on so tightly that I had to return later for a third one otherwise my hand might have dropped off!

Leila and Angus walked with us to the base tent we were at for the day where I spotted my first cousin once removed on the Francis side.  A very fit, definitely in the right age bracket, person who could possibly cram himself into my wet suit and pretend to be me perhaps????? I think they might have noticed! After being told not to be so stressed by my team (that just made me bottle it up) we assembled together with all the others luckily near some loos. I was apprehensive about when and where I was meant to change into my wetsuit. The cyclists and runners were all ready for the off but I had jeans, a t shirt and a rather fetching neon yellow Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research vest on. I did find another of the swimmers who was in the same boat but she was a serious swimmer not a ‘drift as much as you can before the next stroke’ sort that I am and seemed remarkably un-phased by it all.(Having hatched a cunning plan to stick close beside her till the start I don't think I saw her again. So much for planning.) By now I was barely able to speak coherently and persuaded a friend to come with me to Transition. She managed to make it a little way but even though I explained that she was stopping me from bottling out she sadly had to leave the terrifyingly large area where all the contestants were running in and out of. It was an enormous area. Angus stuck his bike in one of the stands and I checked and double checked I knew where it was before I started asking some dumb questions and had to have various instructions repeated to me several times. Next was the 'wetsuit changing into' palaver. Leila very helpfully assisted me as I struggled into it and staggered along to where all our teams were meeting up. Due to lack of attention I  kept being separated from our other team swimmers and only by chance found them posing for group photos but think I managed to blunder into the last one. Then this grey mass of humanity (239 other people, have I said that before? I need to keep repeating it) headed into the holding pen and as everyone else was dunking their goggles and I didn't know any better I did too (a mistake as even before the start I had even more impaired vision than my normal not wearing glasses sight). Next I suddenly noticed that everyone else had bare feet and I still had my shoes on! By now a few more members of my support team had arrived and were grouped standing up high on the slope. I waved frantically through the crowds at one of them. She waved back. I then made large arm gestures that could not be confused as friendly but were more imperative and Angus ran down to the entrance of the roped off area and I threw him my shoes. Stupidly I didn’t throw him my unnecessary swimming cap. I thought we had to have one so took mine along but they provided one (much more pliable and stretchy and red - we were in the red wave). Consequently I had to swim with two hats on and the blue one kept working it's way off taking the red one with it so I had to keep stopping to yank them back on! We were told all sorts of things by an important looking man who addressed us from the lakeside but I am not sure I heard any of it as I was rather wising that someone would swoop down and take me away. One of the things I did hear him say was to pull our wetsuits up higher to stop water entering and slowing us down.  Mine was high enough already and by pulling it up manically I managed to make it virtually impossible for me to breathe. That did not help my swimming effort AT ALL. Far too soon a line snaked out to the end of a plastic, undulating temporary pier sticking out into the lake and soon I reached the end and there was no turning back. I jumped in after one of our team's members and followed her to the far side - adding to the distance I covered but it seemed like a good idea at the time - to wait by an enormous plastic duck. We all trod water for what seemed like hours and then I noticed people were on the move. I stuck my head in the water and hoped for the best. There was a lot of kicking and bashing into, thrashing water, a lack of oxygen, and a complete  inability to do the crawl. I tried, valiantly, and tried but just could not breathe. Sidestroke from my childhood came to the fore as I tried to make the vast distance between me and the turning mark reduce. By now I was feeling that I was letting the team down, wondering why I’d bothered with my swimming pool and sea water bath swims and hating the brackish lake water entering my mouth. Give me sea water any day. I had heard that you must not do backstroke as the helpers in the kayaks would think you needed assistance or were drowning. I could have breathed easily if I'd been able to do that surely! Nearing the finish I thought of undoing my wetsuit at the neck and holding one of the hats in my hand - I should have thought of both those things much earlier. Eventually feeling rather pathetic I reached the end thinking everyone must be miles in front but as I clambered out grabbing tightly to the helpful hand that was given to me to help me from horizontal to vertical I heard a friendly voice. Another of our team's swimmers. I couldn’t believe I had beaten anyone! All that sidestroke as a child off the side of the boat had been worthwhile after all. Up we went, up the steep climb back to the Transition area and I chatted away to a girl who’s partner had dropped out of the doing the swim two days before meaning she had to do that and the cycling. It could have been the same girl I had hugged rather hard under instruction to 'hug someone next to you' just before we headed to the start of the race. I was just explaining that I would run round the corner where there were people watching. She thought that was a good plan. Unfortunately that first cousin once removed and his girlfriend were sitting watching us and I was rumbled. I had to run the rest of the way as my supporters weren't round that first corner but entering the main palace courtyard where I was going to be handing over to Angus (once I’d found him) seemed to me as exciting as an Olympic Stadium. He was so suprised at the speed I arrived - I ran up the wrong lane so he didn’t see me coming - he was still putting his shoes on! It was over for me. He was off. Leila sympathetically helped me pull off my wetsuit and put on the lovely warm all in one padded outfit. (Not a thing of beauty but I recommend one highly to anyone who has to stand around in a wet bathing suit for any length of time - in fact even five minutes.) I spotted some of my friends standing on the Palace steps so made my way over to see them. I changed into normal clothes and put some conditioner in my hair as if  the lake water would harm it in some way. My hair was a bit odd for the rest of the day! Then we went out to shout our support at Angus. I couldn’t believe my swim was over. I was starving.

