Dead Man to Iron Man , livre ebook

Pitch Publishing - Paul Smith

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

146 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

You're 43, cruising through life when suddenly you're diagnosed with cancer. What do you do next? When Paul Smith found himself facing that question he decided to swim 2.4 miles, cycle 112 more and then run a marathon. If you think completing an ironman triathlon is an impossible dream, read this truly inspirational story and think again.

Informations

Publié par	Pitch Publishing
Date de parution	10 février 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785316555
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2019
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Paul Smith, 2019
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978 1 78531 617 3
eBook ISBN 978 1 78531 655 5
---
Ebook Conversion by www.eBookPartnership.com
Contents
Foreword
The Long Road to Diagnosis
My Appendix - Take One
My Appendix - Take Two
Diagnosis Day
Seeing your Parents Can Be a Real Pain
Making Sense of the Big C
Keep Calm and Swim
Kicking off a Ten-Week Block
In the Presence of Ironmen
Moviprep and the Snake of Doom
Pseudo Mix What?
The Race for Life
The Mother of all Surgery
Wakey Wakey
Chemo Haze, All in My Brain
A Dirty Protest and Drain Number Three
Fifty Shades of Green
Just a Little Prick Sir
Home Sweet Home
Slow and Steady
The Long Course Weekend - Part 1
The Long Course Weekend - Part 2
The Long Course Weekend - Part 3
The Highs and Lows of the Long Distance Triathlete
The Final Push
Swim
Bike
Run
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
for Maria
Foreword
YOU RE 43, happily cruising through life and you ve just been diagnosed with cancer.
When your life suddenly turns upside down like that, what are you going to do next? When I asked myself that question I decided it would be a good idea to do an Ironman triathlon.
That improbable seed was sown way back in 2013 during a particularly slow day at work when my good friend Tom boldly stated that he was going to do an Ironman 70.3 in Mallorca the following summer. I almost spat out my tea in disbelief. An Ironman 70.3 is a middle-distance triathlon, or, more precisely, a 1.2-mile swim, followed by a 56-mile bike ride and a half marathon.
When I eventually stopped laughing I realised that I was actually quite inspired by the revelation: he wasn t exactly the athletic type and it seemed like a ridiculously difficult feat of endurance. That winter I watched on with interest as he knuckled down and trained through some truly miserable winter mornings, and, although I would never tell him to his face, I was quietly impressed and the endless talk about it all wasted many long days at work when work was the last thing either of us could be bothered with.
The following summer the Ironman 70.3 Mallorca was duly completed, and the pasty, slightly obese man who walked out of the door just a week before returned a triumphant tanned and toned athlete with a great-looking medal to prove it. My congratulations and interest quickly dried up, however, as I didn t hear the end of it. He would spend the whole day droning on about his new-found sporting prowess whilst sipping tea from his Ironman mug and taking big manly gulps from his Ironman-branded water bottle.
We both ran a bit and enjoyed riding our bikes but I could no longer hold a flame to the newly discovered athlete that now sat opposite me. I was secretly a bit jealous, but in equal measure I was mightily impressed.
There was one big issue taking the shine off of it for him though; this fantastic achievement was never really going to be good enough. His big brother was a veteran of several full long-distance Ironman triathlons and this fact ensured that there were no bragging rights at home. Little brother was only half of an Ironman after all, so the talk in the office turned to completing a full Ironman race, which is a long-distance triathlon consisting of a 2.4-mile swim followed by a 112-mile bike ride and then a full marathon, absolutely ridiculous mind-bending numbers. I thought to myself, could I manage that? No fucking chance.
The biggest problem I have is that at heart I m a self-confessed lazy bastard, I always have been. I talk a good game, buy all the kit and then fade away quietly until the next big thing comes along. I ve dabbled in lots of sports and not really mastered any. My strength, if I have one, is that I love to be outdoors and I love to ride my bikes, surf and walk in the mountains. I have a degree of grit and stamina when I need it but focus has never really been my strong point. The bottom line is I m a cruiser. So could I break that habit and channel enough desire and determination to achieve something like an Ironman?
Who knows? But the famous red tattoo that many Ironman finishers wear would look very cool. There I go again, all about the show with little regard for any substance.
