“I came fifth, but it wasn’t the place, it was the qualification time.”
He says going to the worlds has been something he has wanted to do for some time.
“I’ve qualified a couple of times before. [The event has] always been quite distant, but I just thought, it I don’t do this, I’m never going to to it.”
A tentative plan was put in place before Pukekohe.
“We decided, let’s put the wheels in motion and see what happens and if I qualify then that’s something.
Flights were the next consideration.
“Getting from Ireland to Ibiza can be quite difficult at that time of year, but the flights worked perfectly so we thought that’s maybe another sign that this is going to work out.”
Out of 47 in his age group, Jeff finished 12th in the 5km run, 20km bike, 2.5km run event.
“I was pleased enough, but I think if my transitions from run to bike and bike to run had been better — which I don’t really practise enough — I might have squeezed into the top 10.”
Jeff started running after breaking his ankle playing football about 10 years ago.
“I was off work for a long time and I thought ‘I’ve got to do something different’, so I started doing half marathons because I had a bit of fitness from the football.
“The time for someone like me is 1 hour 30, and I broke that a couple of times and then I thought maybe it’s time to do something different so, to reduce the amount of running, I took up cycling so I’ve really only been cycling maybe five or six years.”
He considered upping his distance to a full marathon, but decided training would be too time consuming.
“I don’t just want to finish, I want to do it in a decent time and the amount of training, it’s just crazy when you are working fulltime.”
Having initially thought it would be a one-off, Jeff is now thinking, with next year’s world multisport championships in Australia, he would like to give the race another shot.
“My son is 22 and he raced in 2018, pre-Covid - I’d really like to race with him so we are hoping that we might qualify for Townsville next year.”
