by : notatriathlete All Things Triathlon

Ironman Wales 2020: a socially distant dragon?

It is almost a whole month since I wrote anything. Well, anything that isn’t an email, a text or a set of instructions for my students, who have been distance learning now for almost four weeks. The world has ground to a halt, but somehow I seem to be more exhausted now from my working day than ever before.

Six weeks ago, I was recovering from a busy few weeks at IM 70.3 Dubai and Oman and a skiing trip to Almaty, Kazakhstan. We were getting ready to set off for a family trip to Canada. My training was on track and my fitness was rebounding after two weeks of rest following the racing. Then suddenly, on the 5th of March, the world from our viewpoint went mental. Within a few short days, the situation in the UAE went from a vague awareness that people were standing further apart, to all gyms, pools and parks being closed. These were swiftly followed by beaches, restaurants and shopping malls, but we were still allowed outside if we were ‘socially distant’.

I now live in a world where it is normal not to step foot outside my apartment for six or seven days at a time. A digital permit is needed to leave, even for essential goods such as groceries and medicine. I haven’t swum since Oman and I haven’t run since the 22nd of March. My training for Ironman Wales consists of endless hours on the turbo trainer and the Insanity program.

Now, I’m not naïve enough to be assuming that Ironman Wales will go ahead, and to be honest I don’t even know if I want it to. Not for any of the usual lack of fitness, scared, or “realised I actually hate triathlon reasons”, but because I don’t know if it should. At the point of writing this, over 115,000 people have died from COVID-19, almost eleven thousand of those in the UK alone. We are banned from any large gatherings, banned from seeing family and banned from visiting our elderly or vulnerable relatives. All this comes at a time when we probably need all these things the most. One of the main draws of Ironman Wales for me is the fact that it takes place in my home county, in a town which I and countless others have been visiting since we were tiny. There are almost 30 NEWTs racing this year from my old club in the UK. I have friends and relatives coming from all over the country to watch me race. Will they be able to come? Will my dad, who suffers from COPD, be safe to travel the 30 miles down the road by September? My best friend, who has severe asthma?

Above mentioned best friend facing the dragon in 2018.

Countless numbers pour in to the Iron Town of Tenby to watch athletes face the dragon every year. These crazies hail from all over the world, from first timers to pro athletes hunting that ever-elusive Kona slot. Visitors swarm all over the village from Friday afternoon through to Sunday evening, with every pub, restaurant, cafe and chippy cramming in as many tables as they possibly can to capitalise on hungry Ironmen (Ironwomen?!) and even hungrier supporters. Hand rails are grasped, shoulders are bumped, and several thousand proud pairs of lungs bellow Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau at the swim start.

IMW Swim Start

Are you beginning to see where I’m going with this? The honest truth is that Ironman could probably let the event go ahead with a limit on spectators and with social distancing measures in place. My question is, do we, as athletes, want to put the people who make our racing possible at risk? Do we want to race in a race where spectators can’t scream encouragement in your face as you ascend Heartbreak Hill for the last time? A race where I don’t get the yells of “Don’t be shit!!” thrown at me like lifeline all the way up NEWT Hill? A race where you can’t high five kids who have been standing on the side of the road all day ‘high fiving for energy’?

I don’t know if I do. I’ll keep training nonetheless, but I’m starting to wonder whether the dragon should have a year off this year, to roar all the louder in 2021.

NEWT Hill. An entire hill taken over by members of the best club on the planet.

Photo credit: Emma Palfrey, Thomas Amery and Ironman Wales

by : notatriathlete All Things Triathlon

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…

…a mantra that I should have been singing to myself much more often for the past few months. Sadly, I didn’t, and now I find that I can’t.

                  Okay, maybe a slight overstatement as I clearly can still swim, but nowhere near as well as I once could. The annoying thing with swimming is that if you don’t keep it up on a twice or thrice weekly basis, the skill quickly begins to evade you. A few years ago, I swam upwards of 2km twice a week with my triathlon club in South Wales, at a pretty respectable pace. Currently, I’m struggling to keep that pace up for anything longer than 200m. 

                  I find swimming the most intimidating of the three triathlon disciplines. Maybe it’s because it’s the most dangerous, but also maybe because it’s the discipline with perhaps the biggest leap between ‘good’ and ‘freak of nature who should have been born amphibian’, and I certainly don’t fall in to the latter category. It’s also absolutely bloody knackering. But, with 10 weeks and counting until my first race of 2020, I suddenly realised that pottering along in the 25m school pool just wasn’t going to cut it. So, I decided to trial for a swim club of sorts at our local fitness freak gym complex.

