High hopes and low cramps in Holkham
A middle-aged man makes a pact
He has a heart condition, asthma, sciatic pain, ADHD, dreadful eyesight and insomnia. He’s mostly deaf in one ear—and a terrible swimmer.
In the cold, dark, damp days of winter, he makes a pact: he’ll train for the Holkham Outlaw Half in July 2026.
He’s a member of Hadleigh Triathlon Club. He is nowhere near fit enough. And despite all the training plans he’s asked AI to design and printed out, there’s every chance he won’t be fit enough by July.
But middle-aged men make odd decisions. Time is passing. The air feels heavy with mortality and existential crises. If not now, when?
Of course, this middle-aged man is me. Ever hopeful. Ever convinced I can transform this soft body into a machine of steel and endurance—one that wins triathlons in my age group and builds a vast online following, paying the mortgage through advertising and endorsements alone.
In February, I pin up a 20-week training plan and promise to follow it religiously. Every day. No excuses.
By week two, everything has gone wrong.
While cycling in Lanzarote—it was all going so well—I wreck my back. I spend the next few weeks unable to put on my own trousers or socks. My wife knew this day would come, but assumed she had a few years before she’d have to help her husband into his Y-fronts.
Every time she does, I make the same hilarious joke: “I’m so glad this isn’t our first date.” The jokes, the body, the injuries, the repetition—it’s all getting very old. If I were married to me, I’d have asked for a divorce long ago.
Wiser family members tell me, “Just ring Holkham and say you aren’t doing it.”
That isn’t an option. This is the third time I’ve signed up for Holkham, and the third time I’ve told my training partner, Ade, I’ll be there with him. He did it last year, and I’m sure he’s only putting himself through it again to keep me company.
Third time lucky.
Winter becomes spring. The 20-week plan shrinks to 12 weeks, then eight. The ever-optimistic AI tells me I’m now at a completely unrealistic stage and will need to run-walk the half marathon.
A lot of walking.
My back heals. My right knee swells. My cardiac surgeon assures me I now have a triathlon-proof heart: the surgery was a success, my mitral valve is working, and the hole in my heart is fully repaired.
With six weeks to go, I take stock of the body that will be 56 by the time I enter the lake at Holkham:
One heart operation
One knee operation
Two rounds of cortisone injections in my lower spine
Never-ending lower-back pain
Countless ankle sprains
Asthma
A long list of allergies—and overwhelming hay fever, but only from March to July
Nothing about me says “triathlete”, “athlete” or even “healthy”. Very little about me mentally says “functioning”, either. But I’ll stick to the physical side of things on this blog. Sharing the mental decline could only lead to being sectioned.
Put it this way: poorly designed as I am for physical pursuits, without them I’d barely function in the world—if at all.
Enough of that. It’s summer 2026. Hours on the spin bike in the cupboard, sweat pooling beneath me; long runs with my loyal hound, Dudley; endless pool lengths and loops of Gosfield Lake: it’s all starting to build some endurance.
Time moves too quickly.
It’s Holkham time.
Holkham Outlaw Half
Bob the Dog appeared, straining against his harness and hauling me through a forest in the Otway Ranges of Victoria, Australia.
I needed something to get me through this, and there he was, back from the dead hauling me along.
Except he wasn’t. Bob had been dead some 14 years. And I wasn’t in the Otways. I was alone on the grounds of Holkham Estate in Norfolk, somewhere on the soul-sapping half-marathon leg of the Outlaw Half.
Bob was the hound I rescued in Australia more than a quarter of a century ago: part Doberman, part Kelpie, mostly Dingo. When I was a younger man, with reliable knees, springy Achilles tendons and the ability to run 10, 20 or more miles in the overwhelming heat of an Australian summer.
That version of me is long gone. So is Bob.
That extraordinary dog and I ran through jungles and deserts across Australia before I took out a gargantuan loan to bring him to England.
Together, we ran dog races, climbed hills and canoed everywhere from the South Downs to the Scottish Highlands.
If you want to see a middle-aged man cry, ask me about Bob.
He was also a complete fucking nutcase.
Back in the real world, I’m somewhere around mile four or five of the final leg of the Outlaw, and I’m broken.
I haven’t trained enough. More importantly, I haven’t done nearly enough brick training: the grim business of getting off the bike and immediately going for a run. It’s amazing how many training sessions end with, “I’ll just sit down for a minute,” followed shortly by a beer.
I’m only partway through the second of three laps needed to complete the half marathon and finally claim the medal I’ve been chasing for two years. There are reasons for the delays—heart surgery and a trip to America among them—but excuses don’t make a run any easier.
Everything hurts. Cramp grips me from my feet to my sorry arse.
