2024 Mash Up
2024 left me gobsmacked. So many things I’ve always wanted to do, a bucket list of joy and so devastatingly interrupted by the passing of my Uncle Phil. I needed sport more than ever to keep me going.
Sitting around doing nothing is not a good way to recover from loss.
Not for me, anyway.
I trained in #lanzarote and #mallorca , climbed #sacalobra (again) completed my first #ironman 70.3 in Venice (when sick!) raced #annecy #triathlon olympic distance, went paragliding over #lakeannecy climbed #alpedhuez for real, learned to fly a drone @djiglobal sea kayaked the length of #menorca camping on sandy beaches with just the best people @muchbetteradventures raced Weymouth 10k, circumnavigated #portland by kayak with @channeleventsuk and saw a dolphin, learned to roll my kayak (work in progress) Dived with #lundy seals and bought some shares in racehorses!! I don’t think I’ve been caving or cave diving once, but there is more to life and I’ll get back to it when the mood takes me.
People keep trying to get me to slow down. Why would you do that? I like my life how it is. Why would I want to slow down? Life is too short, so make the best of it now. It’s not a dress rehearsal....
The beach
Paddling the south coast of Menorca. Image: Karetta Expeditions.
I love sea kayaking.
I really only got into paddle sport properly when I was persuaded to race the Devizes Westminster marathon in 2009. I trained solid for 2 years in a racing K2, burning up the canals and waterways of Dorset and Wiltshire. We were finishing mid division in the warmup races and doing really well. Then disaster struck. 4 weeks before the race I suffered a herniated disc in my back, which rendered me unable to walk, or even sit in a car. It was almost career ending. I sold all my kayaks (I had 5 in my garden at one point!) and vowed never to set foot in one ever again.
Racing K2 in 2008
Time passes and after almost a decade, my back started to heal. I was still nervous of it but missed being in a kayak.
I didn’t think I could ever cope with a tippy racing boat again, but during covid I needed a new passion to get into the outdoors. I watched a video on social media of a friend of mine and his wife, paddling in Scotland with crystal waters and surrounded by peace and serenity.
The beauty of sea kayaking is that it is not competitive, so you can take it at your own pace and as much or as little as you choose. I figured if my back wasn’t feeling it, I just wouldn’t need to go. I bought 2 second hand, barely used Dagger Stratos kayaks for little over £1000 and have had nothing but fun and adventures with them ever since.
I’ve paddled in Dorset, Cornwall and the Outer Hebrides – but never anywhere particularly warm
Circumnavigating Mull, Scotland, in my Dagger Stratos.
I kept seeing adverts popping up on social media for ‘Much Better Adventures’. I generally ignored them. I was quite capable of organising and running my own kayaking adventures and was loathe to use a guide.
The thing is, I very often end up going alone. I bought two sea kayaks so I could take my friends out, but they lacked the time to progress their skills and experience, so I couldn’t take them very far.
My mates just don’t have the spare time, cash or freedom to just drop everything, up sticks when the weather comes good and set off to any corner of the UK for an adventure.
With no ties and 6 months of the year off, I could do this. But inevitably it means it is a solo venture.
I missed company of like-minded people. So, I signed up for a 4-day camping and kayaking trip in Menorca. It promised a leisurely few days on the water, camping on sandy beaches, sunsets and excellent guides who make your food and take care of the housekeeping.
It sounded a bit easy compared to the sort of thing I’m used to, but I decided that, given the tough few years I’d had, I’d give myself a break and let someone else take the weight off for a change.
Going on holiday with strangers is not really my cup of tea, but I figured a good guide would keep everyone in check and if anyone annoyed me, I’d just go and get in the sea and swim or paddle away from them.
I need not have had any of these worries at all.
From the outset we created a WhatsApp group and on the first night, having checked into our own hotels, a gang of us met up in Mahon, Menorca, for supper and some wine. We mooched around the bustling market as dusk fell and the vibe was good.
It was a mix of people, some from as far away as America, some with kayaking experience and some with none. It didn’t matter, we’d be well looked after.
In the morning the minibus picked us up and took us to the depot, where we would be given dry bags and set about packing. Travel light and go minimal was the order of the day.
I was seizing the opportunity to try out stuff I hadn’t had the opportunity to until now, such as dry shampoo and seeing of my solar panelled power bank actually worked…
Packing seemed to take ages, and it was well past lunchtime when we finally made our way to the kayaks that were waiting for us at the eastern, southerly end of the island.
There we met our guides Lucas and Jan, who walked everyone through a lengthy explanation of how to paddle a sea kayak. We had decent boats and paddles and loads of storage space, mainly owing to the ginormous double kayak which acted as the ‘hospital’ boat. It also contained lots of food, water and camping equipment and weighed a tonne. It turned out to be a godsend for one lady who was terribly seasick. Once in the more stable boat and plied with a cocktail of drugs, she overcame it and enjoyed the rest of the trip, much to our relief.
We finally got out on the water and very soon we were forced to settle into Menorca time. Nothing was hurried and dinner time wasn’t until around 9:30pm.
We paddled gently for around an hour in glassy, calm conditions before stopping for a late lunch at a busy, sandy beach. We had ample opportunity to lay about, swim, and eat lunch. It was a lesson in slowing down and enjoying the vibe, but it took several of us a day or two to adjust to this new pace of life.
The plan each night was to put our tarpaulins up as dusk fell. The beaches were therefore cleared of people, and we would have them to ourselves.
We arrived at our first overnight stop of the trip, a secluded sandy cove, and set up our tarpaulin wigwams and groundsheets. Thermarests were provided but most of us brought our own sleeping bags.
Sand. It just gets everywhere. There is nothing more irritating than gritty sand in the bottom of your sleeping bag. The humidity overnight added to the issue, to ensure that the sand stuck to everything, and our bags never really dried out throughout the whole trip.
This aside, we were treated to some super starry nights from under our canvas, complete with shooting stars and arguments about whether or not it was Orion.
“That’s Orion, there…”
“No that’s Ursula major. Or is it minor…?”
“That’s the Scorpion isn’t it?”
“No, it’s the saucepan, look there’s the handle”
“I’ll get my app”
“What’s that noise?”
“It’s my app….it plays music when you use it…I can’t turn it off”
“Look, I told you that was Orion…”
“Oh look a shooting star!”
“Make a wish…”
It was like being on a school camp again. And we loved it! We woke early to a cool sunrise. It took some adjustment to realise we were not against any tides or the clock. We could have a leisurely wake up, without being hurried. I did some yoga on the beach at sunrise, which frankly is something you only ever see on Instagram and never do for real!
We were starting to live the dream.
Each day, we made our way along the south coast of Menorca, stopping for long, leisurely lunches with sea swimming, sunny snoozes and bobbing about, chatting in the water. We went snorkelling, I had a chance to practise my self-rescue skills and on the odd occasion we snuck off to a beach bar in the evening, feeling guilty, but not for long, for making the expedition less of an expedition by joining civilisation.
We worked out that we were all on a well-deserved break and opted to make it easy, rather than harder than it needed to be.
I managed to sneak some early morning drone shots of the camp one day and these really did the trip justice. We were treated to warm, clear waters, rocky cliffs, sea caves and pine forests as we made our way along the entire length of Menorca.
The sea state picked up over the last few days, but the gang coped with it really well and nobody took a dunking. We were starting to get the hang of things and eating simply, enjoying the local produce that Lucas fed us from the never-ending Tardis of the giant double kayak.
All too soon it was over. We pulled into a rocky beach with swanky beach bar and emptied the boats, piling kit into Ikea bags ready to be taken back to the depot.
We were all a bit sun burnt, desperate to shower in fresh water and we all took turns to stand under the beach hose pipe to get the salt off our skin.
We all sat and drank cold beers, half pleased to be back to some normality but half sulking that it was over.
