Quite a paradox I know, but believe it or not some parts of Essex are rural. It’s not all orange skin, big hooped earrings and Sugar Hut ‘goodness’! But perhaps one day, for charity, I’ll do a triathlon as an Essex girl by swimming in a bikini, cycling in a boob tube, and running in white stilettos.
Last weekend I was back at home in Essex, and I thought this would be a great start to introduce myself and my background. So..... it is safe to say I’m not your average Essex girl and I effectively grew up on a farm. No farm animals as such, just dogs, cats, horses, chickens, horses and well... more horses. This is where my competitive sport began and I seemed to add more sports as I grew older, but my sense kicked in last year and I now only do three. I started with Eventing, followed by Pony Club Tetrathlon (shooting, swimming, horse-riding, running) and when I went to uni I learnt how to fence to compete in Modern Pentathlon. I dabbled in a few triathlons and thoroughly enjoyed them. I was soon addicted. Now riding is only a leisure activity for me when I’m back in Essex.
Every time I go home the horses seem to have multiplied as my mum is into breeding event horses. I do love seeing the pets again but as you can imagine the chores are endless. I’m pretty sure most girls would go home and spend quality time with their mum over some shopping and a coffee, but not where I’m from. I had a catch up with my mum whilst throwing a huge stack of logs onto a trailer in the field, only to bring them down and unload them again into the store. There were numerous other chores to be done, but thankfully my twin sister came to the rescue and was home on Sunday to help. Normally we’d go out for a ride on the horses and have a good gossip but not enough time on this occasion :(
Last weekend I was back at home in Essex, and I thought this would be a great start to introduce myself and my background. So..... it is safe to say I’m not your average Essex girl and I effectively grew up on a farm. No farm animals as such, just dogs, cats, horses, chickens, horses and well... more horses. This is where my competitive sport began and I seemed to add more sports as I grew older, but my sense kicked in last year and I now only do three. I started with Eventing, followed by Pony Club Tetrathlon (shooting, swimming, horse-riding, running) and when I went to uni I learnt how to fence to compete in Modern Pentathlon. I dabbled in a few triathlons and thoroughly enjoyed them. I was soon addicted. Now riding is only a leisure activity for me when I’m back in Essex.
Every time I go home the horses seem to have multiplied as my mum is into breeding event horses. I do love seeing the pets again but as you can imagine the chores are endless. I’m pretty sure most girls would go home and spend quality time with their mum over some shopping and a coffee, but not where I’m from. I had a catch up with my mum whilst throwing a huge stack of logs onto a trailer in the field, only to bring them down and unload them again into the store. There were numerous other chores to be done, but thankfully my twin sister came to the rescue and was home on Sunday to help. Normally we’d go out for a ride on the horses and have a good gossip but not enough time on this occasion :(
Perhaps you can’t relate to this if you’re not from the countryside, but I do have one question I would like answered; how does one (yes, I said one!) test an electric fence?? I know for a fact that when it’s clicking it might not be working, so is it just a case of 3....2.....1..... potential iconic Jurassic Park moment, or is there actually a device for this? This needs to be engineered if not!! I remember when we were younger my sister and I tried to encourage the horses to eat the grass on the other side of the fence to test it out. Harsh I know. However, we decided a game of ick-ack-ock, as we called it in our region (although I can see why most people call it rock-paper-scissors), was not entirely fair!
On the plus side I do get to go back to my old swim club, which I really enjoy. I was quite proud of myself this time round as I was able to keep up with the teenagers J I was back to the pool within a couple hours of getting off the train and there again on Sunday morning. Although, these are the days when I wish I was religious! 6.30am on a Sunday morning??? Ugh, I thought Sunday was a day of rest! You can instantly tell whether you’re swimming with a swim club or a triathlon club. These sessions had fly in the WARM UP!! This never bodes well for the rest of the set :/ Triathlon sessions rarely include fly, but if they do it’s in a subset and will be 25m max. I was quite comfortable in the veterans lane on Friday but the coach decided to put me with the fastest swimmers on Sunday. When I said ‘they’ll kill me,’ she just replied with ‘maybe you need to be killed.’ Normally I’m up for the challenge but I’m two weeks back into training, so this was going to be brutal. What’s more, among the warm up was a 200m choice. Well obviously you choose frontcrawl right?! The young lad leading my lane did IM. WTF, he ACTIVELY chose to do fly, and maybe even worse, breaststroke too!! Maybe this is where I’m going wrong?! One day I’ll choose to swim fly.
Actually this weekend wasn’t too bad as the weather was kind. It’s the winter months that are the worst but this weekend it was warm enough for jeans and just a polo shirt (for those who aren’t on my wavelength, it’s like a t-shirt but with a collar ;) ). The yard was looking tidy by the end of the weekend and I think mum was quite happy. Good daughter deed....tick! My mum really likes those useless household accessories with sayings on them. There are numerous of these laying around the house, for example this one, which is obviously utter rubbish:
On the plus side I do get to go back to my old swim club, which I really enjoy. I was quite proud of myself this time round as I was able to keep up with the teenagers J I was back to the pool within a couple hours of getting off the train and there again on Sunday morning. Although, these are the days when I wish I was religious! 6.30am on a Sunday morning??? Ugh, I thought Sunday was a day of rest! You can instantly tell whether you’re swimming with a swim club or a triathlon club. These sessions had fly in the WARM UP!! This never bodes well for the rest of the set :/ Triathlon sessions rarely include fly, but if they do it’s in a subset and will be 25m max. I was quite comfortable in the veterans lane on Friday but the coach decided to put me with the fastest swimmers on Sunday. When I said ‘they’ll kill me,’ she just replied with ‘maybe you need to be killed.’ Normally I’m up for the challenge but I’m two weeks back into training, so this was going to be brutal. What’s more, among the warm up was a 200m choice. Well obviously you choose frontcrawl right?! The young lad leading my lane did IM. WTF, he ACTIVELY chose to do fly, and maybe even worse, breaststroke too!! Maybe this is where I’m going wrong?! One day I’ll choose to swim fly.
Actually this weekend wasn’t too bad as the weather was kind. It’s the winter months that are the worst but this weekend it was warm enough for jeans and just a polo shirt (for those who aren’t on my wavelength, it’s like a t-shirt but with a collar ;) ). The yard was looking tidy by the end of the weekend and I think mum was quite happy. Good daughter deed....tick! My mum really likes those useless household accessories with sayings on them. There are numerous of these laying around the house, for example this one, which is obviously utter rubbish:
However, this was a new one which I quite liked:
So, back to Bristol to do just that. I’ll be starting my life as a part time Neuroscientist and part time triathlete :) Time for some hard graft and solid winter training as we pick up the volume over the next few weeks. I’ll be doing some duathlons and of course some beloved cross country races, so I’ll keep you updated!