Some of you may have seen this in this month's issue of 220, but if not, they have kindly let me copy it to my blog as well:

"Are you an elite triathlete?

Of course, most readers will reply “no” to this question. A simple definition of an elite athlete is relatively one-dimensional: someone who is currently achieving a certain level of sporting performance somewhere near the far right side of the continuum between: “untrained civilian” and “World Champion”.

But however simple the definition may be – the whole business of actually achieving the status of “elite triathlete” is a lot more complicated, and the paths leading there are many and varied. Some athletes, like me, started the sport young, and have risen through the ranks, barely able to recollect a time in their lives that didn’t contain achievement in the sport, yet having put in many years’ toil to rise to the top of the sport and become ‘elite’. Others come in at later points on the development curve, often from being elite (or junior elite) performers in other sports, and are able to transfer from not knowing much about our sport, to scooping up the mantle of elite triathlete in the blink of an eye. There are even rare occurrences of people progressing through life as triathlon-ignorant adults, who discover, by luck or destiny (depending on your philosophical palate) a latent talent for triathlon excellence. The notable example here is of course the unparalleled HRH Chrissie of Wellington.

To achieve this level of performance in sport requires a coming together of a huge range of factors. The physical: the ability to tolerate high volumes of training without getting injured or ill, the ability to adapt and improve from training, and of course pure talent. The psychological: the ability to mentally tolerate the training, the tactical capabilities, the ability to hurt yourself when you need to, and of course a massive will to put winning before everything else. And then there’s a whole myriad of external factors besides - including timely exposure to the sport and finally our old friend luck. To be an elite triathlete, you need to have all of these factors and countless more in place at the right time, and then juggle them for as long as you are able to (or wish to) maintain that level of performance.

Everyone has a certain level of some or all of these factors, and it follows that there are probably countless people who have almost the full set, but for whom one or two small discrepancies have resulted in them never stumbling upon the path of an elite triathlete - be they an enthusiastic age-grouper who always gets injured or who has to work long hours and has never had a chance to put together 30 hour training weeks, or a precociously talented sloth who has no inclination to do any exercise, or maybe a near carbon copy of Javier Gomez, who simply happened never to have come across the sport of ‘triathlon’ and so never realised his extraordinary potential.

And this is where I come in. For the last few years I have been one of the fortunate ones who has had the physical, mental and other factors aligned at the right time, and this has allowed me to travel the world racing at the highest level of our gruelling yet amazing sport. But that fantastic, elusive yet potent mixture of qualities and factors for me is no longer a Royal Flush. I admit that there is a part of me that doubts whether my Glandular Fever-scarred immune system can continue to hack the demands necessary (as exposed by my late summer ‘results’ of 2009 and 2010); but more significant is that the unerring, unquestionable and ruthless desire to win has given way to an equally strong passion to do all of the things that I had to ‘put aside’ to achieve what I have done.

My immediate plans are to go travelling and experience the wider world outside the race hotels and shuttle buses I’ve got used to, and then embark on a degree in Computer Science at Cambridge University in October, before fully embracing my inner nerd and losing myself somewhere in the world of the animation/visual effects film industry.

I am eternally grateful to the sport for what it has done for me - from the sponsors I’m leaving (Nike and Maxifuel), my fellow athletes, friends and the support of the BTF (yes you, you silly rascals!). I’m so excited to see where the sport will go and hope to still give my 10 cents worth as a columnist in 220, seeing triathlon carried forward athletically in the very capable hands of Mr and Mrs Brownlee & Sons, Chrissie, and all of the others snapping at their heels.

But in answer to my original question, now I too will have to say “No”. "

This week, I have been contending with some confusing and conflicts feelings that have made me re-evaluate everything I ever thought that I knew about myself and a certain relationship that I hold dear to my heart.

I am, of course, talking about my ‘love-hate’, ‘on-off’, ‘will they?/won’t they?’ ongoing saga with my dishwasher. When I first met my dishwasher, it was love at first sight. I couldn’t take my eyes off it: all sleek lines, shiny, inviting, and enticing. Our relationship blossomed as and my dependency on it increased. I learned to love its ability to clean all of the dishes with reliable efficiency...and I soon began to realise that maybe I had found the one: it was gorgeous and it could clean. If it had been able to cook, I would have probably popped the question there and then. But I didn’t, I became complacent, I took it for granted and didn’t give it the love and care that it deserved, and last Sunday I realised what a mistake this was.

