“When it comes to organising my season, I have refined ruinous incompetence to the level of a performance art”

Any of you who have had the dubious pleasure of meeting me in person will know that when it comes to organising my race season, I have refined ruinous incompetence to the level of a performance art. While most triathletes build their seasons around an ‘A-Race’ and carefully plot their athletic ascent to peak condition for it, dutifully logging it all on a spreadsheet, I stumble haphazardly through the year in a whirl of ‘Race Full’ notifications and last-minute entries to new events I’ve just been distracted by.

This spontaneous approach to race entries certainly keeps things exciting and adds to my image as the endearing, bumbling simpleton you all know and scorn. The downside is that it’s hard to achieve peak performance when you don’t know what you’re doing one week to the next. You can end up in situations where, for example, you’re on the start line for a half Ironman six days after an Ironman, a sprint-distance tri a week before The Isoman, two marathons on consecutive Sundays or a hellish cycle-sportive in the Peak District called ‘The Leg Breaker’ three days before the ITU Long Distance Triathlon World Championships.

However, even by my own standards, I’ve surpassed myself this year because at the time of writing I’ve only entered two races for the whole season so far – a 10km swim and a long-distance ‘ÖtillÖ’ swimrun race. And guess what? Yes, they’re on consecutive days. Entering a massive swim and a massive swimrun without noticing the proximity of the dates would suggest that, mentally speaking, I clearly haven’t got both paddles in the water and I’m the kind of person for whom silica gel packets have to have ‘Do not eat’ printed on them. All I can say is that the sudden appearance of the spring weather and the sight of my pallid, clenched knees on show as I cycled along went to my head, and before I knew it I’d parted with cash without considering the details, or consequences.

Naturally with 10,000m of swimming in my shoulders I expect to take to the start line of the swimrun event with all the flexibility of a Rubik’s Cube covered in glue and all the verve and optimism of Gordon Ramsay reading from Morrissey’s autobiography. But I’m hoping that all the swim training I’ve done this year will be worth its weight in goldfish and any race day won’t make me look too much like I have the face of a rejected Muppet.

This watery weekend aside, I have no other races in the diary. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots that I’d like to do, but I just haven’t quite gotten round to finding out exactly when they are and whether, for example, I’m on a family holiday at the same time, as may have happened in the past. Once or twice.

After my relative ‘success’ at Olympic distance last year I quite fancy doing a few more of those, and races which have captured my fancy include Wells-next-the-sea, Pitsford, Shropshire, Blithfield, Bala, Perranporth, Ely and the Avenger. On top of this lot there’s the local road-race league of 5-milers and 10km runs, a bunch of cycling time trials, the National Masters swim gala, the Brompton World Championships, a half marathon that goes past my front door and would be rude to ignore, and some bloody race my family in France are nagging me to come over and do.

It’s important that I start signing up for these soon because an event vacuum does leave me open to the persistent entreaties of my friend Neill, a Welsh titch of no fixed trousers, who has asked me if I want to do Ironman Lanzarote agaaaaaaain with him. And at this point I’d like to pay tribute to the hard work and dedication of the NHS staff who sewed my nuts back on after I laughed them off at Nellie’s suggestion.

The one event I really intend to do is the World Masters Swimming Finals in Hungary after I managed somehow to achieve the qualifying time for the 800m race and the 3km open water. I’ve spent a fair amount of time this winter swimming in ‘open’ (i.e. any age can enter) galas to hit the qualifying time (10:48 if you’re interested). I’ve thus been lining up against rivals so young that they look like escapees from CBeebies.

Anyway, I hope to sort all this mayhem shortly, though given my past record of unremitting moon-howling I expect I’ll end up doing all of these races, after which I should be able to donate my body to medical science, although science is expected to contest the will. My appearance at this many races in 2017 should at least cement my position as the Bournemouth AFC of triathlon – nobody knows where I came from or how I got here but I seem to have been around for ages. And if you’re doing any of those races and see me there do come and say hello – ignore the sour look on my face, I’ve probably just realised I’ve entered two races on the same day. 220