Life Without Limits, A

by Wellington, Chrissie

  And, most of all, my mum and dad were at the finish line with my cousin, Tim, who was in tears. To share the moment with them meant so much to me.

  I was whisked away for drug testing, and then for the press conference. The rest of the night was spent down at the finish, greeting the hundreds of other athletes as they ran, walked and crawled across that hallowed line. We pros devote our lives to preparing for this race, but seeing what the finish line means to people who prepare for it in their spare time, and seeing their courage, never fails to move me. As we joined hands for the traditional Hawaiian song after the midnight bell had tolled, my winner’s lei on my head and my family by my side, tears flowed down my cheeks.

  The celebrations continued the next day. A storm blew over, which disrupted the awards ceremony. I had just started my victory speech when it had to be abandoned because the sound system broke and, anyway, people were taking shelter under tables. More a reflection, I hope, of the torrential rain than what I had to say. But it frustrated me, because I believe one of the most important parts of winning a race is to be able to convey a passionate, inspiring message in your speech.

  Otherwise, the night went with a bang. I couldn’t tell you how I got home. But I can tell you that I woke up the next morning to an email from Brett. It was long and it was to everyone in Team TBB. Once I’d deciphered it and worked through the implications, the message came through loud and clear.

  I was off the team.

  12

  My Own Two Feet

  I guess we’d all known it was going to be our last year together. Brett knew it as well, which might also have been affecting his mood. He had tried various things to keep us together, including an attempt to convince Ben to manage the whole team. He seemed to be warming to Ben, which was positive, but one of the things that frustrates me about Brett is that his sense of reality is so often far removed from anyone else’s. Ben was employed by WMG and had a range of athletes under his management. We did discuss the idea, because I still wanted to stay with Brett, but Ben couldn’t see a way of reconciling it with his current commitments. He, effectively, would have had to resign from his day job in order to make Brett’s plan work. To Brett, this was totally reasonable. Needless to say, it didn’t happen.

  Which left us with a problem. From the following season, any athlete with individual sponsors that did not align with the team’s would be asked to leave, as would any with a manager who wasn’t Alex. This had often been talked about, but now it was becoming policy. Brett laid down the law in that long email he sent to all of us the Monday after Kona.

  The end was nigh. The new policy was going to hit me hard. I now had relationships (and long-term deals) with a range of sponsors, all of whom I liked. I couldn’t have walked away from those, even if I’d wanted to. But, if I had, I would have been settling for my share of a team pie split with twenty other athletes. Brett would often talk about this. Would I rather be a mediocre athlete with my own deals, or part of his team and a champion? In other words, who was more important, Brett or my sponsors? His answer to me or anyone else with similar issues was simple. Without him, there would be no prize money, and there would be no sponsors clamouring at the door. We would actually make less money. I was far from convinced, even then, that I could succeed without him, but ultimately I wasn’t prepared to get rid of my manager (and Ben had become so much more to me than just a manager) or my sponsors. We used to appeal to Brett that the priority of professional athletes was to maximise their earnings while they could. And triathletes are a very long way from being the highest earners in the sporting world.

  To have stayed on the team under this new arrangement would have been a logistical nightmare. I wouldn’t have been able to accept any sponsor without that sponsor agreeing to take on the team as well. Brett and Alex did try to persuade my two main sponsors to extend their patronage to the whole team, but they were not keen. It just wasn’t realistic. And, after I’d gone, it frustrated me to see that the policy of one team, one set of sponsors was relaxed, and that some team members were allowed to stay on with their own separate deals and their own managers.

  It was clear that I would be leaving, along with the majority of my team-mates who had similar dilemmas. I didn’t like the idea any more than I had done when these issues had first arisen a year earlier. The prospect of parting with Brett scared me, and he didn’t hesitate to play on those fears, constantly sowing seeds of doubt in my mind about whether I could succeed without him. But I was braced for it now, and, who knows, maybe I could achieve things without him.

  Belinda, Hillary and I decided quickly that we still wanted to train together. But who was going to coach us? We started batting around some names and emailing a few coaches. One was Cliff English, who was based in Tucson, where Hillary lives, and was engaged to Sam McGlone, who’d come second at Kona in 2007.