On Sunday evening, as I walked into the kitchen, I heard a weird squelching noise coming from under the floorboards in the living room. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but with extensive prodding of the entire floorspace of my living room, I eventually found a couple of other areas that had the squelch, and eventually was able to coax one of these patches to produce a trickle of water in the crack between the floor and the skirting. The next morning, the guy who laid my floor came to rip it up, and...long story short, the entire floor was flooded, the concrete saturated, so I now have no floorboards and 3 de-humidifiers, 2 heaters and a MASSIVE fan drying out the exposed concrete while the insurance company decides whether or not to completely drill up the sodden concrete and re-lay it. Not cool.

Mid-way through this process we discovered where the offending leak was emanating from, but I’m sure you’ve guessed that by now. I can’t believe that my dishwasher could do this to me, I feel
cheated. I can’t stand to be in the same room as it, but I can’t cope without it. I’m having to wash-up by hand, which feels like a poor substitute to all of those sepia-toned memories I have of filling and emptying the dishwasher with the help of a singing troupe of birds, badgers and rabbits, while spending the intervening time skipping through fields of lavender.

So what do I do? Do I forgive (and fix) my dishwasher, and admit that I haven’t taken enough care of it, and remember everything that it has done for me...or do I sling it on the scrapheap for being a deceitful hussy?

Hello hello hello.

Well, as I said last week, my most important job this week was trying to successfully navigate through a 3hr exam on Software Development with Java. As I explained last week, I had been reduced to a bit of a cram as a result of lax preparation, but all in all it went pretty well, so I’m pleased.

I have also agreed to do some Physics tutoring for a GCSE student (who my mum knows). I’ve had to crack open one of the new textbooks, and read-through it to remind myself of some of the stuff that used to be second nature. Luckily, it all came back pretty quickly, and means that I won’t struggle as much to answer obscure questions such as ‘why is the sky blue’, and ‘why shouldn’t you sunbathe in space’ (apart from the very real risk of being leched over by nearby aliens).

This weekend I very nearly got talked into doing an impromptu marathon. The Beachy Head marathon starts just down the road from my house, so I almost caved into peer pressure from Todd, James and Sam to pitch up and give it a crack, despite me never having run longer than about 25km before (a marathon of course being 42km), and despite it being one of the hilliest races in the country, and despite the fact that I haven’t done any proper training for over 6 weeks. Anyway, it turned out that I couldn’t get an entry, and I couldn’t find anyone to hand me water/gels at any point on the course (the race doesn’t have drinks stations so you need a partner in crime), so in the end I scabbed off and just ran 1hr in the evening along the sand instead! Poor effort Freeman!

Our dear old James left us this weekend to visit some school-mates in Birmingham. I had a double whammy of relief this morning when he called: firstly because it meant he was safe, since Southern lambs like ourselves don’t always fare too well in anywhere north of London (the accents, the weather and the proliferation of ‘Morrisons’ make us nervous). Secondly, he told me that he was on the way back from the residence of a lady-friend he had made, which meant the end of 10 months of moaning and whinging about how he was a failure and embarrassment to the male gender (which I wholeheartedly agreed with I must say). Anyway, in celebration of this momentous (!) occasion, Sam, Drew and I have spent today preparing a ridiculously over-the-top, hopefully embarrassing and definitely public celebration of his new found virility and promiscuity (involving massive banners, about 100 balloons, party poppers, music and cake). Poor thing won’t know what’s going on, but we’ll just be enjoying an opportunity to tease him for being so chronically unlucky/rubbish in ‘love’.

Anyway, these banners aren’t going to hang themselves (by the side of the road where everyone will be able to see them), so I’ll be off.

Ah crikey, what have I been up to that would be in any way interesting to an occasional peruser of my blog...hmm...probably not much, dare I say it.

Over the last few days my main focus has been on getting myself properly up to speed with one of my Open Uni modules, for which I have a 3hr exam on Tuesday. About 2 months ago I was well in control of this, but unfortunately I don’t like to mix hangovers with academic endeavour (in fact I don’t like to mix hangovers with very much at all, except fried food, my duvet and the O.C. boxset), and as I have spent more days with hangovers than without, my preparation for this relatively important exam took somewhat of a hit, hence the cramming.

I have also been cracking on with bits and bobs of training. I had a meeting with Glenn last week, where I explained that right now I was enjoying doing a run of an unspecified duration (somewhere between 30 and 50mins I reckon) on most days of the week, but that he would struggle to get me doing any more at this stage. Fortunately, he said that he wouldn’t want me doing much different from that anyway for the next few weeks, so I’m just cracking on doing what I want to do, which is refreshing.

