You can avoid looking at a certain page in your diary, avert your eyes away from the calendar every time you go into the kitchen and even flee the country for two weeks, but that race day is still happening.
It’s all happening a bit fast. I did a sprint triathlon in May. My first ever triathlon. Now just five weeks later I’m preparing to take on an Olympic distance triathlon at the Marlow triathlon – a race that’s twice as long as my first.
This isn’t how I approached running. It took me 10 months to go from no running at all to running 10k. That’s a long time for a lot of people but that’s how bad at running and how unfit I was. I remember crossing the finish line in that 10k and saying “There’s no way I’ll ever be able to do a half marathon.”
Because a half marathon is more than twice the distance of a 10k and at that moment I couldn’t run another step. It took another year until I finished my first half. Realistically with hindsight I know that I could have done it a lot sooner, but I wanted to do a particular race and I wanted to be ‘ready’. It was a further six months until I’d complete 26.2 miles.
I took my time with running, I went at my own pace and I built up my mileage slowly. But now I’m becoming a triathlete and I’m jumping in with two feet and a very snug wetsuit. I’m ripping the plaster off quickly in the hope it will hurt less.
When I crossed the finish line of my first triathlon I realised I’d hugely underestimated the task I was undertaking. I’d looked at the separate element individually and thought: “5k run – no problem; 14 miles on the bike – yep, that’s fine; 750m swim – scary but doable.” I hadn’t thought about how doing them all together would work out.
The reality was much harder than I’d anticipated. That 5k run was as tough as the last few miles of a marathon. But still I haven’t learned my lesson. This evening I walked home from the tube idly considering whether to go for a run and wondered what I’d have for my tea.
If I was three days out from a marathon, neither of those things would go through my mind. I’d be firmly in pre-race mode eating gradually more carbs and resting my legs. But the reality of Sunday’s race is that it’s likely to take me longer to complete than my last marathon.
So the next triathlon isn’t filling me with excitement – but thanks to my denial of it taking place (which has largely been enabled by lack of preparation) neither is it filling me with nerves.
