swimming – The Countryman's Daughter

All you have to do is tri

I hi-fived my loved ones who were waiting by the finish line. Their support got me to the end.

Seeing my loved ones with home-made signs cheering me from the sidelines kept me going

Do you remember that way back in January I announced that in a moment of madness, I had applied to take part in a triathlon? I wrote: “For those not familiar with this ridiculous athletic challenge, a triathlon is three sporting disciplines performed back-to-back in this order: Swim, cycle, run. There are various distances and mine is a 400-metre swim, followed by a 20-kilometre bike ride and a five-kilometre run.” I’d had this latent desire to do a triathlon for many years which I can’t really explain, and neither can I explain why I waited until I was old and creaky to actually get round to giving it a go.

I can now reveal that I have done it! It was held at York Sport Village with around 400 competitors from all over the country. I completed it in under two hours without sinking, falling off my bike or tripping over. My legs and knees are still reminding me of it every minute of every day but I have to admit, the sense of achievement feels pretty damn good. This was my first attempt at doing anything like this, so I took it nice and steady, my goal being to preserve energy for the final run to ensure I actually made it to the end without collapsing in exhaustion.

I was not tempted to chase other people who sailed by me in the pool, whizzed past on fancy racing bikes, or glided effortlessly by on the run. The competitor in me resisted the urge to try and go a bit faster or to push harder, because the fear of failing after I had told so many people I was going to do it was greater than the fear of being overtaken by speedier participants.

As for the training that I had pledged to do at the start of the year, well, it was patchy at best, and I would not recommend that anyone follow my example when preparing for an athletic endeavour. I bought my bike three weeks before the race from a second-hand shop for £85 and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have been in the pool since the start of the year. As for running, I did a few long walks and threw in a bit of running now and then. I’m not sure the Brownlee brothers would be impressed with my preparation.

That’s not to say I didn’t do any physical activity. I play racquet sports regularly, and relied on the fitness I gain from that to see me through. One thing that helped was the fact that I managed to shed a few pounds (to get into that bridesmaid’s dress for the July wedding that I mentioned in my January column). It meant there was a bit less of me to drag around the course.

I was very nervous before the event though, nervous of the unfamiliarity of it all, of being surrounded by people who had done proper training and preparation, people looking like they knew what they were in for, people who seemed ready and confident. But it was a lovely and supportive atmosphere, and as I trotted around the route, those who overtook me offered words of encouragement to keep going.

The best thing was having my friends and family on the sidelines. On every lap, I could see my little posse of loved ones holding huge signs with my name on that I could easily spot. Although they were all cheering, the voice I could hear most was my friend Hayley (the bride from said wedding) shouting words of encouragement. I can’t tell you how much I looked forward to seeing and hearing them on every lap, knowing that every time I spotted them I was another step closer to the finish.

What I didn’t expect was the surge of emotion on nearing the end. My friend Stefan (who has done six of these so far!) had completed the event earlier in the day and we were both taking part in memory of our mutual friend Andy Wilkinson who passed away from pancreatic cancer a few years ago. He had been a proper triathlete, and I hope he’d be proud that I kept going and made it over the finish line.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 5th Sept and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 3rd Sept 2025

New year new shoe

I bought new trainers to start preparing for my triathlon

It is the start of a new year and traditionally the time when we make plans and set resolutions, promising ourselves that we are going to get fit, lose weight, see the world, become a hermit or whatever.

For as far back as I can remember, whenever I have made a New Year’s resolution, it has always been the same – to lose weight. Some years I don’t achieve it, some years I do. The times when I am successful are when I have a factor looming that motivates me enough to not reach for second helpings at dinner. It does not happen very often though, because I am not very good at giving up things I enjoy thanks to my mantra: “What is the point of sacrificing things you enjoy when you might get hit by a bus tomorrow?”

Unfortunately, the things I enjoy most involve calories, and at my age calories are far easier to consume than they are to get rid of. We all know that most things in moderation are fine, but I am finding the older I get, the stingier ‘moderation’ becomes. My appetite is as healthy now as it was when I was a slim young thing, but really, I should be eating smaller portions. The problem is, when a plate of really nice grub is in front of me, I will eat the lot. Stopping when I’m full is not a concept my brain understands; it only tells me that once I am lying in a food coma on the sofa.