  Hillary and I flew to Tucson to meet him. We got on very well. He was a young guy, about our age, and very friendly, with the pedigree of having coached the US and Canadian triathlon teams. Hillary, Belinda and I decided there and then to work with him.

  And yet I felt as if I were suffering from déjà vu. I couldn’t help thinking back to the same time the year before when I had been rushed into signing with Alex. Having left the team now, we were all anxious to choose a coach and move on, and I put myself under pressure to make it happen.

  Then, as per the year before, I went home to Norfolk, and the doubts started to close in. The post-Kona euphoria was wearing off fast, and I had plenty of time to reflect on the decision to go with Cliff. Was this arrangement the best for me? Or was it best for Hillary and Belinda?

  While in Norfolk, I got another long email from Brett, signed ‘ex-boss’ this time. He thought I was insane. He told me I could not possibly have picked a worse option. Hillary lived in Tucson, so she was happy. Cliff was the fiancé of one of my biggest rivals – how was that dynamic going to pan out? I would be revealing myself to him, my playbook and my strengths and weaknesses, and thus I would be revealing them to Sam. Never imagine I was so good that I could afford to give the opposition anything.

  I was in a tailspin again. I might have left the team, but Brett would never let a little detail like that stop him from giving me advice. I appreciated that he still felt passionately about my choices, even after we had parted, although I also realised he might be feeling uneasy about another coach picking up tips from him via his former athletes.

  I was also the opposition now. He was no doubt playing his mind games. Not that it helped to be aware of that. I have always been torn between taking on board what Brett says and ignoring it as his way of getting to you. I’ve never been able to separate the strands. I listen to him, and he gets to me. It’s the Brett package. Either way, he was inside my head again. I had already been harbouring doubts, but now Brett had crystallised them in that way only he can.

  To complicate matters further, I attended the British Triathlon Awards Dinner, where I met Simon Lessing, a legend in triathlon. He was starting up a coaching business in Boulder, Colorado and was curious to know why I had chosen Cliff. He laid out his own training ideas, which involved high intensity and low volume. It was a philosophy that chimed with mine. And so another ingredient was thrown into the mix.

  I knew almost immediately that I wanted him to be my new coach. I also wanted a coach who was right for me, rather than right for me, Hillary and Belinda. The trouble was, of course, that I had agreed a course of action with them, and I couldn’t see a way out of it that wouldn’t damage our friendship.

  The upshot was that I agreed to go with Simon – and then I told Hillary and Belinda. It was the wrong way round, I know. It doesn’t sound very world champion, but the truth is, I was worried that if I told Hillary and Belinda first, as I should have done, they would have tried to change my mind. I didn’t want things to get even more complicated than they already were. I had arrived at a decision at last, in the quiet little corner of the world that I call home, and
I just didn’t want any more input.

  Belinda took it really well. We talked it through on the phone, and she totally understood. She ended up being coached by her husband, Justin.

  Hillary didn’t take it so well. She felt I had let her down. My pulling out had led to the collapse of the plan. Belinda did her own thing, Cliff was having second thoughts anyway, and Hillary’s dream of having the three of us training together in her hometown was ruined. She stopped speaking to me for months after that. Once again, what should have been the happiest time of my year had turned into the worst.

  Nothing for it, then, but to head to Argentina for a dear friend’s wedding, followed by the torturous bike trek through the Andes that doubled as her honeymoon. Yes, honeymoon.

  Tina from Nepal and her beau, Seba, had decided that they could think of nothing more romantic than to push bikes where no bikes had been pushed before, through the mountains of northern Patagonia, with four of their equally deranged mates. This would not be many people’s idea of an idyllic honeymoon. Even I was impressed!

  The wedding itself was fresh and informal, which was just as well, because we arrived in Lycra. It was a Nepal reunion. Suzy took the elegant route, but Billi, Helen and I cycled the 80km from Mendoza to Tina’s finca, only to discover that our wedding clothes had been delayed. I don’t suppose Tina, looking radiant on her big day, even noticed. She certainly didn’t care. The day went with a swing and lots of sunshine, slabs of Argentinian meat and vats of Argentinian wine.

