Life Without Limits, A (13 page)

Out of the kayak and onto solid ground, I knew I had strong running legs. The main issue was that it was off-road; in fact, it was off-track. This was wilderness running. There were thirteen river crossings, some of them up to your waist. The terrain was rocky and unmarked. I wasn’t used to this. While I may have been strong, I was not particularly goat-like. I liked having a surer footing.

The Coast to Coast can be tackled over one day or two, but in order to enter the one-day race, which the strongest do, you have to have taken part in the two-day race in a previous year. So I entered the two-day race. It started on Kumara Beach with a 3km run to our bikes, after which you cycle 55km, before a 33km run through the Southern Alps, up and over Goat’s Pass. At the end of that first day, I was shocked to be leading the women. It was so exciting! There were camera crews on me, and helicopters swooping down. I’d never known anything like it. I might as well have been in a James Bond movie.

We camped in the mountains overnight and started the next day with a 15km cycle. Then it was time to face my fear. The 67km kayak down the Waimakariri River – five and a half hours of non-stop paddling. Just think of all the piss in the boat! It went well for me, though. I capsized just the once. But it was here that I lost time to the eventual winner, a girl called Sophie Hart, who was phenomenal on the water. The 243km course is rounded off with a 70km cycle to Christchurch, where the race ends on Summer Beach.

I came second in a time of 13hr 22min. They presented me with a new kayak. I left it with someone with instructions to sell. Not sure what ever happened to it. Still, I’d broken one kayak in New Zealand, and now I was leaving them with another, so this was a restoration of the karma.

Things were now becoming slightly surreal with regard to my sporting endeavours. I’d turned up to this event on a whim, learned how to kayak in a few weeks, borrowed equipment and very nearly won the biggest endurance race in New Zealand. Where had this aptitude for sport been all my life? Sure, I’d captained the swimming club at university and in a small market town in Norfolk, but it was nothing to set my county on fire, let alone the world.

Had this talent been lying dormant, or had it just developed as I’d grown older? I have asked myself this question repeatedly, and still do. I think it must have been dormant, lost amid my pursuit of other goals. I could easily have missed it, had I not been open to trying anything and everything.

Talent needs work, though, in order to flourish. In 2000 I ran the 14km City2Surf road race in Sydney, and I was overjoyed to finish in 1hr 14min. Of course, that was by no means fast (although I didn’t think that at the time!), but it gave me a taste, and I worked and worked. Three years later I ran my first marathon in 3hr 08min. So I worked harder still, and then I tried cycling and worked at that. Another couple of years and I was cycling across the Himalaya. And now, less than a year after that, I was winning a kayak in New Zealand and attracting the attention of helicopters.

Hard work and an open mind – it’s the only way to realise the potential that is inside every one of us.

I left New Zealand for Australia to go cycle-touring around Tasmania with Helen and Billi, who arrived with a broken hip – my muppet soulmate. It didn’t stop her, though. She strapped her crutches to her panniers and gritted her teeth. Your body is capable of more than you could ever think possible.

Then I headed to Argentina to see Tina. I flew in to Santiago, from where I took the stunning bus ride over the Andes to Mendoza, Tina’s hometown. There were ten days until Easter, which was when Tina and I had planned a cycle tour in the north of the country. Until then, Prem and I decided to head south into the beautiful lake-riddled landscapes of Patagonia. It was like being in New Zealand again. Our route took us through a small town called San Martín de los Andes, where we stopped for the night. This place satisfied my passion for breathtaking mountainous scenery, so the next day I decided to do some exploring. I relieved Prem of his panniers, and we headed out into the Lanín National Park, Lanín being the volcano that dominates the area.

I was cycling off-road when a jeep pulled up alongside. The passenger spoke to me in Spanish, and I told him I didn’t understand a word.

‘Are you training for the duathlon tomorrow?’ he said in English.

‘No.’

‘Did you know there was one?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want to take part?’

‘Why not?’

