The London Triathlon 2014 - a glance at the challenge

Ok, so this whole training lark for my 2014 London Triathlon may be a tad harder than I first anticipated. You may be aware that I completed the London Marathon back in 2011 (you can read my blog here) and had a few training issues caused by new running shoes and my right knee. Ok so saying a “few” training issues might be a bit of an understatement but still… At the time my lovely wife was heavily pregnant with our second son, Lincoln (he was born just a month after the marathon). Our eldest son Reece was approaching 4 and despite being what they call a “spirited” child (doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep and is constantly on the go) had finally fallen into line and was finally sleeping through. The result being that we were finally getting some much needed rest and sleep (hence I guess the pregnancy) and so energy for training wasn’t so much of an issue.

Fast forward to 2014. Lincoln is a spirited 3.5 year old (they don’t let you forget the half) and Reece is 6.5. We’ve still up at least once per night with the kids and my work and staffing issues have caused my work to become heavily manual. In short; I’m knackered. What used to be a spring-out-of-bed 5am alarm call has become at best a lethargic flop-out-of-bed and drag-my-weary-body-down-the-stairs fog horn of a morning cardiac arrest. Ok so I may be exaggerating but you get the picture.

For those novices out there, the triathlon is made up into 3 sections (hence the “tri” part, or as I should say “try”) and the race is split into various levels. There’s a sprint, a super sprint, a relay version and then the Olympic version. I’m in for the full distance Olympic version which is…

1500m                      Swim

40km                        Bike

10km                        Run

So what does that mean?  Well my local swimming pool is 25m, so a simple calculation tells me that is 60 lengths. A 40km bike ride is about 25 miles (yikes!) and a 10km run is just over 6 miles. In my mind I’m thinking that I can do the swim and the run and, at a big push probably the bike ride all individually… but consecutively? Hmmm, that’s where I have a slight issue.

Last year I started swimming and got up to 100 lengths without stopping within about a month. Not bad huh? The problem was that I was seizing up when I got out of the pool and couldn’t imagine then getting onto a bike for a 25 mile ride, let alone then doing a 6 mile run.

But look… I’m 6 months away from race day, plenty of time to get my body into condition – time to knuckle down to business…

Bad apples...

I have a handful of businesses, two of which take up pretty much all of my time. One of them is my international freight forwarding company (Spicer International) and the other is a military motorbike and classic car restoration company (RiE-Store). At the end of last year RiE-Store had a bad experience with a client. The client had made enquiries into one of our motorbikes to which we provided documented and photographic responses to. He then came to visit us from Germany and after 3 hours of heated discussion and inspection decided to buy the vehicle. I exerted no sales pressure, the opposite in fact. All seemed fine until he got the bike home and then all hell broke loose. I received a scathing e-mail, personally attacking our mechanics and us as a business. The language used was unnecessarily foul and was full of contentious and libellous accusations. I was personally riled, infuriated that after everything I had done for the client that we were in this situation. The client demanded a large chunk of money for nonsensical compensation all of which we refused but the damage to our confidence had already been done. I spent the next couple of weeks leading up to Christmas convincing my business partner and team that we shouldn’t let one person undermine all the fantastic work we’d done, not only in 2013 but all the previous years.

At the same time back at Spicer International we had a staffing issue. One member of staff who had used all their holiday entitlement and didn’t want to work over Christmas had decided to get themselves signed off sick for 2 weeks over Christmas. This, along with their moody, depressive and selfish nature really got to the rest of the team, especially when pictures of them partying over the Christmas period surfaced on Facebook. We were all totally hacked off. When I called a disciplinary meeting with the employee they ripped into me, blaming me for everything and accusing me of causing a low morale. Needless to say they are no longer in my employment.

Instead of remembering my own advice of not letting one person undermine all the great work and success we’d accomplished, I found myself in a depressed mood, angered by everything that had happened over the last few weeks and frustrated by the lack of support from some of those I had expected.

It just goes to prove how one person can undermine and affect so much and so many people. It seems ridiculous that it has left me feeling as if I have in some way failed – maybe it is because I am a conscientious person. But as I recover it makes me more determined to remove my emotion from what I do and to be more business like. It’s not what I want to do but I guess that sometimes life backs you into a corner and the only way to survive is to come out fighting.