A brutally honest, often humorous memoir tracing Phil Dale’s evolution from substance dependency and obesity, to athletic endurance, whilst striving to complete one of sports’ toughest challenges: IRONMAN long distance triathlon.

With wry humour and emotional candour, the book examines the life of an impressionable working class teenager, wrestling with notions of loyalty and masculinity during the 1970s. It moves on to chart the path of his professional successes in early adulthood, running in parallel with a gradual, imperceptible descent into obesity, mediocrity and addiction.

As 'middle age' becomes a reality, a process of realisation and then gradual reinvention takes place, as his addictive personality is channelled into discipline and transformation.

Balancing cultural reflection and sports narrative, A Drug User’s Guide To Triathlon culminates in philosophical meditations on addiction, endurance and identity. With both confessional and inspirational themes brought to the fore, it is testimony to the possibility of the personal reinvention of mind, body and spirit through endurance sport.

The older tortoise has caught the younger tortoise and, as I come alongside, I place my hand on his back and just give him a little push for two or three pedal strokes in order to ease his pain. Technically, it’s a disqualification right there for me spending too long in the draft zone and also for him, for accepting what’s known as ‘outside-help’, but who cares? And I really didn’t care – it’s my little bro, right?

Riding in tandem for a minute or so, we share a little laugh at the bluntness of the climb, and instantly all the pain in my legs disappears as I feel as if I’m floating alongside him. The Cat4 kicks up a little more and I attend Ants’ ever-slowing pedal stroke with another friendly assist. Moving ahead, I throw out a little verbal encouragement. “Nearly there mate,” and we are indeed nearly at the summit. I’ve clearly got plenty more in the tank than him as I stick ten metres between us in just a few moments, so I slow down as I’m trying not to rub his face in it.

It’s almost all downhill for the remaining couple of miles and I’m excited knowing family will be there at transition to see us come in together. We carve the fast but tricky and potentially dangerous three quarters of a mile of alternating left and right switch-backs, which are a signature section of the race, and it’s glorious and exhilarating. By a factor of about ten, it’s the most enjoyable three minutes of the whole bike section and Ants seems to have found his mojo again because he’s right there on my shoulder.

Ensuring we dismount before reaching the transition line and outstretched palms of yellow-vested marshals, we’re treated to rapturous cheers and applause from the seven family members who’ve travelled far to enjoy the weekend with us. You’d think we’d just won a stage of the Tour de France! Well, having conquered those Cat4s and survived the subsequent switch-backs, does make you feel somewhat invincible.

I’m mentally preparing myself for Ants to do his disappearing trick: out of T2 and jogging off into the distance. However, while I’m getting out of my bike shoes and rehydrating, he comes over and says, “Just a couple of hours of running together and then we’re done.”

I can’t believe my ears. He even waits patiently while I put fresh, bright yellow socks on to match my luminous Saucony Guide 17s. Well, you’ve got to look your stylish best, even if you are barely crawling around the half-marathon run haven’t you? He patiently drags me around for thirteen and a bit miles. He could do this a lot faster on his own, but we’re enjoying the crowd together, sharing the pain and pleasure and taking turns to feel nauseous as the fatigue deepens.

As we enter the finishers chute and the last twenty metres, we join hands heading towards the tape and I’ve got my ‘brothers’ victorious’ finish, after all. I’m feeling elated.

Five seconds later, as we cross the line, the announcer declares over the PA system:

“Antony Dale and Philip Dale, who says ‘as long as he finishes before his younger brother, he’ll be happy!’”

My heart sinks, like a pebble just skimmed across the surface, returns to the ocean floor.

I’d forgotten I’d written it (with tongue firmly in cheek) six months ago on the event entry form in the box marked ‘tell us something about yourself’. I feel a monumental whack of regret since now we’ve finished together and it’s largely down to him sacrificing his best finishing time. My comment feels trite and distinctly unfunny.

I should have just said:

“I’m an addict and a triathlete.”

By way of celebrating my completion of IRONMAN Wales, I found myself falling back into the pattern of meeting M. for that regular Tuesday mix of music and marijuana. Having resided on his comfortable couch for a number of hours, I decided I needed a pee in readiness for an imminent return home on the bike. Like a newborn foal that is finding its early steps somewhat confusing, I made my way from the living room down the narrow Victorian hallway and, after managing to negotiate the two carpeted steps on this split-level ten-yard route, I was relieved to make the right turn into the bathroom. Proud of having completed this miniature assault course, I propped myself up with my left hand on the wall behind the low-level cistern and proceeded to fumble with my fly in order to execute the task.

I remember only a dull thud and then coming to, facing the door, which was originally directly behind me, horizontal. Instinctively, I jumped straight up, but found those foal-like jelly legs again and with no way of adequately operating them. Making for the narrow doorway, I crashed into the corridor wall and recall hearing M. pleading, “Phil! What the fuck?!”

