Or to put it another way, how did I fare against ex-Crazy Gang member, Robbie Earle and F1 driver Jensen Button at Sunday's Windsor triathlon, and more importantly, how did I measure up against my pre-race forecast of a 2hr 38m finish?

I know that you are all busy folk so let me cut to the chase to save you having to read on to the end of my tale of woe, bad luck and misfortune. In a nutshell, I failed. I crossed the finish line in a personal worst time for any Olympic distance event of 2hrs 44mins. There you are, mission unaccomplished. You can now go off and have that cup of coffee or cold beer.

But if you are still with me, every cloud, as they say, has a silver lining. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I am about to argue the case for docking at least ten minutes off my finish time and proclaim that far from being an abject failure, that I did indeed thrash my predicted finish time by at least five minutes. You will of course appreciate that as a civil servant, the art of spinning is not lost on me. And I do of course mean the political form of spinning, not the 100rpm variety! So, how was it that I managed to grasp success from the jaws of failure? Let's start at the very beginning.

My pre-race prediction for the 1500m opening swim was 30mins but what I hadn't factored in was the very strong current on race day that seemed to slow everybody down except for that bloke Stannard who, in swimming terms, is clearly from a different planet. Mind you, I'm not sure whether it was as bad as in 2001. Then, folk were actually being swept backwards whereas on Sunday, they were just not moving! My swim was largely uneventful. I didn't get beaten up and I was able to make steady progress against the strong current. But after about 15mins, in a shallow stretch of water, I sliced my finger open on something sharp and could see the trails of blood on every stroke. I don't know how long the symptoms of weils disease take to surface, but so far so good! I tried to put that out of my mind but things then got a bit too exciting at the turn around buoy. My instinct told me to make a bee-line for it to swim the shortest distance, but the current had other ideas. Like many others, I ended up being dragged underneath the buoy and having a fight with the tethering rope. Who said swimming was dull! But then some good news. Unlike on several occasions in the past, I actually spotted the turn-in point without having to turn back and waste 20-30m! At the water's edge, my watch showed 29m 58s. One of my slowest swims at Windsor, but given my current state of fitness and conditions on the day, I was well chuffed.

My plan for the bike leg was to go out steady, keep steady and finish steady, in the vain hope of having something left for the final 10km run. I tried to keep within a heart rate range of less than 155bpm and kept to that for most of the 26.5 miles. I felt strong on the bike but then again, I wasn't hammering it as I had been doing at earlier sprint events earlier in the year. But disaster struck after 1hr 10mins into the race. The front tyre was, just like that epic track on Free's album 'Tons of Sobs', going down slow! (showing my age there!). I kept going but it wasn't long before I had to stop. My first plan was to re-inflate the tyre - these days I ride on clinchers - using one of my CO2 cannisters and this did the trick, but only for about half a mile. I had to stop again and this time I had no choice but to fit a new inner tube. Thankfully, it was the front wheel and even more thankfully, the Schwalbe Ultremo tyres I use are very easy to slide on and off. All in all, I lost about 10 or 11 minutes but at least I was on the road again. The first few miles after a puncture repair are always nervous affairs, particularly, when you have exhausted your supply of spare tubs or tubes and you know it will be a long walk home if bad luck strikes for a second time. But after a few miles along Draft, sorry, Drift Road, things got back to normal and feeling somewhat refreshed after my unscheduled pit stop, I decided to up the ante and get the ol' ticker up to 160-165bpm. My official bike split was 1hr 24mins but, according to my Polar computer, my riding time was 1hr 13min 59s.

After my uber-professional dismount (I may only be an average triathlete these days, but I still haven't forgotten how to look good!), it was a speedy T2 and out on to the 10km run. Having stopped my watch for the duration of the puncture, I hit the roads of Windsor with 1hr 49mins showing on the clock. My pre-race prediction had been for a time somewhere between 45 and 50mins - and that wasn't too far out! These days, my running can best be described as steady. I go out at a certain pace but I don't slow down. If I could go faster, I would, but at the moment, it feels as if somebody has implanted a speed limiter which kicks in every time I have the urge to pick the pace up. In the end, I plodded around the run in about 47 minutes to finish, according to my watch, in something like 2hrs 33mins. The official record will of course tell a different story but I feel very relaxed about docking the 10 minute pit stop off my finish time and declaring that the day had, after all, been a success when measured against my pre-race prediction of a 2hr 38min finish.

Oh, and for the record, I beat the footballer, but the F1 chap beat me. But I'll have him next year. Either that, or I'll get the referee to DQ him on the basis that he didn't run both slicks and intermediates on the bike leg!

Bob's training tip

Do some.