We all decided to meet up that evening for one final supper at a pizza place. I grabbed my hire car ready for the rest of my trip, as I was staying on for a few more days on the island. Then we had supper and said our final goodbyes.
I cannot recommend Much Better Adventures and Karetta Expeditions highly enough. On my final day I booked a sea kayak rolling lesson with Lucas and progressed a lot. Karetta were friendly, professional and highly skilled. I’d been a caving instructor myself for 10 years, so was able to see the way things were run from a slightly different angle. I could not fault the guys and wouldn’t hesitate to use them again.
Lundy
Arrival on Lundy Island
I live only a few hours’ drive from the North Devon coast. It is shameful therefore that in my 20 or so years of diving, I had never visited the island of Lundy.
But perhaps not that shameful.
Lundy is a small island, only 3 miles long, that sits 10 nautical miles off the North Devon coast. Day trippers sail on the regular ferry MS Oldenburg from Ilfracombe to visit the protected and preserved island, which is home to puffins and seals, one campsite, a pub and 3 lighthouses.
Lundy is protected under a Marine Conservation Zone designation as well as a Marine protected area and the reefs surrounding the island are a strict ‘no take’ zone. This has allowed the underwater flora and fauna to flourish.
Dive boat for the weekend
Situated where the Atlantic meets the Bristol Channel, big seas meet a large tidal range and consequently, boat rides to Lundy can be ‘bracing’.
It is for this reason every trip I have ever attempted has been ‘blown out’. There just wasn’t a safe weather window for the dive boat to transit.
So, after a Facebook message from a diving friend, making an attempt at a trip in August – seal pup season – I thought I’d have another shot. As the date approached, the weather forecast deteriorated and I envisaged yet another failure at trying to get to Lundy Island.
It turned out that the Friday was a no-go. But Saturday and Sunday looked promising, if a little wild.
Whilst we would be too late for the puffins, it was optimal time for last year’s seal pups to come out to play.
On board with Kirsty Andrews, top drawer underwater photographer.
I drove down to Ilfracombe the evening before to stay with a friend, Caroline Bramwell, who has competed in Ironman distance races with a stoma. She also featured in Louise Minchin’s ‘Fearless’ and it was great to catch up with her and spend an evening overlooking the harbour, putting the world to rights.
The next morning the heavens opened. Sideways rain greeted us as we tried to get our cars as close to the boat as possible to unload diving cylinders, camping kit and tonnes of camera equipment.
Boat loaded and cars parked up for the weekend, among throngs of anorak clad tourists, we set off towards an island that we couldn’t even see.
Bone dry diving with my trusty Santi Elite drysuit
As soon as we left the harbour, we knew it would be a rough ride. The catamaran took off out of the water as we battled waves all the way out to the island and it only really settled after 90 minutes of not being able to stand up.
Divers hunkered down with looks of concentration on their faces as they tried not to throw up.
As we arrived, whilst still windy, the island looked wild, with blue skies and turquoise waters. We passed all the camping gear up onto the jetty and it was loaded into a landrover to be taken up the steep hill to the campsite, where we would be staying later.
Now it was time to dive.
Smiling for the camera. Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.
As the boat swung round and chugged into a sheltered bay, there they were. Waiting. You could almost see them tapping their watches; “Where have you been?”
The Lundy seals were in full chorus and at the sight of the dive boat, they flopped their way ungracefully off the sloping rocks and into the water to bob about, and wait.
We kitted up, cameras checked, buddy checks done and in our own leisurely time owing to no tides, we jumped off the boat and into the turquoise, clear, cool water.
Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.
“Don’t go looking for them….they will find you” was the instruction, along with general seal encounter etiquette.
“And if the come up and cuddle you….don’t cuddle them back!” Apparently, they can be covered in all sorts of bugs and nasties.
Seals are endangered and their behaviour suggests they know it. It wasn’t long before we caught glimpses of large, white and grey bodies flashing past as they sussed us out.
They are behind you - always behind you - as this is where they feel most on control. If you turn around to make eye contact, they vanish, quick as a flash.
Knowing this, I decided to experiment with my relatively new toy, an underwater housing for my Insta 360 camera.
My buddy Matt and I went through our pre dive checks and jumped into the inviting dark blue-green water.
My buddy, Matt
Dark round heads popped up and howling could be heard from the beach. You could almost see the seals tapping their watches and telling each other “The divers are here!”
We swam slowly towards the rocks, staying pretty shallow and fiddling with our cameras, getting the settings right, making sure the strobes were firing. I unravelled my selfie sick for the insta 360 and filmed a little bit of us swimming just to check it was all working. There was no sign of any seals just yet.
When I got back home and checked the footage, swinging the camera view around to look behind me, there were three seals quietly following us the whole time!
Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.
It wasn’t long before they started to get more inquisitive and flashes of large white and dark grey bodies shot past us. We milled about, not really sure what to do or where to go as we were now pretty much up against the rocks where the waves broke the shore below the tall cliffs towering above.
Then, it began.
Whilst I was looking the other way, a turned my head back and came face to face with a large, whiskery head. He was sniffing out my camera housing, able to see a reflection of his head in the port.
As soon as he’d been there, he was gone.
This game of cat and mouse continued for the next hour. I tend not to move much in the eater and can hang motionless without moving my fins at all. The seals seemed to love this as they could swim up behind me, grab my fins and hug them with theirs whilst having a good chew of the rubber, my ankles and my drysuit pocket!
Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.
While this was going on, my buddies would get the opportunity to get some great photos while the seal was falling in love with my fins.
The downside for me was that this was all going on behind me and I wasn’t getting much in the way of photos! I used my insta 360 on the stick to film the shenanigans going on but eventually I put it away and chanced my arm at some stills.
These depend entirely on the seals. It is a matter of patience, being in the right place at the right time, the seals mood and the settings on your camera being ready for the photo that presents itself.
Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.
Seals love admiring themselves in the dome port of your camera. In reality, they probably think it is another seal that looks just like them!
This presents great photo opportunities but also puts the fragile and easily scratched dome ports at risk – teeth and claws come out as they try to investigate. I didn’t want to spend my next few months polishing scratches out of acrylic, so I flicked them away when they got too ‘chewy’.
After a wonderful morning of playing with seals, we had a leisurely lunch and went on a dive around a reef pinnacle. I had the wrong lens for macro shots so mooched about a bit, trying to remember the names of the various squidge I was looking at from my Seasearch lessons.
We pulled into the pier and had some fun hauling cylinders up onto land. I think next time I’ll take my perfectly good caving rope and hauling system!
We opted to walk up to the campsite and we were treated to a stunning view as well as a puffy PFO test!
It was really quite windy and as beer time approached, there was some fun to be had putting up tents and blowing up air beds. I don’t know how I do it, but I always seem to end up on trips with people equally as bonkers as me!
The pub on Lundy fortuitously feeds the locals and those who work on the island, so despite being the only one and therefore a captive audience, the food was very good, the booze reasonably priced and the staff and service was excellent.
We made the best of it, interspersed with a very windy walk to watch the sunset from one of the lighthouses, before returning to the pub.
The next morning we all managed to grab a coffee and breakfast roll from the pub which was most welcome, before eating it on the walk back down to the boat.
Luckily the tide was in, which made loading the cylinders a bit less necky.
Off we went for seal round 2.
They were there again, waiting for us to sort out gear out. They seemed a little keener this time, already in the water with lots of howling going on.
Their heads bobbed patiently while we tested our cameras, did our pre dive checks and stepped into the water.
As we approached the rocks, the familiar tugs on our fins began.
I assumed the position and got mauled while Matt and Daryl this time, who wanted to hang out with us, got their cameras in position.
It wasn’t long before the seals started to get the upper hand. They had worked out that if they got really close, the divers didn’t know what to do and fell over backwards, rendering them completely helpless like a turtle on its back.
The mauling began.