By far the most successful way I can enjoy delicious treats without piling on the pounds is to do more exercise (I can hear your collective yawn from here). It has worked for me before, and it is a simple equation: if you burn more calories than you consume, you lose weight. If I want a second helping of mashed potato, I can have it as long as I have done enough exercise that day.

For the past year, that simply has not happened because I have been decidedly unmotivated to do much exercise at all and, as I said earlier, I need something to aim towards to be successful. Thankfully, this year, I have that motivating factor; a close friend of mine is getting married in the summer and has asked me to be a bridesmaid. It is lovely to be asked at my age, but at the same time, a bit scary. The last time I was a bridesmaid was about 30 years and two stone ago.

Because I have until the summer to achieve physical perfection, unless I have something else to propel me into immediate action, I am likely to keep putting off the start of my efforts until it is way too late.

So that is why, ladies and gentlemen, I have entered a triathlon. Yes, really. A triathlon.

For those not familiar with this ridiculous athletic challenge, a triathlon is three sporting disciplines performed back-to-back in this order: Swim, cycle, run. There are various distances and mine is a 400-metre swim, followed by a 20-kilometre bike ride and a five-kilometre run. I’m an OK swimmer, so I know I can do that bit. I quite enjoy cycling too, when there are no hills, and the triathlon route is fairly flat, so I hope I will be fine with that bit too. The kicker is the run. I HATE running, and the fact that they chuck it in at the end might very well be the end of me. I have heard seasoned marathon runners say that even they struggle with the run because it comes after the swimming and cycling.

It is that knowledge, that absolute terror of the run, that will give me the motivation to start my training next week. I have even bought new running shoes in readiness.

A temporary lapse in sanity is the only explanation I have as to why I pressed the button to submit my entry form and therefore I keep telling people that I am doing a triathlon, knowing that the more people that know, the more pressure I will feel to follow it through.

And now, thanks to this column, thousands more of you know so there is absolutely no way I can back out.

Wish me luck!

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This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 3rd Jan and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 1st Jan 2025

Boobs, bottoms and buns

3F16221B-B186-4E27-B08B-3B684D553258 — When I was at school, I could eat whatever I liked without putting on a pound

This week should be a good one for me, as it is my birthday. I am now at that age (actually, I’ve been at ‘that’ age for longer than I care to remember) where celebrating another passing year is a mixed blessing.

On the one hand, it is a good excuse to make my boys do as many chores as possible on the day itself while I sit back, relax, and indulge in various unhealthy treats that I usually deny myself.

But there’s no getting away from the fact that I am another year older, another year stiffer and another year wrinklier. I do try to keep myself fit, and to eat fairly healthily, but there are those days when I just cannot be bothered with all of that, and accept that with those extra few chips on my plate will come an extra few inches on the hips. I’m not sure when I went from being able to eat whatever I liked without adding a pound, to simply sniffing a piece of cake and putting on half a stone.

The thing is, as long as I work hard in the swimming pool I can keep it off. I treat my time in the pool like others treat a gym workout, and swim non-stop at a fast pace for between 45 minutes and an hour. It’s hard work, and I imagine those around me watch in awe as I glide elegantly up and down. I’m sure they don’t really see a slightly dumpy and knackered middle-aged woman struggling through the lengths. Despite the effort, I do feel fantastic afterwards, and strut out of the leisure centre feeling like an Olympic athlete.

What disappoints me though, is that all that work doesn’t use up as many calories as you might think. An hour of front crawl uses up far fewer calories than a Big Mac meal or a 200g bar of milk chocolate, both of which are over 1000 calories a pop. If I want to continue to enjoy the nice treats in life into old age, then it seems I will need to be swimming a marathon every week.

It never used to be like that. In my school days, I could consume crisps, sweets and chips to my heart’s content. I went to a weekly boarding school, and we would have tea at 4pm which was usually cakes of some kind. My favourite was the iced sticky finger bun, and sometimes there were a few left over. On those days, I would always go in for seconds, or thirds, and I remember one day I even had fourths! And yet, I never put on any weight.

As with many things, that began to change with age, yet the bad eating habits of my youth did not, and so the pounds gradually crept on. Once I was a couple of stone heavier, I began to realise that I had to eat less and exercise more if I wanted to retain my shape, and that has been my battle ever since. I could blame my three pregnancies, but looking around, there are plenty of slender woman who have three or more children, so it’s not really a valid argument.

