With a 6.30am start, we were threading numbers onto race belts in the dark with frozen fingers. I trust the pre-dawn start time was not down to the organisers testing our toughness, but simply because the swim is hosted in a public pool so needs to be freed up as early as possible.

 

Easter Monday may well have been the warmest day yet this year, but I can attest at 5.45am, as we racked our bikes it was still a chilly five degrees. The lack of public transport at this hour means many had to rely on lifts. For me that meant a five-mile cycle at 4am (!) to meet my lift, repeating, ‘why,’ with every pedal. 

 

The swim, a meagre 426 meters, took place in the heated outdoor Hampton Pool. Competitors lined up at the poolside in numerical order and were started at 15-second intervals. We used increasingly imaginative ways of staying warm as we waited, flesh exposed in our tri-suits. Some lucky ones had friends and family on hand to take jumpers away at the last possible minute. One girl stood clutching a hot water bottle. As for me, my feet were so cold on the frozen concrete that when I spotted a polystyrene float lying around I grabbed it shamelessly and used it to stand on. The relief as each competitor lowered themselves into the pool was visible. Compared to the outside air, this was like a hot bath.

 

Transition took longer than usual for most as various layers were applied. There weren’t many who braved the cycle with bare arms. I looked longingly at seasoned racers in fancy long-sleeved aero-tops. Some though just settled with a hoodie over a tri suit and to hell with wind-resistance. I opted for a cycling jacket over my trisuit but my damp legs had to brave the elements.

 

The 21km cycle was an extremely flat, out-and-back route. It ran westbound along The Thames through the sleepy village of Hampton, passed the Sunnyside Reservoir on one side and the Staine Hill reservoirs on the other. There was lots of pleasing scenery as it passed Shepperton and the Halliford Mere Lakes and a few sharp roundabouts and potholes to put bike-handling skills to the test. 

 

Unusually, at the end of the cycle route we were given a seven-minute ‘dead zone’ to get to Transition 2. This was so that no one would be unfairly penalised by an unavoidable set of traffic lights. Once we passed through the T2 entrance, the clock restarted and it’s off with the cycle layers and into the run. 

 

My hands were too cold to unclip my helmet strap despite wearing gloves and I had a moment of panic where I resigned myself to completing the 5k run with my helmet on. Eventually though, I managed to stretch the strap and force it over my jaw to get the thing off. Meanwhile my feet were so numb that for the first mile I kept looking at them to check I wasn’t still in my cleats. I couldn’t feel a thing.

 

We were off the road in less than a kilometre and then the route opened into the beautiful Bushy Park - Richmond Park’s little sister. We soon veered off the concrete path and onto a grassy track. There’s nothing like an uneven earthy terrain to test post-cycle legs. After two figure-of-eights, we finished in the middle of the park, a half-mile walk back to base.

 

Typically, as soon as the finish came into site, the sun came out and Easter Monday turned into the warmest day of the year so far. If I were to tell all the Bank Holiday revellers out in T-shirts later that day that just a few hours we could see our breath and couldn’t feel our hands and toes, they probably wouldn’t believe me.