NORTHERN PLANNER

It's a little before 5am. My Dad is gently shaking me awake.

In 5 minutes flat, I roll out of bed, put on my clothes, picked up my swimming bag and get into his his Ford Sierra while he scrapes the last of the ice from the windscreen.

It is minus four, which is really cold for the UK. The radio comes on and, as usual, Dad has put on Radio 2 and it's a slightly mad bloke doing the 'Bog Eyed Jog'.

I am thirteen.

Half an hour later, were at the swimming pool in Leeds city centre. Dad makes his way up the balcony with his flask of coffee and the paper.

I get changed as quickly as possible, the heating hasn't come on yet. Diving into the pool doesn't offer any solace though, it isn't heated either.

The only thing recourse is to train as hard as possible.

It's a delicious feeling when ice in your veins begins to melt and you go from a little warmer to wonderfully toasty.

Two hours later, I will be totally spent and feel like a mini furnace.

As a do the various reps within the session I look up to Dad.

His attention constantly darts between the paper and his son slogging his guts out in the pool.

Only years later will he tell me how proud he is of me.

Not the winning, which happens a decent amount.

The trying.

The determination to train everyday, twice a day.

Getting up in the freezing dark.

Bolting down a hurried evening meal after school, crashing through homework and training again.

He knows there isn't a day when my body doesn't hurt.

And I will tell him how it felt to know that when I looked up from the pool, he was always there.

Just like before every race, he was always there.

Just like when I didn't have any money, he was there for me, not judging, just helping.

How he never told me what to do at the big moments.

Jobs that mattered.

Getting married.

Having your heart broken.

The twin joys and terrors of becoming a parent.

He just talked about what it was like for him and what he did.

The rest was up to me.

When I got beaten up by a mental chef working in a hotel one summer, I only found out months later that he had to physically restrained from driving up to that kitchen and trying to knock his lights out.

We weren't speaking all that much at the time.

The usual headstrong boy/man and the puzzled Dad wondering where his little boy had gone.

But he was still there for me, even when I didn't know it.

I don't think you see the person your parent is until you go through some of the same stuff.

I only understood what it took for him to take me morning training and then do a demanding job.

As a child you love your parent of course, it's biological.

It's another thing to become friends with your Dad and admire him, to want to be him.

And I want to be like my father.

There are things happening in mine and Juliette's live to do with her Dad right now.

I'm very close to him too, but it reminds me to make the most of my, quite old, Dad and make sure he knows how I feel.

He tells me these days he's just as proud of me doing something with cycling now as he was when I was a swimmer.

He was the first on the phone my I broke my wrist crashing into a car.

He was there when our first son was born with an infection that nearly led to meningitis.

He's always there, he always was.