I have two thoughts after completing my first triathlon. First, you only get one shot at writing about your first triathlon, so it better be good and second, a marathoner does not a triathlete make!
I like to think that I’d gleaned a little wisdom from reading and musing about triathlons. After all, I’m a decent swimmer, a decent cyclist and I’ve run a few sub 4 hour marathons, so why not consider myself a closet triathlete, someone for whom it would be no problem to string together my disparate endurance activities into a single event? At least that’s what I thought before actually participating in one. Notice that I chose the word participate, not compete, something I probably wouldn’t have done prior.
Triathlon has always seemed a natural extension of my exercise passions. While I’m only a legend in my own mind, I’m a reasonably competitive runner in my age group and have always loved swimming and cycling. I think there’s sort of an attempt to reclaim my youth where bike riding was my primary form of transportation and my parents made me swim on the community swim team, which I didn’t particularly like at the time, but which taught me fundamentals and grew on me as I got older. So the idea of triathlon has always hovered somewhere in the deeper recesses of my mind, occasionally manifesting itself as some olympian goal worth pursuing.
It was during one of these manifestations that I mentally mapped out my race calendar at the beginning of the year. Marathon in February, a couple 5Ks to work on speed, Marathon in April and then, maybe, a half-Ironman in the fall. I mean, after all, I’m kind of given to extremes and there’s nothing like having big goals. I can run a half-marathon, no sweat. Well, maybe a little sweat. And besides, my swim workouts are usually more than a mile and c’mon, who can’t cruise on a bike as long as they need to?
Then from somewhere, a voice interceded in my manifestation. “Hey there,” it said. “Why don’t you test the waters with a short and fast triathlon this summer?” What… something reasonable? So as if to seal the deal it challenged, “Maybe you can place in your age group.” After all, I’m pretty fast at the short distances. And so with that I signed up for the Buster Britton Memorial Triathlon in my hometown: 400 yard swim, 13 mile bike ride and 3 mile run. No problem!
Well, there are a few things that I learned from my first triathlon experience.
First, it would be helpful to actually train for it. This idea started to take shape in a kind of fuzzy way on the evening before the race, after I picked up my race packet and listened to the overview. It occurred to me that I was pretty good at talking about getting ready for the triathlon, but when it came down to actually practicing specifically for it, I left a little to be desired. For example, how about at least trying an open water swim before I actually dived in to start the first leg? And maybe it would be a good idea to actually ride my bike on the course, say, at least once prior to racing on it. But hey, I can run 3 miles in my sleep and a 400 yard swim? That’s a warm up in the pool. At least I rode my bike on a couple 15 mile rides (nice and flat, of course) a few times prior just to confirm that I could in fact do it, since that’s probably my weakest of the disciplines.
The second thing I learned is that it’s probably advisable not to do your first triathlon when you’re sick. About 2 weeks before race day, I could feel a sinus infection coming on. After 2 trips to the doctor and 2 rounds of antibiotic, nothing seemed to help, and in a defiant act of delirium, I figured that since it’s not really getting any better, so why not just gut it out? I mean, how important is it to breath anyway in endurance sports?
That fuzzy idea that maybe I wasn’t as prepared as I thought became a bit more clear after the race overview meeting. But the honest truth is that I figured I could at least complete the event, I’d paid for it (triathlons aren’t cheap) and I really wanted the t-shirt.
One of the topics that the race director spent a good bit of time on is the transitions. I hadn’t really considered the transitions in my mental pre-race planning. “That’s kind of incidental,” I naively thought. But there we were, in the transition area, talking about flow and USAT rules and penalties and not wearing socks and race belts and on and on. It occurred to me then that perhaps I’d slightly underestimated the details. But hey, I’m a quick study.
Some of the stuff I learned was this. Bring a race bag. Get everything ready the night before. Include a towel (a hand towel will work fine) and lay out your gear on it so it’s ready for the transition. Bike shoes, helmet, sunglasses. Socks and riding gloves are optional. Running shoes with a quick-lock or elastic laces are really helpful. Lot’s of competitive triathletes don’t wear socks, but that’s not something you should try for the first time in the race! I was at least intelligent enough to buy myself some tri-shorts and a race belt before the race. A top would be nice, but lots of guys in this event went shirtless.
Some other things that I was clueless about… mark yourself and your gear up the night before. I didn’t and was a little stressed about the USAT marking rules right before the race. Yes, you’ll walk to the start barefoot. Flip flops are nice to have when getting your transition area ready and waiting to be called to the start. Have water and any gels or other nutrition ready. You might want to consider having a water bottle on your bike. The afore mentioned race belt, while not essential, is a really, really good idea. I almost didn’t get one, but I’m glad I did. Oh yea, the little strings hanging down are to put the number on. Duh.
