Life Without Limits, A (37 page)

I turned around on Ali’i Drive to more reports of labouring athletes. On the way back I crossed Rinny, who was still on the way out. There was focus and determination in her face; her mouth was set in a hard line. I overtook Julie at an aid station a little further on. She’d stopped and conceded defeat. She had clocked a phenomenal 4hr 44min 14sec for the bike, which would have been a new women’s record if she’d finished, but that foot just wasn’t going to carry her through the marathon. A few miles further on, I overtook Rachel and offered a few words of encouragement. Now I was in third, with only Caroline and Leanda Cave ahead of me.

It ended up being the fastest first half of a marathon I’ve ever produced at Kona – 1hr 22min – and I’d stretched my lead over Rinny to five minutes. I passed Leanda at around the thirteen-mile point and continued along the Queen K. to the infamous Energy Lab, the island’s renewable-energy centre, where we turn and head for home. The course is undulating here, and my pace slowed as the pain increased in the blistering heat, but I felt relatively strong, helped by a cooling breeze. Caroline was within my sights, and I knew my race was with Rinny now, who was gaining on me. At the entrance to the Energy Lab, I overhauled Caroline. At last, I had the lead.

From there, you head down the hill to the ocean and run along the shore, then turn round and begin the climb out of ‘The Lab’. The heat is intense here and has been recorded at well over a hundred degrees. Energy is a precious commodity indeed, as you try to haul yourself back out onto the Queen K. On the way back I crossed the other lead girls. There was Rinny, looking strong, about a kilometre behind me – in other words, four minutes.

There is a stretch of roughly five miles along the Queen K. before you head down the hill into Kona and the finish line. I was fading badly for the last mile or so where the highway rises before the descent. It was not so much the physical energy, although my legs were seizing up again, it was the mental energy that I’d expended earlier in the run just to keep myself on course. Now I was hearing that Rinny was gaining fast. People were trying to tell me that she had made up a minute on me in the last mile. That’s not possible at this stage of the race, I said to myself, just keep doing what you’re doing. One foot in front of the other. It later turned out those reports had been exaggerated. When I made it over the brow of the hill, I had something like a three-minute lead over her with around three miles to go, about half of which was downhill. Unless I started walking, she wasn’t going to catch me.

The familiar landmarks now tumbled past. You will the finish line to arrive, but you also don’t want it to come because you want to savour every second. I let momentum carry me down the hill into the thick crowds, whose cheers sweep you along the final mile round town.

I was emotionally spent, virtually delirious. What have you done? I kept asking myself. What have you done? I’d had an email from Matt Hawcroft, an old training partner from the BRAT club, before the race. If I could finish, he’d said, it would be amazing. If I could win, ‘It would be epic. It would be beyond epic.’

That’s what this was. I’d overcome more than I ever could have imagined. I rounded the corner onto Ali’i Drive for the last time. The crowds were screaming, there was the huge Banyan tree and the conch shells were sounding. The Hawaiians in their native dress were running ahead to welcome me home. This was like 2007 all over again. I was flabbergasted, baffled – this wasn’t in the script, it was beyond my wildest dreams. I hadn’t had such depth of feeling in 2008 and 2009 – not that those results had been expected, but both had been very real possibilities. Here I’d defied what even I had thought possible. I didn’t know where a fourth win put me on the all-time list of triathletes, and I didn’t care. I cared about the manner of the victory. I’d defied all the odds. It was worth a thousand ironman wins. People had questioned whether I would have the composure to win at Kona if things didn’t go according to plan, whether I had the strength of spirit to fight if I ever found myself miles behind, rather than miles out in front. With this win I hope I showed them.

