WEEKEND WARRIOR
Plan, plan and then plan some more… or not, if you’re like Brunty. In fact, the less organised the better!
Over the past 18 years of racing, if I’ve learned anything about triathlon – and I haven’t – it’s that just when you think you’ve heard all there is to hear about the sport, you discover something new.
This happened recently when, with the new season ahoy, my thoughts turned to what particular balls-up I was going to make in transition during my first race of the year. It’s traditional that in my season’s debut race I arrive out of the swim into T1 acting as though I’ve never seen a bike rack before in my life, and my subsequent transition is more chaotic than Dr Jekyll’s. It’s not uncommon for me to rack my bike without having checked where it is in relation to the swim and bike exits, adding at least 500m to my race distance as I leg it up and down rows of identical looking bikes looking for mine, and the way out.
It’s also not uncommon for me to arrive without some small but crucial piece of equipment which, in my last-minute bag-packing the night before, I’ve left behind, resulting in much kit flinging as I fruitlessly search for my missing vital item. Over the years this has included goggles, socks, drinks, race belt, sunglasses, cap, gels and, memorably, my wetsuit, which led to much high-pitched screaming when I hit the icy wastes of Lake Bala wearing nothing but a glorified leotard. After wondering idly whether I was the only one to make such preventable blunders I took to Twitter to ask some of you and Lo! Not only am I far from being alone, but it also seems that forgetting something significant on a race day is considered a badge of honour for the true triathlete, and I was regaled with stories of kit whose absence was only discovered right at the point that it was about to be used.
More on these tales of woe in a moment, but on the subject of discovering something new, amid these stories it was revealed that my friend Bruce Darton once forgot the hole-punch with which he makes holes in race numbers to attach them to his belt. I was stunned by this because I can honestly say I never knew that taking office equipment to a race was a thing. I thought it was a tri-tradition to spend five minutes fruitlessly jabbing at race numbers with your car keys before piercing them with a safety pin, wiggling it around to widen the hole and then threading your race belt through like the eye of a needle. I’m wrong though, and according to my chum Kate Charlton the use of hole punches and even staplers is widespread. Whatever next? Swivel chairs and pot plants in T2? Desk dividers between racking areas? (Actually, I quite like that idea.)
Anyway, many of you like me have forgotten stuff on race day but, like the proper triathletes you are it’s how you’ve dealt with it that is cause for admiration. Like Lois Ireson who took her husband’s trainers by mistake, which were three sizes too big, but she ran clown-like anyway. Or Neil, who forgot his lube so dashed to a nearby café and grabbed some sachets of butter. Or Sarah Jackson, who took her 9-year-old son’s goggles instead of her own but swam anyway and emerged with a headache and panda eyes. Or Claire Joyce who forgot to put her trainers in a split transition T2 so ran without anything on her feet, her biggest concern being that she might be thought of as a ‘barefoot w*****r’.
Neill Ruff dobbed his mate in for running out of T2 still wearing his helmet, while Ian O’Donnell dropped his friend Daniel in it for forgetting his bike. Steve Christie arrived at bike racking only to realise his bike was still on his car in the car park a mile away, and poor Chris Deacon made the small but catastrophic error of leaving the skewers for his wheels in his bike bag at home. In a similar vein, all my friend Jane Scott forgot was the straw for her drinks bottle, but had to spend a whole ride looking at liquid she couldn’t drink. And I feel I must give the final word to Jane and my other chum Siobhan Brennan, who missed the bus to the start of an ultra marathon last month and had to race to the start line in an Uber taxi, becoming the first athletes I know of to forget themselves.
To all my fellow kit forgetters, I salute you all!
“Forgetting something significant is a badge of honour for the true triathlete”