Sorry lads
Often the frenetic activity which propels Blenheim Palace along is hidden nicely below the surface. The vast majority of visitors see a serene setting centred on a beautiful Palace and give minimal thought to the work going on "down below".
Today is NOT one of those times. Filming for Gulliver's Travels continues, creating a fascinating and unusual scene in the Courtyards - a scene which provokes a great deal of interest. On the Showground, the build for Art, Design and a Taste of Summer has started (this is a high end craft fair for the Spring Bank Holiday weekend which we are organising with Living Crafts - the same people with whom we run Living Crafts for Christmas). It will be a memorable show
We are very close to the build for the Blenheim Triathlon, which..... I am dissolving in shock as I type this..... is only THREE WEEKS AWAY. No panic. Nice measured breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
That's better. Until I think of the lake.
Roger File (our property director) and I started our lake practice about a week ago. I should point out that we are not cheating and using our own lake here. Oh, no. That would be against the rules (and we don't plan to break those rules until next week). For this, we borrowed a lake in North Oxford. I had a terrible time in our lake last year. All my planning went out of the window. I got kicked, dragged under, realised that the water was a funny brown colour, swallowed most of it, all in the first five seconds. Panic then ensued (and I mean real "I'm going to die" panic). I got colder, realised that I was all alone and that it was a very long way to the edge. I would have quit but I couldn't face admitting to people that I had dropped out after completing the first three metres of the triathlon.
Anyway, with Roger alongside me, it will all be different this year.
Jumping in the practice lake brought back all sorts of memories.
The first memory was about the cold. We really must look into heating the lake, Roger.
The second memory was triggered when I opened my eyes under water and saw my wedding ring slowly sinking in front of my eyes. I grabbed it and put it on the jetty. It is not normally loose but, as I suddenly recalled, when you jump into something THAT cold, your fingers shrink slightly. In fact every bit of you shrinks slightly (so my friends watching from the bank as I removed my wetsuit can STOP that sniggering - it's just nature).
Anything that I have gained in speed and confidence from last year has been more than offset by the complete loss of my sense of direction in the lake. The straight lake swim is hard enough without me attempting what appeared to onlookers to be a complete circumnavigation of the lake in question. I have a horrible feeling I will end up tacking along the Blenheim lake on the day.
One would like to think that one could rely on one's friends to shout a warning if they see one heading off the wrong way. You don't know my friends. I bumped into one, Richard King Smith, in the middle of the lake on a return leg. "Oh, you gave us such a laugh", he said, "the best bit is when you all started off together and you managed to head off at 90 degrees from everyone else".
Thanks Richard.
Roger is training well and he has, in my opinion, the clear advantage of actually being able to bike and run, which he denies but I maintain is a definite advantage in a triathlon in which you, well, swim, bike and run.
And we have more estate competitors (all like me, I suspect, doing it to avoid having to work on a very busy day).
Anita Donaldson, our Head of Finance, competes at a very high level. She is in hard training to try to qualify for the world championships later this year. Needless to say, I will not be comparing times with her.
Nick Bainbridge is another outstanding triathlete, and he works in our Rural Enterprise team helping lead the forestry work which is so defining of our park landscape. I don't think I will compare times with him either. I beat him by about a minute to the finish line last year, which pleased me immensely - pleasure only marginally reduced when someone pointed out to me that he had started one hour after me. Still, I do recall that he was out of breath from the strain of catching me. You ought to try training, Nick.
Two of our Maintenance team are taking part in the team event (Paul Loakes and Chris Monaghan) together with Rhiann Orsi, who is married to our head of Rural Enterprise. Paul, her better half, is too busy helping run the event to take part. He is one of those annoying folks who could probably just go out and do a triathlon without really practicing...
And Hannah "Buy One Day Etc" Payne, our Marketing Manager is also part of a team, although she had the good sense to look around at the athletic specimens on offer here and chose instead to team up with two non-Blenheim people.
Obviously I would like to beat any of them. Trust me, by the time I write up the results on this web-site, I will have beaten most of them. It's not so much the victor writing the history here, as "he who has control of the website" writing the history.
