I knew it was going to be hard, but didn’t expect it to be so hard. I hadn’t trained half as much as I should have and therefore have no real excuses to offer. But I was hoping to equal my time of last year.

It didn’t happen and I was a whopping three minutes slower. My time at this year’s Zurich Triathlon (Short) was something over one hour 21 minutes, which honestly is a bit disappointing. And as what happened last year, I am putting off moving up to the Olympic distance for now.

The swimming part was the usual disaster – my goggles fogged up, I felt out of breath and believe someone had cunningly tied a 20kg deadweight to my leg, thus dragging me down – at least that’s what it felt like. This was topped off with a kick to my chest and kidney courtesy of other competitors.

The ‘hard’ part over, I got on my bike – my strongest discipline – but once again I felt I was a V8 with just three cylinders working. My time was, however, respectable at just over 31 minutes for 20km.

Running, or moving-just-a-little-bit-faster-than-walking as it was in my case, felt as though somebody was beating me up with every stride. A colleague past me at the 3km mark and I decided to use him (he was relatively faster) as a pace maker. This plan was unceremoniously abandoned around 30 seconds after it was hatched.

The ending was surprisingly positive. I picked up pace for the last 200m and people were really cheering me (and all other athletes) on. And at the very end, six cheerleaders cheered me (as they do) past the finish line. Probably the first time someone in so much pain smiled so happily!