Mugged by seals. Images: Matt Emmerson
One rolled me over and I lost balance, my double 12s twinset pulling me onto my back. Now, fins up and fully exposed, the seal took the opportunity to just get a mouthful of whatever he could. Camera, drysuit pockets, bit of hood, glove…
My buddies were insanely helpful, getting right in with their cameras to film this loss of fabulousness, whilst I completely failed to right myself for laughing and flooding my mask.
Daryl thought this was hysterical, until the seal turned its attention to him and, whilst on his back trying to get the classic Snell’s window seal silhouette, he instead got a good humping and was left abandoned in the weed!
The seals were definitely more boisterous and were having serious fun at our expense.
Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.
Being only a few metres deep and with tonnes of gas, we had all the time in the world – and it seemed to stand still.
It is an amazing privilege to be approached by wildlife who just want to play and interact with you. The seals are not fed by humans, they simply seek out play with their curiosity.
In the afternoon, we set off on another reef dive but in my hurry to swap lenses, I didn’t quite put the dome port on the housing properly and flooded my camera and lens.
This was pretty devastating and despite my insurance covering some of it, this worked out to be an expensive mistake.
Fortunately, a brilliant outfit called Nemo Photo who now deal in Ikelite and underwater camera gear in the UK, have been very helpful and I have a new camera set up coming very soon, treating myself to an upgrade.
I can’t wait to get it into the water!
The Lundy Gang
The Alpe
Orro bike part way up Alpe D’Huez, France.
The Alpe
I sat at the dinner table, staring at my small plate of white fish, a little rice and some lettuce. I was too tired to start eating it, pushing around my plate instead.
“That’s a proper fucking climb!” My mate and colleague said, slightly outraged and surprised at what I’d just done.
“I know…” I said, picking at the fish.
“How long did it take you?” he asked.
“Fucking ages!” I replied.
As luck would have it, I was down in Annecy competing in an Olympic distance triathlon and had some time to kill afterwards. Alpe D’huez was only a few hours drive away.
I booked a campsite at Bourg D’Oisans which was conveniently right at the start of the famous climb.
Lake Annecy from the air. Shot on Insta 360 camera.
But, not before I took to the air and went paragliding in Annecy – something I had always wanted to do ever since I started visiting France as an adult in my early twenties.
Wherever you go in the French mountains, you see colourful canopies, dots in the sky, circling the thermals and gently, like leaves falling from a tree, spiralling slowly down to earth to land in some field somewhere.
In my youth I simply couldn’t afford it. Other times, I just ran out of time or couldn’t motivate the people I was with to come with me.
Free of all ties, I booked myself onto a tandem flight. Just 20 minutes, in case I didn’t like it!
View from the best seat in the house. Lake Annecy. Flights by Takamaka.
I rocked up at the flight school and a few of us piled into a minibus, packed out with parachutes and harnesses and our pilots.
We drove up the Col de Forclaz, which is one of the highest points above Lake Annecy. It looked like a half decent cycling climb until the hair pins ramped up to a ridiculous gradient and I thought better if it. We climbed higher and higher.
As we walked to the take-off ramp, the views were spectacular, and the height made you feel a bit dizzy.
My pilot was Mitch and he spoke better English than I did French. He was good looking, smoot and impressed that I worked offshore. We chatted easily and he fitted me out on my harness and helmet. We didn’t faff at all. There was no time to even think, really. I felt a tug of the parachute behind me and we took a few awkward steps back.
Then very quickly, those words again: “Allez allez, go, go, go….”
We ran a few strides then whooomph! We were up in the air very quickly. I wasn’t really ‘in’ my seat, so he quickly showed me how to lift myself into the seat properly and get comfy. He’d kindly allowed me to bring my Insta 360 camera and I started filming the incredible views as we flew up and down the tree line chatting and laughing.
Eventually we crossed the lake and after he’d let me have a go at steering, he was keen to show off his aerobatic skills.
I’m up for pretty much anything and away we went. After three big swoops where my stomach almost fell out, I had to stop. I was the kid who clung to the top of a death slide, hating that ‘dropping’ feeling. I hate roller coasters and theme parks and it’s the reason I won’t do a bungee jump or jump from a plane.
It might have been easier if I’d known what to expect or was controlling the chute myself, but either way, I decided to park the aerobatics for another day.
We had a gentle landing. “Just stand up” he said. I did, and that was it.
Encroyable!
I had also recently bought a mini drone and had lots of fun learning to fly it. I was looking forward to getting some classic shots of the Alpes.
It was a wonderful way to round off my week in Annecy and to be honest, I didn’t really want to pack up and leave, but I had plans and set off to Bourg D’Oisans.
The mountains got bigger and I could see snow on top of some of them. Then I saw some road signs ‘Alpe D’Huez’. I couldn’t believe I was really here.
Chateau Duingt, Lake Annecy. Shot with DJI Mini 4k Drone.
The campsite wasn’t as posh as the one in Annecy, but it had everything you needed and a pool, which I wasted no time jumping into. As I relaxed on the sunlounger, I could see, rising above me, the first few bends of the Alpe D’Huez before the road disappeared out of sight into the mountains. The first few bends are the steepest, averaging about 10% and it looked intimidating from my seat by the pool.
I knew I could climb it, but I also knew that real climbs are also much, much harder in real life than on the Watt bike indoor trainer.
Still recovering from the Annecy Triathlon, I decided to give myself another rest day and go for the climb on the Friday.
View from my van
Instead, I took a gentle womble around a flat route by the river to find places to fly my drone and, as ever, it turned into a complete epic!
It started out fine, passing stunning glacial lakes with unreal turquoise colours and little picnic areas. It was beautiful but I didn’t feel confident flying my drone around people, so I moved on a bit.
A little further along I found an empty parking place which was quiet. I launched the drone and captured some amazing shots of glacial lakes, rivers and mountains.
I rode on along the river and the track became covered in several places with deep sand. I wobbled to a halt and ended up ‘hike a bike’ on and off for quite a few kilometers.
Bourg D’Oisans valley. Shot by DJI Mini 4k Drone
Bourg D’Oisans valley. Shot by DJI Mini 4k Drone
Then, to my horror, I really was stopped in my tracks as the road just ended! It had been swept away by the river which crashed past in front of me.
Nope!
This meant going a little off piste and following a track mostly covered in deep sand and then a grassy path with rocks in it.
Orro Venturi does not like grass, nor lumpy tracks and I completely agree.
I ended up carrying Orro most of the way back to tarmac, boulder hopping yet another dry riverbed, sans road that had collapsed.
Back on terra firma and bumped into some Americans who had been up Alpe D’Huez that morning and were looking for an easy route to do in the afternoon.
I diverted them away from my hike-a-bike trail and they were super grateful.
I chose a Friday to go up the Alpe. Weather looked sunny but not baking hot, so blue skies were promised and I guessed there would be far fewer cyclists midweek.
After breakfast and lots of nervous faffing, I set off on the very short lead-in to the start of the climb, which was pretty much round the corner from the campsite. Not much of a warmup then.
As I started plodding up the first few bends, the steepest of the route, it became apparent that a Friday was a bad idea.
Lorry after lorry came trundling past, belching out black stinking smoke and it was relentless. There seemed to be some sort of quarry works going on up in Huez and heavy plant and vehicles passed at regular intervals.
They were respectful and clearly used to cyclists and I never felt in any danger. It just spoiled the experience somewhat.
A few other cyclists plodded by in their own time not going crazily faster than me. One set off just behind me but never passed until I stopped briefly for a breather on bend 19.
I kept plodding and the heat of the day set in. Fuelled by jelly babies, Nutella biscuits and water with dioralyte, I enjoyed the views as the hairpin bends offered views of the snow-capped Alpes. It was quite humbling to see that some of the lower bends were adorned with very high mesh fencing. These were clearly designed to catch cyclists who descend too quickly and risk plummeting off the edge of the mountain, literally.
Each of the 21 famous bends on the climb has a plaque naming previous winners of the Tour De France stage involving the Alpe.
