The first thing people said post race last year when I returned to normal life?
‘Wow….how fast did you go?’
Not ‘How the hell did you run a marathon after riding 112 miles?’.
Not ‘Dear God, you swam 2.4 miles…in the sea?’.
Nope, ‘How fast did you go? How long did it take?’
Now they might seem like perfectly reasonable questions but I think the size of the distances involved suddenly make people ignore the distance as you would look out of a plane window and not register the height of the buildings. Everything is smaller when you look down. I’ve been telling myself that in the mirror for 20 years.
Don’t get me wrong, the reverse snobbery is also terrible. During my first week back in the office the obligatory ‘sponsor me’ email came around. Some guy from accounts was doing the Royal Parks Half Marathon. My thoughts? ‘Ahhh, that’s cute, a half marathon’ immediately followed by ‘lightweight!’. I wasn’t alone in these thoughts, the other office Ironman was absolutely complicit in the scathing comments behind closed doors.
So why the blues? As we get closer to the big day it feels somewhat harder. I know it’s a harder course by reputation. I also know how much it hurt last time around so there’s no fear of the unknown, it’s a fear of the known this time and it’s much worse.
For the sake of self conviction, I’ve pulled my data for last year and this year…
| Swim | Bike | Run | ||||
| Time (Hrs) | Distance (Yds) | Time (Hrs) | Distance (Miles) | Time (Hrs) | Distance (Miles) | |
| 2016 | 5 | 16500 | 38 | 400 | 36 | 160 |
| 2017 | 7 | 18000 | 75 | 1144 | 51 | 246 |
| Increase | 40% | 9% | 97% | 186% | 42% | 54% |
I have every reason to believe I’ve put an effort in, it won’t be enough to put me anywhere near the sharp end and when looked at clinically my swimming has sucked. I have been injured. I have missed over 2 months of running, but it’s still more, so it should be easier right?
So in short, if you’re going to sponsor someone for jogging around in a flimsy vest for a couple of hours go for it. If you want to sponsor someone who is going to have a tough day out, and I’ll say it now, ‘Never doing it again’, then hit the link.
Proceeds going to Macmillan this time around as I didn’t bother with sponsorship last time I don’t believe!
Fubar@Forty 