The house has been a bit hectic, with poor James at various stages of death-by-flu, Sam still decidedly homeless, sleeping wherever he can find a flat surface (our lounge floor, one of our beds etc), and a multitude of visitors just generally finding it novel that I’m not either training, eating, sleeping or passed out on the sofa all day (as is usual when I’m training hard).

And to be quite honest, that’s about it! You’ll have to bear with me while I do nothing of interest triathlon-wise...but it’s a necessary evil!

Well, alas, I wish I could let you all know that my excess fast-food jiggle-belly has been replaced since I last blogged with a ripped 8-pack torso of hunk-ish awesomeness. Unfortunately, my legs are just a little hairier and my jeans a little tighter, but who cares, it’s only October!

In fact, I have had a relatively eventful time of it, including *GASP* a bit of training, but more of that later. The main event has been, of course, the marriage of my main man Will Clarke to Clare. The wedding was affirmingly lovely, the drinking was predictably hard (we had drained the bar’s supplies of rum and vodka by 7pm), and the partying was sufficiently raucous to make the whole business of remembering how to tie a tie worthwhile. (NB. poor Will and Clare weren’t able to go on their honeymoon because Will had to go into surgery to remove a golf-ball sized abscess from an infected bike crash wound, and they’re going to be stuck in the UK for about a month until he’s fit to travel...if you want photos visit his website at www.will-clarke.com). Either side of this I spent an awesome weekend with my older sister Henny and her new hubby Jon, Jon’s sister Lara and her boyfriend Ali, and the best man Andy. We sampled some of the Cambridge nightlife as well as seeing a bit of the town. I actually had a very surreal experience revisiting Clare College on the Monday (which is the college of Cambridge Uni that I got my place for), where all the first years were having their Matriculation photos...it could have (or could) be me at some point!

Apart from that, being a non-athlete has remained high on my agenda. I have been continuing to sample the splendiferous cornucopia of people, locations and drinks with which the average young person of Eastbourne/Brighton finds solace of a Friday (or Saturday, Sunday, Monday etc etc) night. I have found my formula, which involves excessive cider and rum, embarrassing myself, eating a suspicious burger (not ALWAYS a euphemism) and then waking up the next morning saying ‘never again’. Rinse and repeat.

However, for the good of myself (and probably mankind), I have come to that inevitable stage where the novelty is wearing off, and I have realised that I would quite like to be able to walk to Tescos without having to take a tactical recovery stop on the bench outside the bookshop. I have actually run most days in the last fortnight, though the focal point of the runs has normally been rolling down (like sausage rolls, not forward rolls, I’m not THAT crazy) the Wish Tower hill with Sam, and then racing to the Bandstand. I’m telling myself that its doing wonders for my balance and proprioception, but we’re really doing it because it’s pretty funny trying to even attempted staying in a straight line when you’re that dizzy. I have also discovered the fun of doing ‘Night-Time Beach at Low-Tide Running’, which is pretty much what it sounds like, when the tide is so low that you can run on the flat sand for miles. The only pitfall (which is also what makes it fun) is that the wet shiny sand conceals the odd pool or sandbar, so an acceptance of occasionally falling headfirst into unforeseen salty water has to be made.

Anyway, aside from acting like an idiot (which most of this blog seems to have revealed), I have also been doing some boring stuff like revising for an imminent OU exam (Software Development with Java – wooo!) and having to disagree with various disagreeable suggestions from British Triathlon, but most of that stuff is tedious and all of it is unworthy of blogging at this stage, especially while there is still one iota of self-respect remaining that I have yet to destroy with a night of end-of-season-break flavoured frivolity.

Oh, and well done to everyone who raced Kona. Big respect!

Well as I told you last time, I am on my end of season break, so I’m not exactly the fine figure of fitness that I normally aspire to be. I have been munching through Big Macs like no-one’s business, putting away more than a few pints of golden nectar (though being such an occasional drinker for the rest of year means that I’m not exactly knocking them back like an old timer), all of which has resulted in me having managed to lay down a couple of kilos of jiggle on my belly that definitely weren’t there before.

