Craig Cooper: Feel the fear and pray no hungry orca mistake me for a pregnant seal

The swimming leg of an IronMāori event event. Ocean swimming scares Craig Cooper.

I read an obtuse joke on a blackboard just before lockdown.

It went something like 'sharks can out swim humans and humans can run faster than sharks, so in a triathlon, it all comes down to the bike'.

By no means a classic punchline, but never-the-less a soft blow landed in the paunch of my middle-aged gut.

On November 6, I am participating in a triathlon as an ongoing extension of a mid-life crisis which began in 2013.

The triathlon is part of the IronMāori series, and is a quarter ironman distance.

Multisport naming conventions are still a little stuck in the 90s.

I'm not sure what the gender appropriate reference for ironman should be.

Let's go with 'Iron'.

The obtuse shark joke connected because fear accompanies my participation in a triathlon.

In 2015, I completed a half iron event. I had not done a triathlon before.

It's a 1.9km swim, 90km bike and a half marathon to finish.

Do not enter a half iron as your first triathlon, ever. It is a stupid idea.

Especially if, like me, you never learned to swim.

November 2013 - Craig Cooper pictured with 10kg of fat that he lost during a mid-life crisis. He has since put all the weight back on. Photo / NZME

I knew nothing about triathlons. I asked an experienced athlete if his shorts chaffed, during the run, while they were still wet from the swim.

He advised me that if I emerged from the swim and set out on the run, I would be disqualified. (It's swim-bike-run. Not swim-run-bike.)

A near drowning incident in my late 30s did nothing to endear me to the ocean. So swimming, for me, equals fear and anxiety.

One of the reasons I entered a triathlon was to conquer that fear.

I hired a patient, experienced swim coach who scratched her head and said 'we've got a bit of work to do' after watching me attempt to swim a 25m length.

I couldn't complete the length, but I listened to my coach, put the work in, and now I can swim.

It turned out the triathlon taught me to compartmentalise my fears, feel them and do it anyway.

I did not fall in love with ocean swimming – ocean swimming became a brief fling that I went out of my way to avoid.

Not right away though.

A month after completing a 1.9km swim in my first triathlon, I panicked during a 500m swim in a much shorter distance triathlon.

I made my way back to shore, sulked back to the transition area, packed up my toys and went home.

I have not swum more than 10m off the shore since. But here I am, back on the horse, so to speak.

On November 6, before the swim, I will repeat a mantra that reinforces that no one has been killed by a shark in Napier since 1896.

And that, because the 1896 victim's surname was Cooper, the odds of me being killed by an orca mistaking me in my wetsuit for a pregnant seal in the low light of dawn in a bay frequented by killer whales chasing stingrays is extraordinarily low.

And as the joke goes, in a triathlon, it all comes down to the horse. Sorry, the bike.

Hence the bike (and the run) are my favourite parts of the triathlon, because it is very difficult to drown during those disciplines.

Conversely, you are unlikely to be hit by a car during the swim portion.

Feel the fear and do it anyway. And remember, it all comes down to the bike.