Most of our #TeamTCUK athletes work full-time and more than understand the difficulties of balancing the demands of their day job with training. But there's one athlete, Jo Sutton, who has a little more to contend with than most. Never work with children and animals, right Jo?!

Working full time and juggling triathlon is common place amongst a lot of triathletes but there are certainly aspects of my job that don’t go hand in hand with the sport.

Becoming a vet has been my ultimate goal since around the age of 5 or 6. My life revolved around it. I spent my school years helping out at a local riding centre, lambing sheep, milking cows and choosing subjects geared towards Veterinary Medicine University entry. My mind never wavered, I worked hard at school to get the grades and was elated to be accepted to study Veterinary Medicine.

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Five years later I left university with a vet degree under my belt and the biggest grin on my face…I’d made it. Three years ago, and two years into my first job, I took up triathlon. I had always run throughout school and university, no big medals or competition news for you but I ran anything from track, cross country, road and trail. Running was my escape, whether it was between revising for exams, studying lectures or while out on vet placements I always ran. I was used to hard work, to different coaches giving me advice and to running 6 days a week, every week.

Starting work I wanted to do more than run every day; I knew I wanted to keep on running but also do other sports around it so triathlon fitted in perfectly. I’m probably likely to be described as a slightly obsessive character. I couldn’t just dabble in triathlon, I had to go the full hog, entering races, buying kit, going on triathlon training camps and soon I was swimming, biking and running six days a week.

I had no clue what I was doing at the start, I just took my run training and put it into cycling and swimming; intervals, long rides, tempo sessions etc…it wasn’t a bad start. However, every Sunday would be spent worrying if I were doing the right sessions, enough, too much and 18 months after starting triathlon I contacted Matt at Triathlon Coaching UK to help (having met him out in Morzine while out training the previous year). It took a huge weight off my shoulders and meant my training could be tailored to me and my lifestyle.

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Mixing life as a large animal vet (this is horses, and farm animals, occasionally an alpaca, not giraffes and rhinos as I’m often asked, ha!) and triathlon is hard going. If I were just working a 9 to 5 job it would be ideal but we do ‘on call’ to provide emergency cover 24/7 to farms. This means once a week we have the phones to the entire practice clientele. You could be lucky and get no calls, or you could have the world’s worst ‘on call’ luck, like me, and regularly get called out. This can be anything from late evening calls to middle of the night to first thing in the morning. It’s the same with being on call over a weekend although this covers Friday night right through to Monday morning and following a week of work can be utterly knackering.

The spring time is the busiest with lambing and calving in full swing. I’ll routinely find myself out till the early hours, only to get back and one foot in bed before being called again. This obviously impacts training and I find myself targeting rest days when I’m on call and I’ve no time to train anyway which clearly isn’t great recovery.

But, like with any job, not every morning or evening is used up, so I’ll sometimes swim in the morning and train every evening I’m free. Lunch time work outs are pretty much a no-no as a call may come which when you’re midway through a swim which is not ideal. Sometimes lunch is taken in the car between calls anyway so clearly this leaves little time. So, it’s just about prioritising time and sessions, weekends on call often result in turbo sessions or hill sprints near home so if I call comes in I can just head out of the door. I hate missing sessions but sometimes I have to just learn to accept it due to work, besides calving cows can surely be treated as a strength session right?!

I’ve been lucky not to have too many injuries through work but with farming having beaten the building trade with number of accidents, injuries and deaths it’s a hazard that just comes with the job as a farm vet. My worst kick was from a cow midway through a caesarean section. She got spooked by something flying across the yard and responded by pelting me in the thigh. The swelling was almost immediate as I bent double trying to hide my pain. We do cattle caesarean sections with the cow standing up (ideally) and clearly she still had a gaping hole in her abdomen which needed my attention. I put my own agony to one side and stitched her up leaving her licking her newly born calf as I limped into the car. I was happy I’d kept it together while on farm, no one wants a girly crying farm vet but I balled my eyes out in the car, mainly because I knew I wouldn’t be able to run for, well I was told a week but no one listens to that! (3 days)

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I was also trapped against a shed door by a cow (having just calved and obviously feeling highly hormonal). Stupidly I’d parked my car in the yard where she was standing and as I went to draw up the drugs to give her she came out of nowhere and had me pinned up against the wall battering me with her head. I’m not going to lie, it was the most terrifying experience of my life and one I do not wish to repeat. Luckily, I just came out a bit bruised and shaken, no major damage.

Veterinary has helped me a lot through triathlon though, not only funding it but also my mindset. I’ve grown up, always having a goal in mind, working hard to achieve them and generally just not giving in, this helps for triathlon. Being in a job now with nine farm vets – I am the only female vet – whilst I rarely feel stigmatised for being a “girl”, it does occasionally happen and you grow a thicker skin quickly. I’ve always had the mindset of just “get on with it” so I’m rarely one to show my true feelings. Matt will likely vouch for that as my general response to all sessions is….”I’m ok”, despite occasionally feeling utterly knackered, giving feedback is a struggle. I hate admitting defeat and allowing that negative mindset to creep in so it’s easier to just say nothing, grit my teeth and keep plodding on.

Veterinary has taught me resilience. Starting out as a vet once I graduated was the hugest learning curve. I moved to a totally new area I’d never been to (learning to map read very rapidly), pretty much every case I came across was “new” to me, and the responsibility you suddenly have as a vet for not only the animals but also the health and safety to people on the farm is huge and not something you can just learn at vet school.

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Nothing prepares you for middle of the night calls but adrenaline soon kicks in as you are the only one that can help. It’s almost survival mode. There may be things that happen that aren’t as you expected but ultimately you have to stay calm and try to resolve them. Same with a triathlon; sessions may not go to plan, races may not play out how you expected but through my work I’ve learnt to stay relaxed (perhaps not so much when my chain came off my bike mid-race but I tried), get my head down and just crack on!