Being from Leeds I had watched the Brownlee brothers from the comfort of my sofa thinking I could never do triathlon.  Yes I could swim,  had a bike gathering dust and went for the odd run but a full triathlon no chance. 

However in 2016, I came across an event called Go-Tri, which was an introduction to triathlon by setting shorter distances that  was doable for a novice like me.  I entered and that was me hooked!  The swim consisted of a mix of breast stroke, some sort of front crawl and a bit of doggie paddle,  I knew  if I was going to keep doing this I needed help with my swimming and as by chance a few other competitors at the Go-tri told me about Tri Bramley Baths.  I was a bit nervous about going to a triathlon club with all these athletes who had been doing it for years ... was I about to embarrass myself?  How wrong I was!  A great team welcomed me and I really got a sense of a Triathlon family rather than a club.  Regardless of the level of expertise from Ironman Triathletes to novices like myself, there was encouragement and genuine support from everyone.  I soon found what a terrible swimmer I was  and needed a lot of work to improve.

Roll the clock forward 4 years and many Triathlons later from Sprint to 70.3 I think I have now improved my swimming to a reasonable level.  At my age I have to be realistic, I am never going to set the world on fire but I do not do triathlon to win I do it for the enjoyment and challenge.

Therefore, at the beginning of the year I had booked a few events and started training, but as Covid hit event after event started to cancel and by mid-April all my planned events had gone, swimming pools closed and government restrictions limited the amount of training you could do.  That is when the team at Tri Bramley Baths started running zoom sessions, from Yoga to strength and conditioning, bands sessions and spin classes and not forgetting the weekly social.  As restrictions lifted, a few socially distanced open water swims took place.  Various virtual triathlon events started and it was good to have events to motivate and get me back into training. 

Then at the beginning of July, Evolve Endurance announced they were running a 70.3 event, I booked on then realised I had just over a month to get race fit, so training was stepped up.  Unfortunately, 2 weeks in knee pains halted my running, swimming and cycling was going well, but I couldn’t run!  I had to do something about this and went to see Louisa from LouisaPhysio&Yoga who has been running various virtual session for us during lock down.  After a few sessions, I was able to restart light running. 

So race day arrived, and so did the rain!  The organisation that was in place to make the event Covid safe was outstanding.  Yes the start was delayed but nobody cared.  This was going to be one of only a few events to happen this year and everybody was just grateful to be able to compete.  This was obvious by the distance people had travelled, one of my transition neighbours had travelled down from Edinburgh the other come up from Ipswich, I was glad for the short 30 mile journey I had.  So off we went, 2 by 2 into the lake, a blissful 20 degrees, it was a real joy.  I have never felt so good in the water.  The bike route was mainly flat and apart from the occasional head wind and meeting a tractor on a narrow bridge forcing me to get off the bike and jump onto the pavement, went fairly to plan.  Now the run!  So not only was I dreading this, we had to carry all our hydration with us, there were no feed stations, so on with the hydration pack and off I went.  About 1.5km in I started to feel the knees, however the training Louisa had given me enabled me to reset my posture and restart, this is how pretty much of the run went, run a bit, walk a bit and reset.  I was finally into the last 2km when the monsoon hit, by now I had wet feet, blisters and serious knee pain, but only 2km to go, I would have crawled it if I needed to!

I made it back and even managed to run across the finish line.  What a great day and as always a beer to celebrate once home.