First Time Disaster - Then Success.

Yes, I have resumed my weekly rendezvous with the staff at our local Starbucks Coffee on a Saturday morning after several months of abstinence due to the Covid-19 closure. And afterwards, as I was walking home, staring at the ground ahead whilst pondering on what I shall write about this week, an elderly gentleman approached, heading for the superstore where the coffee house is annexed. 

Excuse me, he asked, stopping me in my tracks, But are you the one who had organised all these Triathlons in Bracknell, years ago?

"Yes, I am the one."

His face lit up at my confirmation. Your Triathlons were magnificent. You certainly have done a good job.

Through his thick facial hair, I thought I could remember him as one of the partakers as I thanked him for the compliment. Bracknell Triathlon? Indeed, I remember them, seven events in all, in a space of six years between 1987 and 1992. We even experimented with staging two events in 1990 but proved to be too much. Hence we resumed with just one event a year. It was enough.

But what is a triathlon anyway and how did I become involved?

It all started with three athletes sitting in a bar in Hawaii back in 1977, the same year I took my first-ever transatlantic flight from London to Toronto. In that bar, a discussion was taking place. Which athlete could be credited with the greater fitness - a swimmer, a cyclist or a runner? The discussion was inconclusive, so one of them, a US naval officer John Collins, thought up the idea of stringing all three together into one event - an ultimate endurance race consisting of the 2.4-mile Waikiki Rough Water Swim, the 112-mile Around Oahu bike race, and the Honolulu Marathon. These three annual events were already in existence at the Hawaiian Archipelago, and therefore familiar to everyone. Thus, later at a banquet, where such an event was proposed, so it was said, everyone present rolled on the floor in complete laughter! 

However, Collins and his mates organised the first multi-disciplined event with fifteen competitors. At 07.19 on February 18th, 1978, they plunged into the ocean surf at Waikiki. Nearly twelve hours later, a 27-year old naval officer Gordon Haller was the first to cross the finish line. He received an odd-looking home-made trophy consisting of pipes welded together. Thus, history was made with the first Ironman.*

The fame of the event exploded across the USA and over the next few years, the scaled-down version of the Triathlon became known worldwide. Back then, the sport competed with a high level of camaraderie. Sedate people including balding men, doctors, students, housewives, office and manual workers who had never competed in any other sport "caught the bug" as they all challenged themselves on how far they can endure such a bizarre race. Even a veteran in his seventies was seen on his heavy roadster, complete with mudguards and with a wicker shopping basket fixed to his handlebars.

In the meantime, throughout the mid-eighties, I was running half-marathons to raise funds for a League of Friends charity. It was in 1986, after completing one half-marathon, when someone approached with a suggestion on why not try my hand at a triathlon. There was one to be held at Wokingham, the next town on the map to ours. Therefore I entered and competed. Immediately I was hooked. I then joined Thames Valley Triathletes, the triathlon club based in Reading, which had organised the Wokingham event specifically to attract new members.

After this, I competed at various locations. Due to their early morning swim start, many venues requiring an overnight stay at a hotel - Winchester, Swanage, Eastbourne, East Grinstead, Romford, Upminster, Farnham, Newbury, among others. It was while at an event in Winchester, with my brain on full alert as well as in physical endurance, that I had a vision. How is this triathlon funded? Through competitor's entry fees (although Winchester also had a sponsor) and there was no triathlon event for Bracknell. Suddenly, with God's help, nothing seems impossible.

So after consulting my friends, all members of what was then Bracknell Saints Football Club, I shared my vision, which was received by some but held in doubt by others. However, the biggest obstacle I had to overcome was to convince the Leisure Centre management team for the hiring of the swimming pool and to enlighten them about this new sport, using part of the Bracknell Half Marathon route. At first, I was refused point-blank. Then after persistent negotiation, they gave me just one lane of the pool. Eventually, I managed to agree with them for full hire of the pool at a set date, and after that everything else fell into place.**

That is - until we had to ask people to volunteer as course marshals, a role which I eventually found out, was a very undesirable responsibility, especially so early on a Saturday morning! - And that despite I have marshalled events in Reading several times already. I asked my brothers in Christ at my former church for their help. No one agreed. One family man, who I thought was a good mate, squared up to me and in my face, quite aloud, said No!

This has always been an interesting phenomenon - why this refusal, even edging towards anger for daring to approach them with such a request? Is it because of me? A labourer who has never seen inside a university or had never risen to prominence? It was exactly this which has tested my devotion to them as brothers to the limit. Had a famous celebrity approached them with the same request, then how would they have responded? With greater favour?

A souvenir for a willing Marshal

We eventually approached a secular charity, whose members were willing to marshal. On our first event in 1987, too few turned up, leaving both the cycling and running routes unmanned. Furthermore, late-night hooligans tore off our direction arrows from their place, leaving both the cyclists and runners in doubt which direction to take, with even some failing to finish. Our maiden event was a disaster! After everyone had gone home, we packed away and afterwards, sauntered home in an emotionally heavy state.

