When her father was taken to hospital last month after a car crash, Caroline Phillips prepared herself for an NHS horror story. What happened was very different.

“The doctors and nurses in intensive care were superb – honest but supportive”

They say you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Equally, with the NHS, you don’t know what you’ve got until you need it.

On May 9 this year, my 79-year-old father, Ronald, careered off the M4 at over 70mph. He hurtled across three lanes on a busy Friday at 2.30pm, down a verge and hit a tree. Miraculously he missed all the other vehicles around him.

It was an hour before emergency services were able to cut him out of his car; then a helicopter landed by the motorway and airlifted him to Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital. I only heard about it at 4pm. “Dad’s been in a major car crash,” sobbed my younger brother, Simon. “He’s got serious head and leg injuries …”

In the emergency room, we found our father: a frozen lump with a face the size of two footballs. He was on a ventilator, sprouting wires, bags and drips and tethered to monitors. He’d sustained fractures to his pelvis and one foot, a deep ankle wound and fractures to 10 ribs and his sternum – giving him a life-threatening flail chest [where the rib cage compresses, rather than expands, on breathing]. We were told he might also have had a heart attack, plus brain and internal organ damage.

“There’s only so much we can do,” warned the anaesthetist. “We’ll try to get him to breathe on his own later – but he has to want to help us.”

I’ve had a complex relationship with my father, a sometimes tricky, adorably eccentric and essentially kind family man. Now he was dying, with so much left unsaid. “You can talk to him,” said a nurse, sympathetically. “We think hearing is the last thing to go.” I whispered thanks to him for looking after me since I was 13 when my mother bolted; for my great education; and for being an incredible grandfather. I told him that I loved him. I begged him to live.

But standing amid the artificially ventilated bodies with my anguished half-sister, Dara, I was terrified – my fears fuelled by all the scare stories I’d read about the NHS. Weren’t these doctors exhausted and incompetent? Wasn’t Dad destined for a hospital-acquired infection? At his age, wouldn’t our father be a low priority? Wouldn’t these medics just leave him to die? Frantically, I phoned consultant friends in London, trying to engineer the best possible care.

Yet, while I panicked over the state of the health service, the John Radcliffe’s staff worked with professionalism and dedication. We were kept constantly informed. A doctor phoned and briefed my consultant friend so that I could discuss the prognosis with someone I trusted; the anaesthetist urged our family to eat: “You’ve got a long night ahead of you.”

At midnight, Dad went into theatre. I prayed that my elder brother, David, flying from New York, would see him alive.

By 2.30am our father was in intensive care (ICU), off his ventilator – to the astonishment of doctors – conversing intelligently and joking. It was a miracle. And surreal. He had, according to doctors, defied all odds by surviving. The nurse showed me a Polaroid of his car, a Toyota. It looked like a foil wrapper crunched in the fist of a giant. He had only been saved by his airbag.

He stayed in ICU for a week. For four days, Dara slept in the relatives’ waiting room. My father’s condition remained critical, his breathing difficult, his heart irregular. There was the possibility he would contract pneumonia. Then he would have died. “It’s far harder being a relative than a patient in ICU,” remembered David, who had experienced intensive care after a spinal operation.

For 17 consecutive days, I drove the round trip from London. (In order to fit everything in, Simon would get to his desk in the antiques gallery founded by our father, at 5am.) It was physically and psychologically exhausting. Illness aside, Dad’s occasional morphine-induced confusion was frightening. “Did you put my V&A invitation in the orange juice?” he asked. Another time he smiled: “I’m on a boat.” (He’d been on a bedpan.) With the stress, my hair started to fall out in clumps; when I told Dara she said the same had happened to her.

We became part of a hidden community, patients’ relatives riding a terrifying roller-coaster. The young woman, careworn after three days of waiting to see if her sister was brain-damaged. The Lancashire couple, living in their mobile home in the car park, and despairing for their son whose pancreatic operation had left him on life support. “You don’t expect people to get infections in hospital,” said his father, tears welling in his eyes.

But, despite all my preconceptions, the nurses and doctors in ICU offered superlative medical care. They were also psychologically astute, honest but supportive. They always went the extra mile. One day, attaching an oxygen supply and face mask, they put our father in a wheelchair to enjoy the sun on the terrace. A nurse also put up with our touching belief in alternative therapies – decrying it as anecdotal, while authorising our use of Bach Rescue Remedy.