The Alpe D’Huez climb ends at 1860 metres altitude, climbing from Bourg D’Oisans cyclists ascend 1143 metres elevation, over 14.5km distance.
The average gradient is 7.9% and the maximum, 14%.
The first landmark was the pretty church, Saint-Ferréol, on a sweeping left-hand bend 7 with a stunning mountain backdrop. There are also some facilities opposite, with fresh water to refill bidons, toilettes and recycling bins.
Climbing ever higher, you pass through a small village which gives some respite as the gradient backs off for a short while. It then picks up again as you head into the upper bends, with a little more shade and luckily, during lunchtime the road was quieter as the lorry drivers took their siesta.
Saint-Ferréol church, bend 7. Image: DJI Mini 4K drone (Christine Grosart)
I passed beneath the ski lift station, as if I needed any reminding how high I was. Just 3km to go then….
This is where the cowbells start and the marmots begin chirping. I’m not fast enough to outride the flies that seem to go for slow moving cyclists, as a refreshing change to the cattle that graze the higher slopes.
There were a few stings in the tail on the last part of the climb and I finally finished conveniantly close to a bar that was something of an anticlimax after such a classic ride.
I had a pint of lager and messaged my friend who had got me into cycling 3 years ago. I spotted some guys standing on what looked to be a podium that had been set up for anyone to have their photos taken.
Some nice ladies from New Zealand obliged and we had a laugh as I enjoyed the moment. What I was really looking forward to was the descent. Mostly facing the right way on the way down to enjoy the mountain views and with a dry road, I went as fast as I dared without needing the cyclist-catcher nets.
On top of the world
I chilled out the next day in the pool and the bar, with a quick drive up to the Alpe to shoot some video with my drone and do some jersey shopping. I rounded the day with a fabulous steak frites and rosé wine in Bourg D’Oisans, watching the world go by.
I didn’t really have any plans after that, but didn’t want to waste a day. Despite an upset tummy, I decided to cycle in the evening up Col D’Ornan. Not steep but quite long, I ignored the thunderstorm warnings and set off. Thunderstorms were usually short lived. Except this one.
A few hundred metres from the Col I couldn’t take any more. It had been steadily raining and now it was a steady, torrential downpour. Thunder clapped, water cascaded down the road and I still had quite a long descent home. It had set in for the evening. I decided that as I was alone and out on a limb, with hypothermia a reality, I’d head home. I was trashed and didn’t feel an sense of achievement at all. Lesson learned. But probably not…
Allez Allez
If I ever hear those words again, I think I’ll scream!
Orro on Lovers Bridge, Annecy.
June in France is meant to be warm, glorious weather with balmy evenings in the bar.
Sure, up in the mountains you can get the odd rumble of thunder and dramatic flash of lightening with some refreshing downpours, but it’s normally all ok by the morning.
The early heat of the sun lifts the dampness into low hanging clouds until they disperse and reveal another blue sky and sun-drenched day in this beautiful country.
But oh no, not today. Not on the day of the Olympic distance triathlon I had been training for since last August!
My first visit to Lake Annecy was after a caving expedition to the Dent De Crolles cave system in the Chartreuse. I fell in love with the warm, turquoise, clear lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains and the chilled, cosmopolitan vibe.
I returned again in 2022 to start dipping my toe into the world of triathlon and it was the most stunning place to train. With an (almost) pan flat cycling and running circuit of the lake, mountains surrounding the lake to get the climbing legs going and the fresh, clear water to get used to open water swimming – it was perfect.
I cycled up my first Col, the Col de Leschaux and was hooked.
I wondered if there was a triathlon in the area and sure enough, an Olympic distance triathlon was held each June.
This comprised a 1500m swim, finishing just beyond the classic ‘Lovers Bridge’, followed by a 40km bike which included Col de Leschaux (11.8km long/ 3.7% average / 8% max) and then a pan flat 10km run.
I set off in my van which is really a car, to Dover and it felt unusually empty with just athletics gear, a driveaway tent and my bike. I planned to stop in the champagne region of Epernay where the Municipale campsite is friendly and a safe place to stop over for a night. I arrived in good time, enough time to go for a run along the river and canal that threads its way through the Marne.
I don’t know how, but I got completely lost and ended up doing a very hot and scenic 7km. Turns out you cannot cross locks on canals like you can in the UK as they were well barriered off with large gabions.
After my ordeal, I spent the evening in the golden hour drinking a pint by the river.
The next day I loaded the van with food, wine, and pretty much all the amazing things you find in French supermarkets and drove a further 5 or so hours to Annecy. I settled in, did a quick spin on the bike and a swim in the lake and I was ready for the triathlon.
I drove into Annecy to register the day before and despite a parking nightmare, this proved a good move as the heavens opened while I was there and getting soaked and risking the bike wouldn’t have been a clever move.
The children’s race was on the Saturday, and I felt sorry for the little mites as they swam, cycled and ran their hearts out only to be met with horrible weather. They finished their races, shivering and teeth chattering, not really knowing what they had just accomplished – some were very small! Their parents yelled encouragement from the sidelines like their lives depended on it.
I smiled and felt happy for them. My mother wouldn’t even turn up for school sports day, never mind take me to anything like this.
As it turned out, the bike distance in the grown-ups’ race was more like 47km and to complicate matters, the two transition areas for bike and run were in 2 different locations! It was logistically a bit fiddly.
Mountains obscured by clouds and rain. Could have been any field in England…
I had originally booked a large apartment overlooking the lake, very close to town, thinking that camping would be too hard if I was too broken following the race. But given that it was half the distance of the Ironman 70.3, and I was infinitely fitter, plus parking threatened to be a nightmare and expensive, I opted for a very nice campsite instead down in Sevrier, close to where I had stayed before. It was right on the cycle way and short waddle to the lake for swimming.
More importantly, the campsite barrier would open for me in the morning. You have to be careful with French campsites, as often they forbid vehicle movement before 7am and locked electric gates to enforce this.
That’s a big problem if you need to be up and away before 6am for race day.
Thankfully camping L’Aloua were accommodating, and the facilities were superb.
The morning of race day was grey and drizzly. This progressed to a proper downpour. As I pumped up my bike tyres the visibility reduced so much that the mountains surrounding the lake were completely obscured by low cloud and torrential rain.
The French didn’t give a monkeys.
It wasn’t particularly cold, but rain capes and brollies came out and competitors squelched barefooted through the mud into transition.
I started to set up transition in a state of disappointment. All that time, all that training and it had come to this. My forté is descending but now I’d had to go super slowly on the wet, greasy roads to avoid crashing.
The lake had never looked so uninviting.
I racked my bike, wrapped my cycling gear in a towel hoping it would stay mostly dry and put my running gear into a bag which would be taken by the race volunteers to Transition 2 about a kilometre away for the run later.
I sat on the back bumper of my van, trying to shelter under the boot lid as I put on my wetsuit. People dressed in plastic bags wandered past and nothing was dry anymore.
We all walked slowly to the water’s edge after what seemed an eternity, waiting for the briefing. The rain had started to subside, crowds began gathering on the promenade and muddied lawns that grace the beachfront of Annecy. We gingerly stepped into the water to flush our suits, get our faces wet and fiddle with our swimming goggles. A few of us dove into the shallow, crystal-clear water and all of a sudden, the weather didn’t matter. The mountains began to appear again, and steam rose off every bit of tarmac that was wet. There was no sun, but the downpour was giving us a reprieve.
The starter arrived on a large pedalo with his loud haler. This was a mass start, but they did separate the men from the women.
“Les hommes, à droite…. Les femmes, à gauche!!!”
This didn’t help at all, as all it meant was, thousands of athletes of various speeds and abilities were destined to converge at the first, right-handed buoy before setting off across the lake into the funnel under ‘Lovers Bridge’.
