I’m squashed between four bodies. On every stroke, the elbows of the bodies either side strike me; our arms tangle and ruin any notion of a smooth stroke. Through the clear water, I see two more bodies outside. None of us have anywhere to go and I’m caught in the middle. In front of me, my hands strike someone’s feet, and behind me someone keeps hitting my calves. It’s an intimidating place to be, but I’ve felt like this before and this time I feel a little calmer. The space will come. Another 300 metres, rounding a buoy pinches us together tighter. I swallow a mouthful of salt water. Another 100m, still no space. Turning left at the second buoy, space starts to develop and I’m into the race.
This was my start to the World Triathlon Championship Finals in Abu Dhabi.
1,216 days earlier, I was sat cuddling a four-month-old Billy in the very comfortable surroundings of our recently finished kitchen extension in leafy Berkshire. Jen, my wife, sat across from me and we were delighting in our first-born son, discussing what the future would bring and what he’d be like when he grew up. What sort of parents we’d turn out to be and how we’d react to all those tantrums, sleepless nights and the endless challenges of bringing a child into the world.
Then she uttered a question which changed our course.
“What are you going to achieve by the time Billy is 10?”
Knowing she wanted a deep answer and feeling slightly mischievous, I trivialised the question;
“I wonder if I could do a triathlon?”
The following day I went swimming for the first time since I was a schoolboy. I proudly did 10 lengths, returned home and slept all afternoon. This was partially due to the sleepless nights, but mainly because the swimming had destroyed my body. And so the journey to physical fitness began.
I reminded myself I had been fit before, but that was nearly 15 years ago. As a young adult I had joined the Parachute Regiment, passing out of their physically brutal selection course, P-Company, as top student. The past 15 years, though, had been very comfortable. There was a lot of work to do to regain fitness, but I knew I had it locked away somewhere.
Early in my training I went out on a ride with a good friend, who in his day was a semi-professional Aussie Rules Football player - a sport notorious for producing fit athletes. I was 10 years younger than him, but he still beat me up every hill. That ride ignited something in me and I started setting my alarm to go out for secret training before work. A few weeks later, I was keeping up and even pulling ahead.
Late that summer I signed up for my first triathlon. It came and went, with abundant rookie errors that deserve a race report of their own. I completed a 400m swim, 16km bike and 5km run in 1hr 13mins, placing 62nd. I was buoyed by the result; my fitness was developing and the triathlon bug was starting to bite hard.
After my first race word spread to my family I was training for triathlons - ‘training’ in the loosest sense, I was still just doing what I thought sensible – when my brother-in-law asked me to do Windsor Triathlon with him in 2020. He was a seasoned triathlete, having completed an Ironman, and his request raised the stakes. This was the next bit of motivation. Personal pride and bragging rights around the family dinner table were suddenly at risk. It was time to take things seriously.
Covid gripped the world in 2020 and events got cancelled, so I never did race my brother-in-law. To this day we’re yet to take part in the same event, though I feel a little more confident I could beat him on the shorter courses. I wouldn’t dare take him on at anything longer than Olympic though!
One event that didn’t get cancelled was the 2020 Hever Castle standard-distance triathlon, my first Olympic distance triathlon (although on the day the cold temperature meant the swim was cut short). I placed 22nd and wondered how far I could go in this sport. I signed up the next day to be coached by the local triathlon coach, Richard Stannard - at the time not realising he was a multiple world champion and Masters world record holder at several distances. My training was about to go to a whole new level of quality.
Training with Richard was the first-time consistency was drilled home to me as the single most important thing in any program. I didn’t argue and I just did what I was told. I gave as honest and open feedback as to how I thought I was responded to each session and improvements started to come.
It was time to set a target. I’d heard people talking about qualifying to represent GB – that sounded pretty exciting, so I found a local qualifying race, signed up and paid my £10 to register. I distinctly remember thinking at the time how unrealistic this ambition was, but what the hell, it would be a useful benchmark. That winter I trained hard with consistency as my watchword, and got to the start line of what was to be my third Olympic-distance triathlon feeling pretty good. I had done my research and knew that anything sub-2hrs 10mins stood a good chance of qualifying.
I stopped my watch at 2hrs 7min 38sec.
I started to cry. Twelve months of hard work and sacrifice had suddenly just cashed in, and the relief and elation was intense. I felt certain I’d qualify with that time and later learnt I got the Q1, although only placing 2nd in my age group. Representing GB was about to become a reality. Fast forward another 15 months of hard, consistent training and I found myself approaching the end of the World Triathlon Championships, in Abu Dhabi.
“Two sponges, two sponges!” I yelled at the cooling station marshal. He quickly complied, plunging his arm into the black bin of icy water grabbing a second sponge. I grabbed them and thrust one under each side of the shoulder of my trisuit. ‘Get them close to your arteries, it will help cool your blood’, the words of my coach repeated in my head. With less than 2km of the World Triathlon Championship to go, I was seriously hot. There’d been almost no shade on the 10km run route; the late morning sun in Abu Dhabi bounced off the white pavements and heat rose from the black tarmac. This had become a survival game.
Winston Churchill’s quote jumped into my thoughts; ‘When you’re going through Hell, keep going’. I snapped my mind back to running - hold the form, keep the cadence high, you’ll be coming back to the crowds soon and their cheers will make the final 500m feel easy – that means I’ve only got 1.5km of hard work to go. It made sense to me at the time.
Wearing a GB trisuit, with my name proudly printed across it, made a massive difference. ‘Go on GB!!’ ‘Come on Lawrence!!!’ The support helped carry me through the final sweltering kilometres, until, rounding one of the final corners the thump of the music and cheers of the crowds grew. I didn’t see her, but I heard Jen shout for me, and then I was onto World Triathlon’s famous blue carpet. The heat forgotten, elbows driving back and knees lifting high, there was no way anyone was going to come past me on the finishing straight. Under the arch, stop the clock and whack. The heat, the glutes, the chest, the thighs everything was screaming.
I’d done it; I’d answered my question. I can do a triathlon.
I wouldn’t have been able to do it without Jen’s amazing support. The number of times I left her pregnant with two boys under the age of three to go training are countless. A few times, the guilt of leaving her alone with our boys nearly chewed me up, demolishing my motivation and stopping my crazy little journey. But each time she centred me, helped us find a way to fit everything in and encouraged me in a way that made the guilt evaporate.
So in answer to her original question; “Before he’s four, I’ll represent GB and come 12th in my age group in the world. What else can we do before he’s 10?”
Interested in racing for your GB Age Group?
Check out my splits for this race on Strava and benchmark yourself.
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