Life Without Limits, A (34 page)

So this was a good a country to be training and racing in, and Stellenbosch one of the best bases within it. Everything is within easy reach. I could get wherever I needed to go on my bike. There are oak trees all over town, and legend has it that if you are hit on the head by an acorn it will bring you good luck. As race day approached, this was exactly what happened to me as I cycled along.

Even before the big race started, that luck was kicking in. I’d flown to Port Elizabeth, the race venue, on the previous Tuesday. On the Saturday, I racked my bike. Before I left, I noticed a group of people crowding round it. They seemed to be taking photos of the bike. That does happen sometimes, so I thought no more of it. Just as I was leaving, though, an age-grouper by the name of Franz came up to me.

‘You do know there’s a huge thorn sticking out of your front tyre, don’t you?’ he said.

Funnily enough, I didn’t. I went across to my bike, nudging aside those people too busy taking photographs to alert me, and, sure enough, there it was, the size of my thumb, a whopping great thorn. I pulled it out. Hiss. The tourists were treated to a few more shots of me getting down and dirty, wrestling with a tube change. Thank heavens for Franz. I might have spotted the thorn the next morning before the race – I do always check my tyres – but, then again, knowing Muppet, I might not. I owed the man a Chenin Blanc.

It was a new bike, a Cannondale Slice, and I’d named it Jude, after the girl who had changed everything for me on my travels through Africa. Who knows, without Jude I might not have pursued a career in development, which means I might not have gone to Nepal, which means I might not have become so strong an endurance cyclist, which means I might not be where I am today. It was another reason why coming to South Africa felt significant. I was back in the land of Jude. After a couple of years’ radio silence, I reconnected with her. Only by email, though – she lives in the middle of nowhere, north of Johannesburg, where she works in environmental education.

Jude (the bike) and I got off to a good start. Ironman South Africa is not known as a particularly fast course, so when I came home for the win in 8hr 33min 56sec I was euphoric. I’d improved my official world record by more than two minutes! Not bad for the first race of the season! Most pleasing was my marathon, which was the fastest of the day – of either sex. This was a serious achievement, considering the strength of the field. The men’s winner, local boy Raynard Tissink, had come fifth at Kona six months earlier and here broke the course record. I came eighth overall.

My run was now consistently on a par with the men. I had been making dramatic progress. Finally fixing my hamstring was a huge part of it, but Dave had also started setting me treadmill sessions. This was something I had never done before, so I was initially averse to it. I’m still not entirely sure what the rationale behind it is, but that very fact alone shows that I trusted him. Although I had made no gains on the bike, which had been my strongest discipline, this improvement in my running had been so significant that I had to be excited by it. It meant I could now start to contemplate facing Mirinda Carfrae in a straight shoot-out on the marathon. The imperative to beat her on the bike was no longer quite so pressing.

I returned to the UK in high spirits. April was already shaping up to be a great month, and at the end of it I had The Wedding to look forward to. Yes, 29 April 2011, as for many British people, had been circled on the calendar for some time. My invitation to the big event had been sitting proudly on the mantelpiece. They’d even asked me to do a reading. I was so excited.

First, though, I went home to Norfolk and spent my days catching up with people. There was the BRAT Club’s tenth anniversary ball to attend as well, where I presented Paul Robertshaw with an award. That was an emotional moment; after all he’d done for me – introducing me to the sport, selling me my first bike and finding me my first coach, Tim Weeks.

I was reunited with Tom, who had been in the UK the previous few months. He had taken a job with TYR as a sales manager. Although Ironman Arizona had gone well for him at the end of last year, talks with TYR were well advanced, and he decided to take the new job and try to combine it with his training. He loved the work, but it was full-time, and it quickly became obvious that it was incompatible with the lifestyle of a professional athlete. So, with regret on both sides, he tendered his resignation and we made plans to go to Boulder in early May.

But first there was The Wedding. We took a room in the Holiday Inn on the A1 just outside Barnet. While we were getting ready, we were able to watch, as a kind of warm-up, the televised coverage of some other wedding, which was taking place in London that day at Westminster Abbey.

