Life Without Limits, A

by Wellington, Chrissie

  It was only when I arrived at the airport in Hawaii that I began to get an inkling of what he meant by the hype. It was a complete circus. There are not too many places to train, so you end up going up and down the same roads. Everywhere you turn there are people training. Everybody’s looking at everybody else – it’s like a catwalk show.

  The media are out in force, conducting interviews with all the well-known pros. People descend on the huge sponsor expo, buying their last-minute pieces of equipment, or lining up under the midday sun to get an autograph from ironman champions. And those that want to relax go to the nearby coffee shops watching others go past and gossiping about who has raced where, who is fast, slow, injured or on form and predicting the top ten finishers. I know I wouldn’t have featured in any of their conversations.

  It was a relief to be able to slip under the radar. Nobody knew who I was. I’d struggled even to find some accommodation. By the time we knew I was going to race, everywhere was booked. I managed to find a room – actually, it was a bed within a room – in a little apartment that I shared with two guys I’d never met before, Scott Neyedli, a British pro, and Eneko Elosegui, a Spanish age-grouper. It turned out the apartment was five miles out of Kona, halfway up the mountain, reached via an incline with a 20 per cent gradient. That meant a torturous bike ride just to get home after each session. I remember lugging my shopping up the hill on my bike, wondering if this was how everyone else was preparing.

  Then there was the apartment itself. It had two bedrooms. Scott took the main one, since he’d rented the house, and Eneko and I shared the other. It had a desk, a fan and two single beds, each of which sagged in the middle like a trampoline. The kitchen was outside, under an awning. Next door there lived a couple with a barking dog, a screaming baby and a propensity to scream at each other just as much. It was all decidedly suboptimal.

  As were my levels of organisation. I had no kit, other than the second-hand shorts Rebecca had lent me for Korea (still got them). So I bought a race suit and shoes that week. How did I make my choice? Simple. Whatever was cheapest. I couldn’t believe some of the prices for a top. I ironed on the team logos. If only I’d had any sponsors of my own to advertise. Then one of my pedals broke. I was so tight, I fixed them with industrial glue.

  On the Monday before the big day, Eneko and I were out on our bikes and we bumped into Belinda, Hillary and Rebecca. Team-mates we may have been, but we’d had no contact that week. I was sure they didn’t want to spend time with me, and anyway, I had been told to stay away from everything and everyone and to concentrate on the race. Eneko and I were on a four-hour bike ride, and it was at the turnaround, after two hours, that we met them. You could practically hear the claws being sharpened – Eneko didn’t know where to look.

  We started cycling back together, but almost immediately Belinda shot off ahead. That gentleman’s agreement about staying in line with your training partners had gone out of the window. There was no malice in it, though. I understood it was her way of putting down a marker before the big race, and it’s the sort of psychological ploy I’ve probably used myself since. It had the desired effect, too, because I remember thinking then that she was so much stronger than me on the bike.

  Come the day itself, I do believe I had a major advantage in my anonymity and ignorance. So many people know everything there is to know about the race, the terrain, the conditions and the competitors, but I knew nothing and no one knew me. I didn’t think. I just raced.

  And there were definite benefits to staying in our ramshackle apartment, which looked down on Kona, well away from the circus. Not that the night before helped at all. Next door were in good voice, even by their standards, and when the police turned up at one in the morning with the sirens wailing and the baby screaming and the dog barking I lay on my saggy bed in the single room that I shared with a man I barely knew and thought: ‘I’ve got the biggest race of my life tomorrow, and I haven’t had any sleep.’

  I eventually dozed off at about 2.30 a.m., which meant I had two hours’ sleep before I had to get up. At 4.30 a.m., the alarm went off, and the three of us went about our preparations, bleary eyed. Three English muffins, honey, a banana and a cup of tea was my race breakfast of choice. Kipling’s poem ‘If’ is my pre-race reading material, without fail.