Bob leans into his trusty harness, his elasticated lead attached to my waist, and glances back with those wolf-like eyes that always seemed to say: “Shift your sorry arse.”
Suddenly, I’m back in the Australian bush during those man-and-dog races. We’d fly along dense forest trails, leaping over roots and rocks and splashing through streams. It was joy in its rawest, wildest form.
It feels good for a while. Perhaps it gets me through another mile.
Then reality kicks in. Bob isn’t there.
And I still have eight miles to go.
Back to the start
Ade and I—fellow 56-year-old triathlete and training partner from the small but mighty Hadleigh Triathlon Club—arrive on Saturday afternoon and pitch our tents in the beautiful grounds of Holkham Estate.
Then come the logistics: gels, energy bars, lube, bottles, salt tablets, pumps, helmets, race belts, shoes and enough kit to launch a small military operation.
Honestly, with my ADHD-addled brain, I don’t have the mental capacity or organisational skills for triathlon. Add Ade, who’ll admit to a few mental challenges and could give me a run for my money in an ADHD competition, and it’s a little like Laurel and Hardy do triathlon.
Earlier, we’d watched a serious-looking athlete beside an immaculate VW camper van opposite our amateur set up. Everything was laid out with military precision. Every tub labelled. Every item in its place.
We watched in silence as he stretched and went through a well-rehearsed pre-race ritual.
Then we spent the next hour saying things like:
“Fuck. I’ve forgotten…” “Please tell me you’ve got a spare…” “No, but I can’t find my bloody…”
And so it continued.
Does anyone sleep properly in a tent the night before a race?
Between nervous anticipation, mentally rehearsing transition and three trips to the toilets half a mile from my tent, sleep never stood a chance.
The alarm sounds at 4:15 a.m.
We walk towards the start in our wetsuits, feeling surprisingly relaxed and organised.
Then somebody asks, “Have you attached your timing chip?”
Of course I haven’t.
I turn around and sprint back to the tent in a blind panic, rummaging through boxes and bags until I find it. Relaxed and organised disappear immediately.
The swim
Gels packed. Helmet ready. Inhalers secured. Socks and trainers lined up.
One final toilet visit? No chance. That particular urge will inevitably arrive at the worst possible moment later in the race.
Ade is already in the water, his pink swim cap bobbing across the brown surface of Holkham Lake. I’m waiting in my yellow cap for my turn.
At 6:20 a.m., I trot down the ramp, catch my toe and go head-first into the lake while trying to make it look intentional.
The usual routine follows: a few gasps, a brief conviction that I’m about to drown, then the internal command: “Calm the fuck down. Breathe. Swim.”
And away I go, with 1.2 miles ahead of me.
Keep the red buoys on your left. Go round the yellow ones. Simple enough—except when you have the visual clarity of Mr Magoo after taking off your glasses. Prescription goggles are one of the few things I haven’t spent a fortune on.
We were warned there might be a few weeds in the water. That was a serious understatement. Great clumps cling to my arms and legs and wrap themselves around my head. I stop several times to pull them off, mainly to avoid climbing out of the water and running to transition as the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Swim time: 44 minutes.
The ride
What a glorious county Norfolk is.
Riding out of Holkham Hall and onto those winding roads is pure joy. After the murky chaos of the lake, the bike feels like freedom: fresh air, open road and the comforting knowledge that, for the next few hours at least, I don’t have to attempt anything resembling running.
Despite the relentless headwind, the miles pass with surprising ease. The course winds along tiny single-track roads, through villages, past open fields and out towards the main road between King’s Lynn and Cromer.
I’ve been dreading that section. Main roads and bikes aren’t always a happy combination, especially when my brain is already calculating how many gels I’ve had, whether I’ve drunk enough, and whether that strange noise is mechanical failure or just my knees.
But with the support team on motorbikes and maintenance vans moving along the route, it feels well managed and, to my surprise, perfectly safe.
Back onto the winding lanes and into Holkham Estate comes the lovely downhill run towards transition—and the brutal realisation that what I’m riding down, I’ll soon be running up.
Bike time: 4 hours.
The run—and the walk
It doesn’t start well. I rack my bike, pull on my trainers and set off from transition. Almost immediately, someone tells me I’ve gone the wrong way and need to cross the entire transition area again and leave by the running route, not the cycling route.
Not the best start.
And it doesn’t get much better.
The first mile climbs a long, straight hill that feels utterly relentless. Within the first 200 metres, I know the next 13 miles—on top of the 57 already completed—will be a joyless experience.
I try to settle into running for nine minutes and walking for one. That quickly becomes eight minutes running, then seven, then six, and eventually five.
Calling it running would be generous. It’s shuffling at best.