Angus whizzed past on his borrowed bike and luckily it held up till the end and he handed over to Leila. Sadly rather than leave his bike on the rack in Transition he tried to take it back to the tent. Not an easy prospect and very time consuming. We had all managed to return to the tent but I was trying hard to find out where Angus was and where he and I were meant to join Leila for the last bit of the race to go over the line together. Of course it involved more miles of walking and I was still desperatly trying to find an organiser to ask where the gap in the rails was when I suddenly found it. The man guarding the exit onto the track was not too sure I was really part of a team and was not very clear about whether I could join Leila or not. I was wearing jeans and non-sporty clothes at the time and probably didn't look like his idea of a Triathlete so it was quite understandable. He was busy talking to someone else when I saw her powering up the course so whipped out the gap and started running as fast as I could to the finish. Angus was still struggling with his bike and was nowhere to be seen so it was just the two of us and Leila was way ahead by the time we crossed. I did have lots of cheers and hurrahs from onlookers - mature trouser clad woman, arms crossed in front of her ‘powering’ up to the finish! We collected our medals and water bottle and were generally chatting when a man with a microphone appeared to tell us that our time chip had not registered. Leila had to go all the way back to the finish again to make it beep. After that I seemed to keep walking around for far too long looking for people and collecting things including a free energy drink. Then backwards and forwards to the tent and generally keeping going like a clock work toy. 

The next problem. Leila, Angus and I were all starving but the picnic was back at the car. (Miles away remember?) There was going to be a Cordwainer Prize Giving though so that in the faint hope we might win something (wooden spoons perhaps..) we waited and we waited and we waited it seemed. Amazing how an empty stomach makes time pass so slowly. We didn’t win a prize but I think may have been second of the teams home and IF the time chip had registered and IF my wetsuit had let me breathe or IF I'd only had one swimming hat who knows - we might have won! Of course the result of the race was incidental but prizes are prizes after all .... 

Thanks for all your support - this is not something we will be doing again EVER.

7th June 2014 only ONE day to go 

Nothing I can do now except worry and make sure I arrive at the right place at the right time having forgotten nothing I need! I have had a couple of extra days - great bonus - to collect everything together and do some more preparation. I even managed to rack up a very short, flat - with shoes on - jog. So not quite the same as I have to do but vaguely similar. 

Sleeping has become fitful as I try to remember all the stuff I need to take/do before, during and afterwards; the images of the swimming bit of a triathlon and my imagination of how it feels to be swum over, kicked and bumped into let alone the thought of trying to go  from horizontal to vertical when I clamber out of the lake; the weather; the logistics of finding the rest of my team and all the necessary bits of paperwork and all this before before we have to register - I am Team Captain after all and the responsibility is weighing heavily on  my now rather droopy. worn out shoulders. Oh yes and making it to the end of my leg so that the rest of the team can carry on - oh the commitment. 

