WEEKEND WARRIOR

Brunty’s on an actual holiday and, unsurprisingly, is struggling with every non-active minute…

I write this as I sit by a pool in Varadero watching a succession of fat British and Canadian men sucking in their stomachs to impress passing Cuban girls, having just arrived here from Havana where I have spent four days wearing a Panama hat, cruising round in a 1951 Chevy and shouting ‘Viva Castro!’ at baffled locals. This is because I am on holiday. Holidays are supposed to be relaxing, but when you’re a triathlete, holidays are anything but relaxing.

The first thing to point out is that I’m on proper holiday. Not trainingholiday, or racing-holiday, but holiday-holiday. This is the first source of stress because it is mid tri-season and while I’m not training or racing, everybody else is. This means that on my return I will be easy meat for people I would normally beat.

The second source of stress is that none of my tri-chums can quite believe I’m not here racing. I have a certain reputation in the tri-world for being a race-obsessed nutter with form for going on holiday as cover for some event I’ve entered, or sneaking off to do some local swim or run as soon as my wife’s back is turned. But it is because of these past misdemeanours that the longsuffering Mrs B has decreed that for two weeks out of 50 we must go somewhere exotic that doesn’t involve bike boxes, Lycra or energy gels. So here I am, rum in hand, watching my hard-earned tri-nut reputation go up in smoke with every ‘You’re not racing?!’ Facebook comment.

The third reason holidays are stressful is swimming pools. The pool in front of me is massive but you can’t swim in it because it’s curved, warm, and full of holidaymakers hanging in the water like jellyfish. It’s also very shallow, meaning I keep banging one knee on the floor revealing poor breaststroke technique. My mind can’t cope with pools as leisure facilities. Pools should be oblong, cold, unhygienic and presided over by a coach whose voice you can still hear when your head is underwater.

The next source of stress is food. This is an all-inclusive resort and there’s grub everywhere. But I can’t enjoy it because my tri-brain is conditioned to see it all as seasonending stodge. No training + endless food = 1 stone added to my weight with every mouthful as far as my paranoid mind is concerned.

Another source of stress is what to wear. Obviously I want everyone here to know I’m a triathlete, but they’ll get no clue of this from my current physique, which at present just invites burial. I must therefore communicate my sporting superiority via the medium of race T-shirts. This means spending several minutes each morning considering which finisher’s shirt to wear that’s obvious enough not to be missed, but subtle enough not to make me look like the chestbragging knob that I am. I also have to ensure no one else here can top my t-shirt, while hopefully not attracting the conversational attentions of people like the bloke from Watford who spotted my Mont Ventoux shirt in Mexico last year, and who gave me a mile-by-mile account of his recent Sportive.

Another area of stress is poolside games. There’s no particular reason why I should be adept at balancing on a floating barrel or catching waterfilled balloons between my knees, but as a triathlete I’m naturally competitive and believe that I should be superior to the international public in all water-based activity. So I must enter and win!

Lastly in the stress stakes we must consider that triathletes are not very good at sitting still. But it is very hot here, and as I’m so fair-skinned I get a tan under the kitchen light, therefore I’m forced to spend a lot of time lurking motionless in the shadows like a Balkan assassin. This is all making me fidgety, which is not only stressful for me but for everyone in a 10 foot radius. To make matters worse a man has started swimming up and down the pool doing ridiculously poor freestyle in a bid to show off and, with Mrs B’s beady eye upon me, resisting the urge to jump in and crush him by cruising serenely past at twice the speed with half the strokes is crippling me. God I’ll be glad to get back to the stress-free world of triathlon.

“I can’t cope with pools as leisure facilities. They should be oblong and cold”