A special clap for those last home in the race

I was back to training this weekend with my Personal Trainer Matt Shore. Matt is a pretty amazing guy, great trainer and strong man and athlete himself. He has pushed, persuaded, charmed and hassled me from my relatively inactive self 4 years ago to a pretty active average woman today. This weekend session was strength based with kettle bells in the hail and rain on Eastbourne seafront - no moaning expected or allowed.

Matt has always pushed me to build my core strength and believes strength comes first in all sport. Personally I love to watch his spanner bending and tyre flipping - but then I can be a bit odd.

At the end of our first year training together in 2010 Matt asked me to set a stretching target for myself based on something I had always wanted to do - I chose triathlons with sea swims - quite a stretch as scared of swimming, couldn't cycle without falling off the bike and running was slow and weak. Being a brave soul and both competitive cyclist and swimmer in his time, he took this on and I completed 3 triathlons with sea swims in  2011 - Matt shadowing me on two of them to stop me from drowning. He got me from swimming 5 strokes in the pool then 'drowning' to doing 1km competently and then facing force 5 gales and waves in Summer tri swims on the south coast. He patiently went bike shopping with me, taught me how to use gears, put my feet in the pedal straps while not falling off and get to a 25km cycle at a more than competent speed, and finally completing 5km running without believing death was close.

 The Tris taught me many things that have remained with me:

• the physical and psychological pain and pleasure of competing
• how to survive the ignominy of being last in a race and still feel you achieved something worthwhile
• how competition pushes your performance up and onwards 
• how much you need a coach to train and believe in you when you don't frankly have any faith in yourself to complete your personal target

Lots more lessons and competitions since then and have stopped coming last now but much as I love watching elite athletes and those who come first, there is a special place in my heart for the guys at the end of the race who are starting out on their personal fitness journey - as it is the toughest part - so I try to be there to clap them home.