Last month it was 5 years ago that we lost Tim.
For those of you who’ve followed this blog regularly, you’ll be aware of the story and if you need to refresh yourself you can read it here.
Tim’s son Louis was with his dad that day and he was 13. He stood up at the funeral and told the people gathered that he wanted to ride 4,900 miles on his bike that year because his dad was 49.
I cycled many of those miles with Louis, to cafe stops for big pieces of cake and the start of smiles again, to the ride that Christmas time where Louis fell off and we both rode an hour home on the worst bike ride I could possibly imagine as we both cried silently together.
From early on Louis had decided what he wanted to do and that was to take an atypical pathway to try to be a professional triathlete.
Not for him (the fame) or a national academy in Leeds or Loughborough, instead the quiet development through the love of the process to try to reach his ‘promise land’.
Part of the road to that promise land would and will be Ironman Nice, a race that Louis’s dad competed and completed some years ago.
And so, after 5 years of extraordinary commitment and development, of thousands of miles ridden on a bike and ran on the road and other thousands of miles in a pool. Of early mornings at 5.45am in my shed riding a Wattbike, to rides in the rain and the wind and snow, Louis (and Callum and Rosie and I) found himself in Aberfeldy in Perthshire.
By a very strange stroke of fate the British and Scottish national middle distance triathlon championships were listed for Aberfeldy, the home of two of my best friends Ross and Morag and so we travelled with Louis to that.
Middle distance triathlon is otherwise known as a half Ironman. For the uninitiated it’s 1,900metres in open water (1.2 miles), 90km (56 miles) on a bike and a half marathon (13 miles/ 21km).
You’re only allowed to compete in a half Ironman from age 18 in most places and Louis was 18 in February.
For that reason, Louis’s age group does not attract a huge amount of competitors because people under 20 simply cannot achieve a depth of fitness to be able to compete at middle distance triathlon in any meaningful way.
This was demonstrated during the race as we waited for Louis to come off the mountain on a bike (I was truly terrified and just wanted to see him safe).
We chatted to an obvious triathlete who was waiting for other people to come past, who turned out to be someone quite famous in the world of triathlon.
He had asked us who we were looking for and we told him it was Louis who was number 1 and he’d asked why Louis was number 1.
Rosie explained that it was because he was the youngest person in the race and when he found out that Louis was 18 he was obviously quite amazed at what we were expecting and when we were expecting him to pass.
This was Louis’s second ever middle distance triathlon having started at the Outlaw middle distance triathlon in June in Nottingham and running his way into 15th place overall before having to stop on the run (that was a race with 100 elite triathletes).
In Aberfeldy, Louis became the Scottish and British under 20 middle distance triathlon champion, winning his age group by 14 minutes.
To give you some sense of what that means, he beat the next closest person in his age group by approximately 2 1/2 miles in the run.
This is not the end of Louis’s story, it’s the beginning of his story.
He’s decided not to go to University but to concentrate on the process of trying to be a long-distance triathlete.
He’s decided to spend the next few years dedicating himself to that goal and to ‘see what happens’.
He has some lofty aspirations but knows and understands instinctively that nothing is for nothing and he knows, better than almost anyone, that unexpected fate is only ever just around the corner.
Not for Louis Dunne a standard, cookie cut, one size fits all pathway to try to achieve a goal.
Not for Louis Dunne, a lead role in a cage.
Louis is a shining example of the atypical pathway, one that was chosen by people like Richard Branson or Sebastian Coe or many of the olympians that we saw being successful in Tokyo.
If Louis doesn’t make it (whatever make it might mean) do you think he would be a better candidate for a job having dedicated his life for several years to achieve his goal, with a focus so razor sharp that could cut a diamond?
Or do you think he should have gone to university to do a degree that he didn’t really enjoy, surrounded by people who do things differently to what he enjoys for the sake of a piece of paper?
I know who I would appoint.
I spoke to a third year dental student the other day who wants to own his own dental practice and become a superstar.
I told him the story of Louis Dunne (and dare I say it Colin Campbell).
If you want to achieve something extraordinary, you’ll have to do things that other people haven’t done before.
‘Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?’ - Pink Floyd
Blog Post Number - 2842
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