  A day or two later, we headed south with the bride and groom to Malargüe, from where we struck out on our trail. It was one traditionally tackled by adventurers on horseback, but mountain bikes were to be our steeds of choice, each one laden with 35kg of equip ment – sleeping bags, clothes, tents, ropes, stoves, food, and so on. We had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for. Our route was about 300km. No one had ever biked it. There turned out to be a very good reason for that.

  Our group consisted of me, Billi, Helen, Tina and Seba, and their friend Rata. We set off in high spirits along wide, very passable fire trails, surrounded by the stunning scenery of the Andean mountains. This was all right, we thought.

  Soon, though, our passage deteriorated into narrow, sandy tracks heading upwards, and then no tracks at all. This was no longer all right; this was mercilessly hard work. It gave new meaning to the term pushbikes. And these were mighty cumbersome bikes to push. On one day we averaged 2km an hour.

  We encountered rushing rivers along the way. At the first, Billi, who is a high-altitude climber and for her next trick climbed Everest, looked at me. We just thought, well, this is the last straw, we can’t go on. But Tina was having none of it. She is one of the most incredibly positive people I know. In our group we had a double ironman world champion and a climber who had conquered several peaks higher than 6,000m – and they were probably the most negative people there!

  ‘We can do this!’ Tina chirped, over the noise of the roaring river that barred our way. ‘We have ropes, we have harnesses, we have spirit! Vamos!’

  The boys managed to make it across the river (I still don’t know how), so that we could rig up an improvised rope-and-pulley contraption across the torrents. One by one we winched our panniers, bikes and selves across to the other side, each teetering precariously above the swirling waters. We did that three times in one day. And then there was the glacier we had to climb up and over – again, pushbikes are not much use on one of those. A yak would have been preferable.

  The trip was one of the hardest things I have ever done – harder than any race, certainly. There were times I didn’t think we would make it, times when we turned another corner only to see the path snaking up the side of yet another mountain, biceps screaming as we hauled our tractor-bikes over rocks the size of houses, the wind blowing sand into every orifice.

  But what a backdrop! All around us, against clear blue skies, soared the Andean peaks. Among the rocks were vivid fossils and wild flowers, and overhead circled vast condors.

  We ran out of food on our last night, having spent a day cycling downhill, albeit on sand with a headwind whipping it up into our faces. A local weather-beaten farmer and his wife took pity on us and welcomed us into their humble, stone home. They slaughtered one of their goats, there and then, and served it up spread-eagled on a plate. Billi and Helen are vegetarians, but even they had some of this fresh, delicious meat. The next day, full to the brim with goat, we made it back to Malargüe, battered, bruised, blistered and bitten.

  It was the best honeymoon I’d ever been on! I felt so grounded with my old friends, who’d all known me pre-triathlon. I was just Chrissie again, and it felt good. As it did on the bus I then took from Mendoza across the amazing mountain pass into Chile to catch my flight from Santiago. There was a traffic jam at border control, which is in the heart of the mountains. They check every single vehicle and all the people in them. The estimate for the wait was five hours. I would have missed my flight, but I managed, with my pidgin Spanish, to get myself through. I made it to the airport just in time, having hitched a ride on a ramshackle local minibus, with gubbins piled high around me. It was an appropriate way to finish a trip that had so revived the spirit of my time in Nepal. Dear friends, beautiful mountains, some never-say-die spirit and a goat. I left invigorated.

  There were times on the trek when I thought of Brett, and the situation awaiting me on my return to reality – a new season, a new coach. There were times when I wondered what a triathlon coach would think of what I was doing in those mountains. Brett, I feel sure, would have approved. He knows I need to switch off, and he was always encouraging me to do that. He told me never to read the internet forums, never to become obsessed with the sport. He wanted me to take another degree, or to learn a language. Trekking through the Andes, however incompatible it may have been with a conventional training programme, represented just such a refreshing change from the norm.

