The audience: The bottom quartile of the Piranhas, in terms of times. Certainly not Megan, Sean, Ciaran, Mikey and all you ‘achievers’, yes, you Siobhán Forman! Probably not anyone under 45.
It all looked so promising. The heatwave had fizzled out and it was a beautiful sunny morning. Leaving Fairview around six o’clock, picking Yuki up in Islandbridge at 06.15 hours, and then a very pleasant 50 minute spin down to Wicklow town chatting with Yuki. Found the Wicklow County Council Parking spot and the area for those of us with the bike on the roof, put the stickers on bike and helmet and headed for Transition. Gave Sophie her preferred Precision Gel as I had one spare; commiserated with Collie for forgetting his bike shoes, secretly glad that it was not just beginners who make these kinds of mistakes! Feeling excited but mainly nervous… knowing that preparing for a house move and poor timing on some pro bono consultancy work had thrown me well out of my training schedule, and this was to be my first full Olympic distance.
After two Age Group podiums, a complete disaster!
These triathlons do strange things to your mind! Before TriAthy, with that long wait on the banks of the Barrow for the swim, feeling nervous and joking about asking oneself if one regrets one’s life choices (at that point of time!).
This time, that second vector of the Harbourman swim, just out past the harbour wall, out into the (admittedly very gentle) waves, trying to sight the distant buoy (who puts out a blue buoy?) and struggling to stay straight and feeling like you are getting nowhere fast (a sad reality) and your mind wandering off to the purpose of sport, asking yourself if you are enjoying this or just enduring it, careering from that old triathlon advice for beginners, ‘think of the swim as just something you have to do to get to the start of the race’, to telling yourself that this is what it is all about, the challenge of the strength between your two ears when your vulnerabilities appear.
It’s the old question about sport, whether it is all about the quality of high-level achievement and finding human pinnacles, or about participation so that people are active and physically and mentally healthy and can enjoy long lives, or even about enjoyment, about people finding intrinsic joy and a sense of fun and pleasure in sporting activities.
I kept preaching to myself: ‘hey, it’s the summer, everyone loves to go for a swim in the summer. Come on, you love the sea, enjoy the swim. Think of those people walking or sitting along the harbour walls and how they would love to be in the water…’
Then the wee devils whispering: ‘you can always roll over onto your back and do backstroke or float or put your hand in the air and wait to be picked up and relieved of this torture…’
And then your will snapping back: ‘don’t be a wimp, don’t be stupid, this is easy, just keep moving your arms and you’ll get there. You know how to swim properly, even if not efficiently or quickly, just keep going. Count out the next 100 strokes and you’ll be half way to the next buoy.’
And ‘why the **** did you breathe to the left on that second vector when you always veer off to the left and you can seem to swim perfectly straight when you breathe to the right, you almighty tool?’
On and on it goes, some tormented battle between the will and vulnerability, some tortured version of the interior monologues brought to beauty by Virginia Woolf, Joyce and Proust… until eventually you get around that accursed boat masquerading as the finish line and see the actual Swim Exit and you can feel relieved, if quite a bit dejected at your awful performance. (My watch tells me I swam 1900m; jesus, I didn’t think I was that off line!) Mark, forgive me my sins!!!!
Soft feet? Did anybody warn you of such a thing when you were younger? The 350m distance to Transition over what should be smooth surfaces… that turned into sharper and sharper stones to turn your half-hearted attempt at a run into a walking-on-nails hobble! And then the deflating view of a pretty empty Transition, a feeling we weaker ones know only too well. Are we in the race or just hanging on to its coat-tails?
Yeeah, it’s the bike, you love your bike, come on, put the swim behind you and get racing past some people. Out of Transition, looking up the road and there’s only one person visible. It feels lonely. This is like out training on your own. Just get on with it. Jesus, what’s with all these roundabouts and strange ascents? I seem to be cycling in sludge. Out of the saddle for a sprint to quicken the pace but the little drags pull you back into the saddle and easier gears…. Come on, work, fight it….
Out of Wicklow Town and you’ve found some pace. One person passed me, then two. I passed someone (shock!). A third passed me. Then I pass one more, two, three, four, five… keep scanning ahead to see my next target. Not bad. You’re pushing until you can feel some burn but you could be pushing harder. You’ve never raced 40km as a time trial before so you are not sure how to pace it. You’re enjoying the cycle but your legs are feeling the recent training you have missed. You sprint around a few more and push it for the last five kilometres, beginning to really feel some pain in your IT bands (iliotibial bands) now. Pushing hard to the Dismount Line, knowing exactly where it is, slamming on the brakes as three lovely Wicklow marshals just begin to shout warnings, laughing with them and they saying ‘you’d be surprised how many people don’t stop at the line!’.
Oh yes, coming around that lovely fast last roundabout, feeling quite good and then seeing all the people on the run course, streams of them, so far ahead of you….
Odd bike course, in the sense of not knowing how I got on. Felt I did horribly for the first 5 – 10 km, feeling almost disconsolate after the swim, then getting into a bit of a cadence groove, feeling I had pushed well for the last 20 km but hard to know. [Later to discover a 4 kph drop from Athy! Ouch!]
So to the run. In fairness, and I would imagine I might be in a minority here, I found the layout of the run course really helpful mentally. You could break it down into discrete 2 km parts. To Turn Around. Then back. Turn Around and back… and then only the final 2 km run in. I never had pains in my IT bands running before so finding them continuing after the bike was not encouraging but I didn’t care, I was on the last leg of my first full Olympic distance (TriAthy bike cut to 20km) and I was going to do it, regardless of how slowly. How slow indeed!
As usual the Piranhas or those of you who recognised me in my non-Piranha gear were very encouraging… thanks Adele, Hughie, Leo… and I just plodded away.
Just after the first Turn Around, just starting up one of the wee inclines, one of the marshals, trying to be encouraging, said; “Great running” and I found myself laughing to myself, thinking that it must have been the most elastic use of the word ‘great’ ever used (though not being a parent might account for my view of that superlative)!
‘Sure God help us’, didn’t I even think I was striding out on the downhills! Notions! For the life of me, I still can’t understand why the last kilometre of these triathlon 10k runs seems the longest. The Finish Line feels like one of those cartoon suspended carrots dangled over the head of a donkey.
And a donkey is how I performed. If the Piranhas have any Quality Assurance process, then I am expecting to be hauled in front of some panel, chaired by Emma or Mikey, showing me copies of my times and asking me to account for myself with questions such as: ‘Give us three good reasons for us to allow you to represent this great and storied club?’ Perhaps they’d just leave it at: “You medalled in your AG in the last two races. We had some hopes for you in terms of the club’s National Series points. But you were a great disappointment here.” And then that classic Irish parents’ line: “It’s not so much that you let us down, but most of all you let yourself down.”
Suitably chastised, leaving the (sporting rather than work) Performance Review with that question ringing in your ear: “Are you sure this is the place for you? Or the sneakier: “You need to ask yourself if your talents would be better pursued elsewhere?”. Of course, they might be kinder and say: “Look Foley, we’ll let you off this time, if only because you were not wearing club gear [thanks Spatzwear!] Now go and strengthen those glutes, hamstrings and hips, because if you perform like this in Piranha gear, it’ll be a one way trip to the Bull Wall!”