Sorry lads.
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Today is NOT one of those times. Filming for Gulliver's Travels continues, creating a fascinating and unusual scene in the Courtyards - a scene which provokes a great deal of interest. On the Showground, the build for Art, Design and a Taste of Summer has started (this is a high end craft fair for the Spring Bank Holiday weekend which we are organising with Living Crafts - the same people with whom we run Living Crafts for Christmas). It will be a memorable show
We are very close to the build for the Blenheim Triathlon, which..... I am dissolving in shock as I type this..... is only THREE WEEKS AWAY. No panic. Nice measured breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
That's better. Until I think of the lake.
Roger File (our property director) and I started our lake practice about a week ago. I should point out that we are not cheating and using our own lake here. Oh, no. That would be against the rules (and we don't plan to break those rules until next week). For this, we borrowed a lake in North Oxford. I had a terrible time in our lake last year. All my planning went out of the window. I got kicked, dragged under, realised that the water was a funny brown colour, swallowed most of it, all in the first five seconds. Panic then ensued (and I mean real "I'm going to die" panic). I got colder, realised that I was all alone and that it was a very long way to the edge. I would have quit but I couldn't face admitting to people that I had dropped out after completing the first three metres of the triathlon.
Anyway, with Roger alongside me, it will all be different this year.
Jumping in the practice lake brought back all sorts of memories.
The first memory was about the cold. We really must look into heating the lake, Roger.
The second memory was triggered when I opened my eyes under water and saw my wedding ring slowly sinking in front of my eyes. I grabbed it and put it on the jetty. It is not normally loose but, as I suddenly recalled, when you jump into something THAT cold, your fingers shrink slightly. In fact every bit of you shrinks slightly (so my friends watching from the bank as I removed my wetsuit can STOP that sniggering - it's just nature).
Anything that I have gained in speed and confidence from last year has been more than offset by the complete loss of my sense of direction in the lake. The straight lake swim is hard enough without me attempting what appeared to onlookers to be a complete circumnavigation of the lake in question. I have a horrible feeling I will end up tacking along the Blenheim lake on the day.
One would like to think that one could rely on one's friends to shout a warning if they see one heading off the wrong way. You don't know my friends. I bumped into one, Richard King Smith, in the middle of the lake on a return leg. "Oh, you gave us such a laugh", he said, "the best bit is when you all started off together and you managed to head off at 90 degrees from everyone else".
Thanks Richard.
Roger is training well and he has, in my opinion, the clear advantage of actually being able to bike and run, which he denies but I maintain is a definite advantage in a triathlon in which you, well, swim, bike and run.
And we have more estate competitors (all like me, I suspect, doing it to avoid having to work on a very busy day).
Anita Donaldson, our Head of Finance, competes at a very high level. She is in hard training to try to qualify for the world championships later this year. Needless to say, I will not be comparing times with her.
Nick Bainbridge is another outstanding triathlete, and he works in our Rural Enterprise team helping lead the forestry work which is so defining of our park landscape. I don't think I will compare times with him either. I beat him by about a minute to the finish line last year, which pleased me immensely - pleasure only marginally reduced when someone pointed out to me that he had started one hour after me. Still, I do recall that he was out of breath from the strain of catching me. You ought to try training, Nick.
Two of our Maintenance team are taking part in the team event (Paul Loakes and Chris Monaghan) together with Rhiann Orsi, who is married to our head of Rural Enterprise. Paul, her better half, is too busy helping run the event to take part. He is one of those annoying folks who could probably just go out and do a triathlon without really practicing...
And Hannah "Buy One Day Etc" Payne, our Marketing Manager is also part of a team, although she had the good sense to look around at the athletic specimens on offer here and chose instead to team up with two non-Blenheim people.
Obviously I would like to beat any of them. Trust me, by the time I write up the results on this web-site, I will have beaten most of them. It's not so much the victor writing the history here, as "he who has control of the website" writing the history.
Sorry lads.
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posted by Dominic Hare at
Friday, May 15, 2009
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Surely Rhian is the better half??
Oh, Paul is a very special fellow. He has a way with trees that I've never seen elsewhere....
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