My Story: Competing
At school I was into most sports but particularly athletics/running. I started competing in the 800m and 1500m and in cross country running 4-10km. Once leaving school and college I continued to run but with no real purpose, more for fun, as I got more into resistance training and enjoyed the benefits that brought.
For the next 3 years while I was living in Cyprus my training was a mix of running, cycling and resistance training. At around age 23, once I’d moved back to the UK and started as a PT I realised I missed the competition and training for a purpose so entered a 10km run. To my surprise I won it, I felt great and charged up to rekindle the love I had for pushing myself and competing in sport at school.
With that first proper race as an adult under my belt I was excited for what to do next. After a few more races I sidetracked briefly and entered a bodybuilding competition. Training for the body building competition was a fascinating process where I learnt a great deal both physically and mentally. I realised though, for me, training for performance was so much more rewarding than training for aesthetics. If you cross that line first, you cross that line first, rather than being judged on your physique by someone else’s ideals of ‘fitness’.
Shortly after that I signed up for a marathon - this was in response to a client at the time was keen to tick a marathon off her bucket list so I decided I would help her train by signing up for a marathon with her. Consequently in 2006 I completed a marathon in 2:57, it was brutal! I fell over the finish line and ended up on a drip in the medical tent I had pushed it that hard. But it was an amazing experience and I well and truly caught the competition bug. The build up, the training together, the camaraderie, the trial, error and lessons of training, I loved it all.
When I moved to London in 2007 I joined the running club Belgrave Harriers partly to meet new people and partly to continue to compete. They have a race calendar so I raced for them in the Autumn and Winter Cross Country and in the Spring Road Racing, both distances between around 3-12km. All team competitions, which had that wonderful environment of all being in it together - this is where I found I really thrived. I felt at some point I needed a new challenge with the running, I’d never be the fastest runner so what could I do next?
Enter Will, the Triathlon guy. I’d met Will at Belgrave, one evening at a session I was telling him my desire to find a new challenge. Will told me he was at the beginning of putting together a triathlon club; back then in 2010 triathlon was starting to get really popular. Will, an ex army officer and natural leader had raced in triathlons himself for many years; his passion in talking about racing and his potential new club was very intriguing. It sounded so exciting and exactly the kind of thing I was looking for, except for one problem, I had no idea how to swim properly. My protests of “but I don’t know how to swim” were met with exactly what I wanted to hear - I was only putting unnecessary barriers up, plus Will himself was a swim coach so he said that he could teach me. That was it, OneTriathlon was born and I was a founding member, triathlon was exactly the challenge I’d been looking for.
I’ll never forget my first ride with OneTriathlon. At this point I’d only ever commuted a few miles each way on a bike and fairly recently learned to ride with my feet clipped in, my longest ever ride at that point had only been about an hour on the bike. I rocked up to Richmond Park (already a fair few miles under my belt coming from Angel), probably completely ill-prepared, to meet the guys (no girls at this point) ready and willing for what was to come but literally no idea what to expect. There were 6 or 7 strong looking guys there, including Will, I was slightly intimidated but they were so friendly and welcoming I quickly relaxed.
Well it was INSANE! Over 100km out to Windsor Great Park and back at a ridiculously hard pace. I had to learn very fast how to draft and work as a team in a peloton. I got dropped off the back many times but the guys always waited for me at the brow of the next hill. God knows what they must have thought but I literally worked my ass off; at that point it was probably the hardest thing I had ever done. The pace combined with the distance was a true awakening to what lay ahead!
That extreme buzz of intense training was so addictive, pushing yourself to levels you didn’t think were possible, followed by a huge wave of exhaustion, followed by an even bigger wave of endorphins and elation. I was hooked! Early Saturday morning long training rides became my new thing and although I’d get nerves every week about the challenge ahead they were probably one of the highlights of my week.
After that first ride the team, OneTriathlon, started, around 10 guys and 5 girls to begin with. It was amazing, I was finally meeting like-minded people, it was especially good to make female friends who were into training and sport too, I really felt a part of something and it was a great feeling. OneTriathlon quickly grew as others wanted to be part of something fun.
Learning to swim was really hard but it was a great new challenge. Learning something new as an adult takes so much longer but is all the more rewarding as you gradually see the improvements come.
We had training sessions together throughout the week and it made me feel really part of something, that feeling that I didn’t have at all through school. I finally felt like I was somebody, like I had a purpose and my clients had someone to look up to.