During the swim I thought I would be able to hang back and swim at the back of my 150 peopled wave but now realise that the next waves of fit, healthy, young and dynamic people will be up and overtaking and swishing around before very long so that I’m not sure that is going to be as calm as I had imagined. To help me swim in the correct direction I even tried to be fitted with daily contact lenses (never having had any contact lenses before but seeming like a good idea to help me locate the finish) but although I was determined they would work technology has not quite reached the level of sorting out the peculiarities of my eyeballs. So following the person in front is still my strategy. Not being too close to be kicked and making sure that they are more certain than I am about the direction of the course is my plan.

Angus and the bike saga continue. He now has the loan of a bike and helmet but it is not at all certain that it will fit into Leila’s car - which at the moment is parked miles away from either of them - so that an alternative plan at the 11th hour may have to be hatched. It is a little like jelly wobbling trying to organise everything and my calm serene Buddha like methods disappeared fast out of the window ages ago. Anticipation of - and visualizing - things that are going to happen. Always colourful doing that and now the planning, preparation and some other thing beginning with p seems to have stopped working for the time being. ........... 

I am not a proficient online shopper but ordered some vital bits which are now languishing in a post office in Daventry rather than at my friend’s house to be brought on The Day. That was well organised!

On a more positive note, in just over 24 hours hours it will all be OVER and the three of us will be tucking into a delicious picnic being brought by supporters who will have lost their voices having been shouting at us for hours. I am sure the rest of the team will be magnificent and will make up for my lack of style and speed in the water and we will all do our best to make sure that the faith put into our team by our sponsors is not misplaced.. As Captain of the Fleet of Foot team I must not forget anything critical and have us barred from taking part. Now where did I put my wetsuit, that cosy after swim outfit I have been lent, photo i.d. and most importantly all the paperwork?

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who has supported us in this rather crazy venture. The countdown begins.

2nd June 2014 Less than ONE week to go now ...... 

Panic has now definitely taken hold as I try to cram in as much training as I can on my two days off work before The Event. The full realisation that being in the water is not a natural element for me rather than sailing about on top is not just dawning but positively sweeping up the sky like an over animated film. But I am steadily keeping to the forefront of my mind that I am doing this for other people and must not waver. Even when I became stuck in my wetsuit again and had to wait for a friend to appear to pull me out of it...... 

I am rather concerned that having eight people in my swimming pool lane was tricky for me to handle. How am I going to cope with hundreds and hundreds of others whizzing along in the lake? I have, though, managed to go round and round the sea water baths, without putting my feet down too much, trying to replicate the seemingly acres of water I have to swim through in the lake on Sunday. Apart from being still unable to see and swimming in a large variety of zigzags I didn’t too dreadfully but there was no other soul in the water at the time and it was flat calm ...... 

Several people have now talked to me about aspects of the race and I am becoming more and more loaded with information. Most of which I would rather not have heard. I have, however, been lent a large thick all-in-one padded suit (no not to take me off in the back of an equally padded van). This has made me feel rather more relieved than it probably should but I realised that normally the swimmers dry off and warm up on the bike leg but I am - thankfully - not doing that. As there will be no showers anywhere I was dreading being cold, miserable and exhausted. Now I should at least be warm as toast lying in my weary heap on the ground somewhere, hopefully having completed my four hundred metre run and handed over the ‘baton’ and be in the process downing chocolate bars.

Angus thinks he has managed to borrow a bike - how to get it to Blenheim is the next headache together with making sure the wheels go round - and we are all scouting around for a helmet for him. Leila continues to run about all over the place which will hopefully help on Sunday. 

The race instructions we need with all the information have been sent miles away to Dorset and I have no idea how I am going to pick them up. Either I go and retrieve them or turn up for the race. All members of the team are coming to Blenheim from numerous directions (three) and we will have to meet up outside with the expected 10,000 other people turning up, be organised, ready to go and not have forgotten anything vital. My old bones and muscles were aching with training but have suddenly plumbed new depths from anticipation of logistical chaos!

Only five and a half days to go ......... 