It was a tough decision whether to take our children, aged 12 and 10, to visit their grandfather at a unit where one woman wailed as if in permanent labour and many patients were wearing contraptions (metal halos) on their heads that looked better suited to a carpenter’s bench than a hospital. But the girls, distressed at not seeing him, wanted to go. Sensitively, nurses shielded them from the brutal sights by pulling the curtains around patients’ beds.

The demands on us as a family have been high. We’ve divided our father’s affairs among ourselves – as if dealing with a death but without the funeral arrangements. Paying bills, sorting insurance, cancelling appointments, arranging visitors, researching future medical care, taking him food and tending his dog, Pingu, who’d been in the accident with him and had a ruptured spleen. (A witness whisked him to the vet’s where, unbelievably, they performed an emergency splenectomy. Pingu is 14 – 98 years old in human terms – but his old age did not preclude treatment either.)

And as we faced the possibility of parental abandonment, rivalry, stresses and strains came to the fore. “It’s a myth that dysfunctional families suddenly pull together in a time of crisis,” said one friend, a family therapist. Instead, events have highlighted our family’s maladjustments. Perhaps a positive way to look at it is that we’ve had a dress rehearsal for a parent dying and can make changes before the final curtain.

Our father remained for two weeks in the trauma ward, one of the best in the country, where overstretched staff are as attentive as possible, efficient and reassuring. His private health insurance policy with Saga Health Plan proved to be a saga: he’d paid thousands, but at a lower premium because of agreeing to accept NHS care if the state could treat him within four weeks – thereby effectively nullifying his access to private healthcare for this condition. So he had to wait to be “repatriated” (as medics dub moving a patient to their local hospital) to Chelsea and Westminster on the NHS, as there wasn’t a bed for two weeks.

Meanwhile I’m counting my blessings. Sixty years since it began, we’ve experienced the NHS at its best. And this episode has enriched my relationship with my father. There’s the chance to love him for longer. His dog visited him yesterday: one patient hobbling on four legs, the other unable yet to stand unaided on two. Above all, staff at the John Radcliffe deserve nothing but praise. So, too, our father who, thanks to the NHS, has foiled the Grim Reaper this time.

THE MOST important beauty issue for women approaching 40 is how to reverse the ageing process. Increasing numbers of Londoners are opting for surgery to banish wrinkles and sagging skin but there are less drastic options if you want to look 10 years younger.

The natural path involves using creams and trying holistic health treatments to improve the appearance of skin. Or there is the scientific approach ‹ cuttingedge anti-ageing technology such as oxygen treatments and chemical peels.

So is natural or hi-tech more effective? We asked Liz Hoggard and Caroline Phillips to try the latest rejuvenation treatments and report on the results.

NATURAL ANTI-AGEING PROGRAMME, NEAL’S YARD

The problem: It was being photographed in direct sunlight at 8am that did it.

Last summer I did a shoot outdoors for this newspaper and the results were terrifying. For years I had battled oily, teenage skin but now suddenly I had the ravaged complexion of Rider Haggard’s She. I knew I’d been overdoing the fun but I hadn’t realised quite how washed out I looked.

What is it? Neal’s Yard tailor-made me a six-week anti-ageing programme, based around its holistic treatments and remedies. Aimed at the more “mature” woman (euphemism for anyone who feels their skin may be losing its bloom and needs to shed a few pounds), the programme sets out to boost your energy and vitality over six weeks using herbal remedies, essential oils and other therapies, thereby rejuvenating skin and perking up sagging muscle systems. In short: no Botox, no bullying.

Who does it? Initially I went for a consultation with homeopath Susan Curtis, director of medicines at Neal’s Yard. She quickly identified that I have quite a bonkers lifestyle, which was probably contributing to signs of ageing, so it was a question of making subtle changes that I could manage.

This meant dropping the quick fixes ‹ caffeine, alcohol, tobacco ‹ which rob your body of key stress-busting nutrients ‹ stress is a key factor in the ageing process.

She also gave me practical advice on everything from diet (cut out soya to avoid bloating) and joints (take up yoga) to eyesight (eating blueberries offers major benefits in preventing and treating eye disorders).