                  Now, I’ve seen these people swimming. They’re bloody good. Two years ago I would have had no qualms going for a trial, but now… well, let’s just say I let the pressure get to me a bit.

                  I organised the trial for a Sunday evening, planning to go straight from work to the pool. I conveniently realised on the way that I needed petrol, and that I would have to battle my way up the bottleneck of Hessa Street in order to get there. There was just no way I was going to make it. So convinced was I of this terribly unfortunate situation that I thought I would pop by the pool anyway, just to introduce myself to the coach, express my deepest regret at how long it had taken me to get fuel, and promise to be there next week. I sincerely hope you’re picking up on the sarcasm.

In the event, I actually got to the pool with enough time to get changed and sprint to poolside, and so steeled myself for the trial… only to arrive at poolside to discover that some thoughtful child had neglected their pre-swim toilet routine, resulting in the pool being closed for 48 hours. Such a shame.

                  However, this now meant that I had to re-steel for my trial this Tuesday. On the day, I got home, did a hill set on the turbo and reasoned with myself that really, I should go to the trial fresh, having not done any training so… I’ll just curl up on the sofa. Luckily, my hero of a husband came home, and in a firm but loving manner, hoofed me out of the door. I arrived at the pool and introduced myself to the coach who as conducting the assessment. We talked through my background, times etc, to which he responded that I would probably be put in the Beginner Fitness Class. I’ll be honest, my ego was crushed. He hadn’t even seen me swim and had already written me off as a non-swimmer! How dare he?! So in I got, determined to show him how good I was (note use of past tense here). In the event, after watching me swim a few lengths, the coach got me out and stated that, actually, I should definitely be in the Advanced Class. Ego rebooted, I switched to the lanes next to the aforementioned class to complete my own set and to have a nose at theirs. They were doing IMs. For the non-swimmers amongst you, this stands for Individual Medley and consists of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle. Back to back. Flat out. On repeat. I haven’t even attempted fly since I was about 12. I haven’t needed to! Ego back at the bottom of the pool, I completed my set and dejectedly made my way to the changing rooms. My first session with the club will be next week once I’m back from the UK. Let’s see if I can persuade my very weak upper body to ‘just keep swimming… butterfly.’.

by : notatriathlete Race Reports

Urban Ultra Coast to Coast Challenge: lessons learned.

Well. What a weekend. Last Friday I took part in the Urban Ultra Cycle Challenge, and it was potentially the biggest learning curve I have ever experienced. It was hell on a pair of carbon wheels, but it has really shown me where my weaknesses lie when it comes to my cycling.

The morning got off to an inauspicious start when I thought I had forgotten my inhaler and actually did forget my Snickers bars for the ride. The inhaler turned up, the ‘nutrition’ needed replacing in a service stop on the way to the start. There was then the standard issue of Google Maps not actually knowing its way around the UAE, meaning that we drove around the Sharjah corniche a couple of times before locating the start line. However, inhaler tucked securely in to my bright orange jersey and pockets stuffed with peanut butter Snickers, off we sped in the back pod, intending to average around 28kph for the 200km of the ride.

The first 92km of the ride were some of the toughest hours of riding that I have ever endured, and where my first real lesson was learned: don’t EVER put yourself in the back pod of a big race or cycle challenge. There are so many reasons for this but here are a few:

  • You are the last group, and therefore more likely to get swept up by the ‘grim sweeper’ bus if anything goes wrong.
  • You could end up in a group of utterly inexperienced riders who have absolutely no idea of how to ride in group formation in a windy highway.
  • Your group captain might spend so much time trying to rescue these people that he gets swept up by the grim sweeper, leaving your pod speed at the hands of other utterly inexperienced riders who don’t know how to maintain pace.
  • All of the above may result in your already significant (and yes, irrational) fear of the hills being compounded by fear of being dropped and seen as an utter failure by the rest of the group.

At the first break at 60km, we were averaging 28kph. Physically, absolutely fine. What was not fine was the fact that my fickle brain had decided to sabotage my entire race. The next 32km passed by in a blur of sickness, shakiness and terror as I tried desperately to cling on to the back of the pack. I dropped twice and was hauled back by the support car – total legend. I was on my last legs, and that was it. As soon as that thought entered my head, I was slingshotted out of the back of the pack at the bottom of the first climb. Coming to a natural stop, I mentally berated myself for having entered a race in such a state of unfitness, for being overly arrogant etc, etc, etc. I was swept up by the grim sweeper, and away we went in the bus.

