Decisions, Decisions

Back in October 2013 I was at home reflecting on my 4th Triathlon season when I got to thinking about challenges for 2014.Having come off my best ever year in Triathlon (culminating in an age group win) the inevitable thoughts of "going long" popped into my brain.

Doing an Ironman takes enormous commitment not only from the competitor but their family, friends & work colleagues, it is basically a whole year out of what most would consider normal life, now I have a very understanding wife who lets me do a lot of crazy things but I'm not sure even she could cope with it! It would also mean a massive commitment to my Triathlon nemesis which is swimming, don't get me wrong I am a capable swimmer but I just plain don't enjoy it! So when I considered all this I decided against going long.
I then thought briefly about a marathon but having done 2 already it didn't seem like much of a challenge so my thoughts turned to cycling, I had really enjoyed the 2013 Etape du Tour and the cycling trips to Mallorca I had done earlier in the year, for some reason I enjoyed the challenge of the long climbs! So as I was surfing the net looking for cycling challenges 3 possibles popped up:

Trois Etapes  ---- 3 Pyrenean stages, each around 100km long with 2,000m climbing a day, racing as teams.

London to Paris (Hot chilie) --- A 3 day timed stage race in teams to Paris.

Haute Route --- A 7 day timed stage race between Geneva & Nice across the Alps, 130km & 3,500m climbing each day

 I had a closer look at all 3 and discovered that the Trois Etapes would cost £5,000 to enter and a minimum of £10k of sponsorship!! so that was binned pretty quickly!
London to Paris in a race looked good but I needed a team of 4 and I couldn't get it out of my head that I had already done London to Paris albeit as a charity ride and not really as a race.
That left the Haute Route, the figures of the daily stages were utterly ridiculous! surely as a 52 year old man I couldn't possibly do it! I thought of the 2012 Etape Du Tour which was my first ever foray into the high mountains and I remembered how hard I'd found it; 152km & 4,850m of climbing, it is and still remains the hardest endurance challenge I have ever done, I still don't know how I managed to finish! The thought of doing 7 days of similar climbing both terrified & awed me.
I discussed doing the events with my wife Nicola and to my surprise she said "I don't mind as I thought you would be doing an Ironman next year anyway!!" As I said she is very understanding my wife! I explained that it would mean several training camps abroad and weekends away doing various events and it would also mean that I would have to train most days and we wouldn't be able to have our normal 2 weeks away, she said she didn't mind as she had a full schedule of Horse riding weekends in mind and maybe we could work to be away at the same time.
With the Wife on side I came close to entering on at least 10 different occasions and had even registered but not paid!
Finally in November on the very last day you could enter I was at home ill (VERY unusual for me!) I pressed the button and paid the money! I immediately started to panic! WHAT HAVE I DONE!! I was going to attempt what was considered one of the 10 hardest endurance events in the world! GULP........