I wasn’t one of those kids whose parents pushed me into sports.
At primary school I played netball and was GS because back then I was tall and could pop the ball into the net over people’s heads. I will also never forget my last sports day at primary school. I had always been about the 3rd fastest runner but on my last sports day I won the running race (a sprint across the field). That was my first feeling of winning and I loved it. I still had the 1st place sticker (it was low budget, we got stickers not medals) on my bedroom door right until we moved house.
Then I went from being a big fish in a small pond to secondary school. At athletics trials I was now up against others who had been on the local athletics team since they could walk. I didn’t even make the relay team. Disappointed but not ready to give up, I joined the local athletics team – St Albans AC.
I got my first experience of properly training. I was doing circuits training and 3 sessions a week on the track. I loved it and quickly started seeing the progression. I raced indoors and outdoors. And the next year I made the school team for both the relay and the 300m. But that wasn’t enough, I wanted to compete in county and regional champs. I wanted to win races.
I remember once in year 8, a friend made a comment about my thighs being fat. I think if I wasn’t training at the time, I would have taken it really personally and maybe even fallen into restrictive eating and body image problems (please everyone think about the impact of your throw away comments). But luckily I was thought, no, not fat, strong and powerful and fast. And I think this is why it’s so important to try to keep adolescent girls (and boys, they can develop eating disorders too) in sport.
I did athletics up until the start of year 12. By this point my performance had plateaued, I wasn’t enjoying racing as I was always putting loads of pressure on myself, getting really nervous and not getting the results I wanted, and school was getting super stressful with doing 5 AS levels and trying to get into medical school.
So for the next 3 years I dabbled with the gym, swimming and going jogging. Then I signed up for the London Triathlon for charity in my gap yah. I didn’t train properly, bought the cheapest road bike I could get and struggled massively with the cycling (since I’d never really cycled properly) and the run (I wasn’t used to running more than 400m). But I did it and raised lots of money and felt that triathlon finish line thrill for the first time.
What I did love about the London Triathlon and the limited training I did for it was the open water swimming. For those of you who haven’t tried it, I couldn’t recommend it enough – the freedom, the tranquil quiet and the fresh air makes it such a unique experience and 50x better than swimming in the pool.
So then I started uni. I wanted to carry on open water swimming. I went over to the swimming club and asked but they said they didn’t do any and recommended the triathlon club. I was apprehensive as I didn’t particularly enjoy my cycling and running experiences in London and I thought the club would be full of really good serious triathletes. But they were so friendly and encouraging so I signed up for their taster aquathlon. I started off as a very social member, going to more socials in the first term than training sessions (I was a fresher cut me some slack). I then got more into it, and despite being the last up the hills on the steady rides and being at the back during running intervals, I started really enjoying it. And honestly, I think triathlon saved me from a slippery slope of alcohol addiction – in first term I drank a lot. Everyone did but I have a very addictive personality so I think I’m lucky I discovered triathlon when I did. I then did the BUCS sprint triathlon and loved it and immediately signed up for the standard distance having never even ran 10k! But I did it.
I then started second year. Then I signed up for a half Ironman at the end of the year as a challenge to aim for. I remember doing a 90km cycle towards the start of the year and thinking what the hell have I done. But despite injuries (and personal choice) meaning I did a less than ideal amount of run training I got round. I remember practically crawling around the run course thinking “never again” and “how the hell do people do double this”.
Then I had the opportunity to join the university track cycling team and I jumped at it. By this point I had tried track cycling a couple of times at the velodrome at Derby and absolutely loved it. The adrenaline you get from riding fast at a 42 degrees angle is indescribable. And I’d been super inspired by the likes of Laura Kenny and Chris Hoy at the olympics. So I started a training programme. It was then that my gradual cycling improvements across the last 2 years suddenly became exponential. In just 2 weeks I was riding at speeds I never had before. I was training every day something, even in my half Ironman training, I had never done before. I loved seeing the sessions go green on training peaks and it was such a great escape from the mundane lab work I was doing at uni at the time. I found the track terrifying but exhilarating and felt butterflies before every session.