The treatment: I had a detox aromatherapy massage, where essential oils are applied to your skin to alleviate stress and eliminate toxins. Emma the therapist spent time finding out my mood and background, before making up a blend of neroli (to soothe), cardamom (to comfort) and mandarin (to refresh).

On my second visit, she did a facial diagnosis to check for any signs of inner health problems, then applied Palmarosa Purifying Mask to my oily T-Zone and White Tea Enriching Facial Mask on cheeks and forehead (to counteract the crumbly effect spotted in the photos). For daytime she recommended using Orange Flower Facial Oil, which reduces fine lines and balances moisture levels.

Both treatments leave you feeling fantastic. But learning to relax was trickier. Emma teased that just as she was still saying, “So if you’d like to get up slowly,” I was already upright in my shoes, raring to get out the door.

Does it work? Being listened to and pampered is incredibly good for you. And Neal’s Yard has just the right combination of tact and insight. When women spend a terrifying £539 million a year going under the knife, it seems a far more humane alternative. No, of course I haven’t done the yoga. But I am trying to relax and burning organic essential oils at night.

But the real find is the Organic Beauty Oil (£8.95 for 200ml), which you take internally as a supplement.

A cold-pressed oil made from flax, hemp, pumpkin, avocado and evening primrose oil, it is the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted, but my skin seems clearer and less sensitive after a month. Hardcore fans suggest you sprinkle it as a salad dressing if you really can’t bear the taste.

Neal’s Yard Remedies, Covent Garden, Blackheath, Richmond and Foubert’s Place (www.neals yardremedies.com; 0845 262 3145).

£65 for an hour’s holistic massage including consultation; £50 for an aromatherapy massage; £160 for a tailored anti-ageing package.

LH

CARBOXY THERAPY (CO) AND THE ULTIMATE FACE LIFT LASER TREATMENT

The problem: I wanted a face that looks 10 years younger than its 48 years. I’d always believed laughter to be the best medicine but that’s left me with unamusing crevices beside my lips. My brow looks like the “before” ad for Botox. And too many summer holidays have left me with sun spots.

What is it? Two treatments that require a degree in rocket science to understand. Carboxy Therapy (CO2) and the Ultimate Face Lift laser treatment (UFL).

Claiming to be the biggest breakthrough in beauty therapy since Botox, CO2 is said to eliminate cellulite, stretch marks, fat, psoriasis and scars and fight age, by rejuvenating wrinkly, loose skin. In the US, predictably, they’re even testing it to remedy impotence.

And the UFL? It helps reduce thread veins, sun spots, laughter lines, open pores, sagging jowls, wrinkles, zits and eye bags – stimulating elastin and collagen and plumping up the skin.

Both treatments act on the collagen and the tissue beneath the skin’s surface ‹ in effect giving a face lift but rejuvenating the skin at the same time.

In CO2, natural gas is administered ‹ great for those scared of Botox.

Who does it: Parisian Dr Daniel Sister, a man with a French accent and Dolce & Gabbana suit. The first doctor to practise Carboxy Therapy (CO2) in the UK and a grand fromage in “the happiness business”.

The treatment: “Ha! You’re having the needle today,” laughs Dr Sister, after gleefully showing me photos of clients’ faces and chicken-wing upper arms that he has turned into spring-chicken ones with his magical needles. I’m a wimp so I’ve opted for carbon dioxide (invisible and odorless gas that’s in the air) being injected subcutaneously into my face with a weeny needle ‹ the latest weapon of Hollywood A-listers.

The gas apparently improves blood flow, bringing a rush of oxygen, helping the body’s drainage system, promoting the renewal of elastin fibres and collagen and mechanically breaking down fat cells.

The doctor sticks 10 needles into my face in as many minutes. These injections sting, like mosquito bites.

Then gas bubbles through my skin which the good doctor massages to distribute the gas. I have five sessions of CO2 (twice weekly) for 15 minutes.

Sometimes I end up with tiny bruises on my jaw, as if my children have pinched me.

This gentle torture is combined with four 90-minute monthly sessions of UFL. This involves three different types of laser therapy for different layers of the skin. With the Aurora part of the treatment, which reduces surface blemishes, a headpiece is pressed against my face for 20 minutes. It throws out a flash of red light and heat, and feels like a slight electric shock or being pricked with hot needles.