In my favour, as I ve got older, I have discovered a more adventurous streak that pushes me a little more. I completed a couple of half-marathons which, even five years before, would have been simply unheard of, so maybe the inner athlete was stirring in me after all. All this talk of being an Ironman was getting infectious.
I had already upped my exercise regimes following the lead set by my new sporting mentor and had for a while intended to seriously think about doing a triathlon. I was definitely a self-confessed MAMIL (middle-aged man in lycra) and I was bitten by the British Tour de France successes like most of the mid-life crisis bracket males in the country. I was swimming for the first time and I was even out jogging on a regular basis; in fact, I d never been so motivated to buy new kit in all my life.
The downside to all this enthusiasm was that I was already finding the training tough, especially the running, which was becoming a real problem for me. In previous sporadic bouts of exercise I always managed to increase my distance and speed quite quickly, but this time it was a struggle. My lungs would be bursting after a couple of miles and my shuffling running style was positively geriatric. I could only put it down to old age so I gamely carried on.
I was following the start of an Ironman training programme as a taster and as it was being dissected in detail every day at work, I couldn t give up at this early stage. How on earth was my germinating seed of completing an Ironman going to grow into a mighty oak if I couldn t even muster the energy to run around the block a few times?
Little did I know it then, but that was soon going to be the least of my worries.
The Long Road to Diagnosis
THE ROAD to a cancer diagnosis is often a long one and can be full of missed opportunities and regrets. The first time I really felt that anything was wrong with me was back in early 2013 when I started having sporadic bouts of stomach ache. I wasn t truly diagnosed until September 2014 when I went to the North Hampshire Hospital in Basingstoke for the first time and saw the excellent Mr Mohamed. That was about 14 months after it started, but in truth my symptoms probably started long before that.
For as long as I can remember, I would occasionally develop a cramping aching sensation in my lower right abdomen. It was never enough to drag me to the doctor but it was always enough to make me feel a bit unwell and lose my appetite. It would strike every couple of months and last about three or four days until it would subside again. I self-diagnosed myself from the internet with all sorts of random ailments from irritable bowel syndrome to old age, so I didn t think too much of it.
Over time the bouts slowly started to get more serious and in March 2014 I took my first sick days off work as a result of it. I had developed a shivery fever and a temperature this time around, and as I was feeling pretty run-down I took the Thursday and Friday off to recover. As usual I was fighting fit within a couple of days so was back to work the following Monday.
I had another attack in April; this time it came with less of a gap between occurrences but wasn t quite as severe. I sat at work huffing and puffing, feeling tired and very out of sorts. I mentioned to my colleagues that I wasn t feeling well again and was roundly told to get a grip of myself and man up.
I took their advice and soldiered on, but by now I was thinking that I would need to see a doctor and discuss it. Now, I had self-diagnosed it as gallstones, grumbling appendix and IBS, but being generally of good health I knew that something wasn t right.
I m a two-day-a-year, if that, type of sick note. I just don t do sick, but that calendar year I was on my sixth day already and there were countless more that I hadn t taken off which maybe I should have, all down to this mystery illness.
It was May when Tom had gone off to Mallorca for his Ironman 70.3. He travelled with family and friends for a week s holiday and several of them were going to do the event. We had talked endlessly at work about his training programme and although work had been busy and he had missed a few crucial late training sessions as a result, he appeared to be as ready as he would ever be.
In contrast, my sniffs at a training plan had been sporadic to say the least - constant bouts of illness and fatigue had put paid to each attempt I had made to get myself going. The training plan we were following was the Don Fink Be Iron Fit programme. It s a structured plan with progressive increments in all three disciplines of swimming, running and cycling to bring you up to the standard of fitness required to complete an Ironman. Two-thirds through the programme was the middle-distance preparation race and this was the point that Tom had trained up to.
The programme is split into three different levels. Just Finish, Intermediate and Advanced; they all follow the same pattern but with