  Scott’s mum and dad picked us up and drove us down to the start at 5.30 a.m. We performed last-minute checks on our bikes, and I headed down to the swim start to prepare. World Championships or not, I just didn’t feel nervous. I hadn’t the same respect – or fear – for the race as everyone else. I was simply very excited. There are so many people there, around 1,600 competitors, and thousands of spectators lining the shoreline and streets.

  I entered the water at around 6.30 a.m., warmed up and then muscled my way into a good position on the start line where we skull on our front until the cannon fires into the morning air. It is one of the most awe-inspiring sights. The sun has risen over the volcano; the ocean is calm and crystal-clear. I watched the fish in the water below, and beyond them were the scuba divers with their cameras trained on us as we hovered, waiting for the start.

  The 150 pros head off at 6.45 a.m., a quarter of an hour before everyone else. My target was a top-ten finish. During my two-hour sleep I’d dreamed that I’d come fourth, and I’d been overjoyed with that.

  The cannon fired, and we were off. I didn’t have a great swim. It was like a washing machine, a complete free-for-all. But there’s energy to be taken from the fish and the coral beneath us – more so, at any rate, than is to be had from the endless straight black lines in the training pool. Belinda and I swam side by side. She breathes to the left, and I breathe to the right, so we kept looking at each other throughout that swim, and we exited the water together. It was a strange way for our relationship to start improving.

  As we entered transition one, I was about six minutes off the leaders, which is quite a lot at that stage. For the first twenty-five miles of the bike leg, I felt really lethargic. The frustration built as it looked as if I wasn’t going to be able to do myself justice. But I plugged away, overtook a few people and started to feel a lot better. I overtook Hillary and felt better still, and then came the climb to Hawi, a small town on a headland on the northernmost point of the island and the turnaround point on the bike. It is a steady climb into a headwind, which means I was in my element – I’m at my best on the climbs, and a headwind only magnifies that. I overtook a lot of people on that twenty-mile stretch. As I approached Hawi, I passed a group of women coming down the other way with motorbikes and cameras trailing them. I knew then that I was gaining on the lead group, although I didn’t know at that point that there were actually two more women ahead of them. They would have passed by a little earlier, but it’s not always easy to tell the sex of the athletes coming the other way when you’re cycling at 25 miles an hour.

  I realised then that if I just kept going at my current pace I would probably catch them. On the way back from Hawi, there’s a small town called Kawaihae just before you return to the Queen Kaahumanu Highway. A few minutes on, the road bends to the left, and there were the girls a little further ahead. I had a decision to make. Either I had to sit at the back of the group, or I had to overtake the whole lot of them, because they were too close together for me to slot in somewhere in between.

  So I overtook them. I acknowledged Belinda as I went past, and I now know that another athlete, Sam McGlone, asked her who I was. Belinda replied: ‘That’s the winner of the race.’

  There’s a motorbike that carries a board with the split times on it, and I could see my race number was in ninth, although you don’t know how up to date it is and I didn’t know who the other numbers represented. It turned out I was actually in third, with two more girls ahead of me, Dede Griesbauer and Leanda Cave. With about fifteen miles of the bike to go I’d overtaken them both, each on an incline. And I still felt strong. I was having a whale of a time.

  All of a sudden, the cameras sta
rted to appear. I wonder if any of my friends are watching at home, I thought to myself. You can get coverage of the race live on the internet. Look at those helicopters overhead. Listen to the cheers. Wow, there are a lot of people lining the streets. Isn’t this surreal?

  Surreal is the word. During a race I feel as if I’m in a kind of bubble – it’s as if I’m swimming underwater. I can see and hear all this pandemonium – helicopters, cameras, media and spectators jumping up and down – but it also feels as if it is happening just slightly somewhere else and to someone else.

  Transition two went smoothly enough, and soon I was out pounding the streets of Kona, out and back along Ali’i Drive and then onto the Queen K. You never know whether your run legs are going to be waiting for you in your transition bag, but they’d been there all right, and now they were whisking me away.

