Accidental Ironman by Martyn Brunt Read Free Book Online

Pack
    The piranha pack is that collection of triathletes who start on the front row of the race, charge into the water at full tilt and spend the next 750m/1500m/3.8k cheerfully beating each other up. These are not places for the faint-hearted and even as an experienced swimmer I once got duffed up so much that when I went for a medical examination the doctor started doing a post-mortem. However, the pack always takes the shortest line so you have to decide whether to join the punchy fun for the quickest route, or stay well out of it and take a longer way round.
    These tips won’t give you superhero powers, but they may help you survive in the water a little bit more easily, and we don’t need any superheroes anyway, there are already enough people out on the streets of Britain fighting each other in their pants. There’s no doubt that all my pool training has helped my triathlon swimming enormously although, on the downside, it has led me to start taking part in a number of Masters swimming galas. For the unknowing among you, Masters swimming tournaments are open to 24-year-olds and over – and in many cases quite a long way over. In fact, some of the competitors don’t look like they’re pushing forty, they look like they’re dragging it. They are run along exactly the same lines as all those swimming tournaments you see on the telly, although sadly without the opportunity to talk to Sharron Davies at the end while wearing nothing but a pair of Speedos. Distances vary from 50m sprints up to 1500m death-battles, and you can choose between the different strokes of front crawl, breast-struggle, back-struggle and butter-flop. A typical advert for a Masters swim gala could easily read: ‘Hey you! Are you old enough to pay income tax and go to bed at a time of your own choosing? When you swim, can you dive in without knocking yourself unconscious and do a tumble-turn without half the pool going up your nose? Do you fancy the idea of walking around with more gold round your neck than Mr T? Then it’s Masters swimming for you!’
    Because I’m over 40 and farcically competitive, Allison talked (shouted) me into trying my luck in a tournament some time ago and, to my astonishment, I won a medal. Admittedly, it was a bronze medal in a race where there were only three swimmers in the M40 category, but if someone wants to give me a medal for basically not being dead, I’m up for it. When I first started out I had the typical triathlete’s view of swimming – no dives or tumble turns because you never do them in races, and every pool swim is merely a training opportunity so doing anything other than freestyle for anything less than 400m is pointless heresy. However, over time I realised that it’s the other strokes where the medals are to be found, precisely because no other bugger does them. At my most recent Masters tournament I won SEVEN medals – three golds, two silvers and three bronzes – and only one was for freestyle. I even won one for individual medley, a vicious invention that sees you do all four strokes at once before spending the next ten minutes trying to get your heart rate back under 200. Now I don’t mean to denigrate the athletic abilities of Masters swimmers, who frequently have bodies shaped like Dairylea triangles and can post times for 100m that I’d be hard pushed to match on a bike, it’s just that there aren’t many of them. The numbers get even fewer if you are female or over 40 – in fact come the day I’m a 73-year-old woman I’ll be quids in. It’s also worth noting that, although I’ve made it sound easy, there are lots of ways to get disqualified at swimming. You can choose from false start, screw-kick, not touching the wall with both hands, not turning properly, not handing your racecard in, and farting on the starting blocks – although that might just have been me. From the moment you step on to the blocks at the start you are alone and horribly exposed, and there are no