It's done!

1 The event, the EG Annual Triathlon, becomes more dominant as it approaches. This year, it has impelled the ROG to undertake some training for the run. Setting aside a sense of what would be the Corinthian approach to the participation in the event, one exemplified by a sense that all that is required of a participant is that he turn up, preferably with clean kit, the ROG, now contemplating his twelvth event, ran along the Worth Way and began the day during a short holiday in France with a two-mile run.

2 It also prompted the ROG to prepare his kit the night before, to pack a bag, and to check the tyre pressures on his bike. In the normal way, such preparations are undertaken on the morning of the event. After all, as he reminded himself, the event comprised but a bike-ride, a swim, and a run. Given the well-founded expectation of completion, given also that completion rather than time was in the ROG's mind, there was hardly anything to worry about.

3 Yet the hero was on his feet at 0530. Shortly after 0630 he was racking his bike in the Transition area, and he was ready, in the swimming pool, about 0645. From there the programme ran according to expectation. The ROG breast-stroked his way to 20 lengths; the next component, the bike, was easier, but the ROG was conscious of the effort which had been put into the swimming and which, he guessed, was not available for the bike. Still, he did his best. Down the hill to Forest Row, from there to Colemans Hatch and beyond, through Hartfield, and past the new coffee shop, to the left-hand turn to the Holtye road, the climb, the road, the left-hand turn to EG; the legs were complaining but they were told to get on with it as there was no chance of stopping and indulging their complaints.

4 Still, the legs did make sure that their interests were registered. They were being called upon to an unusual extent. In recent weeks they had been on duty first thing in the morning. Even when they called out Stop there was scarcely any heed taken of their pain. So they proposed that this adventure should be the last such one. They made a good case.

5 They make an even better case when they were called upon to run. No interval, no recuperation, just one thing after another. So they registered their pain more or less straightaway. The run became a run-and-walk. Still, the ROG was buoyed by the acclamations from the marshals. Even so, the acclamations didn't prevent the ROG from taking a wrong turn. Yet he continued and a generous marshal shortened his route on the second leg. Not short enough though to avoid being overtaken by another elderly man, who might have been sixty-ten or more. The green run-in to the Finish beckoned. The ROG was running (relatively) strongly at the end.

6 However, it has taken some eight hours for the ROG to regain his composure. When he was agitated and, later, in composure, the recalled the pain in the thighs as he ran. For all the acclamations, for all the recognitions, those legs have won the day. The ROG finds it indisputable that he should refrain from triathlons. Of course, as the pain passes, as he cycles again without distress, perhaps even as he undertakes a short run, the ROG may come to think that his recollection is exaggerated, that there is another triathlon in it. Suffice it to say now that there isn't.

7 It was good to have completed. The time was 2h19m22s, a time which the ROG senses was a few minutes more than last year. Yet the time was within the target band of 2h15m plus or minus five minutes. So the ROG need not creep away. What he does need to do, at some later time, is to be ready to withstand the blandishments which seek to prompt him to one more triathlon.

Still, there is another one to add to the collection. Perhaps there is one more ..... ?

The ROG