In Act II, the ReFirme part of the treatment, RF (Radio Frequency) and IR (infrared) heat the dermal tissue to 55 degrees to stimulate collagen production and tighten the skin. Next anaesthetic cream is smeared on my skin and I walk up the corridor for Polaris treatment with Dr Sister. This uses a RF laser light which works even deeper into the dermis to stimulate more collagen and “rub out” my remaining wrinkles.

Does it work? Brilliantly. Although it takes seven hours 15 minutes (less than the average working day) in total, results are seen almost immediately.

My skin looks brighter, fresher, smoother, firmer and younger.

Forty-two years old, perhaps. My nineyear-old scrutinises my face and, unprompted, tells me my “wrigglies” (wrinkles) are disappearing. But my husband still hasn’t noticed.

Notting Hill’s BeautyWorksWest (www.beautyworkswest.com; 020 7221 2248). Five x CO2 at £100 per session, four x UFL at £450 per session, grand total: £2,300. Top-up is recommended after six months.

THERE’S nothing outside the elegant stucco Chelsea townhouse to indicate the extraordinary things that go on inside.

Nothing to show why the rich, famous and just plain troubled now store this discreet address in their BlackBerries. A peer of the realm and a young woman stand on the pavement chatting. “It’s great that you’re also dealing with your sex compulsion,” she says. He smiles.

“Is that an acupuncture stud in your ear?” he answers.

“No,” she responds. “A magnet. I press it to release endorphins and serotonin.” These are patients at The Recovery Centre, a private clinic that offers just five clients at any time for £1,200 a day a bespoke treatment for addictions within the walls of a smart residential London house. There is a choice of more than 80 freelance counsellors plus some off-beat “therapies” ‹ from playing polo, gokarting and watching butterflies to shopping in Bond Street with a personal shopper, about which more later.

Despite its bizarre approach and high fees, such is the demand that within little more than six months of opening in November last year, the owners have rejected a bid to be bought out and are now planning further centres in Notting Hill, Primrose Hill and the City.

The centre is the brainchild of Charisse Cooke, 29, a south African psychologist, and Robert Batt, 40, a former drug addict and aristocrat who, aged six, inherited his family’s Norfolk estate and 24 cottages. He swapped snorting “shed-loads” of cocaine, spending £50,000 on shopping in one day and driving one of his Ferraris drunkenly through a field for eight years of personal recovery, a psychology masters degree and personally financing The Recovery Centre.

Cooke and Batt’s brand of therapy attracts aristocrats, rock stars and millionaires.

It has become the treatment centre of choice for one supermodel.

“An estimated one in 10 of the population suffers from addiction,” says Dr Robert Lefever, a world authority on the subject and the man for whom Batt and Cooke worked for five years at the Promis clinic.

I’m visiting the centre to experience two days of treatment ‹ to top up the regular therapy I’ve been doing for the past 19 years after successfully recovering from an eating disorder, amphetamine addiction and alcoholism in my early twenties.

I came from a classic dysfunctional family ‹ my mother walked out when I was 12 and before that I’d had to deal with her mental illness. When I was 21 and at Bristol University, I saw a consultant psychiatrist in Harley Street. I was so intimidated at having to expose myself psychologically that I would take amphetamines before visits. The psychiatrist helped me but also colluded in my addictive behaviour. “You’re not an addict,” said the good doctor.

“You don’t take pills every day.” When I went to work in Fleet Street, I started drinking and bingeing. I appeared to have it all: a good job, nice flat, fast car, friends. But inside I was desolate, lonely and often suicidal. It was after I spent a weekend hidden in my flat alone, crying inconsolably that a friend with whom I’d lived told me about Promis.

She talked openly about her eating disorder ‹ which had been such a shameful and secretive disease for me..

She was full of hope and happiness. So I checked into Promis for addiction counselling. After that, I spent five years in psychoanalysis and graduated to a psychoanalytical psychotherapy group.

Treatment at Promis saved my life ‹ but it was tough love. So I’m curious to see how different the luxury atmosphere of The Recovery Centre will be.

Cooke greets me wreathed in smiles.

“We were just talking about Treatment Chic,” she laughs, sporting a Hermès belt. I nip into the bathroom: it’s marble with fluffy white towels, Jo Malone soap and luxurious Diptique candles burning. But this is no urban retreatstyle spa. If addicts are recovering here, there will also be tears and hurt aplenty.