This was my first mass start for the swim. I figured if I started near the front, I would be among the faster and therefore better, swimmers.
Oh, how wrong can you be!!
“Trois, deux, un…….Alleeeeeezzzzz”
Everyone threw themselves into the water and a mud churning, washing machine which resembled charge of the light brigade, ensued.
It was little more than aquatic self-defence!
First off, starting to swim was a mistake. We were being kicked in the face by people running through the silt, as the water was still really only waist deep.
I felt that I was wasting energy fighting a losing battle trying to swim beautifully amongst this chaos of all the running, staggering, falling and flapping. I stood up, defogged my goggles and got jogging until the water got deeper and people started to actually swim.
The damage was done.
I’m a reasonable swimmer, with no fear of water but my heart rate had spiked in the maelstrom, and I struggled to get it back under control.
I had also committed the cardinal sin of triathlon – I had done something new on race day. I’d switched sports bras and gone for my training bra which I use for running, to keep my assets under control!
However, I’d never swum in this sports bra, and it immediately felt tight, and I felt short of breath and tight chested. I’d never felt like that in the water before and I had to work hard to ignore everyone around me – quite difficult when you are being kicked and punched from all sides – and slow down.
I moved to the outside of the pack to get some clearer water, but it didn’t work. Some bloke, who had clearly never considered sighting, was zig zagging wildly across the pack of swimmers. He crossed diagonally in front of me no less than 3 times, both ways, and even worse, he was still going about the same speed so there was no escaping him.
I couldn’t go any faster and to slow down and lose him would spoil my own race.
The next time he crossed me he stopped me dead, and I had to bob upright to avoid another mowing down. I instinctively gave him a good hard kick to push him back in a straight line. He was completely oblivious and continued zig zagging and flapping his way wildly to the entrance of the canal, where I finally lost him.
As we entered the canal the water became shallower. I swam as much as I could, worried about cutting myself on any glass or other nasties that might be at the bottom in the thick, gloopy mud. The water turned an opaque grey, and I tried hard not to swallow any of it. We were soon at the carpeted steps and whisked onto the muddy grass by the volunteers to go and find our bikes. I pulled my wetsuit off, tucked my hat, ear plugs and goggles into a sleeve and tried to dry my feet. For distances longer than sprint I prefer to wear socks for the bike and the run. Getting wet socks on in a hurry is always stressful so I decided not to hurry. Once on, I put my cycling shoes on, then gloves, then helmet, then number belt and finally my shades – not that I needed them today!
I trotted in the slippery mud with my bike to the mount line. We set off on a fairly flat run through Annecy, lined with cheering crowds as well as holiday makers who were oblivious to a race happening, and stepped out in front of cyclists at fairly regular intervals.
Orro on Lovers Bridge, Annecy on a gentle lap of the lake after the triathlon.
It wasn’t a closed road event and whilst I got some speed up on my tri bars setting off towards Sevrier, the start of the climbing, several white vans belching black smoke decided they were going to hopscotch the riders and then brake. I decided to keep my momentum and passed both them, and the other riders in the middle of the road where I had both visibility and a clear path. It worked out to be the safest thing to do.
Leaving the carnage behind, I picked off a few more riders and felt good.
I had to make hay while the sun shone (or not) because I knew these riders would all, one by one, pass me again as we started the ascent of Col De Leschaux. And sure enough, they did.
I was heavier than most of them and putting out significantly more power than they had to in order to achieve the same thing.
There is a reason why the pro peloton looks almost emaciated. It doesn’t matter how fit or strong you are – if you are heavy, you will suck on climbs.
Despite a personal record time climbing the Col, I was left with only a few stragglers behind me. All I could do now was descend like a demon and whilst I probably wouldn’t make up the time I’d lost, I definitely couldn’t afford to dawdle. There were cut off times at various parts of the race although I’m not sure how much they were enforced. I seemed to be clear of them.
The rain had stopped, and the roads were not awash as badly as I had expected. I didn’t hang about. I took it steady on the bends but otherwise, went full gas downhill on the aero bars and punched through the irritating further climbs that spattered the remainder of the route.
We rolled back into a strange industrial estate and found a different transition area set up in a school yard. I racked my bike and swapped my cycling shoes for running shoes. I left my helmet and replaced it with my running visor and shades. As I set off at an extremely uncomfortable trot for the 10km run, I was horrified to find that the first kilometre was straight up a sharp hill, alongside traffic belching out fumes and spraying us with puddles. It was horrid and not the idyllic and flat run I’d expected along the shores of Lake Annecy. This was shortly followed by an extremely steep, cobbled descent and some very fiddly turns through the pavements of Annecy, including an underpass stinking of urine.
I didn’t feel like I was going well, despite all my training and I walked a little to try and sort my legs out and get my heart rate down. I had worked very hard on the bike and used a lot of energy which I needed for the run. I had been trying to buy myself time for the run and now I needed every minute of it. It turned out that the bike was several kilometres longer than advertised and much longer than an ‘Olympic Distance triathlon should be.
The run finally found it’s route out along the promenade, and I suddenly realised it was going to be 3 laps. This didn’t match the course that was in the athlete’s guide, which was out and back.
I hate multi-lap runs. Psychologically it is wretched, as you pass the finish line twice, or three times in this case, but cannot go down that finishing chute until the end. You also pass the same spectators who witness your struggle several times over.
At 4km I bonked. And not in a good way!
Like a car running out of petrol, I had run out of fuel, and it was instant. With all the breathless climbing and super-fast descending, I hadn’t taken on anywhere near as many calories as I needed. My little aerodynamic food pouch on the bike still had plenty of items in it that I should have eaten. I had nothing with me on the run.
I stopped at the aid station and grabbed a banana and a piece of cake. I don’t like either, but I was in trouble. I drank some water and set off again, the fire stoked, and was able to keep jogging.
By the time I got to 7km the same thing happened again and I stopped at the same aid station, again. This was definitely not how to do it.
I limped home the final 3km and felt nothing but exhaustion and disappointment at the end.
The atmosphere had been fantastic, with my French being good enough to understand what people were shouting and I was able to converse back. I enjoyed the idea of the event but didn’t particularly enjoy the event itself.
I’m still learning about long course triathlon, nutrition and of course, having to train on a ship 6 months of the year, unable to swim, has its challenges too.
But it’s easy to look at the negatives, especially if you are a fierce self critic like me. There were so many positives about this event, as it was the one I had wanted for so long.
In 2020 I learned to ride a bike and only 2 years ago couldn’t use clip in peddles. I hadn’t swum in open water in a wetsuit and couldn’t bilateral breathe until 18 months ago. My running always halted at 5km with back spasms and calf injuries, all of which had now subsided, thanks to learning new running techniques from my friends. I hadn’t used tri bars on a bike until January this year. I had achieved a lot and built the base for a lot of success in the future. I was strong for sure, but as ever, let down by my weight on the bike and run which I had struggled with ever since I was a child, wanting to be a jockey.
With everything I needed to be competitive in place, I just needed to shift those dead kilograms – easier said than done, but it will happen. Never again do I want to see people flying past me up the Col de Leschaux.
It goes without saying that I would never had got there without the daily support and hard work of my coach, fellow cave diver and 10 x Ironman, Russell Carter. I have an awful lot to thank him for. And importantly, our 100% finish record remains intact.
A perfect day
Last year I took part in my first open water swim triathlon - in Minehead, of all places.
The day before, Channel Events, a nonprofit outfit headed up by an enthusiastic team who just love sport and the outdoors and encouraging newcomers to get involved, laid on a practise day.
I was introduced to the brown, rather chilly Bristol Channel and with kind guidance and advice I was coaxed into the water and was swimming front crawl in my brand-new wetsuit, as if I’d been doing it all my life.
Dan Brice, who runs Channel Events, found out I was a sea kayaker and gave me the heads up on an event he runs every year.
