Speedo Stars – Age is no barrier to improving fitness!

Hi, my name is Jane Mitchell and I have been truly honoured to have been given the opportunity to be a ‘Speedo Star’ for the season.

What a week I have just had! I found out I had been chosen on my birthday which was a fantastic present. How good is this……Speedo training kit, entry into all the Speedo open water events for the season, entry into the London Triathlon, a bike and get this…coaching from a Triathlon England coach!! When I found all this out, you could have scraped me off the ceiling.

I am hoping that my story will inspire others to take up a challenge, and realise age is absolutely no barrier when it comes to improving fitness.

Up until 3 years ago, I was an unfit, heavy smoker. I was one of those people who couldn’t wait for a meal to finish so I could have my next cigarette! In 2008 I was watching the 10km swim at the Beijing Olympics, and thought to myself ‘I can do that, surely?’

So that set me off. I started swimming in my local pool and quite soon I was managing decent distances. I swam to a competitive level as a youngster and swam a lot in the Lake District (Coniston) on family holidays, so I guess I still had some technique, but needed to improve my fitness.

I managed to stop smoking in February 2010, and then my life took a real turnaround. To avoid the weight gain, I started going to the gym. Initially just on my own, but then I started joining in the classes which I soon grew to love. I entered for a few outdoor swimming events in 2010 and my competitive nature soon returned. Each swim was a challenge for me to beat my personal best, which I am still managing to do each event I enter.

Last Autumn I started running for the first time since I was probably about 14/15. I found it really difficult at first managing 3 minutes of running with 1 minute walk and so on. I persevered with it, and soon the distances started to increase. In April this year, I entered my first running race (a 10k road race) and managed to complete it in one hour. For me to actually run for an hour was an unbelievable achievement and I will treasure the memory of how good it felt for a long time.

I set myself a goal in the early part of the year to complete a triathlon before I am 50 next year. Speedo have promised to support me in this goal, and with the added incentive of raising money for cancer research I am going to do all I can to achieve this goal.

I know it is going o be a hard challenge – working full time, busy career, etc but each day I wake up looking forward to the day ahead and realise how lucky I am to do these things, as a lot of people unfortunately are unable to.

I hope that if my story will inspire one person to stop smoking and take up a similar challenge, it will be worth it.

Follow me on my weekly report on training through hell – goodness knows what the coaching is going to be like, I hope he or she is not too hard on me….eeeek!