by Mike Campbell
My GWR membership goes back to 1987 the year I competed in the unique & celebrated Bishops Castle tandem triathlons. In the 1988 event, my partner swam, we both cycled and I ran the final 10k stage. We finished in the top 10.
My first solo triathlon was in Kingswood (750m/40k/10k) in 1990. I still have the paper results. I was 211th out of 342 finishers. GWR’s team (Tim Edbrook, Vic Osmond and myself) came 21st out of 32 teams.
For the next twenty years, road running and cross country were my main things though I swam regularly and got out on the bike for social rides. My pinnacle of effort in the saddle was an ascent of the 21 hairpin bends of Alpe d’Huez in 1997.
In 2010, I decided to try another triathlon at the ‘sprint’ distance, joining family members in Nantwich. Then, encouraged by a few other GWR members who had ventured into the tri world, I entered the Bristol (Tockington) and Midsomer Norton triathlons (400m/25k/5k).
In the same year I ventured into an open water event, the South Coast triathlon (750m/20k/5k) in Seaford. This annual event is, to put it mildly, a challenge. For half the swim I battled a current. I still swear that for most of the time I was stationary. I also ended up swallowing what seemed like half of Seaford Bay. Exhausted, I staggered into transition, where my wife shouts “You don’t have to do it!”. Results record I took 44:13 minutes for that swim! Overall I am 167th out of 174 finishers and aged 63, am the second oldest finisher. Seaford is where my siblings and their families live. My mother was still alive then. She thinks I am mad.
In 2019, I completed my 15th triathlon in Stratford-upon-Avon (400m/18k/5k). I have decided to concentrate mainly on the sprint distance and surprise myself by winning the 70-74 age group [Triathlon age groups work the same way as for Parkruns]. Keeping fit will keep me going for as long as I can and I have resolved to do more of these events as I move through my seventies.
Three months later the media report that a flu-type disease has broken out in Wuhan, a city in central China. On 14th March 2020, I ran the last permitted UK Parkrun (at Fulham Palace) before lockdown.
A circuit of Purdown (aka Stoke Park) became my regular running route in the first year of Covid. As summer restrictions were lifted, Henleaze Lake offered opportunities for outdoor swimming. In early September, I walked 70 miles of the South West Coast Path from Brixham to Bridport. Fit and healthy I complete the seven days walking with no problem.
As Autumn 2020 arrives I am aware of being a bit breathless, struggling to stay in touch with running pals. I wonder whether I have been hit by Covid. However, during the mid-winter lifting of restrictions, I run a sub-30 minute 5k on the treadmill, restart my swims at Horfield Leisure Centre, and manage three long walks over the Christmas break on Dartmoor.
Then in mid-January 2021 my younger daughter invited me to go for a jog with her.
On my way down to her house, I am having to stop and walk every 100 meters or so, exhausted with a chest sensation and tightness which is pretty unbearable, though it goes every time I stop to walk. I can barely maintain the pace that she is going at which is actually very slow as she’s just starting up jogging. Folding arms across my chest helps to relieve the pain.
I seriously think for the first time there’s something wrong. On 16 January I read an article in the Saturday Guardian by Raphael Behr headlined ‘I thrived on the tension and drama of British politics. Then I had a heart attack’.
I recognise the symptoms.
On Sunday I visit A&E rather than wait to see a GP. We’re in another lockdown and I am the only patient. Staff can’t wait to get their hands on me! After a variety of tests, scans, bloods, I’m shocked to be diagnosed with stable angina. Less than a month later I undergo an angioplasty procedure and two stents are inserted into my right coronary artery (RCA) which is seriously blocked. My left anterior descending artery (LAD – aka the ‘widow maker’) will be the subject of a further examination when I return for a follow-up angiogram in April. This visit results in a third stent into the RCA while medication, a high level dose of statins, will, I am told, fix the build-up of cholesterol in the LAD.
Over the summer of 2021 I receive NHS rehab sessions, organise a personal trainer, gently ease myself back into exercising and jog my first Parkrun since Fulham. Over the next eighteen months I gradually return to my triathlon training regime culminating in the Warwickshire sprint triathlon in October 2022.
This year, and two and a half years after those three stents were inserted, I have completed four more triathlons bringing up my 20th event last month in Stratford upon Avon.
Two weeks ago I received an email informing me that I have been placed first in the 2023 UK Triathlon Race Series. My trophy follows shortly afterwards.