He told me to report to a hotel in the town, where all would be explained, which I did once I’d finished my 100km ‘scenery’ ride. The race turned out to be the Green Cup World Championships, the culmination of a series of Green Cup events held round the world. It was an off-road duathlon on foot and mountain bike, and I signed up. The organisers had flown in the winners of the qualification races. As I watched the professional athletes holding court at the press conference, I started to feel a little daunted. And then confused. There was a briefing, but it was all in Spanish. I managed to find someone to translate parts of it, but little details, such as the route and the rules, remained a mystery.

This one was definitely for Prem. Free of racks and panniers, I wanted to put him through his paces. The race was held in the National Park and comprised a 7.5km run, a 30km bike and another 7.5km run. Not very far, but it was technically quite tricky, off-road through mountain trails. On a lovely sunny day, I toed the line with a few hundred others. I took the lead from the outset. And I never lost it.

My Spanish may not have been up to much, but I could tell that the question on everyone’s lips that morning in this small town at the foot of the Andes was: ‘Who is this girl?’ I’d beaten the professionals they had paid to take part. I’d beaten the girl who had won it the previous year. I was a cycle-tourist who had pitched up the day before. And I loved it. I also remember it just not being that hard.

I knew nobody in San Martín de los Andes, but all that changed at the after-race party. Everyone wanted their picture taken with me, and I was draped in the Argentinian flag. They presented me with a big cup (still got it) and a bouquet of flowers. There would have been prize money too, but because I wasn’t a pro I wasn’t eligible. I gave the flowers away, but I stuffed the cup into my panniers, loaded up Prem and headed off the next morning. I remember cycling on the road south to Bariloche and people leaning out of the window as they drove by: Beep! Beep! ‘Hey, Chrissie!’ I was quite the local celebrity.

By Easter I was back in Mendoza, just in time to go cycle-touring with Tina and another friend, Rata, around the desert landscapes of Salta and Tucumán in the north of Argentina. Then, in the second week of May 2006, after twenty months away, I flew back to the UK. I couldn’t wait, but not because I wanted to resume my job, particularly (in fact, I knew now that a career in the civil service was not for me). I couldn’t wait because I was desperate to throw myself into triathlon.

Within ten days of my arrival, I was lining up for a race – the National Sprint Championships in Redditch. It was a miserable, rainy day in the West Midlands, and as far as I was concerned, that was as good as it got.

As usual, I had borrowed equipment. First, there was the road bike. Paul Robertshaw, the very man who had introduced me to the idea of triathlon at the Birmingham Running and Triathlon Club two years earlier, lent one to me. It was a purple Klein, and this was the start of a special relationship. So: road bike, check. Now I needed to get hold of a wetsuit. Mark Hirsch, also of the BRAT club, had a spare. I tried it on the day before to see if it fitted, and it seemed all right.

It was definitely a day for wetsuits. I had recced the course with Rachel the day before. Her heavenly wedding on the beach in New Zealand five months earlier seemed a long way away. Let’s face it, I’d been spoiled rotten with the life I had been leading and the places I had cycled in the previous couple of years, so I couldn’t help thinking, as the rain teemed down in Redditch on the morning of the race: ‘This is just not that exciting, is it?’

When I put the wetsuit on that morning, it suddenly seemed a lot larger than it had the day before. It was quite obviously too big. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed. I climbed into the freezing water of the man-made lake in Arrow Valley Country Park, just before the gun went off. My wetsuit flooded on the spot. I couldn’t swim, I couldn’t breathe, I could barely lift my arm – and when I did it just let in more water. As the other girls disappeared into the distance, I realised I wasn’t even going to be able to finish the swim. Maybe I should have soldiered on, but it would have taken me an age to swim the 750m, and at that time I wasn’t altogether passionate about drowning in 14ºC water in the pouring rain in a wetsuit that didn’t fit. So a kayaker pulled me to the side. Race over.

Not that it put me off even slightly. Three weeks later, on 11 June 2006, I was lining up for the Shropshire Triathlon. This one had qualification for the Age Group World Championships riding on it. Ever since Ellie Rest, from the Serpentine Running Club, had qualified four years earlier, the idea of representing Great Britain had fermented in my mind. The more I had raced over the years that followed, the more serious I had become about the idea.

