There's a particular satisfaction in triathlon that I suspect only cyclists truly understand. Picture this: you're halfway around the swim course and you turn your head towards the finish area to take a breath, and spot that already those annoying natural-born swimmers are sprinting out of the water into the transition with a huge lead. What’s more, glancing around you realise that you are nearer the back of the field than the front. But then you’re out of the water and onto your bike, clip into the pedals, settle into the aero bars and drop into that familiar rhythm, and everything changes. One by one, you start reeling them in. This is where a cycling background doesn't just matter in triathlon – it becomes your secret weapon.
I've been cycling for as long as I can remember, going out with my dad as a young teenager on the Wirral to the (dearly departed) Two Mills cycling café, and glued to Channel 4’s Tour de France coverage every July. I dipped my toes into time trialling then – nothing too serious, but enough to learn the fundamentals of sustained effort and the art of suffering efficiently. I did race against Chris Boardman in a Chester 10 TT around that time, a few weeks after he won gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. I say ‘race against’ – I happened to be in the same race, on my battered old Cougar. But this 13 year old did get his autograph!
what can be an overwhelmingly cerebral existence. So, I joined the City of Lancaster Tri club (COLT) and found the most wonderful collection of warm, supportive (and supremely fit) human beings. I realised that heading out every week for the Sunday morning COLT ride was, as well as providing good training opportunities, also very much addressing my mental health needs: exercise, fresh air, new friends and community, and a healthy focus. Triathlon also offered the perfect escape from the studies – structured training sessions that demanded complete presence, leaving no mental space for thesis anxieties or fretting over the many, many research dead ends. More importantly, though, it gave me legitimate reasons to abandon the thick books and dense political theory and head outdoors, transforming what might have felt like procrastination into essential training.
And here's where my cycling background becomes the great equaliser. On a good day, if I’ve been training regularly, taking in coaching and even practicing in open water… on a really, really good day, with a good wind and a bit of luck, on a really good day, then I can honestly say that yes, I am very much a bang average swimmer. I regularly finish the swim legs somewhere just behind the middle of the pack. It sometimes seems like I’ve only just entered the water when the stronger swimmers are already climbing out. When I first started competing I really fretted about being left behind, but I’m experienced enough now to stay calm because I know what’s coming next. Years of cycling has built more than just physical strength – they've developed an intuitive understanding of pacing, aerodynamics, and power output. I know how to read the road ahead, how to feed efficiently, and how to maintain smooth output even as lactate builds in my legs. And I’m a good climber and can ride a decent pace going uphill. So, I clip into my beloved Specialized and set off after the dolphins spread out up the road, repressing a smile for every one I charge by.
But cycling offers something more important, beyond competitive advantage in a triathlon – it provides moments of pure clarity in an otherwise chaotic sport. While swimming demands constant technical focus on not drowning, and running often feels like a battle of attrition, cycling offers space to think, to process, and to find that meditative rhythm that first drew me to the discipline. It's where the stress of academic life melts away, where solutions to research problems have actually often emerged from nowhere, and where I reconnect with the simple joy of fast, self-propelled forward motion.
As I reel in those dolphins, kilometre by kilometre on my beautiful bike, I'm reminded why cycling will always be my first love in sport.
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