Tandem Triathlon

My little Addy goes to 'Magic Club' one evening a week at her new school. She loves it. She especially loves it because dad takes her to and from school on the back of our tandem bike, weather permitting. As I watched them ride off together this week, I was reminded that I never published the post I had written about the Tandem Triathlon I took part in with my husband during the summer before we moved.  It was a big deal for me so rather than deleting the draft, I have published it here for my benefit more than anything. If you choose to continue reading, be warned, it is a bit of a long one!  Alternatively, here is a little video of Addy practising her magic tricks.

Tandem Triathlon

We had a plan, my husband and I - a plan to find a moment of calm amidst the chaos. A weekend somewhere lovely away from the demands of the family and work - time for us - time to recharge and reconnect.

It didn't happen.

We did, however, have a date in the diary to compete in a Tandem Triathlon. For want of a better plan, that was to become the time for us.

We had not trained properly for this event.

My husband was to do the 1K swim. He is a strong swimmer. This was never going to be a  problem.

He is also a good cyclist but our trips out on the tandem to see what we could do have been few and far between. We hadn't even come close to attempting the 35km demanded by the triathlon and we were slightly concerned by a problem with the gears that may or may not have been sorted by the local bicycle shop.

The run was my responsiblity. My running training had been virtually non existent but I had completed a 5 mile fun run recently which gave me a bit of confidence. I have NEVER run after a bike ride of any length... let alone a 35km one! I was desperately in need of that confidence having suffered a nasty injury to my right leg in an oversized wellies and slippery deck related incident.

The bruise in its yellow phase!

Competitors were encouraged to dress up and decorate their tandems if they desired. We didn't have time to come up with an elaborate plan. I grabbed the artificial flowers that had been used to decorate my car on my wedding day (I could never quite bring myself to bin them) and hastily taped them to the handlebars. Perfect.

The triathlon took place in picturesque Bishops Castle in South Shropshire - picturesque and hilly. I don't know why but I had the impression that the competitors would be mostly long bearded, dressed in the style of Morris Dancers and possibly smelling slightly of incense. I couldn't have been more wrong. Admittedly there were a few couples who had embraced the dress up element of the competition but there were some serious looking lycra clad athletes too.

We signed in, wrestled the bike off the roof of the car and tried to organise everything we needed for the various stages of the event. It was warm and sunny so plenty of water and suntan lotion were among the necessities.

Before long, it was my husband's time in the water. I watched him for a while before going to the transition area to wait with the tandem. It was a very shallow pool. My 6' 4" husband looked quite ridiculous standing in it waiting for the cue to go. His swimming style did not have his usual effortless grace. This may have been attributed to the fact that his arms must have been scraping the bottom of the pool with each stroke!

It was a beautiful day and it was lovely chatting to the other competitors waiting for their partners to emerge from the pool complex ready for the second discipline. The transition was quite relaxed and then, we were off.

I love being on the back of the tandem. I can't see a great deal and have to have total trust in my husband but that isn't difficult at all. The countryside was whizzing past me and I was smiling at marshalls and other tandems coming back the other way. It was glorious. We were picking up a good head of speed going down the hills and  that gave us enough momentum to climb up the hills without too much of a problem.

Then the hill happened.

The hill that went on forever.

The hill that saw our speed drop so slow we were barely moving.

The hill that required every bit of effort we could muster just to stop ourselves from rolling backwards.

But we made it. Somehow, we made it.

The bad news was that we would have to climb that hill again. Not all the way to the top but about three quarters of the way up was the run transition. My leg muscles were screaming. The idea of getting off the bike and running after climbing that hill a second time seemed impossible. On top of that, after the run there would be a further 5km on the tandem to reach the final finish line. I didn't even want to think about it.

So I didn't.

We were on our way again in a landscape that rewarded you with some downhill for the uphill exertions. The sun shone, but not too much. It was wonderful. I was loving it again.

Going up one hill, we were overtaken by a shiny red high performance sports car that made a throaty roar as it accelerated past us. This somehow added to my elation.

Unfortunately, my elation could not last forever. I had been worried about my injured right leg and had maybe been allowing my left leg to take on more of the strain for that reason. My left leg decided it had had enough. My knee started to hurt. My knee continued to hurt. The hurt intensified. I wanted to cry. Our dodgy gears were behaving fine but my knee was a different story.

