Last week, I received one of my most unsettling emails to date. Amid all the confusion and cancellations surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, Ironman had emailed me telling me that I had been allocated a slot at the 70.3 World Championships in Lake Taupo, New Zealand this November. What. The. Hell?!
Of course, my initial reaction was absolute elation, quickly followed by utter desperation at the fact that with a recently corona-cancelled holiday to Canada and flying back to the UK for IM Wales in September, there was absolutely no chance I could afford to go. Nevertheless, my little brain started whizzing around trying to work out how I could scrape the funds together. I spent the day agonising over a number of options, including deferring my IMW entry until next year.
By the time evening arrived on Friday, I had shed a number of tears and run through thousands of scenarios in my head, none of which would work fully. I ended up deciding not to take the only World Championship slot allocation I am ever likely to get for a number of reasons:
- The fact that I would have to defer my IMW slot. I was bloody lucky to get a slot at this year’s 10th anniversary of one of the most iconic Ironman races on the calendar. The race sold out in 3 minutes. To throw this away, as well as all the prep I have already done, seems ungrateful. I also intend to spend a full 6 weeks this summer training back home in Pembrokeshire, specifically to prep for the race. If I defer my place, this means doing this in the summer of 2021. This brings me nicely on to my next point..
- We live in Dubai for a number of reasons, but one of those is undoubtedly the fact that we live in the ‘middle’ of the world here, and it’s so much easier and cheaper to travel to new and exciting places from here than from the UK, or many other places. My husband and I have said that we would love to spend a summer travelling around NZ or even Latin America in the next couple of years, and if I defer IMW again, these plans get pushed back. Talk about first world problems but that’s our very fortunate truth.
- This is the biggie. I don’t feel that deserve that place. The slot was allocated from my time at IM 70.3 Dubai, where I finished in 5:46. I just made it in to the top 50% of my age category if you count my combined time for the three disciplines (wait for the explanation…). However, due to an almighty cock-up with the swim start, half of the field did not have recorded swim times, meaning that for half of my age group, our official finish time was calculated on bike, T2 and run. IM has attempted to calm the understandable fury at this by doubling the World Championship slot allocations for each age group. Now, if we take a way the swim, I finished a vaguely respectable 15th from 44 who suffered the same fate. A good friend of mine came 4th in the same group and has a thoroughly-deserved World Championship slot. Pre-swim-deleting she had a phenomenal time of 5:11. If we take in to account the fact that some of the top athletes had qualified for the Taupo race before Dubai, this means that in order for that slot allocation to have rolled to me, at least 10 other people have turned down the slot. Whatever this is due to, I don’t feel that I deserve that allocation. I know a lot of other people will disagree with me but if I’m going to go to the IM 70.3 World Championships, I want to do it on merit rather than on technicality.
So when the call came from Ironman yesterday to confirm that I hadn’t taken up the place, I had no regrets in saying that I wasn’t going. My aim, for 2020, is to finish IMW in front of my family and friends, on the hilly, soggy grass of home. It isn’t to fly alone to New Zealand and take part in a high-calibre race for which I feel didn’t deserve to qualify. Maybe one day…
By 
