The shoe Muppet

I find myself in a tent in my own back garden with my daughter snoring quietly in her sleeping bag beside me.  We visited Flissy doing her Duke of Edinburgh type thing with her kids from school this afternoon and the little un decided she wanted to camp out.  So here we are.

We also had some visitors over the last few days.  I found myself thinking "hmm, it will be great to see them but how am I going to fit in my training?"  I am not sure this is a good thing.  At least I was sensible enough not to articulate that in my wife's hearing.

Back to my ongoing tale of muppetry in triathlon.  September 2012 had finished with the successful fun distance at Warwickshire.  I decided that I might be able to fit in one more event before the season closed and fixed my eyes on the Ferndown sprint tri.  400m swim, 18km bike, 5km run.

It was an early start and the weather was clear and cold, around 2 degrees.  I was up and out of the door by 5.30 and mornings are not my strength.  My swim start time was 7am and I had never swum that early before, mistake number one.  I swam like a brick wrapped in dodgy triathlon shorts, trying to get out of the pool two lengths early into the bargain.  The look on the counter's face was all I needed to get back in.

I ran out of the pool in my tri shorts and the cold hit home as soon as I was out of the building.  My bike was about half way down the rack and by the time I got there my feet were already frozen.  I had elected to use the same tactics that I had in the previous two races - bike shoes already clipped onto pedals.  This slowed me down even further as I ran with my ice block feet to the bike mount area.  I noticed other people putting on socks and gloves too.  Hadn't thought of that.

Still, I jumped onto the bike and hared off, feet on top of shoes.  As I tried to slip my feet in something didn't seem right.  I looked down and all I could do was laugh, my bike shoes were clipped onto the wrong pedals.  Left on right and vica versa.

There was nothing for it other than to stop, get off, take the shoes off and put them on the correct feet. Muppet!  By the time I got back to transition all feeling had left my extremities and it took me a full lap of the run to get any back.  It's a very strange feeling to run on two lumps of concrete where your feet used to be.

My overall time was a pedestrian 86.23 minutes.  Triathlon had brought me back down to earth with a bump.

Ferndown Muppet rating: 5 (counting, shoes (3), frozen bits)

Triathlon Muppet