Feeling crushed, beaten, defeated, I lay on the single bed in my apartment, looking up at the ceiling. Should I give up? Maybe those Christians were right, after all. Especially the Elders, who knew how to put me in my place. Of course, I will fail! If they said that I wasn't capable of such responsibility, then I wasn't capable. End of. Indeed, modern Christianity looks to be a religion for graduates. Fail at school and I'll never hit the mark. How the heck did those eleven disciples of Jesus Christ, after His Resurrection and Ascension, manage to turn the world upside down without a degree among them? And that after the company treasurer, the cleverest in the group, top himself? 

Suddenly, I arose from my bed and headed for the phone. No, no mobiles back then. To make a phone call, I had to lift my butt from the comfort of the bed. I contacted two of my mates who were living together. I told them that next year's event was ON! We aren't giving up. Suddenly, all my negative feelings fell away like scales from St Paul's eyes, and I was able to look ahead with determination.

And they all happened, all further six of them. We redesigned the two courses to make them simpler, we made sure all our direction arrows were well above the reach of anyone without a stepladder, and we contacted secular charities to marshal our routes. With the promise of a souvenir for their efforts, a greater number volunteered, manning our routes efficiently, and the acquirement of a walkie-talkie made our roving marshals' task a lot easier. On the day a couple of stalls arrived and were set up, so competitors can make a last-minute purchase, including crash hat hire. We also hired a commentary caravan from a firm in Camberley, and the announcements over the loudspeakers gave the whole event an air of professionalism - on the par with any international championship triathlon.

And we were happy because the competitors were also happy, having given us a second chance after the disaster of the first. Also, the numbers grew year by year until were squeezed by the turnout. Thanks to the British Triathlon Association, to which affiliation is mandatory, our event became known right across the nation, and further on as far as the USA and Australia.

Indeed, I wanted to glorify God and give Him the credit for our success. It's nice to know that if God is for us, who can be against us?

This is a kind of story I have heard about before, especially with starting up missionaries. Tales of initial failures before rising to success had made fascinating testimonies, namely, that the natural reliance on our own strength or merit need to be replaced with a dependency on God. Moses was a classic case. He grew up with a knowledge that he will deliver the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. He tried his own way first. He killed an Egyptian guard who was assaulting a fellow Hebrew. As a result, he spent forty years as a fugitive in the desert after he was rejected by his own fellowmen.

So bitter did Moses feel towards his countrymen that in order to be convinced, God had to appear as a flaming bush and then the need to persuade him to return to Egypt with the rod of God's power. However, even after God's revelation from the bush, Moses' continual bitterness and stubbornness against the Hebrews had very nearly cost him his life had his wife not acted quickly enough.

David was another failure after receiving the promise of the kingdom. He was spectacularly successful in defeating Goliath, and soon afterwards the Hebrew women were singing a song of victory, and declared David as the rightful king, much to King Saul's anger which was behind the younger man fleeing to a cave and living in seclusion for the next twenty years. It was during those years when the prince had to learn the reality of dependency over his pride in his battle skills.

With this present Coronavirus crisis, it would be easy to be tempted to ask where is God in all this? The latest news to reach us is about a total lockdown in Wales, with just one man, Labour Mark Drakeford, ordering all prohibition of buying non-essentials, and therefore Tesco and other superstores in Wales have literally covered all their hardware stalls with plastic sheeting. That means you can buy alcohol but not a bedsheet or a quilt. You can buy a chocolate Santa but not a saucepan or a spare woolly for the coming winter. The element in your kettle has blown? Or even your washing machine has broken down beyond repair? Then better to boil water in a saucepan or wash your clothes by hand.

Not used to any of that? Well at least, during my bachelor days, I have done plenty of both. However, if you're unfortunate enough to let all the water boil away and burn a hole at the bottom of the saucepan - like my Mum once did when she was young - well, you can try Sellotaping over the hole. No good? Well, you can always depend on good old Santa. After all, Christmas is not far away, is it? Wait! You have already eaten him! No presents for the kids this year, as toys, games and computers are non-essentials.

Hence the crushing absurdity this hysteria over the virus and how it has overtaken the Welsh. At this moment we are living in the medium zone. The only restrictions are that pubs must close by ten in the evening and there must be no more than six coming together. Not to forget social distancing and the wearing of facemasks - which makes me think - if the rate of infection is rising that fast, then, is the facemask working? After all, when I enter a shop, bus, train or any other public venue, I hardly see anyone without a mask. Then why this rise of cases? And now, like some alien weed creeping and crawling towards us, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this third stage lockdown begins to cover our area.

Yes, our first triathlon was a failure. But not those which followed, year by year. But even our failure pales to insufficiency when compared to those we call our leaders. 

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*Alek Hunter & Erik Kirschbaum - Swim+Bike+Run: Triathlon the Sporting Trinity, 1985, George Allen and Unwin publishers.

**You can delve into the full details on how I came about in organising the Bracknell Triathlon under the title, Alan Sugar at the Kerith? by clicking here.