I thought that if I was able to stretch my leg for a while it might ease the pain. I took my foot out of the toe strap, off the pedal and felt wonderful relief as I straightened my sorry limb. We also felt the disconcerting bumping of the toe strap hitting the road with every revolution of the pedals.  Vaguely reminiscent of my husbands awkward swimming style in the shallow pool, we were losing our rhythm  and at risk of coming off the bike. Lovely as it was to have relief from the pain, my leg had to go back on the pedal.

I was reassured that the pain had disappeared as soon as I had changed position. It was back now, with a vengeance, but I felt more confident that it was just muscle cramping and I could pedal through it. We free wheeled when we could so I had the chance to stretch it out again and it felt great. Mostly, I put up with the pain and prayed that I wasn't doing any actual damage.

When we got to the hill for the second time, my emotions were all over the place. I had the pleasure of knowing that this part of the bike ride was nearly over, the excitement of knowing that my leg was soon going to be free from the crippling constraint, fear that we still had to make it up the hill somehow and the absolute leap of faith that I would somehow still be able to run.

I could only push up the hill with my one good leg. Three legs pedalling failed to do what four legs had only just managed to do the first time. The bike did literally reach the point that the upward forces were less than the downward forces. We stopped. We walked the bike up the hill and I was hugely gratified that I could in fact walk! Maybe I'd be able to run. The gradient of the hill became slightly flatter at the turn off into the forest for the run transition so I bravely suggested getting back on the bike to ride in with dignity.

I made use of a portaloo. I gagged on a warm, gloopy energy gel. I grabbed a water bottle and I was off. I was running. Slowly, but I was running.

I knew the run was though forest trails which is my favourite kind of running. What I didn't know was that it was through forest trails up a mountain. (Maybe it wasn't exactly a mountain but it was a very big hill). My leg didn't feel too bad but my heart was pounding and I was so hot. I drank sips of water, ran when I felt able and walked (briskly) when I needed to. This was going to be a slow 10K but at least with all this uphill I was guaranteed some downhill where I could hopefully make up some time.

My run/brisk walk strategy degenerated into a slow walk/drag strategy. Even the feeding stations with their generous rations of jelly babies, crisps, biscuits and drinks could not energise me. But I was still standing and slowly making forward progress up the incline that just kept inclining!

Looking rough at the halfway point selfie

Eventually, and not a moment too soon,  the gradient flattened out. I had reached the top and saw before me a plateau. A gently undulating meadow plateau. It was what I had been working for and there it was. My slow walk/drag turned into a shuffling jog. I shuffled and I jogged and my heart sang. A short way further and I could see the inevitable downward gradient. All I had to do was let gravity carry me down the hill to the finish. I might even make up a bit of the time I had lost on my ascent. How could I have known that the pain I had felt climbing the hill would be insignificant compared with the pain of coming down?

As soon as the downward gradient became noticeable, my left leg seized up completely. Bearing in mind this happened mid stride and was as shocking as it was painful, I did well not to fall over. With a  series of comedy hops to keep upright, I managed to slow myself to a stop and then tentatively tried to take my weight on my left leg. It was having none of it. I was quite scared for two reasons: firstly, had I done some real damage here that I might never recover from and secondly HOW THE HELL WAS I GOING TO GET DOWN THIS BLOODY MOUNTAIN?

The limit to how many swimmers could fit into the pool at any one time meant that the race was organised with staggered start times over a long period of time. There was never much of a sense of competing with anyone other than yourself and the spread of other competitors throughout the entire course meant there was not a great deal of camaraderie or support available. I was pretty much alone up that mountain. Alone and in trouble. All I could do was man up and face the challenge of getting down. I rested. I massaged the offending limb. I eventually braved walking. It was an awkward walk but it sort of worked.

All the way down the mountain I kept thinking how wonderful it would be to be running but was also grateful that I was at least moving in the right direction. I may have looked like an extra from a zombie apocalypse movie, I may have been grimacing, but I was making progress again. Dragging my bad leg painfully behind me, hop limping... I was making progress.

After a long, torturous time, my spirits lifted when I recognised the terrain that I had run through at the start of the ordeal which meant it was nearly over. My mind was taken off my trials when another struggling runner caught up with me and walked with me for a while. We chatted and commiserated with each other and then the finish line came into view. I encouraged him to go for it and do a good finish. As I watched him muster all his energy to pick up pace I decided to take a chance and do the same. The elation of seeing the finish line combined with the brief respite that the company had given me combined to give me super powers when I needed them most. By 'super powers' I do of course only mean coming back from the Walking Dead to the elevated status of Broken Runner... but I was mrunning. I felt amazing. I felt like that shiny red high performance sports car that had overtaken us on the cycle ride. I let out my own throaty roar and it was over. My husband waiting in the transition area was paying no attention. My triumph was mine alone.

We still had the 5km bike ride to the Final Finish before this triathlon over. There was no way that my leg was going to be fit to pedal. Using the tape we'd attached our 'fancy dress' flowers with (resourceful!), my husband fixed the toe strap so it would not hit the road with every revolution and I 'one-legged' cycled the final stretch.

I would love to say that crossing the final finish line was everything I dreamt it would be but I was in far too much pain. We did not stay for the celebrations which included a BBQ and a Ceilidh (which to my shame I had pronounced Sea-Lid anyway). All I wanted was to have a nice hot bath and to rest in the comfort of my own home... which we did.

This was supposed to be 'time for us', my husband and I... time to recharge and connect. My leg may have let me down badly but honestly, it ticked all the other boxes. Would I do it again? Definitely. But next time, I might just do the swim and let him take on the run!

A Hallowe'en in Pictures

In quiet moments during the past few weeks, I have composed many posts in my head. Unfortunately for my poor head, the time to sit at my computer and commit these ideas to text has not been readily available. A post about Hallowe'en circles then crosses the path of a post about my latest running exploits as I try desperately to clear enough space to think about what to cook my kids for tea! For the sake of children's diets, I really need to start rounding up the wayward words and spill them out onto my computer screen.

So it begins...

I love Hallowe'en. In many ways, I prefer it to Christmas. I find skulls and spiders far more appealing than snowmen and sparkles. If it ever actually snowed at Xmas, the snowman thing would make more sense to me. Spiders and skulls ALWAYS make sense. And then there's the difference between providing  a few  trick or treat sweets compared with the outrageous expectation that we should be spending hundreds of pounds on gifts to put the same smile on the faces of friends and family. Hallowe'en all the way!

As well as dressing up, our Hallowe'en this year had spooky food (how I wish I had taken a photo of my daughter Charis sucking brain shaped jelly up through a straw)

 pumpkin carving,

 arts and crafts,

 scary story telling by torchlight

and a special adventure at local place of interest, Hawkstone Follies, where the trees are tall and gnarly, the heights are enough to make your legs wobble and the caves are dark. Perfect.

An unexpected stand out moment for me this Hallowe'en was the Mummy Contest, where 17 year old Charis and 4 year old Dylan 'volunteered' to be wrapped in toilet tissue. Dylan refused to leave his bandages  on long enough to be properly photographed but game Charis had a little dance in hers to show the look off to full effect. The real fun started after the loo paper was shed and Dylan decided that "a sandpit of Mummy skin" was excellent fun!

The pumpkins are now in the compost and costumes and decorations are packed away in the loft for another year. There are probably still traces of bog roll under the sofa.

We Climbed a Mountain

When my daughter telephoned me with her AS results earlier this week, I was once again reassured that my husband and I had made the right decision supporting her move into independent education. Her astonishingly good results instantly wiped out the remnants of stress I'd been feeling ever since her minor pre-results nerves that we attempted to fix with pizza in a rather nice Italian restaurant. She is currently on her way to Scotland to perform in a musical at the Edinburgh Fringe which rounds off a busy summer that started with charity work in Malawi. She is certainly taking full advantage of every opportunity that comes her way.

Of course, all of these things cost money and although I am absolutely convinced that it is money well spent and my daughter is benefitting enormously, it does mean that there is little left in the budget to spend on such things as a family holiday. As much as I would have loved a week (or two!) somewhere beautiful (exotic?) and relaxing, we are having to be content with staying home and making the best of what's on offer locally.

During a shopping trip to Telford to buy new school uniform for my 6 year old Addy and my little Dylan about to start his Reception year, Addy's attention was drawn to a prominent Shropshire landmark - The Wrekin.

The Wrekin is a hill that rises 1,335 ft above the Shropshire Plain.

To my daughter it was a mountain.

It was a mountain she wanted to climb.

Climbing a 'mountain' seemed like exactly the sort of low budget activity that I wanted to encourage - combining fresh air, exercise and getting better acquainted with our local environment.

