Chrissie Wellington - Triathlon Career (amateur)

Triathlon Career (amateur)

Wellington's first triathlon race was at the Eton Super Sprints on 16 May 2004, where she finished third. In the following two months, she won this race on both occasions. She put her triathlon racing on hold for her sabbatical in Nepal, where she was based in Kathmandu, at an altitude of 1350 m (4430 ft). Every morning before work she would cycle around the neighbouring countryside on her mountain bike, with a group of foreign and Nepali cyclists known as the "Mongolian Cycling Team". She would also go running along the many hilly trails in the Kathmandu valley. When riding around the outlying villages on her mountain bike she would often have to wait for male co-workers to catch up with her. During a religious holiday, she spent two weeks cycling with friends some 1400 km from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet to Kathmandu, crossing mountain passes over 5000 m, enduring sandstorms and blizzards, and reaching Base Camp on the northern (Tibetan) side of Mount Everest at 5208 m (17090 ft). Her coach, Brett Sutton, believes this experience at altitude to have been very useful training for her later professional career, while Wellington herself regards it as having given her lasting mental strength.

Her friends in Nepal remarked on how she never missed a morning bike ride, whether or not she was sick: "Chrissie saying, 'Oh, I have a stomach bug' was like saying hello every day, but no matter how many bugs were inside her tummy she would always train and push herself every second", said one friend, adding, "We all wondered how fast she would be if she had no bugs – and that thought was scary."

In February 2006 she entered the Coast to Coast, a 243 km, two-day endurance race across the Southern Alps of New Zealand involving running, cycling and kayaking. She finished 2nd in this race, despite having no previous kayaking experience, apart from some brief training before the race.

Shortly after her return to the UK she won the 2006 Shropshire Olympic Triathlon. This qualified her to enter the ITU World Age Group (Amateur) Championships in Lausanne, Switzerland, a title which she won on 2 September 2006, beating her nearest rival by 4 minutes and 2 seconds. She later said she "trained really hard for this race for 10 weeks, juggling 20 hours of training with my full-time job."

During this period, like most amateur triathletes, she had also continued entering running races. She had previously run the London Marathon for charity in 2002, finishing in 3:08:17, making her the fastest woman from her running club in that race. That result prompted her to get a running coach, Frank Horwill—whom she regarded as "legendary and ever inspiring"—and to take her running training much more seriously. She had hoped to improve her marathon time in the April 2003 London Marathon, but in March she was hit by a car while riding her commuter bike. Unable to run the marathon, she took up swimming again, leading her to try triathlon racing in 2004. After her ITU victory, she took up cross-country racing for the first time, as a means of building strength for her triathlon races. She enjoyed some success in B and C grade cross-country events around London, winning several races including the South of Thames Championship in December 2006.