Paul May

Okay, a few fundraising notices. Please please please try to get along to my fundraising quiz in Break for the Border on the 9th of August. It’ll be a good laugh and will hopefully raise a lot of money for the hospital.

Secondly, if you’re planning on doing grocery shopping this weekend, please come along to Clearwater Tesco in Finglas on Sunday. The whole triathlon team will be bag packing all day to raise funds for the hospital.

One month to go!

Dublin swelters in much welcome, and probably short-lived spell of hot weather. On Friday I had a night out with work, and with the crazy, naive optimism that good weather brings, we decided to swim in the sea at 9am on Saturday morning. I struggled to Seapoint for 9, but the tide was way way out (something you’d think we’d have checked) so we moved on to the 40 foot, where there was plenty of water - and also plenty of jellyfish.

As we swam there were little white jellyfish, big white jellyfish - glowing, moving quietly in the newly warmed water. Ed thought he saw a seal, and then he was sure he saw a seal - because he was swimming around our legs, bumping Ed’s legs (according to one of the locals “they like the wetsuits” [great]). The seal was huge and graceful, and kindly decided not to bite lumps out of us. It was a good morning of swimming - not for distance, but just for the fact that we were in pretty deep water and I got to wipe the slate clean after Athlone.

The rest of the weekend was similarly warm, so I did some cycling from point A to B, but no super long cycles. (Congratulations to Ed who is now the proud owner of a shiny new Trek 1000 bike). This morning I swam at the ungodly hour of 6am, but it felt great and I did 1200m; I have my usual Piranha swim tomorrow. I also need a haircut.

DNF. The three most terrifying letters in any athlete’s alphabet. Did not finish. If finishing in a good time is the goal of the elite athlete, finishing at all is the goal of the beginner like me.

Yesterday, out of my depth in the murky waters of the Shannon I panicked. 100 metres into the swim my brain got the better of me and I just stopped. I couldn’t breathe, and felt totally disoriented as the other competitors swam around me down the river. I waved at a marshall in a canoe who paddled over to me. I put my hand up on the hull and when I had caught my breath, I swam to the shore and handed in my chip; ending my race.

I’m philosophical about it today, but yesterday I was gutted - walking back to transition to pick up my gear as the others (many of whom were doing their first triathlon and were far more advanced in years than me) streamed out of the water onto their bikes and away down the road.

Today I’m disappointed in myself, but in a way yesterday just points me in a new direction and gives me a bit of a reality check. If I’m going to be ready to swim *twice* what I failed to swim yesterday then I have lot of work to do. I need to get used to the suit, to swimming out of my depth for long periods, and I need to stay positive when the nerves do kick in (as they will). Swimming in the pool is great, but bears little resemblance to open-water swimming - so as I train in the pool i need to be working on getting used to open water.

Well, there you go - a setback but a not the end of the world. Back to swimming on Tuesday, and hopefully (definitely) a sea swim some evening during the week. Just keep going, and put yesterday down to a bad day. Not much else I can do.

With 24 hours notice I’ve been given a spot in Triathlone which is taking place *tomorrow*!!! It’s a 750m swim, 20k cycle, 5k run in Athlone (in case you hadn’t guessed). I’m going to give it a go - see how I get on. This may be my last chance to do a sprint before Chicago, so I should really take it.

Bloody hell though, cutting it fine!

We’re on the downhill slope to Chicago now, with a little under two months to go until the race. I’ll be ramping up my training from this week, with one more sprint triathlon in a few weeks to prepare for.

While I’ll still be writing about training, the focus of the website will move towards encouraging you to sponsor me for the triathlon. The option of sponsoring me through PayPal is quick and easy, all you need is a credit card. I’ll have a dedicated bank account set up by the end of this week, which you can lodge money into. There’ll also be some fundraising events taking place between now and the end of August.

So, a lot to do! Thanks for all the support to date.

…if all camp sites in Germany have olympic size swimming pools. This one does anyway (and a full size astro pitch). We were out on the town until about 6 so I only did a warm up to clear the head this morning; 600m at a snail’s pace. Maybe tomorrow I’ll do a full session, but that’ll depend on the post-match atmosphere in town later. Olé Olé from Berlin.