Bikes and babies do not mix?

Bikes and babies do not mix. Such was the conclusion my husband arrived at Thursday morning when an almighty ‘bang’ sounded as he was attaching the bike rack to our family estate car, breaking the gas strut in the boot in the process which forced its way through the gap between boot and car and warped the metal out of place whilst doing so. We were just putting the final item (namely, the bike) onto the car ready to depart for the trip north to Derbyshire to take part in the ITU World Duathlon Championships qualifying race, to be held on the Sunday at Darley Moor Motor Racing Circuit. Now the boot was broken, in fact, wouldn’t even shut because it had a great hunking wad of metal protruding out of it, and we were faced with the only other possibility which was to transfer everything into my car. Unfortunately, my car is half the size and so that meant a strict ‘downsizing’ of kit had to follow. Size limitations have previously deterred us from taking my car away to a race weekend, yet here we now were attempting to do so with the added kit and kaboodle that a baby brings to the party (he might be small but the amount of equipment he needs is vast)! The broken car was left unlocked on the drive with the boot open (luckily it was a sunny day!) with a message on my FIL’s answerphone to kindly come and sort it out for us! It wasn’t a propitious start to the weekend but one that set the tone of things to come….

Finally underway with paired down kit (I mean, of course we can all wear the same clothes we were travelling in for 4 days, no probs; and why would Sylvester need toys when we he’s just an enamoured by household objects and I’m sure the cottage would have a wooden spoon and a saucepan he could merrily bash away at). We were on the road!

The cottage we rented was in a tiny hamlet called Onecote, in a valley in the middle of the Peak District National Park. It had no mobile phone signal. It also gave me bad vibes the minute I set foot in it. Not bad vibes as in spooky, because I don’t believe in any of that crap, but bad vibes as in it was cold (colder than outside!), dark and unwelcoming. I didn’t like it. Matt said I was being stupid but it just gave me the heebie-jeebies.

The next minor calamity came when we unpacked the car and I decided to take the bike out for a short spin to make sure it had arrived in one piece (my steed has previously always enjoyed luxury travel within the warm, plush interior of the car; Sylvester’s arrival has ousted her to face the elements on the exterior and her pretentious carbon-fibre-self was none too happy about it….) I got my track pump out to inflate the tyres to discover that the presta valve attachment had failed to make it as far as Derbyshire… No test ride for me that afternoon then but a trip to the nearest town (Leek) to source a new pump. Walking around the town, the buggy got it’s fifth puncture in 2 weeks… I deemed the odds of me having a mechanical issue during the race to have just intensified based on this continuing streak of bad luck. Two pump purchases later (yes, two… don’t ask!) and both bike and buggy were reinflated. Rekkie ride done – a blustery affair on the ridge up above the valley we were staying – on the Friday and Congleton parkrun done on the Saturday at full half-pace with Sylvester in the running buggy (plus a sixth buggy puncture on the cool down lap!) and my legs felt good to go for the next day. A good night’s sleep was all I now needed….

Reading to rock and roll at Congleton parkrun.

Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen. Now, Sylvester’s sleep is far from the greatest – indeed, it’s a whole other blog post in itself – but we’ll just leave it as that for today. But I was now used to 3, 4, 5 wake ups each night and had been surviving and training just fine on that. Too bad then that the minor snivel he had when we came away had now turned into a full blown chesty cough and streaming cold. At 7pm when we tried to get him down he was inconsolable and running a high temperature. We took him to the MIU in Leek before it shut at 8pm to get it checked. Ok, just a cold said the nurse. Lots of calpol (a baby’s equivalent to crack; they can’t get enough of its sweet strawberry goodness!), lots of cuddles, lots of fluids. 3 breastfeeds, a life time of cuddles, as many lullabys as I could think of and ten Hail Marys later and he was still screaming like a banshee and refusing to go down in the crib and his temp was still high, despite the calpol. Instinct told me that this was more than a cold. Too bad we had no mobile phone signal and were stuck in the middle of bloody nowhere with nothing more than calpol and a thermometer to deal with the escalating crisis. By 3am, when he was still screaming, none of us had slept and with me now beside myself with worry, we all got in the car and drove to Stoke Hospital. We eventually got out at 7:30am with a diagnosis of a severe ear infection in both ears, some antibiotics and painkillers… (I think they were meant for Sylvester, but in my sleep deprived state they looked quite appealing to me too at this point…)