It’s 9am and time for my appointment with Cooke, who has designed my personal programme. Questions cover everything from whether I’ve ever prostituted myself to whether I suffer from sexual anorexia, exercise obsession or have a criminal history. Having said no to the first two and admitted to shoplifting, aged 19, and a nascent exercise obsession, we move on. I leave the session feeling exposed and vulnerable.

In between sessions, staff waft in and out like First Class air stewards saying, “Can I get you anything?” and returning with nuts and herbal teas. At lunch with four patients and Cooke, the chef dishes up risotto with black truffle shavings followed by sea bass on rocket salad. The food may be fancy but conversation is authentic and poignant. A 24-year-old patient talks about the day her four-year-old son watched “problem drinkers” on Jeremy Kylie’s show then asked: “Mummy, are you an alcoholic?” Cooke hugs her.

By mid-afternoon I’ve already had three sessions: an interview with a psychologist, some experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP) and 50 minutes with a performance enhancement specialist and have a cracking headache from such intensity. But it’s time for group therapy with Batt. Wearing a Savile Row suit and speaking like a Coldstream Guard, the regiment founded by his family, Batt prods and pokes psychologically.

Batt says he’s watching my eyes darting around, “filtering” what I’m going to say. He remarks upon my breathing becoming more shallow. “I feel tearful,” he adds, wanting me to talk, “as if my gut is being wrenched and contorted.” I squirm. I’m not used to therapists sharing their emotions.

Immediately after group therapy, Cooke bounces in giggling. “Hello lovely ladies. Let’s change the atmosphere in here. Let’s play a game.” We each pull a piece of paper out of a glass and follow its directions. “Your secret wish …” is one. “Reveal your most embarrassing moment Š” is another.

My answer? Running down a Kensington street as a dare, stoned and wearing only a moped helmet. It’s the kind of party game I’d play when I was drunk.

Puerile perhaps. But it offers welcome light relief. This style of treatment is Batt and Cooke’s idiosyncratic vision: the way that Batt himself got “clean”.

Aged 14, he drank a litre of whisky at Harrow, spent two days unconscious while friends shouted out his name in roll call, then graduated to a cocaine and shopping habit. Batt got clean with the help of friends, (“other recovering addicts”) and an ongoing mixture of “yoga, therapy, helping other people, contemplating nature, having fun and med- itation”. With this in mind, he recently directed one patient to take creative writing lessons with novelist Raffaella Barker; escorted another to the Syon Park butterfly house (“It helped him get in touch with his inner child”); refused to treat one unless she took tap-dancing lessons; and sent several out shopping with Sally Bardsley, erstwhile personal stylist to Princess Diana and Madonna.

Some critics will find these bizarre therapies silly. Others, like myself, may consider the hugging, hand-holding and the overlap between therapists with patients to be lacking in boundaries.

I am slightly apprehensive on my second day. What is in store for me? A former theatre director turned drama therapist (“I believe in anonymity,” he says,) works with four of us. “When you were young, who was the dominant character in your household and what were their Ten Commandments (or rules)?” We write our lists, my mother’s “Commandments” suddenly spilling out of me. Then we enact a dinner scene, each member of the group becoming one of my family members, to debate the “rules”.

NEXT in art therapy with Maddi Strong we use plastic toys to enact stories that become very self-revealing.

The Recovery Centre believes in creative “play”. “Psychoanalysis and long-term therapies have their place in treating addictions,” says Charisse. “However, addicts initially respond more readily to more humanistic and supportive therapies.” After two days, I feel wrung-out but also empowered. In each of the sessions I have learned something useful about myself, something to fine-tune my recovery, and I have also had some fun. My own experience of early recovery was that it was very painful facing my demons without the “anaesthetic”.

It’s too early to tell whether Batt’s patients will achieve long-term recovery.

But they seem to be getting well.

You could argue the centre’s approach is elitist, recovery only for the wealthy.

Fortunately, most people get well ‹ for no more than minimal voluntary donations ‹ through fellowships like Alcoholics Anonymous in draughty church halls.

