Life Without Limits, A (25 page)

It took me some time to find my rhythm. The heat seemed so much more intense than the year before, partly because, well, it was, and partly because of the dehydration from my diarrhoea and the emptying of my water bottle.

You go into a kind of tunnel where everything outside your head, including the rest of your body, becomes peripheral. Never once did I feel the pain in my shin.

Then, with five miles to go, I knew I was going to make it. My hamstrings were tightening and my form was starting to fall apart, but I felt I could relax and enjoy the final stretch. I told the camera crew that this one was for my grandparents.

The crowd support was phenomenal as I ran that last mile through the town high-fiving and waving like a madwoman. People knew who I was this time.

I was crying as I trotted to the tape, crying and gasping at the intensity of it all. I raised my hands above my head, trailing the Union Jack from them, and, standing for a second to savour the moment, I seized the tape and hoisted it high in the air. You never get tired of that moment. Then I took a step back, lay down on the ground and rolled over the line in honour of Jon Blais.

I’d won. My time was 9hr 6min 23sec, an improvement of just over two minutes on last year and fifteen minutes ahead of Yvonne, who came in second. And I’d broken the Kona marathon record in a time of 2hr 57min 44sec, with two diarrhoea stops. If it hadn’t been for the flat tyre, I might have threatened Paula Newby-Fraser’s sixteen-year-old course record.

But just the fact that I knew now who Paula Newby-Fraser was, and all the other legends of the sport, moved this win onto a new level as an experience. The year before it had all been a bit of a blur. I had had no idea what to expect, or who anyone was. Now I did. I appreciated everything so much more. I felt so privileged. And I was so happy with the way I had performed. I’d overcome the flat tyre and I’d dealt with the pressure of being the champion.

And, most of all, my mum and dad were at the finish line with my cousin, Tim, who was in tears. To share the moment with them meant so much to me.

I was whisked away for drug testing, and then for the press conference. The rest of the night was spent down at the finish, greeting the hundreds of other athletes as they ran, walked and crawled across that hallowed line. We pros devote our lives to preparing for this race, but seeing what the finish line means to people who prepare for it in their spare time, and seeing their courage, never fails to move me. As we joined hands for the traditional Hawaiian song after the midnight bell had tolled, my winner’s lei on my head and my family by my side, tears flowed down my cheeks.

The celebrations continued the next day. A storm blew over, which disrupted the awards ceremony. I had just started my victory speech when it had to be abandoned because the sound system broke and, anyway, people were taking shelter under tables. More a reflection, I hope, of the torrential rain than what I had to say. But it frustrated me, because I believe one of the most important parts of winning a race is to be able to convey a passionate, inspiring message in your speech.

Otherwise, the night went with a bang. I couldn’t tell you how I got home. But I can tell you that I woke up the next morning to an email from Brett. It was long and it was to everyone in Team TBB. Once I’d deciphered it and worked through the implications, the message came through loud and clear.

I was off the team.

12

My Own Two Feet

I guess we’d all known it was going to be our last year together. Brett knew it as well, which might also have been affecting his mood. He had tried various things to keep us together, including an attempt to convince Ben to manage the whole team. He seemed to be warming to Ben, which was positive, but one of the things that frustrates me about Brett is that his sense of reality is so often far removed from anyone else’s. Ben was employed by WMG and had a range of athletes under his management. We did discuss the idea, because I still wanted to stay with Brett, but Ben couldn’t see a way of reconciling it with his current commitments. He, effectively, would have had to resign from his day job in order to make Brett’s plan work. To Brett, this was totally reasonable. Needless to say, it didn’t happen.

Which left us with a problem. From the following season, any athlete with individual sponsors that did not align with the team’s would be asked to leave, as would any with a manager who wasn’t Alex. This had often been talked about, but now it was becoming policy. Brett laid down the law in that long email he sent to all of us the Monday after Kona.