I started racing duathlons (run-bike-run) first while I was getting my swimming up to scratch and much to my surprise I did really well and got quite a few podiums. I grew more and more to love that feeling of being scared and nervous before a race, then going out there and giving it everything with the team then going out together and celebrating with the guys afterwards.
The competing really kicked off after that, I did my first triathlon (which was horrific! I thought I’d never get through that swim!) and I worked my way up to some longer races like TriStar in Monaco and a Half Ironman in Mallorca. Training, travelling, competing and celebrating together was amazing I had so much fun! I then qualified to race age group for Great Britain in Duathlon and Triathlon. I competed for Great Britain for a few years (qualifying each year) to race in the World’s or Europeans all over the World. I raced in New Zealand, Canada, China, Spain, France and more, it was epic!
This was when it started getting really addictive. I was starting to experience huge come downs after each race and was always trying to find what was next, usually something even bigger/harder! I said yes to everything. I did the Etape du Tour, cycled London to Paris in 24hrs unsupported with a friend and many endurance run races. Endurance sport was growing rapidly and there were events popping up everywhere, there was barely a month I wasn’t racing.
At the beginning of racing I was doing really well thanks to my background in resistance training, I was strong and resilient and hadn’t yet done lots of fatiguing miles in endurance. But after 4 years or so the wheels started to fall off. Alongside the racing I was still working a full time PT schedule with clients throughout the day from 6:15/6:30am until 8pm, fitting my training in between. At points I was only sleeping 5 hours a night and thinking I was invincible. I was training sometimes 2-3 times a day. I was working 6-7 days a week. I was competing too much, 2-3 times a month at points. I probably wasn’t eating enough - the volume of training I was doing, my busy client schedule and my daily cycle commute (50 min each way) meant that I struggled to get enough fuel in and when I did eat it was often just a protein shake between clients. I think I was living on adrenalin.
My performance started to suffer. I couldn’t hit my previous times and pull off the race results I knew I was capable of. The harder I tried, the worse it got since I wasn’t recovering enough or fuelling enough. Then I started having very weird things happening to my body. I had repeated eye infections (from swimming pools) that just wouldn’t heal and permanently scarred my retina. I was knocked off my bike a few times (which luckily weren’t serious) and got injuries that just wouldn't heal. My knee joint at one point swelled up to the size of an elephants leg for seemingly no reason to the point I couldn’t walk for days. I had multiple strange things appear on my skin. I hadn’t had a period for 2 years. My immune system was screwed, I couldn’t heal from things that normally would be nothing for the body to deal with, I was scared, it was the kick I needed to realise I couldn’t carry on like this.
The benefit of my job and the clients I worked with gave me enough knowledge to realise that I needed to stop and slow down before I did more permanent damage. Though obviously telling someone else this and then being able to do this yourself are different things! It took me a long time to accept I needed to slow down. It was so hard, my identity was the ‘Duracell bunny’/runner/triathlete/duathlete I didn’t know anything other than train hard until you pass out!
I had always thought yoga and Pilates were too soft, gentle and not sweaty enough for me but after some resistance I thought I’d give them a go, deep down I knew my body needed something different. So alongside my regular resistance training, which had remained throughout my whole training career, I cut down drastically on the triathlon training and worked on restoring my health, function and structural balance. I eventually found yoga and Pilates teachers I resonated with and my journey back to optimum health began.
The main takeaways I got from Pilates and yoga, was the importance of the breath and learning to really feel and create tension in the muscles. This led me to explore many other modalities such as PRI (Postural Restoration Institute) and FRC (Functional Range Conditioning) along my restorative journey. During this time I cut my racing back to just running races.
In April 2018 I took on a coach for a year that I’d met and resonated with on a course in Costa Rica. I trusted Mike and he understood my personality and tendency to do too much so it was great to have him to be accountable to and rein me in when all I wanted to do was more, more, more! Eventually at the end of 2018 I started to feel as if my energy was restoring and my body was responding to what I was doing.
In 2020 at 40 years old I felt better and stronger than I ever had done. My training now is all about longevity alongside performance. My goal is to be ‘six weeks ready’ for any event that I want to turn my hand to which in the last couple of years have been (self made) multi day running events across Mallorca and around Cornwall, obstacle course racing, running events, team races and fitness competition Hyrox. I do a mixture of resistance training, running, calisthenics, gymnastics, yoga and Pilates with elements from many modalities within that resistance training. I train to be strong, fit, agile and able to take on any challenge that comes my way!