OUR STORY

About the Authors

We are not professional triathletes.

We are two ordinary people who found triathlon later than most, got plenty of things wrong, and kept going anyway.

Why We Wrote This

We're not former elite swimmers, lifelong cyclists, or sponsored athletes writing a book between training camps.

We're two ordinary people who found triathlon later than most, got plenty of things wrong, and kept going anyway.

Everything in this book was tested on us first, usually the hard way.

And that's exactly why we wrote it.

TWO DIFFERENT STARTING POINTS

We Came to Triathlon in Completely Different Ways

Starting Again at 50

There had been a sporting life once. Through school and into our twenties, sport was simply part of life. Active, competitive, always moving.

Then knee injuries arrived. Not the kind that disappear after a few weeks, but the kind that make you quietly wonder whether that part of your life is over.

Then came work. Kids. Life. Years passing. Sport gradually became something remembered rather than something done.

A bike changed that. Bought in the early 50s, initially more out of impulse than any grand plan, it was ridden nervously at first and then more often. Running followed a few years later. It was slow, awkward and nothing like running thirty years earlier.

Then came the swimming pool. And one of the most humbling twenty minutes of the entire journey.

Thinking you can swim and actually being able to swim are two very different things.

Gasping at the wall, genuinely shocked by how difficult something so apparently simple could be, was a turning point. That feeling is exactly why the swimming chapter exists.

A Fighter Who Started Running to Stay Fit

The route in was completely different. Cycling came first, as a kid. Proper, regular riding. Enough that muscle memory creates a dangerous sense of confidence decades later.

Running, however, was never part of the plan. Swimming was certainly no more sophisticated than knowing how not to sink.

Then came a move out of the city and into somewhere quieter in the early thirties. A first tentative run was really just cross-training, something to stay conditioned between martial arts sessions and MMA training.

Then came a 5K. The 5K became a 10K. The 10K somehow became a half marathon. And somewhere along the way, without ever really deciding to become a runner, running had become part of life.

Then a local triathlon changed everything again. The bike looked manageable. Did that as a kid. Muscle memory. No problem. That confidence lasted exactly as long as it took to get to the local swimming pool.

The first swim session produced one length. That's it. One length.

And the immediate, slightly deflating realisation that swimming was going to be an entirely different challenge.

LEARNING THE HARD WAY

What Came Next Is What This Book Is Actually Made Of

Between the two of us, we've experienced most of the fears that sit behind the pages of this book.

The knee that makes you wonder whether your body has finished with sport. The 'I can already swim' assumption that gets corrected very publicly at the side of a pool. The confident cyclist discovering that cycling fitness doesn't automatically make swimming easy.

The fighter who thought endurance was already covered, discovering an entirely different kind of exhaustion.

The Research

Thousands of hours of YouTube tutorials. Watched, rewound and sometimes completely contradicted by the next video.

The Coaching

Paid coaching sessions, saved for and booked when we could justify them.

The Nutrition

Nutrition guides, calorie deficits, carbohydrate timing, fuelling and recovery, all figured out through plenty of trial and error.

The Gear

Second-hand smart watches. Second-hand trainers. A rented wetsuit. A borrowed bike. All the improvised, budget-conscious decisions genuine beginners make.

We went through all of this separately, in different ways, making different mistakes and learning different lessons. Then eventually we sat down and compared notes. What surprised us was how often the things we had each assumed were personal failings turned out to be completely normal.

AND THEN WE FINISHED

Several Times

Not quickly. Not elegantly. Not without incidents, disasters and at least a few stories we still can't quite believe ended well.

But we finished. Again and again. Across distances neither of us would have believed possible when we first stood nervously at the edge of a swimming pool or headed out on that first tentative run.

It has never completely stopped being nerve-racking.

Every event can still bring the same nervous stomach and terrible sleep the night before. The swim still scares us. Genuinely. Experience hasn't magically removed that feeling. But something else happens every single time. You cross the finish line.

WHY TRIATHLON TRACKER EXISTS

Why We Wrote This

We remember exactly what it felt like to be where you might be now.

Excited and frightened in roughly equal measure. Wondering whether you are actually capable of doing this. Wondering what you need to buy. Wondering how you're supposed to train. Wondering whether everyone else understands something that you somehow missed.

Nobody handed either of us a book like this when we started. We built our own version slowly, and sometimes expensively, from scattered videos, second-hand equipment, coaching sessions, mistakes and years of trial and error.

So we decided to write the book we wished we'd had. Every chapter comes from somewhere real. A fear we actually had. A mistake we actually made. A question we genuinely struggled to answer. A piece of advice we wish someone had given us months earlier.

We're not writing from some distant place as elite athletes looking back at our beginner days. We're still close enough to remember what those days felt like.

It's about giving ordinary people honest information, practical help and a little reassurance when they need it. Because you can do this. We're telling you that as two people who, not so long ago, couldn't.

The Triathlon Tracker Authors