Part of me likes to blame my gap year for the start of the rot. I went to live in Greece, having been inspired by my older sister Tricia. When she was 18, she had gone to live in Italy, and one of the things I noticed when she came back was that, having left a skinny girl, she came back with the body of a woman. By that, I mean, she had developed a pair of proper boobs. She put it down to the fact that Italians used lots of olive oil in their cooking.

I wasn’t very blessed in that department, and over the years had been teased by boys for being flat chested. So when it was my turn to go abroad to Greece, I remembered what Tricia had said, and was delighted to discover that the Greeks used copious amounts of olive oil in their cooking too. So, with the goal of growing my boobs, I indulged very enthusiastically in whatever food was put in front of me.

Needless to say, at the end of the year, rather than gain an ample bosom, all I’d gained was an ample bottom.

Read more at countrymansdaughter.com. Follow me on Twitter @countrymansdaug

This column appeared in the Darlington and Stockton Times on 27th and Ryedale Gazette and Herald on 25th May 2022.

Weight to go!

D4CBDC39-648C-45C4-BC7D-43C453D93E30 — I used to swim almost every day as a child which bleached my hair from silky dark brown to blonde straw

I may have mentioned before that I am a keen tennis fan and play at a couple of clubs. Unfortunately I injured myself in May and have not been able to get back on court for a long time.

As it was my main form of exercise, I did pile on the pounds somewhat, and I resorted to wearing looser and looser clothes in a vain attempt to disguise it. By September, I felt far too big and with no sign that I’d be back on court any time soon, I decided that it was time to do something about it.

When I was in primary school, I absolutely loved swimming and was pretty good at it too. We were fortunate that in 1975, the nearby private school installed a brand new indoor pool which, for a small fee, the locals were able to use.

I was a proper water baby, and in the summer holidays would go swimming nearly every day and, thanks to the amount of time it spent submerged in chlorinated water, my straight, shiny dark brown hair transformed into a blonde nest of dry straw.

As I grew older, I began to realise that larking about in the swimming pool was deeply uncool, and by the age of 15 I discovered there were far more interesting things to do with my spare time, such as lounge about looking trendy in stripey leg warmers and pastel mohair jumpers while listening to Duran Duran.

For the next four decades I avoided swimming as a form of exercise due to the fact that the thought of ploughing up and down the pool over and over again, grinding out monotonous length after length, just didn’t appeal. At heart, I still wanted to be running round the edge and dive bombing my mates but apparently it wasn’t seemly for middle-aged women to be doing that.

What drew me back to it was noticing how my body protests for days after doing other forms of vigorous exercise. I figured that the non-impact swimming might be a good idea after all, despite the anticipated tedium of doing it.

Well, let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, heading back to the pool has been a revelation. I swim up and down for about an hour at a time, and early in the morning so that it doesn’t impact on the rest of my working day. And guess what? I absolutely love it! I come out of the water feeling completely refreshed and ready to face the day ahead. Instead of finding it boring, it’s like a form of meditation, where I switch off from the noisy thoughts cluttering my mind and focus on the sound of the bubbles around my ears and the sensation of the water enveloping me.

Another bonus is that my body is changing shape. I have had to tighten my belt from the first notch to the last, and clothes that were clinging and tight now hang fairly loose. Yet I have not changed my diet in any way. I can’t tell you how liberating it is to be able to to look at my wardrobe and not feel depressed. To find a form of exercise that I enjoy and that sheds the weight without making sacrifices in the kitchen is a dream come true! I can pull clothes out of the wardrobe and know they are going to look OK. It is quite literally life-changing.

On the subject of clothing, in his column from 28^th November 1981, Dad mentions some customs that used to be associated with what we wear. If you were putting on a new garment for the first time, you were meant to make a wish as you did so, and if it had a pocket then it was common to place a coin inside for good fortune.

When children had new clothes, their friends would give them a pinch on the arm and chant, “Nip for new, nip for new.” They might also sing “Health to wear it, strength to tear it, and money to buy another.”

If my weight loss continues, then I shall have to make a fair few wishes as I restock my wardrobe with new clothes. But every wish will be the same – that I don’t go and put it all back on again!

Read more at countrymansdaughter.com. Follow me on Twitter @countrymansdaug

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on 26th and the Gazette & Herald on 24th November 2021