Are you crazy?!

Congratulations......I have to go lie down now.......I'm exhausted from reading your recap!

That's what my sister kept saying.

It was kind of weird racing in front of them as apart from a couple of small running races (I was part of a 4 man team that won the fastest corporate team at a race a few weeks ago) they have never seen me race any triathlons of any distance.

They've heard me talk about loads of races I've done in Oz on the phone but of course it's different when they see it for real. Mind you, I could have eased them in gently rather than the shockfest they saw saw on the weekend.

When I was staying with them, before I moved to Surrey they used to see me get up at 5am-6am, freezing cold, go to the pool, or run or come back from 100mile rides soaking and freezing, sometimes nursing injury and they used to say 'Is it ever worth it'?, 'why do you do it to yourself?' etc etc.

And I used to reply 'when you come and see me race, you'll see why I do it'.

Whenever anybody watches a big triathlon (IM or HIM), they all get swept away with the event and some even think they'd like to give it a go (which is a good thing generally, not always though) because everyone focuses on two things. The mass swim start which always looks impressive and the finish chute with all the cheering, watching weary bodies come in.

What I try to get across to my family is that these people don't see the winter running, swimming, early nights, early rises, pretty much no social life other than with other triathletes. It's what you do in winter that really counts in summer. One big problem with long distance tri is that you're virtually always training, rather than racing. You can't knock one of these out every couple weeks (even if there were that many races).

That's why I mix it up with regular cycle racing, sportives, time trial racing, sometimes running events (never swimming races) otherwise it's a pretty lonely old existence until race day.

BUT, on race day? Definitely all worth it, 100%

Thanks for all your messages.

Well, I think you are all as mad as a box of frogs - but very well done anyway