Back home I had a go at baking brownies to take on our expedition and told the children the story of the Shropshire Giant that allegedly had a grudge against the people of Shrewsbury and wanted to destroy the town. The giant had a plan to dump a shovel load of earth into the River Severn to flood Shrewsbury but did not know how to get there. He met a cobbler on the road and asked him for directions. The quick thinking cobbler was returning from market with a bag full of shoes for repair and sensing that the giant was up to no good, emptied his bag and told the giant that he had worn out all the shoes on his journey from Shrewsbury. The giant concluded that Shrewsbury must be too far away to bother continuing with his plan and dumped his shovel load where he stood. Thus, the Wrekin was created. A smaller hill next to the Wrekin known as The Ercall was created when the giant scraped his boots before returning home to wherever giants return home to.

Addy thought this was a stupid story...  and anyway, giant aren't even real.

She did, however, approve of the brownies.

The next day, we set off early to catch the best of the weather and climbed that mountain. We had plenty of breaks to eat brownies, climb trees and pick blackberries.

The children made it all the way to the windy top where fifteen counties can be viewed - if you know what you are looking for!

After a slight disappointment from Dylan that it wasn't possible to sit down and slide back down the mountain, we made our descent.

It was a lovely trip with a great sense of accomplishment all round, not least because of the brownies that turned out to be a chocolatey success.

K is for Knighton

My husband confessed to having a crush on Victoria Pendleton.  I know I can never aspire to the levels of fitness and commitment to sporting excellence of the Olympian, but I can get on my bike and show willing! For our 'K' alphabet date, that is exactly what I did.

One of the things I love about where I live in Shropshire is how easy it is to set off down a quiet lane through gorgeous countryside and end up in a little village complete with village pub. For our K date, we headed towards one such village - Knighton.

It was a beautiful evening and I loved the feel of the wind in my hair. I wasn't so keen on the feel of Kamikaze insects dive bombing into my eyes, nose and mouth. I had to stop my bike and get my husband to remove one tenacious little flying creature from my eye. It was quite romantic really - reminiscent of the 1940s black and white classic Brief Encounter where a piece of grit is removed from the eye of a suburban housewife at a train station by a fellow passenger leading to forbidden love and finally, tearful farewells.

We cycled to the White Lion at Knighton. I was slightly alarmed by the long downhill stretch before we got there, realising that this would be a long uphill stretch on the return journey.

The pub did not have Kronenburg so I settled for Carlsberg which seemed the closest thing in terms of phonetics. It was disappointing that the menu, which looked excellent, did not offer a single vegetarian main meal option. We were about to change our plan to include a detour for chips with Ketchup on the way home when the barmaid came over to tell us that the chef had offered to cook us any vegetarian meal we wanted (within reason). We ordered vegetable curry and I was delighted when it was served to us with a neatly moulded dome of pilau rice wrapped in a dark cabbage leaf. The curry itself was a different beast entirely from the sort I enjoy at my favourite Indian Restaurant. It was a lightly spiced medley of vegetables cooked just enough to retain their crunch. And the portion was generous enough to satisfy the appetite I had built up with the 6 mile bike ride so far.

We talked about Knickers!

My husband likes me to wear thongs. So much so that he once raided my underwear drawer and replaced all my Bridget Jones-esque 'dress for comfort' big knickers with sexy little offerings that occupied very little space by comparison. Recently I have taken to wearing panties in the 'shorts' style. When I asked him if my choice of underwear was a disappointment, he answered in his usual considered manner. He surmised that it was a diagonal line across the buttocks that he objected to in ladies undergarment styling. A fully exposed buttock as in a thong or a horizontal line framing the buttock as in shorts were both equally preferable. Had the topic of Knickers not fitted in so well with a K date, we would never had had this conversation!

The ascent I had feared at the start of our journey home was easily accomplished with legs oiled by lager! I had only drank one and a half pints but I did feel myself being a little less cautious and enjoying my cycling with childlike abandon. A dead cat lying on the side of the road, almost certainly hit by a car, was a sobering sight. That was one Kitty that would not be answering the call of it's owners to return home.

As we cycled past the church in the village where my little girl will be starting primary school this September, the bells rang out. The perfect timing of this made it feel as though they were heralding our arrival in the village. A little further on, a huge flock of Canadian Geese took off from a field and flew right over our heads in two slightly messy V formations with a loud cacophony of honking. I actually stopped my bike to fully enjoy the spectacle.

The sun was sinking very low by this time. It had been a long time since I'd cycled anywhere in the dark and I really loved it. We stopped on a humpback bridge going over a canal to finish our date with a Kiss in the eerie stillness of twilight.

Come September, crossing the canal on the humpback bridge will form part of my school run. I hope that it will always remind me of a special evening and bring a little smile to my face.