At the moment one of best friends (Ed Hunt – the victim of ‘The Withered Willy’ sabotage that I mentioned a few of weeks ago) from my school-boy oik days is staying at my house. We have cranked nostalgia up to 150%, and are indulging in any and everything that we used to get up to back in the day. This has revolved around dusting off a prehistoric (!) PlayStation 2 to play some of the semi-pixellated classics from our ‘yoof’ (Tony Hawks Pro Skater!), listening to the kind of embarrassing tunes that we only admitted to each other that we liked (not least: Uptown Girl by Westlife). We topped this all off with some midnight Super Noodles, which is in remembrance of one night when we cooked some in my parents’ kitchen at some ungodly hour past our curfew, only to hear my Mum rattling around checking the cat was OK, at which point we scarpered, in fear of reprimand, and thinking that we had got away with it we were surprised to be called down by my Mum about 60 seconds later, at which point she pointed out that we had left the evidence of our crime in the form of two steaming plates of smelly noodles on the kitchen table. Oops.

Tomorrow we are planning on going to Brighton to watch the mighty mighty Seagulls play Oldham. To be honest, I have never watched them play before, but with a brand-spanking new stadium almost complete, I think it would be wise for me to watch them at least once at the dilapidated Withdean Stadium, so when they do transfer to the new stadium, I can pretend I’m one of the old faithful because I can say ‘I was there at the Withdean before all of this new stadium...I’ve been there since the beginning’ etc.

And apart from that, well, the next major event on my horizon is the wedding of Mr William of Clarke to his lovely Clare Adomeit. As long as he makes it back alive from his epic stag-do in Thailand (which I had to decline because I’m just not man enough for that level of partying!), I think it’s going to be an awesome day.

Righto, I haven’t eaten anything with a dangerously high salt content in about 60 minutes so I should really eat a plate of chips before I get the shivers.

Afternoon all,

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last blog, for which I should apologise. Last Friday was the day before the Grand Series final in Budapest, and unfortunately I couldn’t get on the internet at our hotel (and in deliberations as to whether I should race the following day) so decided it was best to leave blogging until I could get online. By the time I got home, I needed a couple of days to digest the previous few days before I spilled anything online. I try to be as honest as possible on this blog, but being honest on the World Wide Web for 700-odd words every week is something that should not always be taken lightly!

Anyway, so as my last blog entries have explained, training hasn’t been great of late, but in Spain I was pleased to put together a few high quality sessions, even though the reps were short. After a good day on Saturday where I ran and swam well, I had an easy day on Sunday and then woke up Monday feeling pretty grim and under the weather. I took the day off, and then did some easy stuff on Tuesday, though felt as if I had just smoked a packet of cigarettes when I did my run. We travelled on Wednesday, and by the time I had got to Budapest I was feeling a little better having taken the pills and potions proffered by the team doctor. Although my coach thought it may be best for me to not race, I wanted to at least have a crack. As it turned out, I had a great swim, feeling comfortable sitting in a break with 4 other guys (Gomez, Ali Brownlee and a couple others) but despite smashing the first 3-4km of the bike, we got caught by a fast moving group of chasers, and unfortunately by this time the last week had caught up with me, so I continued for a couple of weeks despite going backwards very quickly, and called it a day soon after. All in all it was nice to swim well, but I probably should have been less proud/stubborn and not actually started in the first place.

The couple of nights after the race were great fun spending some down time with the guys. On Saturday I had a night out with the boys, as the girls didn’t race ‘til Sunday. After a stumble back across the square on Sunday morning (the term “walk-of-shame” would be harsh!), I spent the rest of day with Ali and Dave McNamee exploring the restorative effects of a McDonalds combined with a day at the Roman baths. We met a few interesting people, including an angry Hungarian man who seemed to take offense at the fact that foreigners were allowed in the plunge pool (pretty random I know), and one absolute visionary who had taken goggles to the baths, with definite aspirations to bob around taking in the various...um...underwater sights! Good lad!

After the girls race, we had the long awaited end of season party on Sunday evening. I couldn’t possibly divulge some of the gossip that emanated from that night of nights (I think I would hunted down if I did), but suffice to say that 220 could have had a field day! After a rather delicate journey home on Monday, I have been enjoying the simple life since then, as I am on my end of season break, which has involved rather more fast food and beer than I care to admit to, but I’m not being too hard on myself as it’s been over 12 months since my last break from training. I am also going to use this time to have a bit of a think about the last couple of years and what I need to change, because despite consistently hitting the best sessions of my life, the magic just hasn’t been there in racing for a while.

Anyway, I’m off to Wales tomorrow for some meetings with British Triathlon, so I’d better go pack my bags.