There’s an expression in the world of mountaineering called ‘summit fever’, which is used to describe those occasions when climbers become so fixated on reaching the top that they push past the point when they should really turn round and head back down.
As you can imagine this can have some fairly stiff consequences, because in climbing the summit is only the halfway point, meaning they’ve literally gone past the point of no return.
I should stress that I have zero experience of mountaineering. In fact, I’m so scared of heights that I’m frightened being this tall, but if my tri history is anything to go by then summit fever is a concept I completely understand, and one in which I routinely fail to behave sensibly.
Getting into hot water
The consequences aren’t quite the same, but speaking as someone who has ended up in a finish-line medical tent five times suffering from dehydration, concussion, a broken bone, and exhaustion, I am in no position to huff and puff at tales of climbers getting into hot water.
I was musing on this recently having completed a trail marathon on what turned out to be the hottest day of the year so far. With about five miles to go and with the temperature reaching 28°C, I was starting to feel the effects of the heat.
As someone fair-skinned, I was just contemplating what sensible actions I should take to avoid ending up in a sweaty, twitching heap whereupon I spied another runner up ahead of me – and they were walking.
And what’s more, I was in fourth place, and they were in third.
It’s my solemn duty to inform you that as a triathlete, all thoughts of slowing down or stopping to soak my cap in the stream etc instantly evaporated and although I knew – I KNEW – how it would end I set off in pursuit.
It took me a mile to catch them, then a mile to run silently alongside him after he picked up the pace to go with me, both of us pretending we were absolutely fine while silently praying for the other to crack.
And then three miles to keep going at the same pace after finally getting ahead, not daring to even glance behind and thinking that every echo of my own footsteps was him about to come back past.
When I finally made it to the finish I made a beeline for the shadiest corner of the finish-line gazebo and slumped there like a patch of damp, until a kindly sports masseur came and draped a moist towel over my head making me look like a wet Elephant-Man.
It took me an hour, all my remaining salt tablets, several cups of tea and being told my car park ticket was about to expire to get me moving again.
Triathlon is basically a choice between different kinds of suffering
I have no idea why I do this – there were no prizes for first place let alone third – but I do it time and time again, and I’ve ended up on drips or in St John’s ambulances at races as diverse as Ironman Lanzarote, the Vitruvian, the Black Country Tri, Ironman Lake Placid, and a daft ultramarathon I did in Suffolk where I was so dehydrated that the very lovely race organisers had to sit me in a paddling pool and fan me with pizza boxes.
God knows what damage all this has done to my vital organs but the only reason I keep on good terms with my relatives is that I might need a replacement kidney one day.
Here’s the thing, though – you all do this, too. Be honest, how many times have you pressed on to the finish of a tri knowing that you should have backed off several miles before?
Triathlon's foremost finish-line collapser
Triathlon is basically a choice between different kinds of suffering and how many of us can hand on heart say that we haven’t pushed on past the point in a race where we knew we were going to end up staring at the bottom of a bucket?
So although the stakes are a bit higher in mountain climbing, summit fever is definitely a triathlon thing too, and I’m hoping that some Hollywood producer recognises this and, as triathlon’s foremost finish-line collapser, decides to make a blockbuster about my tri career.
Opinion is currently divided between my wife and I about who should play the lead character, I say George Clooney and she says for physical proximity it should either be Art Garfunkel or a thin Colin Montgomerie.
Illustration: Dan Seex
