Before race day I had managed to knock up plenty of running – this is always my go-to exercise of choice, you don’t need much in the way of kit to do it, just a good pair of shoes and that’s about it. Although over these cold winter months, having a good jacket and hat have been pretty key too. But there was my first error, training in the one element of the race I wasn’t worried about, the running. I decided I would use my old bike to train on, this is a bike my parents gave me on my 14th Birthday! Not exactly your top of the range race bike, a bog standard mountain bike, that was very smart 14 years ago, but really wasn’t up to the job now. However that wasn’t the worst of my biking plans, I did at least do up to 80km on it before the race day. It was the fact that the only people who let you hire bikes in Donegal are companies designed for tourists. So on arrival I found myself faced with a heavy bike with a back paigner and flat front handlebars, apparently it caused a bit of a stir with the other competitors that anyone would even consider doing the event on that! Thankfully a chap called Sean, from the Gartan Adventure Centre came to my rescue (albeit while laughing at my incompetence) he very kindly lent me his road bike. I proudly dropped it off ready to collect at the start of the third stage, but here I made my next mistake – I didn’t try riding it, not even once before the start of the race. I’ll come to that later.
Lastly, the next element of the race was a Kayak stage, I did at least make an effort to train here, I was using the rowing machine plenty to build up my upper body strength and tried on a number of occasions to get out on the water, but the flooding at the back end of last year and start of this meant that doing so was impossible. Most water centres nearby were flooded with polluted water and so were closed. Finally I was advised to try the White Water Centre used by the 2012 Olympics – success. I got out on the water for 50 mins of 1:1 training, although in a white water craft which are incredibly difficult to keep straight. Thankfully this made the kayak stage on the day far easier than I had worried.
So, here I was turning up in Donegal woefully under prepared, but not feeling too nervous about it. I was there with my friend Samantha Gash, who was equally under prepared for the bike and kayak stage (although she had a good excuse having been in Canada for the past few months). So the plan was that Sam and I would run out together and ideally, race together, helping each other through. We sorted through our kit and helped make sure we had all we needed for each of the bag drops, a process I’ve never had to do before. I’ve always done one discipline events, so didn’t have the need for changing clothes etc. There was a wide variety of organisation, others like us who had no real idea when it came to cycling and bag drops and others who had clearly done many triathlons and knew the pitfalls of not getting it right.
At 0600 on the 1st March (St David’s Day), we were there, ready to go and set out into the darkness. The run started great, no issues at all, settling into a steady pace, nothing fast, nothing too slow – although Sam soon found it wasn’t quite her steady pace and headed on. The morning was beautiful and I was starting to think it might be a good day for it, as I ran into Ramelton the sun was up and I’d completed the first stage – a half marathon in an easy 2 and a bit hours. A quick change in the sun had me out on the water and in the kayak, this was far easier than I had expected and I was feeling strong. Moving faster than I was expecting I was looking to get a decent time, coming in after only an hour and a half. However this is where the weather turned, with the wind picking up and spots of rain turning to heavier rain. Arms tired I pulled up to the slip at Rathmullan and on to the change area for the bike stage. Unfortunately an hour and a half on the kayak appeared to be about average, with a lot of competitors changing at this stage at the same time, there was no cover as the rain continued to lash down. At this stage, starting to shiver, I was starting to feel less happy about this race. Eating down a chocolate bar and getting some clothes on I rushed back to my bike and jumped on….
Now, this is where my earlier error of not trying the bike kicks in. How do you change gear? That was the first question that went through my mind. Ok I could find the lever to change up, but not down. My legs flying around at a pace on the flat I must have looked a right sight. Indeed, I heard a few competitors laughing as they passed me, one even glanced back and shouted, “you want a lower gear mate!”, I didn’t fancy shouting back, “thanks, but how do I do that?” as I thought I’d look incompetent – because of course my legs flying round and round on the flat didn’t make me look that already. It turns out it’s not that hard to find the levers, and soon I was off properly, already thanking Sean for the lend of his bike.
Another error was simple Maths or is that Geography, either way if you start at sea level and end at a mountain, you are likely going to have a net gain in height. Now I had been practicing in Northamptonshire, not an area known for its hills, but worse than that I’d been doing the majority of training at night, so in order to prevent myself being run down by cars, I was training on an old disused railway. Trains tend to use flat rails as such my training had been mainly on the flat. Error number three, or was that four now? Anyway, it soon became apparent that these hills were far worse than I had imagined, I knew it was ‘hilly’ but not as bad as it was, every turn there came another hill, another up, another damn climb. I pushed on, trying to keep an eye on the time and the distance, it soon became clear to me that with a cut-off of 1700 at the mountain stage I was going to have to go for bust to get there.
Cycling, unlike running, you need to have some momentum and coordination in order to stay on. When your muscles cramp, your legs slow, the bike start to slow. Put in a hill and if you’re not careful you end up going backwards, do that, and you fall off. So this was the process I found myself in. I would go as fast as I could on the flat, use them to get as far as I could on the hills, drop down the gears then rise off the saddle and finally slow to the point I had to get off and trot up the hill. At the apex of a hill I would get back on, push off and go hell for leather down the other side, this did make me catch up with some competitors as I ignored the dangerous bends and the speed I was going to use gravity as best I could. However they soon overtook me on the flat or up the hills again.
So at 1630 I found myself on a long lonely road forever upwards trying to keep momentum, strong wind in my face, rain coming down regretting not having clipped in shoes and well it felt hopeless. I kept on, peddle, peddle, peddle. Stop. Peddle, peddle, peddle, stop. On and on, slowly, slowly up. However, I soon passed a road marker that made me realise what I had already suspected some time before, no matter how much I pushed on I was never going to make the mountain in time. I was never going to get to finish this race.
After about 11 hrs I was out the race, the dreaded “DNF” attached to my name – sickening and humiliating, but mainly my doing. Had I trained enough? No. Had I prepared enough? No. Was I ready for The Race? No. I can’t honestly say I was, and not in the way of, “there’s always more training you can do” but in a “I’m really under prepared for this race” sort of way. So now I have my first failure, the first time I’ve not completed something I set out to do. Annoying as it is, there were other competitors who didn’t finish, and even then there were only 54 of us who signed up to this event – I’m not going to say the obvious, “it’s the taking part that counts” as that’s more humiliating than anything else. No, it beat me, but now I’m just going to have to work hard to build up my capability and beat it. Watch this space….