Life Without Limits, A Read Free

occasional Portaloo on the course, but the most time-efficient solution, I find, is to go in my pants. If you’re on the run, a quick crouch over a roadside ditch is acceptable. But on the bike, unless a flat tyre causes a natural break, going on the saddle is the best way. This is when the earlier application of Vaseline really comes into its own. And don’t underestimate the use of urine as a weapon. On the bike it is forbidden to take advantage of someone’s slipstream, even though it is allowed in the swim. We call it drafting. To get too close to the bike in front is not only dangerous but cheating. There are a series of official penalties for anyone caught doing it, but people still do. If anyone does it to me, I let off a warning shot, and they usually back off. It is yet another reason to keep yourself hydrated.
    The final leg is when even the best start to wrestle with their demons. After 112 miles sitting on an unforgiving saddle, crouched low over the handlebars to maximise your aerodynamics and pumping your legs remorselessly, taking to your feet for the marathon can be a strange sensation. Your legs will feel like jelly for the first few minutes, but that will pass. Soon they will feel like lead.
    It is impossible to swim, bike and run for the best part of a day and not experience bad times. Illness, dehydration and physical niggles, not to mention full-blown injuries, come and go throughout. There is also the mental anguish – that long road stretching out ahead of you, the landmarks that just won’t come quickly enough. You can’t listen to music; you have only the throb of blood through your head for company, and the screams of every unthinking fibre in your body that they want to stop. This is when the mind must take over. Ironman is as much a mental game as a physical one.
    Everything is redeemed, though, by the sight of the finish line. The crowds, whose exhortations around the course lift many a flagging body and soul, focus all of their energy around the final few yards. Whether you finish first or 1,001st, they make you feel like a champion. Your body may be wrecked, muscles cramping, skin chafing, toenails falling off and feet blistering, but you have joined a special club. After all of my races, I stay at the finish line all night to welcome people home. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. We professionals do nothing but eat, sleep and train for these events, but it’s the thousands who take on an ironman for the love of it who inspire me the most.
    Julie Moss was the first great hero of the sport, but there have been countless others since, and most of them get nowhere near the podium. People fighting old age, illness and disability, those recovering from horrific injury, others simply wrestling with the demands of a day job – these are the heroes of ironman.
    Sport has a unique ability to inspire and empower. If used correctly, it can be such a force for good. Ironman is a relatively new pursuit and, although it grows exponentially each year, it is still a ‘minority’ sport. Maybe this freshness is what gives it its energy, but there is something about its gruelling nature, as well, that inspires people to find the best in themselves and in each other. Because, make no mistake – that is what it does. The ironman walked into my life quite suddenly, and changed it for ever.

 
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    Out of Norfolk
     
    It’s at this point in a sporting autobiography that the author traditionally launches into an account of the brilliant athletic achievements of their youth, of how they were always destined to become a professional athlete. Unfortunately, I have no such tale to tell.
    I did play wing attack in the Downham Market High School netball team that won the Norfolk Schools Championship in 1993. And I wasn’t a bad swimmer. I won the odd race at the Thetford Dolphins Swimming Club, although Julie Williams would usually beat me.
    And that’s about it in terms of sporting achievement for the