31

Frankfurt

HYWEL picked me up in his VW Touran from the Dartford Hilton hotel at 5.30am on the Thursday before the race. He was competing as a pro and offered me a lift with my bike. The early start precluded much conversation and on the way down to Dover I reflected back on the specific race plan Keith and Bruno had devised for me.

We knew my swim would not be mega-fast and aimed for 60–65 minutes. I would have my shoes attached to my bike pedals in T1 to quicken transition, then aimed to hold 260 watts for the first 75 per cent of the cycle, before opening up and pushing harder in the final quarter. With good weather, as we expected, those numbers should provide a time around four hours 50 minutes on the bike. The marathon was where we intended to exploit my strengths, starting off at a pace of four minutes 15 seconds per km. With the right conditions, if all played out well, it would bring me home in under nine hours.

In 2015 the winning time for my age group had been nine hours nine minutes.

The ferry brought us to Calais and we set off through northern France, across Belgium and over the southern tip of Holland, near Maastricht. I enjoyed sitting back and watching the scenery roll by and as we entered the Netherlands I found my mind instinctively turning to Aaron and my own time there. It was the closest I had been to his place of death since then.

I remembered how much I enjoyed myself and what a happy period of my life it had been, how I felt so free. But putting myself back into that time and place from 13 years before seemed impossible. What is the past really? It only exists when you think of it, and when I thought of it, it was like thinking of someone else, or watching a movie with actors playing parts.

I remembered how I had been going to a meet-up with Aaron near Antwerp, probably with Eddie or one of his associates. We never used satnav because it can be tracked by police so Aaron had sat on the passenger seat with a map, claiming to be an expert navigator. There was nothing wrong with that in itself, but in his other hand he held a big, fat, coneshaped spliff, wrapped up with some of the top-notch Northern Lights cannabis we had been moving.

Of course we got hopelessly lost, doing laps of the ring road around the city, getting increasingly wasted and riled.

‘If you were a fucking tank commander, you’d have got us all killed by now,’ I’d told him, shaking my head. He had looked at me, red-eyed over the corner of the map and dissolved into giggles.

The memory brought a smile to my face, along with a stab of sadness. Whatever you do in life, whichever roads you take, you can never escape memory. It’s always lurking in the background. Soon we left the low countries behind and crossed the border into Germany.

Seven hours after leaving London we arrived at the Inter-Continental hotel in Frankfurt, the official Ironman hotel. We didn’t have a room there but wanted to store our bikes somewhere secure, as our rooms were booked in a rougher part of the city.

As soon as we walked into the lobby we found ourselves among a whole host of professional competitors, people I had only read about in magazines. Miranda Carfrae (female world champion) noticed me wheeling my bright pink Wyndy Milla towards reception and smiled.

‘Nice bike,’ she said.

I thanked her, feeling I had really arrived on the scene.

After storing our equipment at the Inter-Continental we made the short journey across town to the hotel Hywel had booked. All I knew was that it was cheap. It could not have been a more different establishment. Situated down a back street in Frankfurt’s red light district, surrounded by titty bars, our place was conveniently located next door to the city’s main needle exchange. As we arrived a group of about 12 heroin addicts sat on the pavement in front, fixing up with the clean works they had been provided with. Several had obviously made use of them already and sat gurning in the gutter, eyes rolling up in their heads.

‘Blimey,’ Hywel commented.

‘It’s like being back in Full Sutton,’ I said.

Both of us were surprised to see such a scene in Germany, a country renowned for its cleanliness and organisation. Fortunately, we only had one night booked there, before moving to the Hotel Lindner, which was much more upmarket, the night before the race.

Over the next couple of days we went through all the usual prerace procedures, briefings, equipment storage, race orientation. The town was full of tall, ripped Germans who looked like they trained 24 hours a day and had never tasted crisps or sweets in their lives. For some reason Ironman is a particularly popular sport in Germany (the Spanish, Belgians and French are strong too). Since the eighties, when all the top guys came from the USA, the Bundesrepublik has taken over as the sport’s leading nation. For that reason, along with the prestige of the race, I knew my age group would be extremely competitive.

On the day Hywel was scheduled to set off with the pros, meaning he would be at least half an hour ahead of me on the course. My job was simply to put in as strong a performance as I could. It would be difficult during the race to gauge my age-group position. I wouldn’t know my placing until the finish, but this one was simply about doing as well as possible in the second biggest event in the world.

On the way over to T2 to rack and prepare my bike, my power meter cut out again, which caused me to roll my eyes. Why couldn’t everything just work properly? As I had in Staffordshire I spoke to Keith on the phone.