Sat in a cramped, overcrowded paediatric A&E waiting room with a screaming, poorly baby at 4am, it was looking highly doubtful that I would be racing later that morning. Still sat there at 5am, there was no way I would be racing. When we finally got out we both decided that we wanted to head home that day so we could get our boy back home to his familiar environment that night. We could either go back to the cottage, pack and drive straight home, or go back to the cottage, pack and just about make the start of the race – which would take me about an hour to complete – then head home after and try to salvage something from an otherwise naff weekend. I hadn’t slept, I hadn’t had the breakfast of free-range eggs from the village farm on fresh sourdough toast that I had planned to have to set me up for the later race start time… indeed, I hadn’t had breakfast at all. But I had energy bars, I had coffee, I had a bucket load of adrenaline coursing through me and a can-do attitude, so why the hell not give it a go? I like a challenge…

Before anyone berates me for putting my racing ambitions over my baby’s health, that was absolutely not the case. What Sylvester needed at this point was sleep, and as ear infections hurt more when a baby lies down (hence the screaming each time I tired to put him in the cot), the best place for him to sleep was either in his buggy, being pushed around by Matt whilst I raced, or in the car seat driving home, so that’s what we did.

So, as this has historically been a blog about my sporting exploits, I guess the actual race finally deserves a bit of coverage. It was the last event of three offering a qualification opportunity for a place on the GB team for the 2020 world duathlon championships (the other two races were in spring, when I had just given birth, so basically, this was my only chance). I knew that I am not fully back to pre-pregnancy fitness. The bike isn’t far off, but the run is still about a minute down over 5k on where I would usually be at a qualifying event. (I have only just broken 20 mins again, where I would normally be doing around 19 for the first run of a duathlon). The bike course, however, was not ideal for me, whether fit or not. I am a climber with a high power to weight ratio, and I love to get out the saddle and punch my way up inclines; this course was mildly undulating at best, on multiple laps of a motor racing circuit, so it suited the stronger, more powerful girls on TT bikes. Weirdly, this qualifier was draft-illegal, even though the champs will be draft-legal… not sure of the logic in that. I decided not to race my TT bike as a) I haven’t ridden it since February 2018, and b) I won’t be able to race it at the actual championships (not allowed TT bikes or aero-bars in draft legal racing), so I didn’t see the point in racing it here.

The start line - an all ladies wave made for a more exciting race.

There were a few familiar names and faces on the start list. One girl who I have had some great battles with at three previous races was there. Pre-baby, we were very evenly matched. Here at Darley, she went on to both win our age category (F35-39) and win the ladies race outright… I finished three minutes behind as 10^th lady overall and 2^nd to her in our age group. My run was one minute slower (I did a 19:39, so a post-pregnancy 5k best on no sleep – that’s at least encouraging!) and a 32:30 split for the 20k bike. That gives me a rough idea of where I am at fitness wise: a minute to find on the run, the bike wasn’t my ideal course, so hard to judge that one, but my time was a minute down on the faster ladies, and my second run was well up there, so it’s coming together. Given the previous night’s stresses and its inevitable toll on my body, and being 7 months post-partum, I can only be pleased with a top 10 performance. Got a whole year now to get fit! One big positive, my second run off the bike was the exact same pace (6:26m/m) as my first run on “fresh” legs, and this despite having done absolutely no brick sessions. I know I am a bit of a metronome when I run and this confirms it. I know, as an athlete and as a coach, that brick sessions should be the bread and butter of a duathlete’s race build phase, but if I don’t have the time to do them given my hectic Mummy schedule, I’m not going to worry.

The 20k bike course was 8 laps of a motor racing circuit. Mainly flat, a couple of drag, didn't really suit me but a 32:30 (21mph av) split wasn't too shabby.

Finish line feels: happy to get the job done and get back to my poorly boy and get him home!

Next up? Possibly the local Honiton Triathlon on October 5^th (it got deferred from July after gypsies invaded the transition area the night before the race!), but the next big goal is Bedford Sprint Duathlon on October 13^th, which is the qualifier for the 2020 European Champs. So if the weather looks at all grim on the 5^th, I won’t be risking racing Honiton. Let’s just hope that our trip to Bedford is less eventful. Matt has already calculated the most direct route to Bedford Hospital from our hotel, as two out of the four times we have been away with Sylvester, he has ended up in hospital! Thanks as always to Matt, super-supporter, husband and Dad extraordinaire. Luckily little S. slept through the entire race and so Matt was able to park up him up track side, shout encouragement at me, and enjoy a well-deserved bacon butty from the catering van!

Oh, forgot the important bit - needed top 4 in age group to secure automatic qualification for the world champs and comfortably did that with 2nd, so Amsterdam 2020 here we come!!

With my two babies. Bikes and babies mix very well in my opinion. Husband: you're wrong!