My hazy feeling that I was out of my league became rock solid concrete when I showed up in the morning. The triathlete crowd is something to behold. Bikes that looked like rocket ships were being wheeled by spandex clad dudes with pointy helmets. Groups that could have stepped from the pages of Homer’s Illiad, except for the tights, chatted together about race strategy, like a collection of aliens who were masquerading in human bodies that they had crafted from watching summer action movies. Into the crowd I wandered, wide eyed and trying desperately to breathe through my nose, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. I glanced toward the calm water of the lake and the buoys that marked the swim course. Hmmm, I thought, no lane lines…
I can remember chatting with a guy named Jeff while waiting to start the swim. “Look,” he said, “they’ve already started,” and I could see swimmers rounding the first buoy. This event was an individual time trial start and fortunately for me, they started calling numbers close to mine fairly quickly or I might have bolted at the last minute. Diving into the water, I started my first triathlon.
There’s a reason you shouldn’t swim with a sinus infection. I managed to make it to the first buoy before conceding to the fact that I was like every other newbie. I had started out too fast and was tired. On top of that, I couldn’t get hold of my breathing since I was all congested. The difference here was that the bottom was a lot deeper than the one in the pool. So, instead of choosing to simply drown right then and there, I rolled over on my back and did an easy backstroke for the remaining half of the swim, emerging from the water winded and glad to be alive. Funny thing about backstroke. You can actually watch everyone else cruise by you, even in murky lake water. Note to self: do some open water training next time.
From the water to the transition area I was met with cheers from the awesome volunteers and spectators. If I was considering running behind a tree and hiding, this was enough of a lift to keep going. That and the thought of getting race photos e-mailed to me of a tree with arms that read “218.” I arrived at my assigned spot in the transition area, my chest still heaving, and plopped on the ground guzzling water out of my bottle and fumbling with my gear. Jeff, the guy from the start, whizzed by me like the Tasmanian Devil and was gone with his bike while I was still working on my left sock.
The bike leg was a little better than the swim. At least I wouldn’t sink on a bike. The route was described in the race literature as mildly hilly however at this point I would have used a different adjective. On top of that my bike computer seemed to be suddenly malfunctioning. Where it should have read 20+ mph, it was reading something like 9. One of the cool things about watching a bike race is hearing the whooshing sound and seeing brightly colored riders whiz past on missiles disguised as tri-bikes. It was kind of like that for me, only I wasn’t a spectator. I didn’t have much of a problem heeding the USAT no-drafting rules. But push on I did and even managed to pass a couple people and feel competitive, despite the fact they were in the 60+ age bracket, before letting loose on a few nice downhill runs.
Riding into the transition area for the second time, I was ready for my particular area of expertise, the run. Besides, I have orange running shoes with elastic laces and I was ready to blow away the competition on my own terms. Slipping on my shoes I turned towards the run course and for some reason, my legs seemed to have an issue. Note to self: Next time, it might be a good idea to practice running after riding for a few miles.
The 3 mile run course was an out and back that went uphill for the first 1 1/2 mile. In my last 5K, I was the 3rd place finisher in my age group clocking a 6:30 pace and then doing the 1 mile fun run for kicks. I’d always heard triathletes talk about how their legs felt like bricks when the run started but until now never really had a frame of reference for that imagery. But now it felt something like the last 10K of a marathon.
Hearing my wife and kids cheer me on, I dug deep and fell into a cadence somewhere between a light jog and a drunken shuffle. But still I pressed on. 3 miles seemed a bit like a joke when I signed up for the deal but now the joke was definitely on me. At the halfway point, I guzzled a couple cups of water, tried to remember that I used to be a decent runner and headed back for the finish line. It dawned on me that I hadn’t been passed by many folks on the run when suddenly a guy I used to go to college with blew by me on the downhill. I tried to keep up for about a quarter mile then let him go. Humbled, I remembered some advice I’d been given when marathon training. “Run your own race,” I thought, and my legs agreed.
I love races when they announce your name at the finish line. I heard, “Ed Hart, from Alabaster, Alabama” from the loudspeaker and the awesome spectators, including my family, were cheering at the finish line. And as suddenly as it started, I was done. 1 hour and 24 minutes into my life as a triathlete. After a couple of hugs from my wife and high fives with my kids, and the obligatory pictures, I walked back into the transition area, packed up my gear and proudly put on the t-shirt that I had earned.