  Not that people were taking me too seriously at this stage. I think there was still very much a feeling that I was some silly rookie who had gone off too fast and would fade on the run. On the commentary there seemed to be more interest in the fact that I wasn’t wearing a hat or visor. This was Hawaii – everyone wore a hat in Hawaii. But I’d never liked headgear – it makes me feel as if my head is in a vice. All I had were the $20 sunglasses that I’d bought in a gas station in New Zealand two years earlier.

  The commentators were desperately trying to think of things to say about me. My friends watching online were screaming at their computers as the poor experts floundered in the dark.

  Roughly five miles in, Belinda and I crossed paths. I was now a couple of miles ahead of her and she screamed at me: ‘Chrissie, it’s yours! Just remember to eat! Don’t forget to eat! Focus!’

  From that point on, our friendship blossomed.

  In my excitement, I suddenly remembered that England had played against France in the Rugby World Cup. I asked a guy who was waving a St George’s flag if he knew the result, and he told me that England had won. They were in the World Cup final, against all the odds.

  There must have been something in the stars for the English that weekend (we won the football, too). I was even more of an underdog than the rugby boys, and yet I was still winning. From the moment I’d taken the lead, about five and a half hours and a hundred miles into the race, I’d just assumed it would be temporary. They’ll catch me, they’ll catch me, I thought as I got off the bike. They’ll catch me, as I headed out on Ali’i Drive. They’ll catch me, as I hit the Queen K.

  Where are they? The gap just grew and grew. With five miles or so till the end, it dawned on me that this was mine to lose. Brett had always said that the race doesn’t start until this point. You can be feeling great and suddenly it hits you, the proverbial wall. His words rang in my head. I didn’t think my body was going to break down, but I couldn’t let myself believe I was going to win, either. If I let my concentration drop, my body might be next.

  I remember seeing my old friend from Birmingham University, the nutrition expert Asker Jeukendrup. He was halfway through the run as I was coming towards the end. We high-fived each other.

  I ran down the hill into town, and I could almost see the finish line. I was half laughing, half crying, totally bewildered. I saw my friend’s boyfriend on the side of the road, grabbed the Union Jack off him and belted for the finish, waving, weeping and grinning.

  Then, much to my surprise, the lead motorbike turned left at the bottom of the hill. ‘Oh, no,’ I thought. Muppet strikes again. I hadn’t looked at the map properly, and it turned out we had to do a loop through town before we finished. There was another mile to go, another mile carrying this huge flag and continuing what I’d started on the waving, weeping and grinning front.

  As I finally reached the last couple of hundred yards, I heard this low-frequency humming sound and I suddenly thought: ‘They’re booing me!’ No one knew who I was, this irritating flag-waving Brit, and my win was clearly not welcome. It took the wind out of my sails for a moment or two. Until I noticed two large islanders blowing into their conch shells to welcome the world champion across the line – another Kona tradition I’d been ignorant of.

  And there it was in front of me – the finishing tape, and the first inkling that things were going to be very different from now on. I had won – Chrissie Wellington, World Champion. I took a bow in front of the crowd, who were definitely cheering now, and at around 3.53 p.m., 9hr 8min 45sec after I’d started, I reached out for the tape, seized it with both hands, brought it down to my knees and hoisted it high over my head.

  Everything fell out of me at that point – tears, laughter and any remnants of British reserve. Important-looking people shook my hand, a lei was placed around my neck and a garland on my head. An excited guy in a white baseball cap, whom I now know to be Mike Reilly, the Voice of Ironman, grabbed me and thrust a microphone in my face.

  By now everything was blurred. Someone else grabbed me for an interview, and I followed his lead blindly. My eyes were full of tears, and the fixed smile was making my mouth hurt almost as much as did my feet and legs.

  People have often asked how it felt. It’s the hardest question to answer, and I still can’t do it properly. Surreal is the adjective that I use most often, but there are lots of other words that hint towards how I was feeling, without ever truly getting there. Words like elated, confused, satisfied, delirious and proud. The coming together of all that you’ve trained for at the moment you secure your sport’s biggest prize is a rush of euphoria much discussed by other champions, but it doesn’t make it any less powerful when it happens to you. And no less difficult to capture in words. I do remember feeling sadness, too, that my parents weren’t there (they had long before booked a holiday in Sicily, never knowing I was going to be in this race, let alone win it) and that Brett wasn’t (he doesn’t go to Kona, partly because of his controversial past, partly because he feels his job is done by then).