But to focus on the centre’s “swish” factor is to miss the point. “If you’re at rock bottom, lobster and cream carpets won’t heal you,” comments NHS and private psychotherapist Lili Reinisch.

A WALK around Selfridges was once my idea of aerobic exertion.

Then a few months ago my brain synapses must have got twisted, because I started working out thrice weekly.

I was able to run, say, for 40 minutes without stopping. And I was able to swim gentle lengths of breaststroke.

But when a friend suggested doing a triathlon – that’s swimming outdoors, biking and running over silly distances – I should have checked into rehab.

But at the age of 47 and with two children, a mid-life crisis was looming.

Not to mention a sense (a legacy of having had an eating disorder) of never seeing myself as slim enough, plus a desire to get really fit and raise money for ChildLine.

Undeterred by my general lack of fitness, I visited Simon Costain (Paula Radcliffe’s podiatrist) who videoed me running, took a cast of my soles for orthotics and pronounced me fit to run on both feet.

I went home, signed up to Britain’s fastest- growing sport, then tripped over my own feet, damaged my coccyx and was scarcely able to move for three weeks. I felt miserable. My first challenge, a Super Sprint distance at Blenheim, was looming in June. It’s the shortest of the triathlon races ‹ 400m swim, 13.2k bike and 2.9k run ‹ but felt like an enormous goal for me.

By March I had joined the Herbalife Triathlon Training Academy ‹ which offers coaching, normally available only to the elite, to the country’s four most promising grassroots triathletes (selected from 15,000 entries) and to a few interested journalists.

At our first session, everything the mustachioed legend-cum- Olympic coach, Bill Black, said filled me with horror: the idea of jumping into murky water with hundreds of people and not having lines on a pool floor to show me where to go; the sheer distance and different disciplines to be negotiated; the amount of training to juggle with commitments to work, husband and children.

“What’s the minimum training I can do?” I asked dolefully.

“Up to you,” replied Bill, fixing his look on a man doing 15 hours a week. The experience tipped me into retail therapy at Swim Bike Run (SBR) Sports where I left £1,200 lighter and with a sexy bike.

Next I had to tackle learning to swim properly. Coach Daniel Bullock at Swim for Tri in Brick Lane’s Old

Brewery attempted to conquer my fear of swimming freestyle by filming my underwater mistakes and projecting my flailing whale impressions onto a plasma screen.

My next stop, in May, was an Academy training weekend in Eastbourne, with a clutch of superfit athletes, coach Bill and “mental performance lifestyle coach” Midgie Thompson, a sportswoman with a French manicure who helped me through some of my disheartened moments, about which more later.

As soon as we arrived we were ordered to get running. We set off like racehorses, scaling a road that was at right angles to the ground, crossing the Downs and doing a twomile loop across mountainous terrain with a gale blowing in our faces..

Puffing behind those sleek triathlon machines with a mounting sense of despair, I had the feeling that I might be about to meet my Maker.

“Imagine you have wings on you.

Where are they taking you?” panted Midgie, doing creative visualisation.

“To hell,” I replied. But I got through the run at my own pace. And afterwards I felt elated by the bracing air, endorphins and jolly company.

Afterwards we swam drills for two hours. I’d never done that much exercise in my life, but the problem with triathlon training is that you have to remember so much kit, 35 basic items, and two of us had forgotten our towels. So I dried myself with loo paper, then fell asleep at 5pm.

The exhaustion of persistent exercise that weekend ended with a sense of exhilaration ‹ achievement coupled with serotonin, I imagine. After that, I turned into a real athlete and developed a serious pill habit, popping 18 natural supplements a day, courtesy of Higher Nature. Rapidly my skin became clear, my nails and hair got stronger and my energy levels soared.

Less than two months after I had started training, I began to enjoy exercise, training nearly an hour a day, four to six times a week. I’d confide in Midgie during our phone consultations that I was too fat/ nearly 50/that everyone else would be better and faster/that I hadn’t done enough training/and that I lacked motivation. Midgie would help me turn the internal dialogue into positives: what a fantastic achievement, many younger people couldn’t do this/I’ve done ample given my other commitments.

Often I ran with my psychotherapist friend Lily, (thereby tending my madness and hamstrings simultaneously) or biked around parks.

The big day was fast approaching.

