Jules Blog - December 2010
Salad Dodger Morphs into Triathlete
Well that's the plan but not being an individual with a natural appetite for regular structured exercise or raw vegetables; I may, by mid June be half triathlete half Pilsbury Dough boy, a hemaphrodite of an overweight lady boy athlete sucking in my middle aged belly at the start of the swim.
Back in the day -at the end of the Eighties - I did have a small ambition to be a triathlete but this was partly thwarted by my regular weekend visits to the Spice of Life in Soho and Wendy May's Locomotion in Kentish Town both of which were preferable to exercise.
I used to run up and down Hackney Canal and ride my Kingfisher Blue Nigel Dean bike (purchased from Mosquito Bikes) around Essex and out on the chain gangs at Hog Hill on a Tuesday night. I even joined the local swimming club at Haggerston Baths and would spend an hour or so trying to keep up with the local kids and not drown in the process…it was the back stoke, the butterfly and the Speedos that I did not get on with. But back in those days there was no internet and only Winning Magazine and about three triathlons a year and then I bought a mountain bike and never looked back.
My lifestyle doesn't really provide enough time for the five hour endurance rides required for finishing the Etape but I can fit in a twenty minute run or swim here and there which in the current weather is much more civilised. Actually I haven't started swimming yet my ambition is only two weeks old and I'm building up to taking my clothes off in public - and I won't be wearing Speedos.
I'm trying to get Phil involved, he's resisting but that's part of the fun.







