After his 15-year old son, Jack, was diagnosed with a cancerous brain infection, #TeamTCUK athlete Dan Faulkner accepted Jack's challenge to compete in a triathlon. Dan's brave and inspiring journey saw him do Jack proud at the recent Outlaw Half Holkham in Norfolk.

My story starts back in April 2018, a regular family living a normal family life. That is until Jack (our eldest son, aged 15) was taken ill into hospital. Very quickly things escalated and with in a matter of weeks we learned that Jack in fact had an aggressive cancerous infection of his brain. After a courageous battle, Jack sadly passed away at his home on October 26th surrounded by his family. As a family we are completely devastated.

This obviously left a huge hole in our lives and collectively we all have to try and find a ‘new normal’. We are still trying to do this.

Whilst Jack was being treated in hospital, we had discussed setting up a Just Giving fundraising page. With his blessing we told his story with a view to raising some money for Sheffield Children’s Hospital and CLIC Sargent as both organisations have played an incredible part in Jack’s treatment and ongoing support.

We needed a few events to attract donations and so I committed to a 10K run and then one of my close friends asked me to join him in a Sprint Triathlon, something I’d never done before. I really enjoyed the Sprint and managed to get round with no structured training program, although I did breaststroke my way round the course (as I couldn’t crawl at that time).

A good friend of mine had also committed to the Outlaw Holkham Half event, and Jack had heard about this. Jack thought it would be a good idea if I entered this event….. how could I say no? This is when things started to get serious.

I knew I needed a training program. I like routine and needed something to focus on, something to offer a distraction. This is where my relationship with TCUK started. James had seen me tag myself into the Outlaw Holkham Half event on Facebook and subsequently dropped me a note offering advice regarding training. I was already running quite a bit, but nothing structured and without really having an end goal defined or in sight. I was running for the sake of running.

But once committed to the Outlaw I knew I needed to up my game and so jumped in feet first with TCUK and soaked up all the advice and guidance James & Matt threw at me. In my younger days I played volleyball at international level for England so this means that I am used to regular training sessions and also I consider myself to be very coachable.

At the beginning we met up to discuss the structure, my goals, medical history of any notable injuries. James talked me through how the web based training works, how all the information from my Garmin automatically synced with their system so they could then get their hands on all the HR data and stats from each session. This was great… I’m a stats guy at work and this system meant there was nowhere to hide. You had to do the training to get the data, for every session! So that’s pretty much what I did, I followed the plan to the letter for 33 weeks.

The routine was great. Over the weekend my training would be loaded into the calendar for the next week or possibly 2 weeks. This would allow me to move things around my work schedule. Then I would receive my Monday morning pep talk from James. Here we would discuss the successes/ challenges of the previous week and talk over what we need to focus on for the week ahead, identifying the key sessions which cannot be missed. We repeated this for 33 weeks.

As part of the training process you are actually trying to find your own level. How far can you push yourself? When it hurts, how much longer can you carry on? This took some time for me to find this level and I remember exactly when it was. During my Monday call I told James that the FTP test that I had done the previous week hurt from the very beginning, there was not one minute of it that I enjoyed. From that point onwards, every session counted and I could really start to see the incremental gains from regular training.

I was feeling really comfortable on the bike and the training plan put together showed a massive improvement in my FTP score. The technical sessions were building power and the endurance sessions were putting miles in the bank

I was falling into a natural rhythm whilst running too. I have never have previously considered myself a strong runner but in actual fact this might be my strongest discipline.

Swimming was my weakness leg and James advised that I signed up for some swimming lessons to try and master front crawl. I turned up as the new boy at the local baths where a group of coaches watch me swim up and down a lane. I think their first comment to me was “Yeah we can definitely help you” or words to that effect. In February I was struggling to swim 400 meters without stopping and being out of breath. Now, I am comfortably able to swim the 1900m, without stopping, in a decent time (for me anyway). The swim training sessions defined by TCUK were then put into action and I could start to see gains in the pool now as well.

In the run up to all the events I have competed in I have been pretty close when predicting my final times. Nottingham Spring in 1:14, Sheffield Half in 1:41 but it was another level trying to predict a 70.3

James told me to focus on none time goals, sight well during the swim, fuel well on the bike, pace well on the run. The time will be whatever it will be. At the beginning of this journey my goal was to get round and don’t miss the cut off. But as Outlaw drew nearer I began to think about maybe getting under 6 hours, if everything went according to plan.

I completed my first Outlaw in 5 hours 30 minutes and 9 seconds, this is way faster that I could have possibly have hoped for. I enjoyed the swim, I sighted well, I felt fresh coming out of the water. Onto the bike on the Norfolk roads which by comparison to Chesterfield/ Sheffield (where I’ve been training) is pan flat. I was watching that my heart rate didn’t climb too high and at the same time following the nutrition plan that I had been using in training for the previous few months.

Then onto the run. I’ll be honest, it was only when I got into T2 that I realised how hot it was. I actually thought that maybe I should have had another bottle on the bike. But I felt good and made sure that I drank at every feed station. The heat was draining and at the 12K mark I could feel my hamstrings wanting to cramp. It was at the 16K mark that they actually did cramp.

After a brief stretch and a spell of run/ walk with a funny limp, I managed to get into a good rhythm again which then saw me to the orange carpet. I was joined by my youngest son Max (aged 5) who loved running down the finish with me. It was a hugely emotional experience for everyone there including myself, my wife, my mum & dad, and supporting friends & family.

To date we have raised an incredible £63,000 which is spread between Sheffield Children’s Hospital and CLIC Sargent. Both of which played such an important part in Jack’s treatment and ongoing support.

If you would like to make a donation and support these amazing charities then please click on the following link

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/teamjackclic

We will continue to raise money for these wonderful organisations and you will definitely see me competing in more triathlon events for years to come. I’ve definitely been bitten by the bug.

Massive thank you to Triathlon Coaching UK for all your support and advice. Without you I simply wouldn’t have been able to complete the event.