Fearing triathlon humiliation, I swam in the Serpentine amid the killer swans: triathlon lore has it that they attack swimmers. The hardy octogenarian swimmers who belong to the (self-dubbed) “Royal Serpentine Hernia Club” call the wet-besuited triathletes “Rubber Johnnies”. I loved being in the fresh air. But swimming in bird poo and looking like a wally clambering around in a wet suit in a Royal park? I hated that.

Blenheim day dawned. Midgie had agreed to run alongside me, for mental support. It was a hot day but as we descended like hundreds of rubber tadpoles into the freezing water, it took my breath away. I managed a mixture of swallowing water, panic, breast stroke and crawl. I forgot most of the techniques I’d fought so hard to learn. Midgie ploughed in front of me yelling, “Come on Caroline you can do it.” Rescue canoes came over to us three times. I was thinking, “Never again.”

But I did it! Then we reached the banks, ran up an outrageously steep hill, sped off on our bikes and pedalled furiously around Blenheim’s beautiful Capability Brown-designed landscape. The weather was perfect, the crowds supportive and, having worked so hard to get here, I had a huge sense of achievement.

After returning our bikes to the “transition” area, I ran off, losing Midgie. It didn’t matter. As I crossed the finishing line, I received a hero’s welcome. I’d finished ahead of the twentysomethings, in Olympic time. Then it dawned.

As the marshals fussed over me, I realised that I’d, er, missed out a running lap. Disqualified but not beaten, I followed Bill’s (psychologically brilliant) instructions and went back and finished the race. I still completed the course in a (very) respectable one hour 20 minutes.

There was something uplifting about showing our daughters (aged nine and 11) how anything is possible if you try hard enough..

So, now, on Saturday, I’m racing in the London Triathlon, swimming front crawl amid abandoned cars in Docklands and cycling and running over what could be several hundred miles if I get lost again.

But if all goes to plan, I’ll do a Sprint distance which is a 750m swim, 20km bike ride and 5km run.

That’ll be double what I did at Blenheim. And I hope to raise £10,000 for the NSPCC’s ChildLine services. I feel proud that, with the help of my younger brother, Simon, I’ve already raised £5,000.

Looking back, I’ve loved my recent training, and its intensity, have enjoyed meeting triathletes and have revelled in my new-found focus, positivity and energy. I’ll miss having a goal and feel out of sorts on days when I don’t exercise.

But I feel apprehensive about the race. I feel scared that I may be unable to complete the swim. (After all, it is the equivalent of 30 lengths of a 25m pool). And I feel nervous that I may not be able to manage a run after all that biking and swimming.

But that’s how I felt before Blenheim. Anyway I don’t have to be fast. I’d just like to finish the race.

So if you see number 3433 getting lost, point me in the right direction.

To sponsor Caroline go to www.justgiving.com/carolinephillips

FROM INNER TUBES TO SWIM COACHES – ALL YOU NEED TO COMPETE

THE KIT

>From SBR Sports (01753 830118, www.sbrsports.com) LeMond Etape bike £600 Helmet £49.99 Pedals £9.99 Bottle cage £7.99 Pump £12.99 Bike computer £34.99 Saddle bag £12.99 Inner tube £4.99 Tyre levers £2.99 Orca Tri top and pants £80

Race belt £5.99 Elastic laces £5.99 Asics trainers £85 Bottle £3.50 Orca wetsuit £250 Turbo trainer £179 Kryptonite bike lock £29.99 Cycling glasses £29.99 Anti-blister socks £12.99 Rehydration tablets £4.99/pack Natural supplements from Higher Nature £55 per week (0800 458 4747; www.highernature.co.uk )

THE SUPPORT

Olympic coach Bill Black, www.billblackcoaching.com, prices from £60 an hour.

Midgie Thompson, mental performance and lifestyle coach, www.brightfuturescoaching.com, £100 an hour.

John Beaton, masseuse at the Harbour Club, www.harbourclub.co.uk, £45 an hour..

Daniel Bullock at Swim for Tri, www.swimfortri.com, first consultation £75; thereafter £50 an hour.

