I'm not generally superstitious, I typically don't carry a rabbit's foot in my pocket and I don't mind walking under the ladder but sometimes the symbols add up, or sometimes they tell you a story, or sometimes they remind you of a narrative you'd forgotten or that you were trying to find from earlier or from long ago.
And so today, I had an appointment with a new physiotherapist, Mike Whitehead, in Radcliffe, near where I live. I've known of Mike for many years, and I've known lots of people who have gone to Mike, like Simon, my former coach, and Louis Dunne, and lots of guys like that.
He was a triathlete, I don't think he still is, but he was, and he's in good shape for his age, a little bit younger than me.
I met him for the first time at 8 a.m., and we got on like a house on fire.
The purpose of meeting Mike was not to make me ‘better’ after my knee surgery; it was to start a project to see what was possible with no definitive endpoint. I don't know where it goes, I'm not sure whether it goes anywhere, but I'd like to try and give myself the best chance, just to see if I can have a moonshot, whatever that moonshot is.
The funny thing is, I got chatting to Mike. I liked him instantly, we got on well, it was clear that this would work, whatever this thing was. He asked me about the long-distance triathlon that I mentioned in my email before I came, and I told him I had done the Outlaw 10 years ago; it turned out that he had, too.
We danced around the subjects for a little while before we were able to ask each other how well we did. He beat me by 10 minutes, so I was 11:09, and he was 10:59 (I would never get under 11 hours). However, 10 years ago, almost exactly to the day, we'd raced in the same race and finished 10 minutes apart over an almost 12-hour effort.
It felt like that was quite symbolic.
I left Mike in good shape, excited about what might come next, and then I went to Bingham Leisure Centre, which has recently been completely redeveloped. I was doing my physio, doing my strength exercises, trying to get stronger so I might be able to run again. I looked out the window as I sat on the machine, and I saw the swimming pool at Bingham; then I had a huge flashback.
Over 20 years ago, I took my daughter to that pool for her first swimming lesson. Alison and I were both there, Grace hated it, and it was hilarious. At the end of the traumatic session that Grace didn't like, Alison suggested I try to do a few lengths in the pool, I hadn't swum for years since I was a boy. It was 22 years ago, I was 31 and so I managed six lengths and nearly had a heart attack - 6 whole lengths of a 25 metre pool.
From that point onwards, I would start swimming, and it would culminate in 3.8 kilometres in the water, the day I finished 10 minutes behind Mike in the outdoor triathlon.
3.8 kilometres in 75 minutes, as opposed to 6 lengths that day in about 20 minutes and nearly a heart attack.
It was all outlaw that morning, Mike, the pool, the thoughts, the moonshot.
Never in a million years?
Blog Post Number - 4234