To Begin at the Beginning:

OK – I won’t lie – this is just another blog site by a wannabe Age Group triathlete desperately hoping he can improve enough in 2013 to qualify for the GB Age Group team and get entry into the ITU Age Group World Championships. Conveniently this year, they are being held in September in Hyde Park at the London Olympics venue. And yes, it’s really for self motivation purposes; the thought being that if I have a blog then that will keep me motivated to keep doing stuff to blog about.

I give that preamble because after thinking of my “unique” idea of blogging I had a look around the web to see what else was out there. It turns out that every man and his dog (I suppose I should say every triathlete and his or her dog) has similar ideas. There’s many a fine blog on the web with a similar theme. They are well written, interesting, informative and with a host of useful information and links for the budding AG triathlete. Please don’t expect that here. Instead it will be a bit of a diary, some observations on life, some musings and a bit of my personal sporting journey (to fill in the gaps when I can’t think of anything current to blog about). At first I was going to make this blog private for family and friends but seeing what other triathletes are up to is quite interesting so I thought it only fair to them that they can see my crash and burns. I also have been talking to a few potential sponsors so if I manage to go down that route I guess I must broadcast things far and wide. I guess I also want this to be a personal archive that I or my family can look back on at some time in the future. Only time will tell how successful I will be and how far done my road I get with this.

I’ve been entering triathlons for quite a few years. I’ll say more on that and an interesting angle on the “first” triathlon in later blogs. My reasons for this Hyde Park qualification target go back to my last two triathlons in September of 2012, Bala and London Standard Distance tri’s. I’d been hampered in the previous year with a stress fracture in my foot. It seemed to be ok at the start of the 2012 season so I was gradually improving. Before Bala I came across the AG scene and the British Triathlon website and the fact that the Bala race was a qualifying race for the European Age Group Championships. Just to see where I stood, I went ahead and registered for qualification on the British Triathlon website. After the race I was a bit surprised to see that I placed 5th in the registered triathletes in my age group (excluding one who had already qualified at previous qualifiers). The first four qualify automatically (each from the three qualifying races). This was despite not the perfect preparation as we had camped in Bala with friends for the weekend and had had a bit too much of a good night prior to the race! So I just missed out on qualification but I’m on the roll down list in case of drop outs (As I’m just about to post this on the 1st January I get an email from British Tri advising I now have a roll down place for the European Championships in Alanya, Turkey – Wow!).





At the London Triathlon a week later I came third overall in my age group. Now I know the London Tri is more of a “fun tri” avoided by a lot of the serious athletes but I did enjoy the 3rd place out of large field of my age group. The best thing was that I was in the first wave of the day. A 6.30am swim start in the almost dark in the London docks doesn’t sound like fun but it turned out ok as we missed the big storm that came through later in the morning and somewhat wrecked things for the later waves. So for 9/10ths of the race I was the on course race leader of the London Triathlon cycling through the streets of Westminster. I was unfortunately caught and overtaken in the last 500m of the run but it was still a great feeling.

So this is the start of hopefully a good 2013