Accidental Ironman by Martyn Brunt Page A

into the murky bilge. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before you have to complete some kind of obstacle while under fire from a machine-gunner. The races are divided between a bunch of stick-thin burger-dodgers at the front who float over the ground and complete circuits faster than the Large Hadron Collider, and a bunch of carthorses at the back who plough through the ground like human tractors. Unsurprisingly I belong to the latter category but, like a growing number of triathletes, I’ve latched on to cross-country as a great way to build strength and to distract yourself from the soul-sucking darkness between January and March as well as all the sunny-side-up halfwits claiming spring is almost here.
    I also enjoy the cut-throat competitiveness of these races, which seem to give more scope for team tactics and individual treachery than any of the other sports I do. Points are awarded to your club based on your finishing position but, although these are team events, it tends to be your clubmates that you try hardest to beat, and if you show any kind of comradeship you’ll probably be handed a copy of
Das Kapital
and given 48 hours to leave the country. I frequently get into trouble at cross-country races because there’s something about being barged out of the way that makes me see red. One year I did the Midland Masters (OAPs) Cross Country championships amid the wasteland scavengers of Wolverhampton and was toiling near the back only to be shoved out of the way by another runner as he cut inside me on a corner. I’m not exactly sure what happened next because everything went blurry and shouty, making the world look like an Al Qaeda video, and the next thing I knew I was sprinting over the line in fifteenth place, collecting a gold medal as part of the winning team. I virtually crippled myself in the process and left myself with a pulled Achilles, which still hurts to this day. Additionally, although I hammered the guy who shoved me, I had to endure all his post-race excuses for why he lost, using rich and vibrant language that enabled him to sound knowledgeable despite being what we linguists call ‘a knob’ – and thanks to my throbbing legs I couldn’t get away!
Trouble number four
    It is written in
The Triathletes’ Bible
that: ‘Thou shalt not enter running races unless thou cycleth to them, nor shalt thou do a swimming event unless thou runneth during the interval, and after any cycling time-trial thou shalt jump off thy bike and go for a hard run – otherwise thy races do not count and thou cannot braggeth on Facebook.’ As a result of this unspoken code, I found myself planning to race in a swimming gala on the Isle of Wight followed swiftly by an entirely separate ten-mile run near Poole. No cycling sadly, although had there been a pedalo for hire at Cowes I’d have had a go at using it to reach Portsmouth. I had a good reason for wanting to migrate southwards because an upshot of my medal-winning run mentioned a moment ago was that, having seen what I’m capable of when not dossing about, my running club tried to rope me into doing the national championships in the buzzing metropolis of Sunderland. The prospect of eight hours of driving to run 12k in a mudpit – in the rain, in Sunderland – sounded as much fun as listening to One Direction playing banjos. Instead, I skeddadled off to the Isle of Wight, which is as far away from Sunderland as it possible to be while remaining earth-bound.
    I was joined in my island adventures by my mate Keith Burdett, previously introduced to you as a bleached Wookie but who, on reflection, looks more like Father Ted’s stunt double. We travelled down and stayed over in my campervan, which is always a risk because spending time with your mates on holiday dramatically increases the risk of finding out what they are really like. Keith is a mild-mannered man until you add water, at which points he becomes an instant headcase who views all his competitors with