So serious, indeed, that in the build-up to Shropshire I bought Paul’s Klein for £500 and called it Calvin. The night before the race, he taught me how to mount and dismount in my new clip-in shoes. I even borrowed a wetsuit that actually fitted. The sun was shining brightly for this one, and I felt in much better spirits. I took the lead on the bike and never let it go. And with that win I achieved my goal – a passport to the Age Group World Championships, which were being held that September in Lausanne. I won a mountain bike, which I gave to my mum, and I also won the right to buy lots of GB kit. I bought my race suit, and my proud parents bought me the full tracksuit as a present. My excitement and pride were uncontainable. I was going to the World Championships!

My joy was short lived, though. I was waiting at Snow Hill station in Birmingham for the train back to London that evening when I took a call from my mum. She had bad news. Nanna Chris, her mum, had died. I sat down on the bench, stunned, as the tears welled up. Suddenly, all excitement about the future evaporated, and memories of the past flooded back. How quickly emotions can turn. I thought back to our first Christmases at my grandparents’ house in Halstead, Essex. My morning walks in the woods with my grandad Sid. The hours my brother and I spent playing in their big garden. When I was a girl, Nanna Chris used to call me Zola Budd, because I ran around so much and never wore any shoes.

That proved prophetic because, even if I was not exactly running barefoot, I had made it to the World Championships with a minimum of equipment or method. Paul knew I needed a coach, so he rang a friend of his called Tim Weeks. Tim was a very good Olympic-distance athlete, but his competitive aspirations ended prematurely when he was hit by a car while cycling. He was reluctant to take me on because of his workload, but Paul persuaded him, apparently, that I had a shot at winning in Lausanne. So Tim set me a ten-week programme, which was compromised by the fact that I could do barely any running. I had a pain in my sesamoid, which is a bone in the ball of your foot. It had started in Nepal and never gone away. It was thought to be a small stress fracture. Tim sent me for physio at Parkside Hospital in Wimbledon, which was where they first diagnosed a weakness in my core, my glutes and hamstrings, which I still have to work on today.

I had very little money, but Tim was kind enough to accept a nominal fee for his services. His programme had me training twenty-five to twenty-eight hours a week. I was back at Defra now, and every spare moment outside work was devoted to training or socialising. A typical day saw me bike to the pool first thing in the morning, swim 6km, bike to work for a 9.30 a.m. start, work a full day, bike home, exchange Prem for Calvin, bike to Richmond Park, cycle round it four times, then be home by 9.30 p.m. Repeat five times, then really up it on the weekend. One bank holiday I cycled with a friend to Brighton and back (a hilly 120 miles), then went to the pool and swam 5km. It was a lifestyle that demanded considerable reserves of energy, which, fortunately, I have always had, but the drive and determination that has shaped me from my earliest years was even more important, insisting that I complete my programme even when energy levels were waning.

At the end of July, without tapering my training schedule, I took part in the Salford Triathlon. I pitched up the day before on my bike with a rucksack, having slogged it up to Manchester by public transport. Tim told me I looked exhausted, and went off to get me a cup of tea. By the time he returned I’d fallen asleep on the sofa. He had organised for me to compete in the aquathlon that afternoon, and woke me up half an hour before the race. Despite my lack of run training, I came third, then went straight to bed. When I arrived for the triathlon itself the next morning, he told me I didn’t look much better. I was determined, though, and I won by nine minutes. I stayed to watch the elite World Cup race that afternoon, and my time would have placed me among the top-twenty professionals. Tim was beginning to look excited. I set my sights on a top-ten finish in Lausanne, and maybe a podium place in my age group (25 to 29).

But it was the age group of my grandad Harry that was the cause of family celebrations before then. On 11 August he entered the 100-plus category. Grandad (he was my dad’s father) was born and bred in north London and was a massive Spurs fan – which meant I was too. He had seen them win the FA Cup in 1921, before Wembley had even been built. In addition to his telegram from the Queen on his hundredth birthday, I managed to get Spurs to send him a carriage clock and a card signed by the players.