24th May 2014

Two weeks before the event now and a rather more frantic update. I am finding the ten hour days working on my feet as a Chandler (with barely half an hour off for lunch); worrying about if our cyclist will have a bike or whether he will even be able to turn up as the midnight oil is being burnt at a furious rate and deadlines are creating mountains of stress; our runner having huge workloads in the office and my motherly instinct to mop brows coming to the fore; living in two places at once and feeling the pressure mount that I have to finish my Triathlon leg for the rest of the team to continue so need to be able to swim an ever more daunting distance followed by a gruelling uphill run of further than I can even walk at the moment at the end of the day - all these together with a concern that we have barely lifted off the bottom of the money raising for these wonderful causes is inducing PANIC. Well that was an extremely long sentence but not as far as I have to swim! The other teams in our event within an event are discussing training schedules, padded shorts and other serious stuff as well as appearing to be on target with fundraising and raring to go. We need help!

I have now discovered that I will be able to see virtually nothing as I swim as without my glasses together with smeary steamed up goggles and lake water churned up fish, weed and mud as well as by thousands of other participants that will not be very clear. I was trying out the local sea baths without a wetsuit when I discovered this as I tried to stay out of the way of the other accomplished wet suited swimmers whilst I purposefully made my way round and round trying not to stop more than three times every twenty five metres or so. An even more daunting idea I had was to don my wetsuit - and that took twenty minutes - to join real athletes in huge swells off the beach. Uh oh I can only breathe on one side and that was the way the rollers were coming. Doggy paddle breaststroke came in handy as I seemed to drink the entire ocean. I decided to head in to the beach at one stage as the others masterfully continued and was promptly rolled by an enormous wave. Then came the much more difficult battle. Taking off the wetsuit. I became completely stuck with my hands in a straight jacket position and had to find someone to help me extricate them as I shivered embarrassingly in my wet bathing suit. That was nothing compared with being completely ensnared around my knees and ankles five minutes later. By this time in a fairly crowded evening sunset car park after one of my very long work days I just wanted to disappear homeward and jump under a very hot shower and quite possibly blub. I couldn't though as my lower legs were stuck in a mass of what seemed to be rubber as thick and unforgiving as those kitchen gadgets for opening jars. Taking several deep breaths and thinking of The Team and in ten more minutes I was free and hurtling home to rinse my superwoman suit and try to warm up.  What am I doing? I haven't even donned a pair of trainers yet to see if I can move faster than ambling pace over a distance of 100 metres let alone 400 ...... the plot thickens.

13th May 2014:-

Now here is an update. We are only three and a bit weeks away from the BIG day. I managed to find a swimming pool and career along it up and down - eventually finding I was aching all over and realising there was no way I could then crawl - let alone run - uphill for 400 m.  Seriousness will have to be considered. Angus is battling along with his finals - exams finally over now but final project feverishly being worked on so no time for checking bike seats. Think we may have the loan of a bike so we don't have to pick up a 'Boris' bike in Oxford on the day. Leila is powering away using any tube strikes to rush to work using upper body strength to push onto buses and generally using the energy around her in the vast queues to give her extra resilience. A rubbery suit arrives soon for me to try on - must remember to put on with zip at the back - but what do I wear on my feet? Is the bottom on the lake slimy, muddy, sandy or weedy ...... bare feet are alright for the swim but how about the 400m uphill run I have just discovered I have to do afterwards???

Ages ago:-

Here we are the three of us about to put ourselves through a grueling experience to raise money for some very worthwhile causes. I have seen a swimming pool and found a pair of goggles. Angus has looked at pictures of people riding bicycles and Leila used Shank's pony to travel to and from work during the tube strike. So far, so promising. We will be flexing a muscle or two, shaking out a swimming costume and even possibly investing in bicycle clips very soon. To keep us on track we need supporting in our very focused endeavours. For example pondering on the questions: should I use a rubber ring or water wings with my wet suit, what colour sun hat should Leila wear and how to decide on Angus' length of shorts. Decisions, decisions.

You see. You just have to give generously. 

So you know where your money is going here is some information. We are supporting two charities that make a lasting difference to many lives.  The two charities are Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research - the Blenheim Triathlon 2014 charity for the year - and LCF 125 - the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers charity for the year.

Many families benefit from the work of Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research. It is an organisation that has a real impact on medical advances.

The Cordwainer Company provides essential Bursaries to talented young footwear designers. To fund training, education and apprenticeship at the London College of Fashion.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

Thank you.