This October will mark the four year anniversary of my first race since school sports day. The Wimbledon 10K 2008 was the start of a long line of running races which has led me to training for my fifth marathon. Before I took on the Wimbledon 10K the furthest I’d run in training was 5 miles, so just getting round the course (and up what seemed like a mammoth hill) was my only aim.

But that wasn’t the first race I’d signed up for. Back in February of that year I’d signed up for the Women Only Triathlon. This was 2008 and race entry wasn’t always as advanced and the organisers not as tech savvy as now is the case – I had to send off my entry form with a cheque (remember cheques?).

Somehow, maybe divine intervention to stop me drowning, my envelope had come apart in the mail and my cheque destroyed. The organisers sent the form back to me so send again. I didn’t send it again and as I got better at running, and found I quite liked it, I forgot about triathlon.

This year, wanting a new challenge and fearing that my knees will give up pretty quickly if I carry on with my current rate of three marathons a year, I decided to rethink triathlon. I asked a fellow blogger for advice, looked at races, I bought a book to learn to swim better and I longed for my bike to be shinier and faster than it is. Most importantly I declared that this year, the year I turned 30, would be the year I complete a triathlon.

It’s now July, more than half way through the year and yet there’s still no triathlon in my calendar. Is this because of my own well-documented predisposition to laziness? Is it the phenomenally high entrance fee of triathlons? Or is it, in fact that I want to be awesome?

A lot of things have changed since my first race four years ago – most notably the circumference of my thighs. A sprint distance tri, 750m swim, 20k cycle, 5k run, is now something I know I could finish this afternoon if I had to. I’d probably get through the swim without drowning, put in a reasonable cycle and then do OK in the run.

But completing a triathlon isn’t enough any more. I want to finish my first triathlon race in a time I’m proud of. That’s why my offical triathlon debut is being postponed to 2013 – but in order to keep my goal of doing a tri this year, I’ll be hosting my own DIY tri with a competitive field of one athlete some time this autumn. 23 lengths of my local pool, a cycle along the canal and a run round the park. I’m pretty confident I can finish in first place.