Australia Iron Man Contest - Travels to Coogee Beach, Sydney Eastern Suburbs

Us English country folk enjoy quaint little events such as cheese rolling (a group of loons chase a ball of cheese down a hill), Cheese and Bread throwing (self explanatory) and Morris Dancing (men in their 50's dancing in knickerbockers with bells on their elbows and knees.) God Love em!

We arrived at Coogee and the little nippers were doing a demonstration, these cute little 6-10 year olds were diving through the frothy waves, little well oiled sporting machines were swimming out to sea and back again in no time like torpedos. I immediately felt a bit ashamed, sat there on the steps nibbling chicken nuggets and chips, little did I know that worse was to come!

A promotions guy came up to me mid-bite offering me free gym membership, then a giant smoothie cup waddled past me finished off by 2 joggers with I-pods dashing past knocking over my curry dip! I was enraged! ‘These people are health-freaks' I muttered to myself as I tried to salvage the last of my sweet sweet dip…

The adults came out next for the final and all I saw were big tattooed muscles, broad tanned backs and tiny little lycra covered bums and heads, and that was just the women!

We watched in awe as these titans did lap after lap of swimming, skiing and canoeing against waves which would send me running back to my room! The stamina of these people astounded me, they only had a 5 minute break after each round and seemed as fresh as the first time, every time. One guy even got stung by a blue-bottle in a very sensitive area and still carried on to finish in 2 nd place, what a hero!

My initial thoughts had changed, these people aren't freaks, they are superfit greek gods, I wanna be like them! So off I headed to the juice bar for a ‘mighty marty muscle shake'… hey it's a start! Maybe I'll wait to join the gym… theres always tomorrow!