I approached the finishing tape, the usual bundle of smiles and tears, but there was an edge of delirium this time. I was at the end of my tether. I had nothing more to give. I reached for the tape and held it over my head, swaying with exhaustion. When I went to lie down so that I could perform my Blazeman roll over the line, nearby officials went to help me, thinking I was collapsing. They weren’t far wrong, but I waved them off, and when I’d finished my roll I lay on my back sobbing and laughing. Eventually, those concerned officials helped me to my feet. Another Hawaiian in native dress came to place the winner’s lei around my neck and the wreath on my head, just as Dad arrived to embrace me, followed swiftly by Mum. I kissed and hugged a perfect bundle of leaves and parents. Mum, Dad and my beloved crown, back in my arms again.

Then Tom arrived with a towel round his shoulders, fresh from his first Kona, which he’d finished in a brilliant eleventh place. When he held me, I wept freely and my empty legs nearly went from beneath me. If they had, he would have taken the strain. Dave was there, too. He and Tom knew what I’d been through. They’d carried me out of the club the week before when I’d been unable to walk, let alone cover 140.6 miles. Dave knew what that win meant; to share it with those two heroes meant more than I can say. And Drew, Dave’s son, was out there on the course. He, too, had got up from that crash two weeks earlier and raced at Kona, despite the broken bone in his wrist. He has his father’s determination, and his talent.

For the first time in my life, they put me on an intravenous drip after the race because I was so dehydrated. The medics were insistent and took me away to the medical tent, where I spent half an hour. They bandaged my wounds and weighed me. I was 128 pounds now – eight pounds lighter than I had been that morning. My pee looked like beetroot juice. I thought it was blood, but they assured me it was severe dehydration. So I headed to the swimming pool at the King Kam to meet the Wellington crew and replenish myself. Mum and Dad were in tears, my cousins Tim and Rob were in tears, I was in tears. This was where my story had begun, among loved ones. This is where it will always return.

It was the proudest moment of my career, the culmination of this unlikeliest of journeys I’d taken over the previous five years. I’d always said I’d wanted that ‘iron war’ – to be forced to take myself to the very brink and give everything I have to the sport I love. Rinny, Julie, Caroline and the girls had forced me to dig to unexplored depths, and for that I owe them so much.

But the other, more visceral war I’d fought was against the simple desire to give up. What a fight I’d waged with that! Physically, I’d probably been able to give 80 per cent, but mentally I gave every last morsel of the full 100. I wasn’t fully fit for this race, yet I’d survived it on something other than physical aptitude. This was no technical masterclass. This was blood and grit, a war of attrition. My mind could have given up on me at so many stages, and I just would not let it. For that reason alone, this win, this most cathartic regaining of my crown, will stand as the ultimate accolade of my career.

Epilogue

Thirteen is an unlucky number for some, and so it nearly proved for me. Kona 2011 was my thirteenth ironman. I did indeed suffer some cruel luck two weeks before it. Then again, maybe coming off my bike that day was the stroke of luck I needed. I ended up having the race I’d always dreamed of, the race where I summoned up every last flicker of a fight from my body and soul. I discovered at last what it was to be taken to the brink.

Of course, it would be the height of vainglory for anyone to imagine they were indestructible – had my injuries been much worse, I wouldn’t have been able to race – but it’s all too easy, as well, to accept lying down as your only option, or even just standing still. No one should ever be afraid of failing; it’s being afraid to give it your all in trying that I urge against. If there is one thing I have learned, particularly in my life as an athlete, it is that our limits may not be where we think they are. And, even when we think we’ve finally reached them, the next time we go there exploring we often find that they’ve moved again.

If you’d told me as a teenager preoccupied by notions of body image that within five years I would be representing the UK Government at a UN summit, I would never have believed you. If you had told me at the UN summit that within five years I would be a world champion I would have dismissed you out of hand. Even if you had told me at the finish line in Kona in 2007, that I would still be unbeaten over the ironman distance four years later with three more world titles and several world records under my belt, I would have looked at you askance. I still can’t quite believe it now. I’m an ordinary girl from Norfolk, marked out by, if anything, an appetite for adventure and a will for self-improvement. These are qualities available to anyone who is of a mind to acquire them.

