Run, Ride, Sink or Swim by Lucy Fry

Author:Lucy Fry [Lucy Fry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571313167
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

One week later and I’m standing on the shore at the start line of my first Olympic-distance triathlon. It is 26 April, my mother’s birthday, and although she doesn’t know much at all about triathlon, nor what I’m doing here, I decide to dedicate my race to her. When things get tough, I shall blow her a birthday kiss and remember home, my family; that there is a world outside all this. But there’s another birthday in mind too; this is not just any old triathlon but Lanzarote’s thirtieth annual Volcano Triathlon. After a humble start in 1984 with just thirty-two participants, it has grown to become a major sporting event on the island with today’s start list at over three hundred.

In the seven days between my sticky conversation with Emily and the portentous calm before the race, I’ve come to understand why people choose to exit their regular lives and deposit themselves here for an immersive training experience. I’ve tried to do as much as possible in the way of training, learning and orientating, without either aggravating my injury or completely exhausting myself before the event itself, and the results, merely in distance terms, are satisfying. The last week has seen me cycle around 140 kilometres, swim at least ten and run about fifteen. It’s the closest I’ve got to a typical triathlete’s training week (albeit a little light on the running still) since I started this project.

More than that though, I’ve deepened my understanding of the sport as fresh challenges have inevitably arisen and unwanted mishaps have occurred. I have been moved up a swimming group because I was too speedy for the bottom lane; I have managed to ride with my hands down ‘on the drops’ (the lower part of the handlebars, deemed to be a more stable position for descending, but rather tricky for novices to get in and out of); I have done a ten-kilometre cycling ‘time trial’ which involved five fairly successful kilometres uphill and five painfully cautious kilometres downhill, battered by a side wind and an unexpected attack of warm rain; I have run alongside a sixty-year-old Albanian woman, Eva – a prestigious gynaecologist in her home country – who completed her first Olympic-distance triathlon here last year in just under four hours and is now back for more; I have twice turned up to open water practice oblivious of the fact that my wetsuit was on the wrong way round (‘Um, Lucy, the zip should be at the back …’), and have then, once said wetsuit had been rearranged amidst my blushes, swum, shoulder to shoulder, with a wonderful Japanese man shortlisted for an adventure to the moon in 2024 – a one-way ticket, he explains, with a 0.5 per cent chance of ever returning.

I have felt elated and empowered, just as I have felt lost and longed for the security of home. I have felt both energised and exhausted, have eaten plenty of wholesome, nutrient-dense food advisable for quick recovery times,

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