Late last year, a good friend of mine took part in her first (sprint-distance) triathlon, and being the good friend I am, I went along to cheer her on. It looked like a lot of fun, and when she said, almost immediately after finishing it, that she’d do another, and asked if I was interested in joining her for the next one, I said, “Sure!”.
I don’t know if it was over-confidence in my own level of fitness, or just that I didn’t want to lose face and admit I am old and ‘past it’, but I figured if she could do it, then so could I. Although I apparently temporarily forgot that she is 20 years younger than me, and almost certainly exercises more regularly than I do. But, my word is my bond, so I duly signed up when the time came around.
To be fair, I was ‘only’ signing up for a sprint triathlon – nothing too crazy. Just a 750m swim, 20k bike ride, and a 5k run , one after the other. (I have no idea why they insist on measuring them in metric, but they do. For reference, that’s about 0.6 miles / 13.2 miles / 3.2 miles.) But that’s still a stretch for me. I do cycle reasonably regularly, at least 10 miles (mostly off-road through the woods), and I used to run a lot when I was younger, but I’ve never been a strong swimmer so i knew that would be particularly difficult. Not least because I don’t have a pool, or easy access to one. Sure, there’s a bayou nearby, but I’ve seen water-snakes and alligators in there. so nope to that.
Instead, I joined the local YMCA, which at least has a 25m pool, and started swimming a couple of times a week. And I upped my cycling to 15-20 miles at a time. And switched to cycling just on the road/tarmac, which proved to be hard work with my big, fat off-road MTB tires, so I had to buy another bike – this one a road one. Nothing majorly extravagant; another Trek, but with super-thin tires (thin enough to slip into the cracks in the shitty roads we have round here, as I found out to my cost on one ride…) and a fair bit lighter.
Running was OK, as I’d been hitting the treadmill a couple of times a week anyway, clocking in an hour at a time watching Better Call Saul. But running on the treadmill and running on the road are, strangely, two entirely different pursuits. I think it’s because on the treadmill all you really have to do is jump up and land again, on the spot, and the belt moves for you. On the road, you’re having to propel yourself. My first road run (in about 30 years…), I thought I was going to die after half a mile. But I persevered, and got up to the required 3.5 miles with relative ease (although here in Texas I tended to wait for the sun to go down before venturing out).
Interestingly, the swim, which I was most worried about, turned out to be the easiest part, and after a few weeks of training I was able to do the distance with relative ease – albeit in the YMCA pool, and all breaststroke because my crawl really isn’t strong enough. I didn’t have the chance to do an ‘open-air’ swim, but water’s water, right?
However, doing each of these (swim, bike, and run) in isolation is one thing. Doing one immediately after the other is an entirely different proposition. Apart from the extra effort, transitioning from one to the other isn’t as easy as it sounds. Going straight from swimming to cycling isn’t too bad, once you get used to cycling in a pair of wet shorts (I bought special ‘tri shorts’ which offer a bit of padding for the cycle, but are still light/tight enough to swim in). But going from biking to running is a bit more challenging. At first getting off my bike and going straight into running was like borrowing someone else’s legs (or, as my tri partner described it: detaching your legs, rotating them 20 degrees, then putting them back on again) but after a while, that was manageable, too. Although I did learn the hard way that running in my MTB shoes (very flat, with a solid sole) was unwise, and I nearly knackered my knees trying… It’s much easier to cycle in running shoes – although you could probably swap shoes ‘in transition’ as they stop the timer between legs.
Anyway, despite vacillating between “Oh, this is easy; I can do the tri no problem” and “Oh my God what did I sign up for? I’m going to die!”, come ‘race day’ I was feeling relatively confident about all three legs, and the transitions between them. And I was fitter than I had been in years (and down to my lowest weight in at least a decade). In fact, I was actually looking forward to it.
So it was a little disappointing when they cancelled the swim component on the morning of the race, due to health concerns over the water quality in the lake. Instead, they replaced the swim leg with another 1.6 mile run – so, run-bike-run. That was probably harder than the original swim-bike-run, especially as I hadn’t specifically trained for that combination (and was mentally unprepared for a sudden change). Of the three, the only bit that I’d say was difficult was the (second) run – not necessarily the pace or distance, but because I wasn’t familiar with the route, and I’m a very poor judge of distance and don’t know how to pace myself, so every time I was coming up to a corner I thought “OK, the finish line has got to be just round here…” and then despaired every time it wasn’t. But I did – eventually, after many false corners, finish. And with a personal best time! (OK, so this was my first sprint triathlon, so whatever time I finished it in would be my de facto personal best, but it still counts…) And I didn’t feel like I was going to die at the end. In fact, because the men started – and therefore finished – before the women, when I crossed the finish line, I walked back to see where my friend was, and when I found her, some 400yds from the finish line, I ran (along the spectator portion) back to the finish line with her, cheering her on (to which she responded with a terse “Oh, f*ck off!” – but I’m sure that was just to let me know she wasn’t out of breath!).
I originally decided to do this triathlon as a one-off, just to prove that I could. But having been swindled out of the swim component, I still feel I haven’t done a ‘real’ triathlon yet. So I’m signing up for the next one, six months later. And depending on how that goes, maybe the one after that, and so on, until I can’t do it any more. My friend has upped her game and is training for / entering ‘Olympic-distance’ triathlons now (1.5k swim, 40k bike, 10k run) but I’m not falling for that again. I’ll just gracefully accept my aging and cheer her on from the sidelines.
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