I have been through many changes in my life, never more so than in that first year as a professional athlete. It was hard, undoubtedly, but I reaped the rewards. I recently received an email from Brett after I’d told him I was writing this book, and his recollection brought back to me how far I have come since those first days as a rookie in Thailand in 2007:

‘You were in such a hurry,’ he said. ‘I thought your desire to know now, your will to see the unseeable without paying your dues, was a bit rude. I knew you wouldn’t hang around in triathlon beyond that year if you couldn’t see a future for yourself in the sport. I think that set my mindset to give you the “full treatment”. And if it broke you it did, but if you coped mentally I had no doubt that, physically, you were precocious. “Crash or crash through” was my catch phrase to myself, as I dealt out some very harsh realities. It was not easy from my end, but it was bloody hard from yours. I was brutal, and the fact you got through it amazed me. I haven’t been as authoritarian since, nor have I had the desire to be.’

After Brett’s crash course in how to become a champion, Dave has since finessed me to a stage where I now feel as strong as I ever have as an athlete. At the finish line in Kona 2011, my time was irrelevant, but I have since come to appreciate that, in the history of the World Championships, it was second only to the women’s course record I’d set in 2009. And my marathon in 2011 was only 32sec slower than Rinny’s, which was the fastest ever run by a woman at Kona.

The most recent lesson I’ve learned, though, is not to fall for these external measures of worth. Up until two weeks before the race, just before I had the crash, I might have felt differently. In five of my previous six ironman races I’d set a new world record, and the odd one out was the World Championships of 2009 when I’d set that new course record. In Kona 2011, I was intent on lowering it further. Things didn’t turn out as planned. In the end, my time was nowhere near as fast as it could have been, but it was the best performance I have ever produced because it was the one that I finished emotionally and physically spent, with absolutely nothing more to give. That is the only measure that counts.

I have talked in the past about perfect races. I thought Roth 2010 was my perfect race. Then I thought Roth 2011 was. If Kona 2011 taught me one thing it was to look within for the real standard. You can never reach perfection. Your ambition should be directed towards your ability to overcome imperfection, and that is how I want to live my life. Trying to effect positive change has always been important to me, and that is not the same thing as chasing perfection.

Where will that process take me next? For now, I want to continue racing and eventually to test myself in other endurance challenges. But I will always want to be an ambassador for the sport I love. I want to represent the views of pros and age-groupers and to try to secure a higher profile for triathlon, better reflecting its status as one of the fastest-growing sports in the world.

More than that, though, is the desire to use well this privilege of being a world champion. It excites me to be in a position to make a difference. It excites me to see how sport can inspire people and change lives. I believe that the responsibilities of a professional sportsman or woman extend beyond their performance on the big stage. They have a role to play in shaping the health of their nations, spreading positive messages and doing their best to effect change. Not enough take that responsibility seriously. With it comes power, and you choose to use it or you waste it.

On a personal level, I want to spend more time with friends and family, and I would like to think that Tom and I will one day have more than just a bike box to call home and maybe more than just a couple of bikes to look after. Beyond that, motivational speaking and politics with a small ‘p’ are avenues that interest me, and if
Blue Peter
should ever be looking for a new presenter I will be first in the audition queue!

But how can I speculate on what the future holds, when the present is so astronomically removed from whatever expectations I might have had in my youth? I prefer to see my life as a tree, branching out in who knows what directions. There is never a destination, just the impulse to grow. My only policy throughout has been to keep an open mind and, whatever I may do, to give it my all. It still takes my breath away to think where that simple outlook on life has taken me, how many times I have managed to defy what I thought possible. I never set out to be a world champion – not many ordinary girls from Norfolk do – but neither have I ever wanted to be left wondering, ‘What if . . . ?’ To my amazement, at so many stages along the way, the limits that I thought I could see in the distance dissolved as I approached them. They turned out not to be real at all, but mere assumptions. And that has been the most exciting revelation of all.