IM: It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it.

My training thus far has been following the advice/ideas from a book called “Going Long” by Friel and Byrn. On the one hand this is useful as the authors have been coaching and racing Ironman for several years. On the other there are some glaring errors in the book. The entire chapter on nutrition is, how shall I say? Bovine Surplus-matter, and I speak as someone who has a PhD in the area – OK, in both nutrition and BS, more on this below. There are also some big misunderstandings in the section on bicycle handling, some of which are pointless and some probably dangerous. Still, until proven otherwise I am assuming most of the rest to be correct and going along with most of the ideas. That means, up until now, that training has been all about “preparation”: Improving my technique over short distances and short durations, the principle being that there’s little point trying to do something for hours if you can’t even do it properly/efficiently for the first 30 minutes.

This has been both satisfying and useful. Swimming is becoming more relaxing and smoother and it is great to spend some time thinking about pedalling technique and decision-making on the bike. My running style remains a bit too bouncy and low-cadence, as 1 or 2 better runners have pointed out (Joe Socks and a random Canadian, thanks) but I think I have maybe got a little tidier there too.

What I am also really enjoying is not having a job. For one it gives me the chance to train when and where I can do so best, rather than when the boss dictates. Since my swimming is usually dependent on the tides this is fairly crucial. But more fundamentally it means I can introduce myself to people in a much more honest manner. I’ve always disliked the way a lot of people in Western society tend to define you solely by your job – can this really be the most interesting thing about someone? I am sure Marilyn Monroe did more interesting things than standing on air vents, including having affairs with at least one US president, for example. Those few people I know who have read a Jeffrey Archer novel assure me that his writing can certainly not be the most interesting thing about him, not compared with being a liar and a crook and serving time for it. But is she just a model, and he just an author? No, they are real, complex, multi-faceted (maybe I should say multi-faced in the latter case) human beings with quirks and flaws to their characters just like anyone else. And those are famous, well known jobs. Introducing myself as an epidemiologist was confusing for one, as most people don’t even know what it means, and secondly it was telling less than half of the story. I find (found) research and teaching in epidemiology interesting enough that I could turn up to work each morning, just. And I presume that one day I will have to work again, probably in the same area. But if you offered me early retirement I would take it on Monday. I have 1001 other things more stimulating and rewarding that I will always want to do with my leisure time, and by which I would much rather be defined, or categorised. All I ask of my job is that it pays me enough to do them, for one, and secondly it should be something that I can at least regard as “not unethical”.

So being here is fantastic, I can support the Mrs in her work, aiming to improve the survival rate of newborn Tanzanian infants, which is surely the opposite of unethical. And at the same time we can both be a myriad other things, and be known for those things. Some of them may seem small or quirky (the white couple who don’t drive everywhere), while others may on a local scale be really weird (“How can you not be a Christian or a Muslim!?”), but all of which tell far more about who we really are than the things we have to do to earn money.