It’s official: I am all booked up for the Isle of Dogs Open Water Sprint Triathlon on 22nd September, and with that in mind, I need to update my list of worries as follows:

Cycling

• Delete fear re: U-turns and replace with creeping resentment of the hours spent practicing said pointless manoeuvre all for sodding nothing.
• When braving the prospect of an open road cycle I told myself that it would be fine because no one drives around Canary Wharf at 7:30am on a Sunday.  What I failed to take into account was that there are BUSES every TEN MINUTES which means that in a seventy-minute cycle I will encounter SEVEN fucking great big red road hogging buses!  I can only hope the local bus service is as unreliable as the 158.
• Fear of being overtaken by someone on Boris Bike: ramp this one up a bit as now I will actually be cycling in Boris Bike territory.  Worse still – I might be overtaken by someone on a Boris Bike who is not actually part of the triathlon.
• There’s a cut off!!  Not a strict cut off, thankfully, but if one takes more than 70 minutes to cycle the 21km course (which I almost certainly will, especially if dodging buses) the race team “assess the ability of the competitor to complete the course” and may remove them “in the interest of their health and safety and the sanity of our marshals”.    Now I have the mental wellbeing of volunteers on my conscience too!!

Swimming

• Sharks probably not a worry in Millwall Dock, but there may be even worse things lurking in there.
• Never mind getting stuck in my wetsuit – I might get stuck in the water!  One enters and exits Millwall Dock via a floating pontoon which requires a lot of unnecessary palaver to raise oneself from the water.  My last effort to escape was eventually successful, but not before I had floundered ineffectually for several minutes, thrown a tantrum, nutted myself on the chin and eventually rolled on to my back on the shore like a beached whale.

Running

• Millwall Dock is full of sodding trip hazards.  There is a very real worry of tripping over a buckled paving slab and ending up on a impromptu second swim section with even less hope of getting out of the water in one piece.

Miscellaneous

• I forgot to list it last time and of course it turned out to be the worry to end all worries so I am going to put it in massive letters here.
  

  WEATHER!!!

  Fuck off weather, your services are not required.  Pls stay away.  Many thanks.