33
DESPITE all that has happened since that day late in 2012 when I walked out of Sudbury, the life licence does play on my mind, of course it does. I also know that because of my background, people will always doubt me. Who I was remains part of who I am. I have to live with those things for the rest of my life.
Someone else can afford to make a mistake, to have a car crash for example and injure someone by accident. They might get arrested but it would not necessarily be a big deal. But if anything like that happens to me, I go back to prison. In my eyes (and in the eyes of the law), I am not truly free. I am serving my sentence in the community. It feels like having a black cloud over your head. And every now and then it rains.
Sometimes I do think it’s unjust. There are people who have committed crimes far worse than anything I did; sex offences, things against children. Some of them are released and get to live a normal life, even receive state protection, but not me. Stealing large amounts of money from financial institutions is worse than paedophilia, apparently. I guess that tells you who really runs the country but something about it doesn’t sit right with me. Maybe I’m biased.
At the beginning I have no doubt that they were watching me. Probably on and off for the first year. I find it strange to think that even after I finished my first Ironman and was so dedicated to my new path, obsessed with training, it is likely I was being observed. Police probably spied on me running around Richmond Park or cycling on the South Downs. Maybe they still do now.
If I could share one piece of advice with the world it would be that life is not about cars and watches and money. That’s the life you’re sold by the media, but it’s a mirage. I want to inspire others, especially kids, to stop them looking up to the fake role models they admire. I can tell them – I have seen it.
I have seen so called badman gangsters come back to prison after court, crying like babies because they’ve got life. They’re 25 years old and they’re not getting out until they’re 60. That is their reality.
When it gets to that stage, those guys end up turning informer, grassing each other up, selling out their mates. In desperation they do anything police ask. They aren’t so bad then are they? But youngsters on the street, in their communities don’t see any of that.
I have sat among real criminals, the top-end guys, as they say how they paid a kid a few grand to kill someone. When that kid is caught and faces years behind bars, they couldn’t care less.
‘Never mind, he’s expendable,’ they’d say, ‘just some toe-rag off an estate. There’s thousands more, we’ll find another one.’
That’s who these badmen really are. These boys who walk the walk and make lots of noise are small fry. They get used and taken advantage of. Yet that’s who these kids look up to, because they are visible. If they knew who the really shrewd guys are, the ones making all the money, street kids wouldn’t admire them at all. The real top boys are a bunch of middle-aged white men, who never get their hands dirty, look and talk like regular businessmen, but are wealthy and ruthless as fuck. They don’t make YouTube videos or drive around in soft-top cars with music pumping out.
I guess I was lucky I avoided needless violence. If it didn’t make money, I wasn’t interested. If I had come out after ten years with vendettas against me, as many people do, it would have been very difficult to stay out of things. You have to defend yourself in those circumstances. It’s life or death. So physically, I escaped that world. It means I had to cut off a lot of people, even relatives, which wasn’t easy but was the only way. I probably still bear internal scars, though. And I probably always will.
My probation officer is so proud. I still see her every month. I enjoy it. She shows my media interviews to everyone in the office. Of all the people who got out around the same time I did, I was the only one who stayed out. Her other cases were all recalled within two years.
I’ve received letters from mums saying their kids look up to me. That now they want to go into sport. Darren told me there are guys in Lowdham Grange doing the million metres on the rowing machine because they’ve read what I’ve done. That drives me on, fires me up – my successes are not just mine.
That’s great, because in Ironman you cannot just go out and take what you want. You have to work and work and work to earn it – then you still might not get it. Risk to reward is no longer a factor. Its work to achieve now. Work to improve, little by little. It’s hard, but hard is good.
Maybe that’s why, when I train and compete, suffering is so important. Interpret that how you want. But I like to suffer.
I like to prove to myself how mentally strong I am. I hate to show vulnerability.
All Ironmen know that after the swim, after the bike, they will go out on the run and at some point they will be in huge, inhumane pain. It might happen at ten miles or it might happen at 20, but it will happen. It scares them.
I long for that moment, that little slice of hell. I crave it. I run towards it.
It’s therapeutic.
When it comes, I transcend. Questions disappear. It is only now.
I move one leg, then the other, heart and lungs, feet on the earth. Blood cells buzz, hormones stir, genes conjure.
While the body screams, the soul rests.
At that time, I’m not a McAvoy. I’m not even an athlete.
I just am.
And that’s the way I like it.