Not In It To Win It

We did a triathlon at the weekend. Well, I say we. Sue, Alex, Simon and Roger did a triathlon. I stood at the side and cheered. I stood for a very long time, and what with that and the running around between viewing points, my legs were very tired by the end of the day. Did I get any sympathy, though?

How to explain a triathlon? Well, first there's the 750m swim. In open water, so as well as floating debris, currents and the bow waves from other competitors, there's also the cold to deal with. Most swimming pools try to maintain a temperature between 25º and 28º. In open water, the temperature tends to be from 15º to 19º, and at this temperature your muscles start to cramp, every breath is an effort and you find yourself struggling to cover a distance that would normal be a warm up lap in a heated swimming pool. The temperature in the lake on Saturday was 14º. No one came out looking happy. Some people didn't make it, either realising as soon as they jumped in that this wasn't for them, and jumping straight back out again or, in one case, having to be rescued by rubber dinghy and taken back to land. I suppose it's better to have the swim at the beginning rather than the end. Alright, so having completed the swim and been virtually dragged out of the lake, you then have to immediately taken on a 30km cycle, and 5km run in sopping wet clothes, but can you imagine the disappointment of having completed the cycle and run first only to find yourself clinging to a canoe and realising that you will not make the far bank? Better to get the disappointment over with early before you have fully committed.

Having said that, what I found inspirational were those who took part despite clearly not being up to the challenge. So what if they failed at the first hurdle; they made the effort and were far more interesting to watch then those at the front. Since everyone was wearing identically coloured swimming hats, and these were they only things visible above the surface, trying to work out who was winning was as unexciting as it was pointless. Trying to work out who was going to drown and who was going to keep doggedly going forward had all the car crash excitement of formula one, however. Just when you thought you had spotted a quitter, he would keen thrashing onwards, refusing the help of the boats around him, and ignoring the fact that his wave was now at the far shore, and he was now being overtaken by swimmer from subsequent heats. It takes a large amount of determination to keep on going, knowing that you will have neither time nor position to show for it, knowing that you could quit at any time, knowing that you will only have the satisfaction of having completed what you started.

So, to all those weekend warriors I salute you. Not just to the mountain climbers, and the athletes, and the medal winners who will be rewarded with glory. I would rather celebrate those of us at the back, who did it despite the nagging feeling that our only reward will be pain and embarrassment. So go to the gym, even if you're worried that you don't have a gym body; pick up a bike, even if the last time you cycled was the school slow bicycle race; play tennis though you make Mr Bean look like Andy Murray; climb a hill, even if it feels like climbing a mountain. And don't do these things because you dislike them but feel you ought to. Do them because you want to and no-one's going to stop you. This is not a call for everyone to get fit. It's a call to everyone to not care about being rubbish. We, the crap, are in the majority. Let's take back the field. We're not in it to win it. We're here to have fun.