  I was whisked away for a drugs test and then to a nearby restaurant for the most amazing buffet, where I ate my body weight in food. Then it was back up the side of the volcano to salvage my things from the apartment. I now had a hotel to stay in, and it struck me that moving out of our hovel into it could prove symbolic. I was no longer Ms Anonymous. I knew barely anyone in that town down below, seething with thousands of racegoers, but suddenly they all knew me. I would be shaking a lot of hands for the next few days; I would have a big target on my back at all future races; and my funky chicken would be scrutinised like never before. Oh, Lord, I thought, my life is never going to be the same again.

  That fact was brought home to me powerfully in the hours that followed. I was grilled at the hour-long press conference by a range of journalists who had never heard of me, before returning to the finish line, where I stayed till midnight when the race comes to an end and all competitors still out on the course are gently told that they will have to stop. I shook hands, signed autographs, threw things into the crowd, cheered on the other athletes as they finished, danced . . .

  But I was also overwhelmed. I had no mechanism in place to deal with all the attention I was receiving, all the offers. Asker was really the only person there I knew and trusted, so he acted as a kind of manager. I just handed him all the business cards as they were thrust at me. Bike manufacturers, shoe companies, management companies, we can do this for you, we can do that. I tried to smile through it all, but inside I was in turmoil.

  I managed to get through to my overjoyed parents to tell them that their little girl had just done something that she feared was going to have major repercussions – and for once, it wasn’t because of some accident I’d been in. Which was just as well, because my mum revealed that she’d been in hospital for three days, having tripped on a kerb in Sicily, landed on her arm and damaged her gall bladder and one of her kidneys. You see where I get it from.

  And I got through to Brett.

  ‘Good job, kid,’ he said, simply, just as he always did. Those three words meant everything to me.

  The next day I sat
down to write my victory speech for the awards party that night. I didn’t have a dress either, so I had to borrow one. Standing up on the stage with the other girls in the top ten, who included Belinda and Rebecca, was intimidating not just because of all the people in the audience but also because of the calibre of athletes lined up alongside me. It was a long speech, I’m afraid – they always end up longer than you think they’ll be – but it was straight from the heart.

  And I used it to foist upon everyone my passion for international development. ‘I worked as a swimming teacher at a day school in Boston,’ I said, ‘and I saw at first hand what a difference sport can make to children’s lives. And again in Nepal, where sport was one thing that could bring conflict-affected communities together. Sport has a tremendous power, and can be a force for considerable change.’

  It was a crazy night, a crazy weekend. I finished it the only way I knew how – low-key and with friends. I might have met Scott and Eneko for the first time only a few days earlier, but we had bonded, and after we’d danced into the small hours at the after party at Lou Lou’s, the three of us headed out to Denny’s fast-food joint for the most disgusting, polluting, delicious meal of chicken wings, chips, mozzarella sticks and every other deep-fried delicacy you could dream of. The boys gave me a silver necklace with three turtles, one for each of us, and I still wear it.

  It took a while for me to get to grips with where I was, all of a sudden, after Kona. All year, I’d simply completed the next task that was put in front of me, and I’d never considered my progress to be much more than doing just that. I’d certainly never expected to become a world champion. Now that I could stop for a moment and look back, it was plain that, yes, it had been an extraordinary few months. I’d turned pro in mid-February as a wannabe Olympic triathlete. And here I was, in mid-October, the champion of the world in ironman. I had a cheque for $110,000 in my back pocket, I’d just registered the eighth-fastest time ever recorded on the course by a woman, and my marathon split of 2hr 59min 58sec was the second-fastest ever. I had people clamouring outside my door and was being showered with praise, the like of which I’d never known before.