Four wheels good

Triathlon involves a swim, a bike, and a run, yet perversely it’s really hard to do without a car.

For a sport that celebrates the diverse abilities of the human body, there’s one hell of a lot of extra gear to carry around. And since I don’t have a car (330 days a year it’s just be a chunk of metal depreciating in my driveway) I have to carry that gear on my back, along with 10kg of bike when I can’t ride it. Which limits what I can carry for the weekend. With a wetsuit and running shoes already in my backpack that’s two-thirds of the space already gone.

Of course, my Tube line doesn’t take bikes, so just to get out of London I have to trundle to a mainline station at daybreak. I have an appalling sense of direction, so the need to consult an A-Z every km means an 8km journey takes 45mins. And the troubles don’t stop there. Many British trains only take the first three bikes to arrive, or make your steed ride in the guard’s van, or something else specially formulated to yank your chain.
Then when you bowl up after two changes in a part of the country you’ve never seen, you need to get back on the bike and find a) where the event is and b) where you’re sleeping that night. Naturally, sleep is all you do there: my race Sunday starts at 8am, so I have to pack breakfast too.
Triathletes joke about a ‘fourth discipline’ of transition; Ironman maniacs mention a fifth, of nutrition. How about a sixth: getting yourself to the event?

But I’m starting to feel a masochistic fondness for the precision planning involved. Enjoying it, even. Makes a Tri more than an event: it becomes an expedition.