14 running, throwing and jumping events, back to back..howhardcanitbe?
A former circus performer was so inspired when she saw an extreme multi-discipline championships on telly that she decided to have a shot herself. Now she has turned her amazing track and field exploits into a stage show
BY ANNA BURNSIDE in Sportcentrum de Hoogt, near Antwerp. There were 12 entrants – Belgians, Germans, Swedes, a Romanian and Lauren, from the Highlands, representing GB. She said: “It felt super pressurised, which is ridiculous when it’s such a casual affair. It has the starter and gun and so on but otherwise it’s very chilled out. “Everyone is doing so many events, you are eating your pasta until the minute you get on the starting blocks.” It is safe to say Lauren did not bring home a medal. But she got through the weekend in one piece and has lived to make a show about it. Tetra-Decathlon kicks off at the Macrobert Arts Centre in Stirling at the end of the month, is in Glasgow as part of the culture programme for the European Championships and finishes its run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It’s written by Lauren, with director Jenna Watt helping to tease the sweat and drama out of an unfit tightrope walker’s decision to compete in 14 challenging athletic disciplines over one weekend in Belgium. Now she has stopped training and started rehearsing, Lauren can analyse what she enjoyed about it all. She said: “It’s the obscurity. I love that nobody has ever heard of tetra-decathlon but it’s so important to me.” Now she has found the world of extreme multi-events, she’s finding it hard to leave. She revealed: “I heard about a onehour decathlon, when you start the last event within an hour of the first, so I ended up doing one of those. “Then there’s a double double one-day decathlon, when you do the 20 events on the Saturday and then again on the Sunday. “You start at 6.30am. The last event is the 10k, then you get up and do it all again. It’s totally mad. “I’ve entered this world where people ask, ‘What stupid thing can I do? Bring it on.’ And I love that.” Tetra-Decathlon is at Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, from July 27.