Time, Bowie says, is waiting in the wings. I didn’t believe so when I was doing the Zürich triathlon. On the contrary, I believed it was running after me, wielding a huge axe and spitting venom. However, it could be I was just delirious.

I had my reservation as to whether I would manage to complete the Zürich triathlon this year, and that’s an understatement. Most of my training time was taken up by studying, so I did not feel all that fit – not an excuse, just the way things were. And my not-so-ideal weight didn’t help, either.

I had set myself a target of 90 minutes to complete, quite slow when considering it was nine minutes more than last year and a staggering 19 minutes slower than my fastest ever time. But I was being realistic, not uselessly optimistic. Misplaced optimism only acts as a downer and makes people blind to their achievements.

My race was therefore planned out accordingly. I did some last minute swim training with a friend a week before and this meant I went into the first part of the race with more confident and less nerves than in previous years. The strategy worked as I sailed through the swimming part, actually beating last years’ time and overtaking a number of other competitors.

The bike part also went well, keeping in mind that Constance (my bike) was damaged. Every gear change was a nerve-racking experience, and the constant clanging was a reminder that she was on her last legs (wheels?). In my defence, I did take my bike to get fixed, but after spending two weeks at the store (Athleticum) with no repairs done, I collected my bike and took my chances – it paid off, just.

The start of the running was marred by a wrong turn, which added a good 200 metres of track. But the rest went well and at the end I was actually picking up pace. My time was 1H24M flat, six minutes faster than planned. I can’t tell you how important those six minutes were.9