‘You know what 260 watts of power feels like,’ Keith said. ‘You know how to race. Just do it on feel. It won’t be an issue.’

Darren came out with his wife Tracy and we all had an early dinner the night before the race. It was interesting, sitting there with Hywel and some of the athletes he coaches, as no one knew that Darren was a prison officer. It was a lovely relaxing meal, on an outside table at a restaurant near the historic centre. Darren was there to support me, as he had been in Lowdham Grange all those years before and it didn’t matter to those present who he was or how we met. To them, he was just my friend, which is what he had become.

With our passage down to the Langener Waldsee due to take place in the small hours I set the alarm for 4am, making sure I was in bed by 7pm. My night was only slightly interrupted by the Germany v Italy Euro 2016 quarter-final being shown in street-side bars outside. The constant night checks at Belmarsh had trained me to sleep heavily despite disturbance – a useful skill when there are pockets of football fans screaming every 20 metres outside your bedroom window.

Wyndy Milla had provided me a new white tri-suit and as I lined up in it the following morning, with the wetsuit over the top by the water’s edge, I felt again the icy calmness that always came over me. It was surprisingly cold at about 13 degrees and as I watched the pros swim away I thought again about my lack of emotion. It wasn’t just a case of being in control of my nerves, it was a total absence of nerves, as if I was somehow unaffected in the way others were. Guys were in tears. Some were shaking. In a funny sense, that worried me a touch. Is it ok to be so unmoved? Was I in the moment enough? Why wasn’t I fearful and anxious like everyone else?

The next group to go were the hour-or-under swimmers who I allowed to go off without me, remembering my mistake from Bolton. When my turn came I got into the water and settled into a rhythm straight away. The water felt lukewarm, pleasant to swim in, much clearer and with a nicer taste than Pennington Flash.

For the first kilometre and a half I stayed on the feet of a group ahead of me, but felt that their pace wasn’t stretching me enough. After the first turning point and a short Australian exit I noticed a female swimmer with a very strong stroke powering on ahead. I made a concerted effort to catch her then sat on her shoulder. Again, after acclimatising to her rhythm I felt the need to press harder and with about 1.8km to go, I left her and caught a group of five men who I stayed with all the way in.

First impressions on climbing out on the beach were that I hadn’t pushed myself as hard as I could. My shoulders were loose and I didn’t feel out of breath, but a glance at my Garmin told me I had finished in one hour three minutes, my fastest ever Ironman swim.

I went for a pee in transition, adding dead time and stretching my stay in T1 to five minutes, then as I mounted the bike I removed five chia-seed bars from the bike box and tucked them into my new tri-suit. This was a habit I had developed throughout my short racing career, meaning I could slightly unzip the suit and nibble at the bars while riding and remaining in an aerodynamic position.

Within myself, I felt mega-strong, but something about the suit didn’t quite feel right.

It’s the sort of thing that will sound silly to people who aren’t involved in the sport, but triathletes have to be pedantic over details. For a race I wouldn’t usually wear anything I hadn’t trained in many times, but Wyndy Milla had been so supportive and provided me with such an amazing bike, I felt I owed it to them to wear the suit, even though I was yet to properly try it out.

After throwing my chia bars in, the zip remained slightly lower than I would usually leave it and sure enough, at around 100km, after an encouraging start, I hit a pothole and the three remaining bars fell out. I watched them go with a twist in my guts. There was no possible way I could stop and pick them up, losing all my momentum, but I had 80km of cycling left, with only half a bar carrying about 200 calories to get me to the end.

‘That’s an hour’s worth,’ I said to myself, making mental calculations. ‘And if I use my two emergency caffeine gels I’ve got taped to the bike frame that will get me to about four and a half hours, then I’ve just got to collect some drinks from the race stations. It will be okay, as long as I drop my power slightly.’

I wouldn’t allow myself to overdo it on the bike and risk blow-up on the marathon, not in the European championship, so I pared my imagined power number back from 260 watts to what I thought would be about 230. Allowing my heart rate to fall to about 138bpm, I figured it would be enough to pull out a decent time without completely exhausting my reserves of available energy.

I was a little light-headed when I reached the end of the bike leg, slightly bothered about the drafting many other athletes seemed to be doing. Drafting, or riding in another competitor’s slipstream, is not allowed in Ironman, but is rumoured to be rife among continental Europeans. If you’re holding a position within 12 metres of another bike you can be given a time penalty, but despite that, race officials on the day seemed quite slack in enforcing the rules. Large groups of Europeans were assembling into pelotons, like the Tour de France, assisting each other hugely and getting away with it. To me, that was cheating. Maybe I needed to adjust my very British attitude of fair play?