Again, I didn’t make the team pursuit team. I did the 500m and was relatively happy with my performance but I was hungry for more.
So I carried on with the training. I joined the Beeston Cycling Club ladies team and started racing. At this point I was having a really tough time with placement, I wasn’t enjoying it at all and was questioning if I really wanted to be a doctor. I felt alone as I felt like everyone else was enjoying it and would judge me. Plus, I’d just had a break up. Honestly, I was slipping into the dark lonely depths of depression, not for the first or last time in my life. So cycling helped me, after a bad day I would get out on my bike for 2 hours in the cold and dark and it would make me feel like a new person, someone in control, someone happy, someone working towards a goal. As I started racing and getting results I started to feel better in myself. I was loving the racing and training and was surrounded by supportive, like-minded people.
BUCS the next time around I made the team, but we had a disaster involving a few broken bones (none mine) and ended up 4th. I was gutted. So we decided to do National Track Champs to show what we could really do. We were lucky enough to get sponsorship from Beeston to do it. So we kept training. At this point I’d been training non-stop for a year and a half. Over Christmas instead of relaxing I was getting up early to train in the cold or sweat on the turbo, I was working to earn money then coming home and desperately trying to catch up on uni work (turns out a summer of racing alongside the most work intensive placement means you will end up behind). Then, 2 weeks before Nationals, I crashed. I took off a lot of a skin but wasn’t badly hurt. But the mental block was real. I felt awful, I just couldn’t seem to be able to follow a wheel or ride as aggressively as before. I felt like I was letting everyone down. In the end we had a bad qualifier ride but a good final and ended up 9th. Job done. And it was pretty cool to meet Jason Kenny and watch the “real cyclists” race.
I took a week off. Then I started training for road season. At this point I was finding 4th year very stressful and starting to panic about exams. But I wanted to do it all, I still wanted to be able to race at a high level and retain my category 2 license. But fitting in training and revision was near impossible. I was getting up at 6 every morning and staying up late. I was putting pressure on myself to do every training session. Even when I ended up crying on the turbo because I literally didn’t have anything left I carried on. And my performance was suffering. I wasn’t hitting the numbers I was hitting the year before and I wasn’t keeping up. This all contributed to my stress and self-doubt.
Then exams hit. Training did actually help a bit. I remember not doing any training for a few days then going out on my bike one morning and how amazed I was at just how much better and calmer I felt. I did a couple of races and they were amazing for stress relief and I even slipped into a couple of top 10s and podium placings.
I failed my exams, I was in a dark pit of depression and anxiety and I stopped the training plan. But I kept exercising and I honestly think sunny bike rides and open water swims with friends really helped with my recovery.
Then it was decision time. Was I ready to come back to training and give BUCS another go? I was torn, in a way cycling training and racing had really contributed to my problems, but I also saw an opportunity, I was given another year, the team was looking strong. We had a real chance to get that medal. I decided to do it. But this time I had a totally different outlook, if I was tired and had a hard day I wouldn’t train. If I didn’t have time to do 2 hours training, I’d do one, I even did a few duathlons and runs to keep up variety. And we did it.
So what now? I’ve had a couple of months “off”. I haven’t had a structured training plan and have been doing what I want when I want. I did RED January and enjoyed climbing, running, cycling, strength training, swimming etc. I fell back in love with exercise.
But that said, I still haven’t got the perfect, healthy, balanced relationship just yet. This week I’ve been ill with tonsillitis and I think a lot of that is down to early morning swimming and running in the cold without sleeping or recovering enough.
Life is a learning curve. Exercise is amazing – it gives you a break from the World, a chance to meet amazing inspiring people, a way to achieve extraordinary things and a way to feel good about yourself and your body. But it can become an obsession, overtraining can be really detrimental to your physical and mental health and sometimes it can do more harm than good.
Just tri'ing my best 