I was furious. With myself, with the race organizers, with the heat, with the wind, with my training partner for not telling me I was crap at cycling… until, after around five minutes of rest, a bottle of water and a protein shake, I suddenly felt as good as new. I wrestled with myself for twenty-odd kilometers on the bus, made friends with another swept up cyclist and, on the other side of Generator Hill (see previous post), got back on my bike.

We rode together the next twenty kilometers to Feed Station Three, where I found my tough-as-nails friend Aimee, and we joined the next pod up. Weirdly, despite a higher average speed, I tucked in, ducked down, put in some work and loved every minute. I stayed with the pod for the next 80km, only getting dropped on the final hill, around 10km from the finish line. I felt absolutely great. It was hot, fast, and hard, but something had changed. My mindset.

I crossed the finish line to be greeted by my amazing Dubai family consisting of my Head of Department, her husband (ex-army training partner from last week’s post) and their two awesome little girls. I had a little cry, ate three plates of the BBQ food put on by Le Meriedien Al Aqah, and spent the afternoon relaxing on the beach.

It was a long, long way from my finest race. But, as my husband said to me when I finished, it may have been one of my most valuable in the starting stages of my Ironman Wales Training. I learned a huge lesson: despite being a Welsh triathlete, since moving to Dubai I have developed an irrational fear of hills. It’s not going to go away over night, but I have time. I have a feeling that Jebel Jais, Jebel Hafeet and the Hajjar Mountains are going to see a lot of me and my little bike over the next few months. I have a lot of work to do in the gym, and a lot of work to do getting out of my overactive little mind. But I have a pretty awesome crew around me, and the game is officially on.

1 Comment
by : notatriathlete All Things Triathlon

The importance of being earnest…

Yes, I know, typical teacher bringing a play in to my blog, but this phrase really came into its own this weekend during our training ride in the Hajar Mountains.

We all know that mental strength plays a huge part in endurance sport, but up until this weekend´s training session, I really hadn´t realized quite how much this would come in to play in my Ironman training. The challenge began with the four o’clock alarm to make the hour drive to the mountains in the North East of the UAE. The aim was to have wheels rolling at 6am and hit the smooth, unused tarmac of the UAE for 120km of hilly fun. Needless to say, things didn’t go to plan.

The first issue arose when, around 2km in to the ride and about halfway up the first incline, a deafening crunch, a screech and the blast of a horn heralded the writing off of a motorbike in the central reservation five meters behind us. I broke all rules of group riding and dived sideways onto the gravelly hard shoulder to avoid whatever it was that I could hear flying up the hill towards us. Thankfully for all involved, the gradient of the hill was steep enough to have slowed the biker down, although I’m sure being dragged along the central reservation helped too. I swiftly dispatched my ex-army training partner to deal with any injuries, stipulating that if I had to deal with blood and gore, he’d have two casualties on his hands. Having said that, the ordering of an ambulance was an ordeal in itself; the emergency number was not actually the number for emergencies and the paramedics had never heard of the road I was on, so I had to share my location via Whatsapp. Thank goodness for 4G.

Unusually for this part of the world, once they had my location, the ambulance turned up within thirty minutes and after a cheery wave to our mercifully not so injured biker, we were on our way. However, if you have ever cycled anywhere near the equator, even in November, you will know how much of a difference thirty minutes can make to your suffering at the hands of the weather. At 6:45am, we already knew that in four hours’ time we would have been out in the sun for thirty minutes longer than planned. That knowledge in itself was enough to terrify, but my mental challenges only continued as the ride went on…

I sensibly span up all the hills on the way to Hatta, knowing that 120km of incline/decline would present their own challenges without any unnecessary heroics from me. I know 80km of the route very well and was careful to hydrate and refuel in the right places to get me up the worst inclines. The village of Huweylat brought me in to entirely new territory as we turned right towards the Omani border as opposed to our usual left for home. I now knew that I was on my way to Generator Hill, a name which inspires dread in most UAE based triathletes and cyclists. I could feel my mind sending slug-like signals to the rest of my body, as if my brain was physically trying to pull me in the opposite direction to that of travel.

“I feel sick. I’m too hot. I have a headache. My shoes are hurting. My triceps are hurting. My electrolyte tabs are too sweet. My water has gone warm. It would be better for me to give up now, and try Generator Hill next time. My sportive next weekend isn’t this hilly, I don’t even need to be doing this. Oh crap, I have to cycle 200km next weekend. I can’t do it. I’m too unfit. KILL ME NOW”. This was my silent howl of a monologue as I ground my pedals towards the base of Generator Hill. Then, I saw the hill itself and almost broke down in tears of utter despair.