The end was nigh. The new policy was going to hit me hard. I now had relationships (and long-term deals) with a range of sponsors, all of whom I liked. I couldn’t have walked away from those, even if I’d wanted to. But, if I had, I would have been settling for my share of a team pie split with twenty other athletes. Brett would often talk about this. Would I rather be a mediocre athlete with my own deals, or part of his team and a champion? In other words, who was more important, Brett or my sponsors? His answer to me or anyone else with similar issues was simple. Without him, there would be no prize money, and there would be no sponsors clamouring at the door. We would actually make less money. I was far from convinced, even then, that I could succeed without him, but ultimately I wasn’t prepared to get rid of my manager (and Ben had become so much more to me than just a manager) or my sponsors. We used to appeal to Brett that the priority of professional athletes was to maximise their earnings while they could. And triathletes are a very long way from being the highest earners in the sporting world.

To have stayed on the team under this new arrangement would have been a logistical nightmare. I wouldn’t have been able to accept any sponsor without that sponsor agreeing to take on the team as well. Brett and Alex did try to persuade my two main sponsors to extend their patronage to the whole team, but they were not keen. It just wasn’t realistic. And, after I’d gone, it frustrated me to see that the policy of one team, one set of sponsors was relaxed, and that some team members were allowed to stay on with their own separate deals and their own managers.

It was clear that I would be leaving, along with the majority of my team-mates who had similar dilemmas. I didn’t like the idea any more than I had done when these issues had first arisen a year earlier. The prospect of parting with Brett scared me, and he didn’t hesitate to play on those fears, constantly sowing seeds of doubt in my mind about whether I could succeed without him. But I was braced for it now, and, who knows, maybe I could achieve things without him.

Belinda, Hillary and I decided quickly that we still wanted to train together. But who was going to coach us? We started batting around some names and emailing a few coaches. One was Cliff English, who was based in Tucson, where Hillary lives, and was engaged to Sam McGlone, who’d come second at Kona in 2007.

Hillary and I flew to Tucson to meet him. We got on very well. He was a young guy, about our age, and very friendly, with the pedigree of having coached the US and Canadian triathlon teams. Hillary, Belinda and I decided there and then to work with him.

And yet I felt as if I were suffering from déjà vu. I couldn’t help thinking back to the same time the year before when I had been rushed into signing with Alex. Having left the team now, we were all anxious to choose a coach and move on, and I put myself under pressure to make it happen.

Then, as per the year before, I went home to Norfolk, and the doubts started to close in. The post-Kona euphoria was wearing off fast, and I had plenty of time to reflect on the decision to go with Cliff. Was this arrangement the best for me? Or was it best for Hillary and Belinda?

While in Norfolk, I got another long email from Brett, signed ‘ex-boss’ this time. He thought I was insane. He told me I could not possibly have picked a worse option. Hillary lived in Tucson, so she was happy. Cliff was the fiancé of one of my biggest rivals – how was that dynamic going to pan out? I would be revealing myself to him, my playbook and my strengths and weaknesses, and thus I would be revealing them to Sam. Never imagine I was so good that I could afford to give the opposition anything.

I was in a tailspin again. I might have left the team, but Brett would never let a little detail like that stop him from giving me advice. I appreciated that he still felt passionately about my choices, even after we had parted, although I also realised he might be feeling uneasy about another coach picking up tips from him via his former athletes.

I was also the opposition now. He was no doubt playing his mind games. Not that it helped to be aware of that. I have always been torn between taking on board what Brett says and ignoring it as his way of getting to you. I’ve never been able to separate the strands. I listen to him, and he gets to me. It’s the Brett package. Either way, he was inside my head again. I had already been harbouring doubts, but now Brett had crystallised them in that way only he can.

To complicate matters further, I attended the British Triathlon Awards Dinner, where I met Simon Lessing, a legend in triathlon. He was starting up a coaching business in Boulder, Colorado and was curious to know why I had chosen Cliff. He laid out his own training ideas, which involved high intensity and low volume. It was a philosophy that chimed with mine. And so another ingredient was thrown into the mix.

