Forget Halloween and horror movies, I’ve seen more frightening things in triathlons

Thanks to the time delay between writing and the mag going on sale this might be the issue on sale during the festive period. But as I write this month’s offering, I am looking out of my front window watching hordes of zombies wearing blood-soaked bandages stagger past my house, demanding money with menaces from terrified passers-by. 

I know this probably sounds like a normal night out in Coventry. But on this occasion, it is because it is Hallowe’en, and I’m taking part in the ancient tradition of sitting in the dark with the lights out pretending I’m not in.

Not that I find zombies, witches and vampires very scary – to be honest if you wanted to frighten me just come to house dressed as a vet’s bill. However, after more than 20 years doing triathlons I’m well used to the sight of people lurching around on unsteady legs in cloying costumes with sheet-white faces and bits falling off their bodies.

Triathlon, for all it’s wondrousness, can be scary sometimes, something I had cause to reflect on recently when I decided what the most frightening aspect of being a triathlete is. In fact the more you think about it, the more you realise how nerve-jangling our sport can be, so here are my top ten triathlon terrors (with my personal hell at number one). Read on if you dare…

Top ten triathlon terrors

10. Swimming face first into an Elastoplast floating in a pool. Enough said.

9. When someone at a club AGM says to the room “I think (insert your name) would be a good at (insert committee role which promises to rob all your free time and good mood until you can shake it off a year later)”.

8. When you’re flying downhill on your bike and you foolishly glance at your speedo, leading you to immediately ponder how much protection against high speed gravel-rash Lycra actually provides.

7. When a stranger at bike racking says “can I borrow your track pump?” and you know you’ll probably never see it again.

6. When you are stalking a cyclist ahead of you and have just entered the dreaded phantom-drafting zone when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up at the telltale sound of a motorbike as the Race Marshal of the Apocalypse draws near.

5. When you see the next yellow mile marker in the distance which never seems to get any nearer until you can eventually just make out what it says, and it reads “Caution Runners”.

4. When your bike box disappears through the rubber curtain on the airport baggage check in, and you wonder whether it will turn up in the same continent as you.

3. When you go wide to try to avoid the piranha pack at the start of the swim and end up ploughing into the thickest blanket of weeds ever, which clutch at you ever more tightly no matter how much you thrash, and drag you down to your salty doom.

2. That moment when you are completely pain free until someone points at your nipple and says “oooh that looks sore”, whereupon it immediately starts stinging like you’ve just been shot.

1. There is nothing – NOTHING – scarier than…. The night before a race. Ah, the number of times I have vainly set my alarm for 4am only to wake up at midnight, 1am, 1.30am, 2am, 2.15am, 2.45am before eventually getting up at 3.30am rather than just lie there imagining all the disasters and humiliations that will inevitably befall me that day.

In my waking nightmares I have had to swim without my forgotten goggles, swum off in completely the wrong direction, freestyled head first into a riverbank, done three laps of transition looking for my bike, had more punctures than I can carry spare inner tubes, got into a tangle mounting and dismounting my bike and fallen flat on my face in front of laughing crowds, run the wrong way out of T2, been overtaken on the run by someone walking, and been struck by deadly cramp while sitting naked on the portable loo-of-horrors with my skinsuit around my ankles.

The fact that none of these has actually happened (well one has, but I’ll save that story for another time) just goes to show that what’s in your mind is much scarier than real life. But that doesn’t stop me from lying awake all night dwelling on the terrors that triathlon might bring, so that I arrive at race starts looking more haggard than any Coventry Halloween zombie.

I’m sure you all have your own dreads in the pre-race dead of night. If I have caused any distress to you by bringing the subject up in this column, then all I can say is – woooah-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaa.