Tim lives in London. Thom lives on the Isle of Wight.
Tim wanted to visit Thom but he doesn’t have a car (or a boat for that matter). He could have taken a train, a boat and a taxi but that would have cost a lot of money and left a big carbon footprint. Besides, it’s not much fun.
Instead, Tim got to Thom’s house by doing a triathlon. He cycled to Portsmouth, swum across the Solent and ran across the island.
Oh, and Thom went with him (he couldn’t resist when he heard about it). While they were at it, they raised some money for something that meant a lot to them: the British Schools Exploring Society.
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The London to Isle of Wight Triathlon
Thom and I completed our triathlon in September 2008.
It involved a 100km cycle, 5km swim and 20km run. A bit like a “Half Ironman” but with a bigger swim. Neither Thom nor I could do much more than a single length of front crawl when started and we spent a good year or so training for the event. It took about 15 hours in the end and we were met by the most fantastic reception at Thom’s house on the island – seeing the crowd at the finish line is one of my most powerful memories.
In addition to the physical aspect, we committed a lot of time to fundraising and keeping our supporters informed with fortnightly newsletters. We received a lot of positive feedback from our readers and got as much from documenting and sharing our experiences as we did from actually having them.
You can read our penultimate ‘T2T Triathlete’ newsletter below and follow links to the others:
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