Triathlon is a strange game. You train for hours and hours, often on your own, and then when an event comes along you leap into the water with 1500 other people --usually.
last weekend I introduced son No 2 to the world of triathlon with an outing to the Crawley Late Summer Tri. The way that the start worked was to put the novices in the pool first, then the slowest to the fastest. The juniors went off last. I decided to leave my slot of 149 and wait until my junior ( no 205) went in. He was the last number off and was in straight after the fastest athletes.
Needless to say we were pretty much on our own. It was the first time I have ever been last out of the water and to hear th marshal say your number and 'the pool is empty' really puts the pressure on. So out of the pool and into transition. Junior decides to go off on his own and I will catch him up. I leave and put the hammer down to catch him up ( something I failed to do on the swim!!), but where is he? 20 minutes later and still no sign, he's either improved a lot or he's taken a wrong turn. This is confirmed at the turnaround. About two miles into the return leg I spot him so I wait. We are now well and truly on our own, not another athlete in sight. We finished the run in isolation and head off into Ashdown forest alone. A few stragglers pass us by on their return leg but the rest of the run is on our own.
As we enter the stadium to finish our support is made up entirely of marshals ( it has started to rain). A nice young lady offers us a mars bar abd a bottle of Highland Spring, our day is done.
My son loved the race and we both had a blast. It just wasn't what I had in mind for his first experience of triathlon.
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