‘Springboard into Summer’ is a chilled event, organised for reasonably experienced paddlers with guides to keep the show together. There were BBQs, guest speakers, camping and sea kayaking along the Dorset Coast. As soon as registration opened, I signed up, delighted that it did not clash with my work rota.
The date came around and I loaded my sea kayak onto the roof, packed the car full of camping kit and set off down to Burnbake campsite in Poole.
I was super excited and motivated by the promise of a circumnavigation of the Isle of Portland. I knew it was possible in a sea kayak, but having dived there for over 20 years, I was acutely aware of strong currents, short slack times and rough seas that Portland Bill was notorious for.
I decided to get back into the swing of sea kayaking on the Saturday by signing up for the Old Harry Rocks to Swanage trip. We were treated to calm, warm, balmy weather and the sea state was like glass. I had never seen Old Harry Rocks in such calm waters and as we lined our boats up on the sandy beach just along from the chain ferry to Poole, I knew we were in for a good day.
I was delighted to find I was paddling with Nienka. She was a triathlete and part of a small group of volunteers who gave me my confidence in my first wetsuited open water sea swim in Minehead the day before the triathlon there.
The sea was so calm we could play around in little rock hopping tunnels, go through arches and sea caves and enjoy a close up view that you definitely don’t get when you’re diving the area. We paddled across the bay to Swanage and stopped for an ice cream and lunch with a super friendly group of like-minded people, who loved the ocean, paddling and being outdoors.
We weaved our way back through the chalk stacks and archways, enjoying idyllic conditions. Once back at the beach, Nienka and I needed no persuading to get into our cozzies and go for a swim off the beach.
The water was chilly but it was wonderful to be swimming in clear, calm water in the UK and a rare treat for me. I spend half my year at sea but I’m not allowed to swim in it.
The evening was spent sitting around a campfire, enjoying a BBQ and some beers and a guest speaker talking about his long distance adventures.
The next morning I had signed up to the lap of Portland, as had pretty much everybody else!
We set off on the hour drive to Chesil beach and dragged our boats up onto the pebbles. A few of us had some fun seal launching onto the water and we set off on a slightly overcast morning towards the Bill.
It was a real privilege to get so close to the coastline, when normally I’m far out on a dive boat zooming past. The nooks and crannies, caverns, archways, crystal clear water with a green hue, were so pretty and inviting and I relished every moment of it.
The sun all the while was trying to appear and once round the bill, where a seal joined us at Pulpit Rock, it came out and gave us a glorious afternoon of warm sunshine and sparkly water.
We pulled into Church Ope Cove for lunch and basked in the sunshine. I couldn’t resist another swim in the glassy, clear sea. This really was the perfect day.
We continued the journey in glorious sunshine back through Portland harbour and were treated to the local dolphin putting on a display.
Time stood still and all our plans of getting away home at this time and that time were just forgotten. Days like this are becoming rarer and rarer and we all wanted to absorb every minute of it.
Sea kayaking is the most wonderful sport and allows people of all levels, ages and abilities to access beautiful parts of our coastline where larger craft cannot. It is a silent sport which causes no pollution to the environment and paddlers tend to be very environmentally aware.
Whether you are joining friends for the day, going on a solo adventure or a multi day camping trip, or even a daring long distance expedition, it really is the most wonderful way to see our winderful coast. As we passed Portland Bill a dive boat I knew passed us and not for one moment did I wish I was on it. My love of the ocean goes way beyond just diving in it and the purchase of my two Dagger Stratos boats are some of the best impulse buys I ever made!
I cannot thank Dan and his Channel Events volunteers enough for laying on such a great event. I’ve made new paddling friends and hope to be able to head out on the sea with them again in the near future.
Ironwoman Part 3
I felt fit, but my lungs had other ideas.
The lady marshall held her arms out to create a barrier for my group of 6. Every time an athlete ran into the water her shoulders got hit as they barged past her. She just smiled and propped herself back up for the next 6.
I mouthed ‘Thank you’ – these volunteers do an amazing job and have a very long day. She smiled and gave me a fist bump before the count down.
3…2…1…
She lowered her arms and I trotted off down the sandy beach into the sea. As soon as it got to hip height, I started to swim.
The water thankfully wasn’t cold enough to take your breath away and I settled in steadily towards the first buoy.
Well, I was off.
I tried to find a reliable strong swimmer to draft but honestly, it was carnage. Most people in my pen couldn’t actually swim very well. One guy was doing backstroke which apparently is legal – but because he couldn’t see where he was going, he zigzagged all over the place, going just fast enough that I couldn’t get past him.
Another woman kept stopping every couple of minutes to ‘meerkat’ and doggy paddle then set off again, carving everyone else behind her up. As the swimmers got more strung out, I found some feet to follow but they didn’t stay straight, and it was more of a hindrance than a help.
I decided to stay wide at the final few buoys as the ones who couldn’t swim decided to use the buoys as a safety float and there was some significant congestion to go around.
Despite this, I found some free water and concentrated on having a clean exit.
The guys at Channel Events who had got me started in sea swimming, advised that as soon as your fingers touch the sand, it’s time to stand up.
I waited for that first touch of the sand then got up to waddle out of the sea. 44 minutes. Considering I was trying not to get out of breath and start coughing, I was happy with that. I was well inside the swim cut off too.
Swim exit. One job done.
Deciding that playing it safe was the order of the day, I walked to transition as did many others. I took off my goggles, swim hat, ear plugs and unzipped my wetsuit as I went.
So far so good.
I went straight to my blue bag and kicked off my wetsuit. Grabbing a towel I tried to dab my feet dry and pulled on my cycling socks, pre-loaded with talcum powder to make them easier to get on.
Cycling gear on, I stuffed my swimming gear back into the blue bag and shovelled down half a sandwich and stuffed some goodies in my jersey pocket. I trotted off to find my bike.
“Lane C, just past the parking sign on the right”. I found Orro and popped my bike computer on before wheeling her to the mount line. I was delighted to see others taking their time and not running. I’d learned my lesson about getting out of breath in T1 at the start of the bike. I wouldn’t let that happen again.
I hopped onto Orro and set off, starting the eating and drinking early. My plan was a 3-hour bike. This would leave me lots of time in the bank for the run, which I already knew would be a disaster.
I tried to reach 30kmph without getting out of breath and trying to keep my heart rate down. I rested on my tri bars and tried to settle down. The first 3rd went well and was quite quick. I soon found that any time I tried to put any power down my lungs protested.
As the bike went on, I just felt weaker and weaker as whatever I had started to really get hold of me.
Despite this, I didn’t stop until my planned wee stop at the final aid station which had porta loos likely to be less busy than transition.
I pulled in and the marshalls held my bike while I sorted myself out. My legs felt like jelly and I still had 20km of cycling and a half marathon to go!
I had timed my fluids so that I had just one small water bottle remaining. This was to save some weight in the last 20km. When I came out of the porta loo, a young volunteer with a big grin informed me he’d filled all my water bottles.
Bless him.
I thanked him, got back on the bike and when I was out of sight, poured 3 of them away. He meant well.
The last 20km was on rough tarmac and into a headwind. Drafting isn’t allowed on the bike part of a triathlon and getting too close to another competitor can lead to a disqualification. So, we sat and suffered, taking the full brunt of the wind. I started to flag but kept the peddles turning and concentrated on saving my legs as much as I could for the run.
I got off Orro at the dismount line and thanks to my recent loo stop, my legs weren’t too bad. My 3-hour bike was 3 hours 38. It was a 90km personal best for me, but I was fuming. On any other day I’d have smashed 3 hours.
I racked Orro in disgust and set off to my red bag. Helmet off, jersey off, cycling shoes off. I changed into running socks which was a good plan as I didn’t have a single blister afterwards. Trainers on, sun visor on, shades back on. I always leave my cycling gloves on to make wiping my nose easier!
Cycling gear got stuffed back into the blue bag and I put on my camelback which had some nutrition and was part filled with water.