HALF TRIATHLON ENTRY COSTS

London: £69 Blenheim: £59 Royal Serpentine Swimming Club: membership £20

THE 2007 MICHELOB ULTRA LONDON TRIATHLON

THE London Triathlon is a great two-day event for spectators. Held in and around ExCeL in London’s Docklands (take the Docklands Light Railway to Custom House), it attracts more than 12,000 people competing in the world’s largest triathlon. There are a variety of locations for the expected 45,000 spectators ‹ some under cover ‹ and a big screen in the ExCel centre, not to mention restaurants and dockside cafes.

Saturday is for the amateurs like myself who are competing in the half-triathlon ‹ catch me and 430 others in the Female Sprint Group 2 starting at 2.30pm..

On Sunday, world-class athletes including current World Champion Tim Don and Olympic silver medalist Bevan Docherty will be vying for the fastest times in the full Olympic triathlon which requires a 1.5km open-water swim, 40km bike ride and 20km run.

For those wanting a break from trying to glimpse their loved ones whizzing past, there will also be a huge Expo held in the main hall with retailers such as SBR Sports and professionals on hand to help anyone keen to learn more about the UK’s fastest growing sport ‹ triathlons.

www.thelondontriathlon.com

HOW I GOT FIT ENOUGH TO DO A TRIATHLON

When I started triathlon training, my coach Bill told me that if I could do the distance in each discipline individually, then I could do the whole thing. I found this very motivating. Here is how my fitness was transformed in under four months:

SWIMMING

Before Although I could do a mile in breaststroke, when feeling fit, I’d never mastered front crawl, or freestyle as it’s referred to by triathletes.

During You need to be able to do front crawl for triathlons, especially in a wetsuit, which doesn’t lend itself to breaststroke. I took lessons with Swim For Tri at the Old Truman Brewery and was talked through the correct technique before trying it in front of my coach, who corrected me until I could stay afloat. Then I went off to try it out on my own.

I practised at least once a week at my local baths, and attended four Swim For Tri sessions. An underwater camera recorded my style, which was then critiqued by experts. Then I went in the endless pool ‹ swimming against an adjustable current ‹ while adjusting my style for maximum performance.

Once a week I went to Kensington Leisure Centre, where I repeated exercises to improve my stroke. I swam alongside a woman who’d just swum round Alcatraz, and another who’d completed the Iron Woman Challenge. They were supportive.

To acclimatise and build confidence for swimming across open stretches I did laps of the Serpentine.

Now This week I completed an hour of drills, breaking for only a few seconds between 100m sprints. Recently I did a two-hour freestyle swimming session ‹ with short breaks..

CYCLING

Before I didn’t even own a bike. Occasionally I’d borrow my 11-year-old daughter’s bicycle to do the school run ‹ on the pavement. I never cycled for exercise.

During I started with the attitude that “anyone can cycle”, which may not have been sensible, but it made the task ahead less intimidating.

In April, on a sleek lightweight bike, I discovered that racing tyres have no proper grip. I struggled through a rain-sodden two-hour training ride, finding out that you get cold when you stop, so it’s better to soldier on.

At first my training schedule was virtually nonexistent.

I only wanted to cycle on pavements and paths, so lengthy stamina-building road training didn’t appeal. Instead I visited the country every three weeks and cycled downhill on country lanes for an hour. My theory was that I could build up resistance through running and swimming.

Recently I began longer, more serious cycles, doing circuits of Regent’s Park and Richmond Park with a friend’s husband.

Two weeks ago I even took a 45-minute spin class at my gym ‹ now that was seriously tough.

Now I can cycle like a pro for 90 minutes on my lovely LeMond bike..

RUNNING

Before I’d started running about a year and a half before deciding to compete in a triathlon. So, when the training began I could run for a respectable 40 minutes, which I did two or three times a week through Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens.

During My real training began in March. I joined the Herbalife Triathlon Training Academy where Bill told me it’s possible to train for a short triathlon, such as the Blenheim Sprint, in just six to eight weeks.

In May I went off to a two-day workshop in Eastbourne which involved running gruelling twomile circuits. It was an intensive experience, but if anything I found it more terrifying than inspiring.

Bill sent me precise training schedules, which I was to follow week by week, gradually building up my running distance. But instead of sticking to his regime, I trained at my own pace.

Every week I made sure I did at least one long run, for at least an hour. When my sister-in-law accompanied me, she brought an athlete’s flak jacket to weigh me down. I still managed to complete the run. Each week I made sure to have at least one day’s rest. You improve a lot by letting your muscles relax.