In my mind this was what I had spoken about with Keith. I was utilising my race experience. Not everything will go well or how you want or expect it to. Your plan will fail in some areas and you have to adapt. The loss of nutrition probably meant my bike was 10–15 minutes slower than it could have been, but slowing saved me from the possibility of falling apart on the run, while the behaviour of other athletes was something I could not control. There was little point dwelling on it. Time to crack on.

I did feel that my energy levels were lower than I would have liked, but knew there would be plenty of aid stations and Darren waiting for me at ‘special needs’ with my own nutrition. As I pulled my running shoes on, my mind quickly processed the race so far. One hour three minutes in the water and four hours 54 on the bike were both good times, personal bests in official events, although the bike was slower than I had hoped. The five-minute transition in T1 was a small issue, though. If I wanted to break nine hours I would need to run a two hour 57 marathon, not out of the question by any means, but again quicker than I had raced before.

While I made these assessments I studiously ignored an increasing sense of pressure from my bowel. All the extra caffeine gels had stimulated my system. I didn’t know how I was placed in the race but stopping to take a crap was the last thing I needed, so banished the thought from my mind and set off.

I set off at three minutes 40 seconds per km, a strong pace, good enough to record a two hour 50 marathon. Halfway around the first of the three laps I saw Keith and Bruno who told me to stay calm and ease into it. I slowed slightly, but still found myself overtaking large numbers of athletes. For a time I attached myself to a female pro from Portugal, but she wasn’t going quickly enough for me so soon left her behind.

Towards the end of the first loop I began to really feel an energy dip resulting from the bike, then saw Darren at special needs at the start of lap two, scoffed another gel and was forced to face a grim reality. The downward pressure in my guts was increasing. I desperately needed a crap.

I soon found myself running shoulder to shoulder with Vincent Depuiset, a French professional. We stayed together for a couple of kilometres and were holding a high pace but by then my need to relieve myself had become urgent. If I waited much longer there was a danger I would soil myself and at this stage of my career that’s not something I’m prepared to do in public (I have thought about it since and think if I was in a pro race and knew it could be the difference between winning and losing, I perhaps would).

I dived into one of the athletes’ loos by the side of the course which was an absolute pit of filth. Piss and shit had been splattered everywhere by desperate runners. I pulled my tri-suit down, timed myself and it took me 63 seconds to get in and out, not disastrous but also far from ideal. Another step on my learning journey.

I ran hard out of the toilet. The stop, combined with lost momentum, meant I needed to. Within ten minutes I was back on Vincent’s shoulder and we maintained a good, steady pace until the 30km mark, at which point I saw Keith again.

‘You’re 12km out,’ he shouted. ‘Just go for it.’

I upped my pace and Vincent stayed with me. We weren’t speaking, but when you run with someone in that way you become strangely tuned in to their movements and breathing. At 38km, as we approached an aid station, he sighed and in my peripheral vision I was aware that rather than run through, he had stopped to get a drink. Vincent was walking.

‘He’s cracked,’ I thought and motored on alone.

With only 5km to go every instinct told me to drop the hammer and bury it, but I had begun to feel a small twinge in my left hamstring. Before I would have taken a gung-ho approach and gone, but experience kept me sensible. I maintained a strong pace but without losing control, staying in touch and in tune with my body.

As I entered the final kilometre, the realisation of what I was achieving hit me. ‘Fucking hell,’ I thought. ‘I am at the Ironman European championships and I’m about to finish.’ I looked at my Garmin and saw I was at two hours 59 minutes for the marathon. That toilet break had cost me the opportunity to go below three hours. Never mind.

Knowing that I had narrowly missed my target time, I resolved to relax and savour the experience. Massed crowds went crazy as I approached the finishing chute, creating a funnel of noise. This is what I had dreamt about for all these years since learning about Ironman at Lowdham Grange. Euphoria erupted within me.

As I entered the main square of the old town, I slowed to a walk, receiving the congratulations and love of the crowd. Hands reached out to touch me and shake my hand. Kids screamed. Women blew kisses.

With the line just ahead, I broke back into a jog, almost crying with joy. A lovely, blonde female official put a medal around my neck. At that moment she looked ten times more beautiful than she already was. I felt like kissing her.

Three and a half years since leaving prison and there I was.