I couldn’t really see anything clearly (my glasses, later to be recovered, were strewn – left lens popped out and broken – on the bathroom floor). I was stumbling away from the scene, making my way to the kitchen.

M. managed to sit me down real quick on a chair in the middle of the kitchen, and it was only now that I could feel a sharp stinging sensation above both my eyes. He wetted a tea towel and got me to press hard on my eye sockets in an attempt to stem the blood flow. I was determined things would be fine and I would be off home soon, but there was no way he was allowing that.

“You need an ambulance!”

Reluctantly, I agreed, but was struggling to come to terms with the fact that I had blacked out. What a fucking stoner.

As it transpires, it’s not unusual for ‘older men’ to suffer from a condition called micturition syncope. It usually presents when one gets up suddenly, or when the bladder empties quickly. Probably, though, I just ‘whited out’ – a direct result of a recreational drug-user taking on board too much cannabis in one sitting. Yeah, that was me, sounds about right.

I’ll never know completely, but it seems I stood over the toilet, fainted, made first contact with my left eyebrow on the cistern, popped the lens on the glasses, which made an incision just above the eyelid, then proceeded to follow through with a second blow to the right orbit on the toilet pan, causing a lovely upside-down T-shape cut on the frontal bone. I could have lost an eye.

At roughly four wide and 300 people in length, the queue to an IRONMAN swim start is an intriguing place to spend fifteen minutes prior to the gun. I join it. Shuffling forward, black neoprene-clad humans resemble seals, but we are truly fish out of water. Some feign confidence either for themselves or others. Most have a look of what I can only imagine to be akin to the hellish state of shell shock. Eyes wide open. Seeing nothing. Thoughts reduced to single words, syllables dripping with chaotic emotion.

Eighty yards from Pennington Flash, the water looks grey but calm. Quietly uninviting. Dawn has finally found the confidence to birth and blossom and is gently pulling a reluctant sun skyward, whilst vying for space with grey cloud. The mix of the rising orb and still-lit T1 floodlights casts a beautiful, magical, ethereal luminance across the many faces of suppressed panic.

Ultimately, the grey cloud wins, and takes on a flatter, structureless form. Like a painted wall. A backdrop for the day. I need no reminder that this isn’t some balmy resort in southern Spain.

Within the shuffling athlete queue, which is moving ever closer to the water, but separated from the funnel of supporters and well-wishers by a hastily erected steel post and ribbon barrier, I come alongside Sophie, Mum and Dave for a final hello, goodbye and good luck. I pause there, momentarily. Out of nowhere, the sound of applause and enthusiastic cheering from the back of the queue makes its way, like a Mexican Wave, forward and towards us. I feel a gentle pushing and repositioning of the competitor crowd into the supporter barrier, like traffic as it moves to allow an ambulance to pass.

Four very capable men in wetsuits are carrying a guy with only two and a half limbs (also wet-suited) aloft, past us and toward the swim start. Competitors and supporters erupt as the small group passes within a metre of us and disappears amongst the bodies again, forward to the start.

Army vets are carrying a bodily incomplete colleague. Team True Spirit. Joe Townsend. Royal Marine.

The moment is simultaneously humbling and uplifting. I catch Mum’s eye and both of us are now weeping. The release of tension is extraordinary for both myself and others. I can see my fellow competitors shaking their heads in disbelief – as I am – thinking, “WTF? If he’s up for this, so am I too.”

We’re hacking north on Camberwell Road with twenty-five metres separating the three of us. I’m at the back. The two riders up ahead of me are both sporting their messenger bags and the bags look full. Even though they’re carrying additional dead weight, their cadence is high and I’m struggling to stay in contact. There’s little to no drafting benefit this far back and, even though we’re only five minutes in, I’m blowing real hard in an attempt to hang on.

As we approach a set of traffic lights, it becomes obvious the guys ahead are not waiting for green; in fact, they’re accelerating, whilst focusing and processing, in thousandths of a second, speed, distance and time in anticipation of an impending curtain of steel about to be drawn across our direction of travel. In reality, the lights are against us, as there’s a solitary amber that submits to red as the lead guy approaches the white lines of the junction. With zero hesitation, the first guy slips through marginally ahead of incoming traffic from the left, but the second guy is on a collision course with a car now immediately across his pathway. He jumps on the nine o’clock and is out the saddle; his rear wheel whips to the right as he throws off 10mph in an instant and, with bars continuing to point in the direction of travel, immediately corrects the bike with another hop and slips behind the vehicle, through to the once more open road.

I blindly follow suit, although the gap I escape through is more by luck than judgement, as the cars crossing our path have halted in anticipation of more riders coming through, even though it’s their right of way. I set about following the riders up ahead, who have stuck another twenty metres between me and them, as if to punish my amateurish hesitation, and are rapidly disappearing into the distance towards the Elephant and Castle. That single manoeuvre sets the tone for the next hour and a half. These guys are professional cycle couriers. They’re riding ‘fixies’ and this is Alleycat racing.