  The trip did me the world of good. I did think of ironman, but it seemed a long way away. I was able to find myself again, to feel independent.

  From Santiago I flew to Boulder, where I spent three days with Simon, his wife, Lisa and their two girls. Simon was certainly confident that I could succeed without Brett. The self-assured part of me agreed, but still the nagging doubts plagued me. I had been Brett’s puppet for two years. Could I still dance without him above me to pull the strings? I was determined to try.

  It meant that I went home for Christmas ready for life without him. That feeling was further sharpened when I was greeted upon my return by more posturing from Brett over the payment of his bonus. The dynamic was exactly the same as the year before – he wanted me to pay him his 20 per cent cut of my Kona prize money now; I couldn’t pay him until they paid me, which was going to be in January. There was never any question of my not paying him, just as there hadn’t been the year before. He got his money when I’d been paid mine, and he spent it on a new bathroom. The Chrissie shitter, he calls it. He sends me emails intermittently, saying, ‘I sit there thinking of you.’

  But as one man left my life (or took a back seat, at least), another walked in.

  It was January, and, while I was waiting for my US visa to come through, I headed to Club La Santa in Lanzarote for some warm-weather training. It wasn’t very warm, though, so on this particular day I was wearing a puffer jacket, £9 from a discount store. They were holding a duathlon, and I was the starter. Brandishing my gun, I noticed this tall, good-looking guy hanging round the finish line. He was wearing a puffer jacket just like mine (only somewhat more expensive), he had streaky hair and I vaguely recognised him.

  I thought no more of it, but the next day I received a message through Facebook from a guy by the name of Tom Lowe. I get a lot of messages through Facebook, but he made reference to the puffer and looked mighty fine in his photo, so I replied. It turns out he was there to train with the winner of the duathlon that day, Joerie Vansteelant. And we had met once before, at the British Triat
hlon Awards in 2007. We flirted by email and then arranged to meet at the TCR (Triathlon, Cycling and Running) Show the next weekend.

  This is an annual expo for all things triathlon, held at Sandown Park in Esher, on the fringes of south-west London. I was doing a signing when we met again. It was difficult for us to talk, because I was being pulled this way and that by sponsors and fans. He seemed relaxed and undemanding of my time, which I liked.

  After the awards dinner, though, we got to talk properly. I was immediately attracted to him. He was so engaging, funny and seriously good looking. I remember thinking that this was someone very special.

  Me being me, at midnight I ran for my pumpkin. I was with Steph Cox and a friend called Caroline. I said goodbye to Tom, but at the moment of reckoning we didn’t kiss.

  I walked downstairs with the girls to get my coat. ‘Nothing happened! Nothing happened!’ I practically wailed at them. ‘In a few days I go to Boulder, and that will be it!’

  Steph said, quite decisively: ‘Wait here, I’ve left my scarf behind!’ Off she bolted.

  Moments later, I heard her calling out behind me: ‘Chrissie! I brought him back!’

  I turned round, and there he was, smiling awkwardly.

  This is sounding like one of those situations at a disco when you’re about twelve – and it was exactly like that. Steph and Caroline went out to hail a cab, leaving the two of us face to face under the glaring lights. We said goodbye again, and this time he gave me a hug, and I went in for the kiss. Being world champion really had given me confidence! He didn’t resist, and in the taxi home we girls were wild with excitement, all the more so when I got my first text from him before we’d even left the venue. We went back to the room I rented in Putney and gossiped the night away over a whole tub of chocolate Carnation milk and a huge bag of crisps.

  Tom and I spoke on the phone a lot over the next week. My birthday was coming up, and I had organised a party at a bar near Waterloo for around forty to fifty friends. I suggested he come along. Without a thought he said yes, which just showed what a warm and open person he is, up for anything. This is a big deal for me. I had always said that the most important attribute in a prospective boyfriend would be an ability to fend for himself in a large group of my friends. He passed the test with flying colours. I more or less dumped him among them, coming back every now and then for a kiss and a chat. Everything felt so natural. I was on a cloud.