There’s always next time!
From time to time upon these pages I have extemporised upon the subject of parenthood in the context of the illogical ability of human beings to cling to the absurdity that they are eternally youthful – e.g. my father commenting that his ability to flirt was undermined anytime he was forced to reveal that his eldest son was over the age of sixty and my experience of going to watch my daughter Grace act in a school play and appreciating that she was a far better actor than I ever was – and today my subject is another that can be filed under the general heading Parents Growing Up By Realising That Their Offspring Are Real Human Beings In Their Own Right.
Yesterday I travelled to Windsor to watch Grace and a pal take part in the 2017 Nuffield Health Royal Windsor Triathlon.
The background is that in her youth Grace was never an athlete, largely because ‘growing pains’ issues with her knees prevented her fully exploiting any natural abilities she possessed.
At school she participated (but that was all) in games of hockey, netball and lacrosse at no particular standard of excellence. Which is why for a long while both she and I had her marked down as someone whose abilities did not lie in a sporting direction.
But that was then and this is now.
In her late twenties, entirely of her own volition, Grace began taking exercise – no longer hampered by her knees – and soon got the ‘bug’. Seven or so years later she has played several seasons of league netball, goes to the gym and runs regularly, and these days is fully entitled to regard herself as a reasonably fit thirty-something.
Four or five years ago I went to watch her take part in a Tough Mudder event not far outside the M25.
These are perhaps best described as an ordeal combining a 10 kilometre cross-country run with a full-on military-style assault course
The latter requires participants to advance through the likes of an industrial skip filled chest-high with ice-cold water; crawl through a 20 metre tunnel with but six inches of air above its water level; and stagger through fields of mud.
If you manage to survive those, your next tasks might to jump off a tower 20 feet high into a lake; climb wooden walls six feet tall; using a series of rings to ‘hand walk’ over a man-made tank of water; and somehow scale a dauntingly-steep slippery wall about 150 metres from the finishing line.
About three weeks ago, Grace had competed, winning her female age category, in a ‘Sprint Triathlon’ (a half-distance version of the real thing) in preparation for yesterday’s event, which was an example of a proper, Olympic Distance, triathlon, viz. a 1,500 metre ‘open water’ swim in the River Thames followed by a 30 kilometre (24 mile) street/road bike ride and then to finish a 10 kilometre (approximately 6 mile) run.
Our support group congregated at about 5.45am in the nominated Windsor Boys’ School car park in advance of the Female Age 30-34 (as on 31st December 2017) Category event, consisting of 90 participants, setting off at precisely 6.28am.
The weather was warm – eventually hot – and sunny, I should have said near-perfect conditions for a triathlon.
For the personal family record, I shall simply state here that Grace finished 19th in her Category in an overall time of 3 hours 14 minutes and 23 seconds.
Just as fascinating and rewarding, however, were my random impressions of the event and its participants.
For someone who is an averagely-fit sixty-something that spends far too much time at his computer and/or slumped semi-comatose in an armchair watching dangerous amounts of television (albeit mainly sport), it was a real eye-opener.
Just as your average punter like me is surfacing in slow-motion upon a Sunday morning, breakfasting, reading the papers and chilling out, elsewhere something like 10,000 hardies of all genders, ages, sizes, shapes and states of athleticism are donning wet-suits, taking last minute trips to the phalanx of portable toilets, drinking energy drinks and checking their equipment … i.e. making their final preparations for the challenge of an event that fifty years ago was practically unheard of, yet in 2017 is an Olympic Sport ‘enjoyed’ by countless thousands all over the country.
I was truly amazed yesterday by the triathlon ‘community’. Making my debut as a spectator/supporter – in other words, a virtual outsider – it was an experience to prompt waves of wonder, admiration and ‘respect, man (and woman)!’ in all non-participants.
On the ‘people-watching’ scale it ranked an 8 or 9 out of 10.
And yes, I did suffer a pang or two of shame and serious consideration as to whether – perhaps next year – I ought to look out my lurid multi-coloured lycra all-in-one, skin-tight genital-revealing, costume, put in the hard yards over several months … and turn out to meet the challenge of this three-discipline event, just the once.
Fortunately, upon each occasion said ‘call to arms’ snuck up on me, I managed to find myself a wall or spare plastic chair and sit down until it went away.
Who am I kidding? Despite the fact that yesterday there were not a few over-sixties playing a seriously-committed active role in proceedings, penny to a pound says that I’d have a heart attack or stroke within fifteen minutes of the start if I ever tried it.
Furthermore, there’s the issue of the 1,500 metres swim. I can just about do the crawl inelegantly for one length of a 25-metre, but that’s my absolute max because I’ve never properly mastered the skill of breathing and swimming simultaneously.