This turned out to be a godsend. The sun was out and it was getting quite hot. The aid stations only offered small cups of water and cola. The ability to swig off my camelback whenever I wanted was a huge comfort.
My plan of running 07:30 minutes, walk 03:30 minutes went out of the window pretty early on. My lungs and throat were audibly wheezing and if I even began to get out of breath, the coughing started.
This was damage limitation now. My 7 hours was gone. I just had to finish and even that was looking necky at one stage.
I jogged when I could and walked when I couldn’t.
The run was three laps and psychologically this was awful. As time went on, more and more people finished and just assumed I was on my final lap. One guy shouted “Come on, only 2km to go”. Bless him. He was completely unaware that I actually had another 9km to go!!
The assumption must have been that I was just fat and slow. Nobody knew I was sick as well!
It was the worst feeling in the world.
As I passed the car park for the final time with 7km remaining ahead of me, I did consider just walking to the car and driving home in disgust.
It took all the strength I had to keep going in just an attempt to finish. I jogged when I could and walked when I couldn’t – and repeat.
I kept an eye on the clock and made sure I was always in a position to finish within the cut off time of 8 hours 30 minutes. Beyond that, I would be listed as ‘DNF’ or ‘Did Not Finish’.
Over my dead body was I going to do all that, only to be listed as not finishing!
I jogged when I could, walked when I couldn’t….
I was really starting to feel quite ill.
Pain is only temporary.
You only have to do this once.
I started to worry about getting back to the car and the hotel. I didn’t think I’d be able to collect my bike. Would they sell it if I didn’t go and get it? Could I afford another Orro if I just left it there? It would save packing it for the flight home…
If only my ‘friend’ who said she’d come and support me had actually turned up. If only my family cared. If only my Uncle was still here…
Thoughts whirred around in my head and I tried to block out the comments from people as I passed them. They had no clue.
The finish was in sight. I was going to make it, albeit my aim to have a 7 in front of my finish time had gone. But only just.
As I turned into the red carpet, I managed a jog. The finish line marshalls were amazing and I ran through a Mexican wave of arms and lots of cheering.
The tears came immediately, and they kindly waited for me to gather myself before presenting me with my medal.
People I didn’t even know came up to say well done and all the way back, during my VERY slow walk back to transition to collect Orro, people high fived and clapped.
Now I was barely able to speak. My voice was hoarse and my cough worsened.
I loaded the car which was trashed and drove the 10 minutes back to the hotel.
On arrival they had already reserved me a table and I feasted on all my favourite things hurriedly, before I could no longer taste them.
Scallops, steak and champagne later, I was ready to turn in.
The next morning was like the black death in my room. I wouldn’t let the cleaner in in case she caught whatever I had, so she just posted boxes of tissues through the door and said to call if I needed anything.
Hotel Atlantico, Jesolo are just the best.
I desperately wanted to look round Venice so after some rest and when my cough had cleared up, I headed to the water taxi stop.
Venice was even more incredible than I imagined, and I couldn’t have picked a better venue for my first Ironman.
Almost 3 weeks on, I’m back into training but my lungs are still struggling and I feel weak. With Annecy Olympic distance triathlon (half a half Ironman) looming, I’m desperate to maintain and even increase my fitness, but it will be one day at a time.
I cannot thank those people – they know who they are – for taking time out of their personal lives to support me, coach me teach me, advise me and inspire me.
I apologise now to anyone I have forgotten.
In alphabetical order…
Adam Raines Sports Massage
Andy Sparrow
Caroline Bramwell
Caroline Lance Sports Massage
Cath Pendleton
Dan Brice & the Channel Events volunteers
Ed Collins
Hotel Atlantico
Jason PDQ cycling
Jayme Fraioli Harper
Joan Woodward
Kelli Coxhead
Lisa Page
Louise Minchin
Mark Julier
Maxine Bateman
Mendip Cycling Club
Michele Reed
Mint Cycle Works, Priddy
Nienke Hensbroek
Paul Duckworth
Redd Rises
Russel Carter
Sheena Warman
Steph Dwyer
West Country Triathletes
Click here for a flavour of the day.
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Ironwoman Part 2
Training at work is unique. Running on a treadmill on a moving boat is an art form. Seven Kestrel is 125 metres long and 24 metres wide. There are not many places you can go. You can’t pop back to land when you fancy and the amount of mileage you can clock up in a day, mostly spent at the computer, is very limited.
The boat is always moving, even in the calmest of weather. The diving bells are up and down, the 120 tonne crane is always busily leaning over the side, lifting and lowering things and the ship’s heading changes regularly.
In rough weather, despite being quite stable, the vessel lifts, rolls and heaves and sometimes the bang of a wave against your porthole makes you jump out of your skin.
Seven Kestrel working at a windfarm. Image: Subsea 7
Russel and I use Training Peaks combined with Strava to track my progress. We converse mainly over WhatsApp which is the offshore communication channel of choice. Our schedule has to work around weather, port calls when the medic (me) is super busy, and crew change days which move multiple times over one week.
The great thing about having a coach is they do all the number crunching for you. It wasn’t long before Russel got the measure of what I could and could not do and he was soon dialled in to giving me training sessions that were spot on. Hard enough to get me fit and faster and stronger, but not so hard that I couldn’t finish them.
Jesolo 70:3 came around and I’d planned the whole thing meticulously to perfection. The hotel was superb and had a nice spa to relax in. I rented a car so I could get about easily and run up and down to the Ironman village for registration and shopping.
Oh my word – shopping!
There were so many lovely things in the Ironman village I had to restrain myself from buying all of it!
Registration was painless and I took the time to write a little note for my uncle Phil who I’d lost only a few weeks before. He was basically the Dad I never had.
I was going to miss his funeral. But I’m certain he wouldn’t have wanted me to throw away all that hard work on his account. I knew he’d be watching and behind me all the way.
I popped my wetsuit on and walked down the pristine sandy beach to the water’s edge. It wasn’t as cold as expected and the waves had gone away as the weather started to settle. I didn’t really feel like I had much energy, so I just did a slow 400m swim and got out.
Russel said I was likely to feel sluggish during tapering week, so I put it down to that. Then I went and changed by the car and jumped on my bike.
My Orro venturi went beautifully with her new tyres and tune up at the Ironman village. The Italian traffic though was a little scary, so I bailed early and ran for safety back to the car.
The evening was spent packing the Ironman specific bags for transition.
Transition is considered the fourth discipline of triathlon. It is where the athlete switches from one discipline to the next, dumping swimming gear for the bike and then the bike for running gear. There are two transitions; T1 is from swim to bike and T2 is from bike to run.
For the professionals, races can be won or lost in transition. In regular triathlons, your bike, trainers, helmet, shades, cycling shoes, towel, race belt which holds your race number, all reside in a neat pile under your bike which is ‘racked’ on your numbered station, usually hanging on a scaffold railing among hundreds of other bikes.
At Ironman events, things are done slightly differently, otherwise the transition area would look like a burglary at a jumble sale.
Athletes are given coloured and numbered bags: Blue for Bike, Red for Run. They hold all your equipment you need for the next phase of the race.
Transition opens the day before the race and athletes started to congregate at the entrance to the two huge transition areas.
Blue bags are hung on pegs with your corresponding race number and the same for the blue bag rack. They started to fill up, with 2800 athletes taking part. I racked Orro on number 721.
I planned to walk the triathlon routes the next morning as it would look very different once all the bikes had been racked. It is imperative that athletes remember how to find their bikes or you could be in transition a lot longer than planned!
My next job was to go and find some food. I don’t have a sweet tooth and anything sugary or sticky will go untouched, so planning my nutrition for something useful to me that I would actually eat, always proves difficult. A mouthful of sandwich and focaccia seemed the way to go, along with some dried papaya, mini pizza crisp breads and tasteless carb powder for one of my water bottles.