 It’s steep. Really steep. 2.7km of 10% gradient, to be precise. Despite being in my lowest gear, spinning was no longer an option. I pushed and hauled my way up towards the summit, stopping three times. At one point, my training partner offered to give me a push, to which I yelled “Don’t you bloody DARE push me up this effing hill!”. When I finally, finally reached the tunnel, I collapsed in a broken heap on the pavement, not caring that every car driving past thought I needed medical assistance. I still had 35km to go.

As I headed back towards familiar ground, my determination really started to wobble. The dreaded climb over the final ridge on the Hatta rides is always a dreaded challenge, but never more so than after my crawl up Generator Hill. Three times I resolved to stop, give my car keys to my training partner and collapse, weeping, on the side of the road. But actually, once you’ve climbed Generator Hill in 42°C, the 13.3km of ascent before dropping back to Showka is a piece of sugar and electrolyte fueled, shaky cake.

120km complete with more ascent than I’ve seen since leaving the UK, I spent the afternoon curled in an exhausted ball on the sofa refueling on McDonald’s and Nando’s. Not the best nutrition strategy admittedly, but all I could face. I now have no idea how the sportive next weekend will go, but all I can do is take from it what I learned this weekend: that Coca Cola is the nectar of the gods and that someone suggesting you might need help is the best way to snap you out of the negative hole you have invariably dug yourself.

1 Comment
by : notatriathlete All Things Triathlon

Excuses, excuses…

So, I’ve paid my race entry, ordered my bag, entered a couple of half distance races and persuaded my CEO to let me fly back to the UK to race next September. I now actually have to start training and the honest truth is I have no idea of how to go about it. I’ve got that feeling at the moment when your to-do list is so unimaginably long that you don’t know where to start, and end up in that panicked fugue state of not actually doing anything productive at all. The enormity of my to-train list is terrifying me, to the extent that I have stubbornly done absolutely nothing all week.


The thing is; I know what I need to do. I know that with my current state of fitness I need three swims, two strength sessions, three runs and two rides a week. That’s ten sessions. I just can’t get my head around starting.


Training for me has always been something I love and something I look forward to, but since moving to Dubai it has become a real chore. The reason is simple: I’m unfit. My fitness took a proverbial leap off a cliff when I moved to the desert and somehow, over two years later, I still haven’t scrambled back up. Of course, the heat has a huge part to play but there are other factors too. Last week, my school had so many events on in the evenings that I rarely left before 7pm, and by the time I had driven halfway across Dubai to our apartment, my only thoughts were food; shower; bed. My guilty glances at my Training Peaks reminder had no effect on me last week: I didn’t care!


Living away from family and friends brings its own challenges in the form of visitors. People come to stay and they come for a holiday… so then it becomes your holiday too. You drink more, you go out for more meals, you go to brunch, and you go to bed late. That doesn’t even take in to account the fact that when you have your nearest and dearest visiting you don’t want to lose that valuable time with them. I mean, picture it. Crashing through the door at 4pm; racing out to squeeze in a badly planned, poorly executed 5km on the broken treadmill downstairs; tumbling, red-faced and sweaty, back in to the apartment to then yell at them that you are STARVING because you’ve been working all day, you HAVE AN IRONMAN TO TRAIN FOR and to GET A BLOODY MOVE ON! Been there.


Over the past three weeks, I have had my mum here for ten days and a close friend here over the weekend. My training is non-existent, my Training Peaks full of accusatory red boxes. Tomorrow we fly to Japan for the Rugby World Cup Quarter Finals, a holiday with two other couples who are sure to lead me astray (not that I’ll put up much of a fight). The most positive move so far I have made is find out where Tokyo’s Parkrun is and bully my best friend in to believing that the only way to get over jet-lag is to get up at 6am on her first day in Japan to go and run 5km.


I think this week’s post is really to hold myself accountable for my training. I have a lot of races booked in for the autumn, for which I basically need to pull my finger out and get training. I plan to run most days in Japan; it’s autumn, the weather is so much cooler than Dubai and I’ll be reunited with one of my best friends who a) also runs and b) categorically does not get hangovers. I plan not to wake up every morning with a saké-induced headache, and I plan to make sure I walk at least 15,000 steps a day. We’ll see.

1 Comment