But the main event was my brother’s. Matty and Kelly were married in a lovely little church in Stanstead St Margarets in Hertfordshire. The reception was at Hatfield House. It was a truly wonderful day. To see my brother and his bride so happy brought me such joy. Matty looked a million dollars in the middle of it all, so confident and charismatic. And now with a gorgeous wife!

We lost ourselves in a bubble of family and celebrations, which carried on over to lunch the next day. It meant that Tom and I returned to Boulder on 1 May full of the joys and ready to take on anything.

May is usually when the weather in Boulder starts to warm up. Not so this year. There was torrential rain day after day from the moment we arrived.

After two weeks, this was still going strong. One Saturday, I was out on my long ride and only three or four minutes from home. I was in the time-trial position, with my arms on the bars. Unbeknown to me, the sleeve of my rain jacket had become caught on the armrest. When I lifted my arm to sit up on the bike, the sleeve jolted my handlebars, my bike flipped and I hit the deck. Hard. Muppet!

My hip was badly bruised, and I had broken a rib. My next race, Ironman 70.3 Kansas, was in four weeks’ time.

I have written elsewhere on the subject of how a good, conscientious athlete should deal with injury. If I remember rightly, the gist of it is, above all else, rest.

Well, do as I say, not as I do. Here I was again, pushing the envelope. I was on the turbo-trainer the next day. That was relatively painless, other than getting on and off it. I needed Tom’s help for that. But swimming was a different matter. For a week or so, I couldn’t swim more than two lengths because of the pain. Still, I gave it a good go. Soon, I was putting myself through four kilometres’ worth of pain in the pool. And running was hard. I did all my run training before Kansas on the elliptical. Despite the suboptimal preparation, the race went well. For the third year in a row I trotted down the Yellow Brick Road in first place.

Back in Boulder, it was time to focus on regaining full fitness for Challenge Roth in four weeks’ time. No more stupid pratfalls. Not even I could keep having them. Surely.

A week later, I was heading out on an hour-long run on a trail close to our house. I like trail running, but there’s no doubt it doesn’t suit my accident-prone nature, and I prefer not having to look down at my feet the whole time. So much so that on this occasion I made a conscious decision: ‘I’m fed up with watching my step,’ I said to myself. ‘I’m bloody well going to look up and enjoy the scenery.’ Muppet!

Barely a few yards into my run, I tripped on a rock and went flying. Out came my hands to brace myself for impact. I had a nasty gash on one of my legs and surface wounds on the other and on my elbows. I decided to carry on and attracted some dodgy looks from other runners, what with the blood dripping from my elbows and down my legs. After a quick shower I went for a swim, but my wrist really started to hurt. The next day it hurt again in the pool, and when I went for a ride in the afternoon it was so painful I simply couldn’t operate the bike.

We were about fifteen minutes into the ride – me, Tom, Dion, Matty Reed and his wife – and I had to stop. In tears, I told them I couldn’t do it. I turned round and took myself off to hospital for an x-ray.

Tom said to Matty on the ride: ‘Chrissie will go to hospital now and find out that she’s broken her wrist. And, when I get home, she’ll be on the turbo.’

That’s exactly what happened. I had two little fractures in my right wrist, just where I’d broken it the year before. It didn’t need a cast, but they gave me a splint. Riding outdoors was impossible for a week. Swimming was very painful. I wore a wrist guard while running.

But I never doubted I would race. By the time I left for Germany, the wrist was a lot better, although dragging my bike box was painful. It was the disruption to my preparation that worried me most. I had barely done any cycling outdoors since my first fall mid-May. Most of my running had been on the elliptical. There had been precious little swimming at all. And, as always at Roth, everyone was talking about world records. I was feeling the pressure. I couldn’t see how I could improve on my race here the previous year, where I’d set the world record. That seemed to me like the perfect race, and here I was this time, secretly carrying a broken wrist, having had my preparation disrupted by that and the broken rib I’d picked up two months earlier. Oh, and, because of roadworks, the bike leg was to be 2km longer than usual. When people talked records this time, I just smiled and said I would do my best.

It was a particularly violent swim in the canal. At Roth the best age-groupers start with the pros, so there are a lot of competitors in what is a relatively narrow stretch of water. But I was pleased with my swim – Roth is a wetsuit race, so my wrist had some support from that, and I didn’t feel it once. I came out of the water in first place. I wasn’t so happy with my bike, but a split of 4hr 40min 39sec was enough to keep me twelve minutes ahead of Belinda Granger in second. In terms of world-record pace, though, I was three-and-a-half minutes down on the year before.

I really went for it on the marathon. The conditions were perfect – warm and dry – and I just pushed and pushed. I later asked Dave if he’d ever had a kind of out-of-body experience during his years as an ironman, when your legs almost feel as if they’re not connected to your body. He replied that he had. That was what the last 3km were like for me. I was pushing so hard that in a strange way it felt easy. My legs were so fatigued that they just didn’t hurt any more. It was the first time I’d felt like that. Crowd support does wonders for you in these situations, inspiring you on when all rational thought is telling you to slow down. In so doing, it moves you onto another level of consciousness – yes, like an out-of-body experience.

I turned into the finish arena amid pandemonium. When I looked at the clock, I saw why. It was reading 8hr 17min. By the time I’d run round to the finish line and reached for the tape it said, 8hr 18min 13sec. A new world record.

I stayed down longer than usual after I’d done my Blazeman roll over the line. I was too emotional to get up. I thought last year’s race had been perfect. Here, I’d shaved off another minute from my own world record. It felt even better than smashing it had. What made it so special was that I’d had to fight for it. In view of my preparation and the concomitant doubts over whether I could improve, the euphoria was all the more intense.

My marathon split was 2hr 44min 35sec. It was the second fastest of the day, behind the men’s winner, Andreas Raelert. And Andreas had just annihilated the men’s world record. Having stood for fourteen years, it had been broken only the weekend before by Marino Vanhoenacker at Ironman Austria, where Tom had finished in an impressive fourth place, with a 2hr 44min 48sec marathon (thirteen seconds slower, Tommy!). Marino’s mark of 7hr 45min 58sec wasn’t destined to last long, though. Andreas won Roth in an incredible 7hr 41min 33sec. But my marathon split was less than four minutes slower than his. I was right in there among the best men. ‘The fifth man is a woman’ was one of the headlines the next day. I’d come fifth overall – my best performance at a major ironman.

Roth is one of my favourite races, but I feel such pressure there, more than anywhere else. Not only do I have to try to win, but I’m also expected to break the world record. People don’t ask me whether I’m going to do it; my doing it is offered as a statement. The only question is by how much. I don’t have that kind of pressure in Kona. There, it’s a straight race against my fellow competitors.

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t receive performance bonuses from my sponsors for world records. Brett thinks I’m financially incentivised to break records, and he doesn’t approve of the way I push myself to the limit in these races. He feels I should do enough just to win, to save myself for the next fight. But the next one may never come. This is the only way I know how to do it. I give everything in training, and I give everything in every race. Even if it were for a penny, I would do it that way. I couldn’t live with myself if I hadn’t tried my hardest. And Dave is of the same mindset. He used to race like that himself. Do justice to the training you’ve put in is his mantra. It’s not records I chase, it’s self-improvement. And that cannot be done by taking it easy.

I was as overjoyed with my race at Roth as I have ever been. It brought home to me that there is no such thing as a perfect race. However perfectly you think something has gone, there is always room for more ‘perfection’. What was clear, though, was that, muppet injuries notwithstanding, I was in the shape of my life.

So everything was set for Kona. I was much more sensible in the days following Roth than I had been the year before. Tom and I returned to the same hotel in Germany. This time we really did luxuriate – no long bike rides through the mountains, and then, when we returned to America, no two-hour workouts with a high-class marathon runner. With Kona three short months away, and acutely mindful of what had happened the year before, I was determined not to leave myself open to illness or fatigue. The injuries that had blighted my preparations for Roth had cleared up, and, as July turned to August and August to September, everything was in place. In August, I’d won Timberman 70.3 for the fourth year running. I was ready – and itching – to mount the mother of all assaults on that famously punishing course in the lava fields. This meant that, barring any mishaps before then or on the course itself, if anyone wanted to beat me they were going to have to produce something spectacular.