I cut everything up into bite size pieces and put them in ziplock bags ready to stuff into my cycling jersey and transition bags on race morning.
As I walked round transition, I felt lethargic and had developed a dry cough. It seemed to come out of nowhere and initially I just put it down to the hotter climate. As the day went on, my voice changed and the coughing became more regular. I started to feel wheezy in my upper chest. I prayed it was an allergy of some sort but deep down I knew I was getting sick.
I forced a pizza down the night before the race but didn’t really want it and couldn’t really taste it. I drank full fat coke in an attempt to stifle my cough, but it didn’t work. I headed to bed early, struggling to get to sleep as I kept on coughing.
I woke the day of the race before my 5am alarm. The hotel Atlantico Jesolo amazingly had laid on breakfast super early for the athletes and the volunteers staying there.
I was still coughing. I just didn’t know what to do. I had to get on that start line in the hope that this was all a fuss about nothing. Better to start and not finish than to not start and find out it was just an allergy.
I stashed my food in transition, checked my bike tyres and changed into my wetsuit. Any bubbly excitement was killed by the incessant cough and generally feeling rubbish.
The party atmosphere was electric, and I desperately wanted to enjoy it, but I stood in the heat of the swim pen knowing full well I was getting sicker by the minute.
I figured I could only really die on the swim, so planned to get that part over and done with and the rest would be just academic.
For various reasons, the traditional spectacle of a mass start had been curbed to staggered starts. Swimmers were initially divided into ‘pens’ according to their swim speeds and then let go 6 at a time, 10 seconds apart.
Marshalls held the swimmers back and we were standing around in the heat for a long time as 2800 athletes started the swim, 6 at a time.
I should have started in a faster pen, but knowing I was sick I decided to play it safe and go in the slowest group.
That was a mistake.
As I got closer to the start line, we filtered into lanes on the sand. I felt quite emotional at this point. I was on the start line of an Ironman 70.3. This was real.
In a few seconds I would start swimming and would not let up racing for another 7 or so hours.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6mDHmIitMx/?igsh=c2hhN2k5eXJ0aDd5
Ironwoman - Part 1
“Everybody put your hands in the aaiiiiiirrrrrrr!!”
The tannoy boomed across Jesolo Lido beach, Venice, Italy as 2800 athletes dressed in wetsuits and wearing yellow swim caps, raised their arms in unison.
Stomp stomp clap - stomp stomp clap…it went on.
I wanted to join the party, I so badly wanted to join.
Instead, I stared into the abyss, knowing I was doomed to failure. I had started coughing the day before the Ironman 70:3 triathlon race – a dry, hacking cough and I’d started to feel ‘achy’ and just not right.
I’m in that lot somewhere….
My voice had gone hoarse, and I was getting breathless doing nothing, with my heart rate refusing to budge from 106. It was normally 56 at rest, owing to the 8 months of intensive training I’d done for this very moment.
Now, I was staring out to sea, looking for the distance between jet skis in case I needed to hail one for help. This was not how it was meant to be and the situation I had dreaded.
Ironman is probably the best-known brand of triathlon. Triathlon is a multisport competition, beginning with a swim, followed up by a bike course then finishing up with a run. In between each discipline is the process of ‘transition’ where the athletes must switch between sports, and this is all done against the clock as well and is included in the total time. Practising putting your socks on, with wet feet quickly, is a thing!
Triathlons have varying distances. From super sprints which are very short with only a few hundred metres of swimming, 20 or so km or cycling and a 3-5km run at the end. Then there is the extreme end such as the holy grail of the ‘full’ Ironman, which is:
Swim: 2.4 miles (3.9 km)
Bike: 112 miles (180.2 km)
Run: 26.2 miles (42.2 km) or, a full marathon.
In total, a full Ironman Triathlon covers 140.6 miles (226.3 km).
Given I work on a ship at sea 6 months of the year, a full Ironman wasn’t realistically achievable. Despite being surrounded by the ocean, it is not permitted to swim. It’s probably not the best idea to hop off a North Sea dive vessel into 160m of water with 6 thrusters going, saturation divers and ROVs in the water and currents running…besides, it would be considered a suicide attempt, and definitely career-ending.
Despite this, you can’t explain this to folk at home who just say, “Can’t you just swim off the boat?”
No, I cannot. And that is why.
My office, Dive Support Vessel - Seven Kestrel, working at a previous office, the Claymore platform, North Sea. Taken from another previous office, Boka Atlantis.
So, swim training is limited for me. I only get so much time I can reasonably spend in the gym and the gym on board is also limited. Some days, you cannot go in due to bad weather and some days other people will be using the equipment you need, and your time window has passed.
When I get home, I have to run my house and do adulting things, plus try to make time to see friends that I miss when I’m away so much. It can be a lonely existence just training all the time without having any social time with people I know. Most of them are at work midweek when I’m off on shore leave.
So, it is not as idyllic as it sounds.
I figured a half Ironman, or an Ironman 70:3 was achievable and still quite a challenge.
I was aiming at an Olympic (standard) distance triathlon (Swim 1500m, Ride 35.5km, Run 10km) in my favourite spot Lake Annecy, France, but was worried about getting registered and getting a slot. I got itchy feet and wanted an interim challenge.
It was as if Facebook read my mind. A Venice-Jesolo Ironman 70:3 advert popped up. A pan flat course for both the bike and run seemed idyllic. Without blinking, I signed up.
Then I told my coach.
Russel Carter is a legend in cave diving circles. Understated, but hard core, his mantra is well known within the Cave Diving Group of Great Britain: “If you weren’t hard enough, you shouldn’t have come!”
A significant support diver in the expeditions in the 1990s in the Doux de Coly, France, Russel moved on to Ironman triathlon and didn’t do that by half either, finishing no less than 10 full distance Ironman races. Some of these were on particularly tough courses, such as Lanzarote and Mallorca.
Russel Carter racing Ironman Barcelona. He’s in there somewhere!
He had been following my progress as I dabbled in sprint triathlon over the last few years and was always on hand to offer advice or check in on how I was doing. It was no surprise then that when I asked, as a level 3 triathlon coach, if he’d like to coach me to Annecy. Of course, he agreed on the proviso that I kept his 100% finisher record intact.
A half Ironman wasn’t on the table. Now we were going to have to get down to work.
An Ironman 70:3 is basically half the full Ironman distance. I guess it suited me, being little miss average. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Good enough, but never the best.
Given I’d limped round sprint distance triathlons finishing in the bottom 20 with no real clue about how to train for multi-sport, this would be a proper challenge.
I’d held an amateur jockey’s license in my 20s, riding in 3-mile steeplechases and raced kayak marathon, finishing mid-divison – and I won the high jump on school sports day and 2nd in the 400 metres! I was on the school netball team – always goal attack, never goal shooter even though I scored the most goals…and I was in the hockey team and went to ‘away’ school competitions. So, I wasn’t a complete slacker at sport. I considered this an achievement, given I was not blessed with athletic genes, or the sort of parents who come to watch me compete. Neither of them turned up to my first horse race.
My second race on board Clashbridane.
But athletics was another game altogether.
I mean, why be crap at one sport when you can be crap at three?
I grew up knowing how to ride a racehorse but couldn’t ride a bike. Everything I did was in the shadow of an absent father and an uninterested, unsupportive mother who said no to anything that cost money or involved any effort on her part, such as getting out of bed early or driving anywhere.
Triathlon is not a cheap sport. I could only embark on it once I had learned to ride a bike in 2020. Plus, I had to get myself a decent job to be able to be able afford it.
I spent the deep winter and early spring taking myself away on solo training camps in between my work rotation, first to Lanzarote then to Mallorca. The sea was calm and warm enough to swim in and the cycling is world class. The running through the volcanic landscape in Lanzarote was preferable to the streets of Alcudia in Mallorca, but I kept on increasing the mileage under the daily watchful eye of Russel.