It would be easy to call the whole thing miserable: searing pain down the outside of my right knee, cramps biting into my thighs, feet swollen and sore.
But it isn’t entirely miserable.
There’s a strange camaraderie among those of us further down the field. A shared, self-deprecating humour settles in among people who are struggling and questioning their existence. Everyone is in pain. Everyone knows there are still hours to go. And yet there’s dark humour everywhere.
The volunteers at each refreshment stop are brilliant. They’ve been out there all day in the heat, yet they’re still full of encouragement as they hand out water, electrolytes and bananas—and tell us we’re nearly there.
What else can you do when you’re determined to get that medal?
Just keep moving.
A constant narrative runs through my head. This is meant to hurt. Discomfort is part of the point. David Goggins and all the other voices on the podcasts say that pain and discomfort are necessary if you want to live a better, fuller life. Constant comfort, they warn, brings apathy, lethargy, anxiety and depression.
I have friends and family who would happily dispute that.
For now, I’m going with Goggins—not to his extremes, obviously—and choosing to believe that all this discomfort is worth it. This is my experience, not advice to anyone else: with my health history, I know pushing through isn’t always the right answer.
At the end of lap one, with help from my long-lost hound, I see my long-suffering wife.
While I’ve been indulging my latest endurance-based midlife crisis, she’s been driving our son to his activities, walking the dogs, dealing with parental duties and looking after her own father, who has just had heart surgery. Then she’s driven two hours to Holkham to watch a chubby bloke in lycra stumble around the grounds of a National Trust property.
She has a can of Coke and some chocolate.
Heaven.
I’m emotional, grateful and slightly revived. Then I head off on lap two.
That’s what we do. If running is in your blood, you know you have to keep going.
My mind goes back to winning school cross-country races in the mid-1980s, ploughing through mud and snow in football boots, shorts and a singlet, lungs rasping in the bitter cold. I think of beating my arch-enemy, Keith Grant, in the 800 metres on sports day. I think of finishing the London Marathon in the 1990s.
I’ve been here before, when every sinew is screaming at me to stop.
Only now, I’m doing it in a body ravaged by time, injuries, operations, indulgence and several deeply unhelpful vices.
Still, the mantra is the same:
Just keep fucking going.
And I do.
Painfully. Slowly. Eventually.
I turn off the course and run towards the finish line. A sparse crowd remains.
The announcer spots me.
“Jonathan Schofield, still smiling after all this time.”
That’s a generous interpretation.
After seven hours and 54 minutes of continuous forward motion—in a lake, on a bike and in a pair of increasingly hostile running shoes—I cross the line and stop.
That’s it. All forward motion comes to a halt.
Run time: 2 hours 59 minutes.
A medal is placed around my neck. A St John Ambulance nurse gives me a concerned look and asks whether I need any assistance.
That can’t be a good sign.
I thank her politely and hobble on. A few minutes later, Ade crosses the finish line and two ageing, knackered middle-aged men embrace.
Total time: 7 hours 54 minutes.
Why do this?
It’s a fair question. There’s no money in completing a half Ironman. There are certainly easier and cheaper ways to spend a weekend. Training takes huge chunks of your life. The equipment costs a small fortune. Injuries arrive with depressing regularity. And there are plenty of moments in a race when you wonder whether a comfortable chair, a bacon sandwich and a quiet afternoon in the garden might have been the wiser choice.
Especially at 56. Especially after heart surgery, knee surgery and back problems.
But I think the answer is simple.
As you get older, the world slowly lowers its expectations of you. People stop expecting adventure. They stop expecting risk. They stop expecting you to test yourself. The quiet message becomes: be careful, slow down, take it easy.
There’s wisdom in that. But there’s danger in it, too.
If you’re not careful, life can gradually shrink. The boundaries get smaller. The challenges become fewer. Before you know it, you’re saying no far more often than yes.
This is my small, possibly futile way of pushing back.
Not because I’m trying to prove I’m still young. God knows the state of my knees, hips and cardiovascular system makes it abundantly clear that I’m not.
I do it because I still want to discover what I’m capable of. And because, with 60 rapidly approaching, I have a niggling sense that I might still get fitter.
I want to believe discomfort isn’t always something to fear. Sometimes, it can be embraced—carefully, and in a way that makes sense for your own body.
The medal will end up in a drawer. The aches and pains will fade. The bruised ego and blistered feet will recover.
Perhaps that’s the real point. Not the medal. Not the finish line. Just knowing that when things get hard, you keep moving.
Slowly. Painfully. Inexpertly.
But forwards.
As my wonderful, stoic, tough grandmother used to say, well into her 90s:
“Keep striding! Once you start shuffling it’s all over.”
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