I knew almost immediately that I wanted him to be my new coach. I also wanted a coach who was right for me, rather than right for me, Hillary and Belinda. The trouble was, of course, that I had agreed a course of action with them, and I couldn’t see a way out of it that wouldn’t damage our friendship.

The upshot was that I agreed to go with Simon – and then I told Hillary and Belinda. It was the wrong way round, I know. It doesn’t sound very world champion, but the truth is, I was worried that if I told Hillary and Belinda first, as I should have done, they would have tried to change my mind. I didn’t want things to get even more complicated than they already were. I had arrived at a decision at last, in the quiet little corner of the world that I call home, and I just didn’t want any more input.

Belinda took it really well. We talked it through on the phone, and she totally understood. She ended up being coached by her husband, Justin.

Hillary didn’t take it so well. She felt I had let her down. My pulling out had led to the collapse of the plan. Belinda did her own thing, Cliff was having second thoughts anyway, and Hillary’s dream of having the three of us training together in her hometown was ruined. She stopped speaking to me for months after that. Once again, what should have been the happiest time of my year had turned into the worst.

Nothing for it, then, but to head to Argentina for a dear friend’s wedding, followed by the torturous bike trek through the Andes that doubled as her honeymoon. Yes, honeymoon.

Tina from Nepal and her beau, Seba, had decided that they could think of nothing more romantic than to push bikes where no bikes had been pushed before, through the mountains of northern Patagonia, with four of their equally deranged mates. This would not be many people’s idea of an idyllic honeymoon. Even I was impressed!

The wedding itself was fresh and informal, which was just as well, because we arrived in Lycra. It was a Nepal reunion. Suzy took the elegant route, but Billi, Helen and I cycled the 80km from Mendoza to Tina’s
finca
, only to discover that our wedding clothes had been delayed. I don’t suppose Tina, looking radiant on her big day, even noticed. She certainly didn’t care. The day went with a swing and lots of sunshine, slabs of Argentinian meat and vats of Argentinian wine.

A day or two later, we headed south with the bride and groom to Malargüe, from where we struck out on our trail. It was one traditionally tackled by adventurers on horseback, but mountain bikes were to be our steeds of choice, each one laden with 35kg of equip ment – sleeping bags, clothes, tents, ropes, stoves, food, and so on. We had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for. Our route was about 300km. No one had ever biked it. There turned out to be a very good reason for that.

Our group consisted of me, Billi, Helen, Tina and Seba, and their friend Rata. We set off in high spirits along wide, very passable fire trails, surrounded by the stunning scenery of the Andean mountains. This was all right, we thought.

Soon, though, our passage deteriorated into narrow, sandy tracks heading upwards, and then no tracks at all. This was no longer all right; this was mercilessly hard work. It gave new meaning to the term pushbikes. And these were mighty cumbersome bikes to push. On one day we averaged 2km an hour.

We encountered rushing rivers along the way. At the first, Billi, who is a high-altitude climber and for her next trick climbed Everest, looked at me. We just thought, well, this is the last straw, we can’t go on. But Tina was having none of it. She is one of the most incredibly positive people I know. In our group we had a double ironman world champion and a climber who had conquered several peaks higher than 6,000m – and they were probably the most negative people there!

‘We can do this!’ Tina chirped, over the noise of the roaring river that barred our way. ‘We have ropes, we have harnesses, we have spirit!
Vamos
!’

The boys managed to make it across the river (I still don’t know how), so that we could rig up an improvised rope-and-pulley contraption across the torrents. One by one we winched our panniers, bikes and selves across to the other side, each teetering precariously above the swirling waters. We did that three times in one day. And then there was the glacier we had to climb up and over – again, pushbikes are not much use on one of those. A yak would have been preferable.