Reasonable Results From My First Tri

Today, I completed my first triathlon. The event was the ‘Get Out There and Tri’ put on by Mary Meyer Life Fitness (That's Ms. Meyer herself posing with me). It was a super sprint (swim 400m, bike 9 miles, run 1.5) so it wasn’t too long. The physical challenge for me was to get used to swimming and running in real world conditions: no ipod, pushing off pool walls, standing because the water is only 4ft deep, or stationary bikes with ESPN on the flat screen. Though, the biggest challenge was equipment. My goggles kept losing their band. I seem to have a body to fit a medium large wetsuit and the shoulders to fit a large. Based on advice, I went with the medium large and felt it fight my arms the whole swim. The worse was the bike. Let’s dedicate a paragraph to complaining about this before getting back on topic.

So, I don’t have a bike. I haven’t ridden one with wheels in 7 years and never one with as narrow of tires as the ones used for triathlons. I figured it’d make sense to rent one before buying. So I headed down to the local shop and make a reservation. While placing my order I mentioned my next problem: my car is too small to carry a bike and that I’d either need to find a sucker friend with a rack or rent a car for the weekend. The guy behind the counter disagrees and proudly relays the story of a friend with a Miata that did it. So I’m thinking, ‘A Boxster is waaay bigger than a Miata. I can do this!’. In life, there are a lot of things that can be done, quite a few less that should. It worked, but it involved …

• Putting the top down (thank god it didn’t rain)
• Removing the front tire
• Placing the front of the bike such that I couldn’t shift into 2nd, 4th, or 6th
• Hanging the seat out passenger side
• Hold the bike in place so it wouldn’t knock the window switches (the seat went out the downed window)
• Dodging a swinging pedal while driving 45mph
• Not relying on the now hidden right rearview mirror
• Not exceeding the speed limit in the slow lane (come on. Y’all know how I do)
• Doing all this back and forth through 40 miles of downtown, a highway, country roads and traffic
• Prayer

Once I got past fighting my equipment, the event was an absolute blast! Participants were split up into waves. First was the elite wave. These people did the whole event twice. Next were the men, then women, then seniors. I couldn’t imagine a better location for the tri. The water was reasonably warm and the bike route only had a couple of tough hills, but plenty of declines to keep you going.

The first leg was swimming. Here all the men passed me. It was neat being a part of a wave of swimmers in open water. Though turning at the markers was a bit disorienting. Once I came around the turn, I was blinded by the sun and just saw a sea of swim caps in front and to the right of me. It took me a little while to determine if I was to swim straight or diagonally. Once I got that figured out I was ok.



Next was the bike. We did two laps around 4.5 miles of local roads (where respectively the women and seniors passed me). I knew the bike was going to be my worse leg, and I was spot on in my expectation. I was hoping to get a few minutes to acclimate myself to the bike before the event started. Unfortunately, my chain fell off during the afore mentioned hell ride. I spent about half hour figuring out how to get it back in place and verifying it worked. During the first mile of the ride, I was playing with the gear shifts to figure out which was up and down. I never felt 100% comfortable on the bike. At lower speeds, it was very easy to wobble the bike by doing things like wiping my brow. So going downhill, I capped my speed to what I felt comfortable doing. And man, was that seat hard. I began to hurt after 5 miles. By mile 7 I was inadvertently giving my own personal homage to Michael Jackson, singing a ‘hooo’ or a ‘he he hee’ with each bump in the road.

The run was my strongest leg. What’s surprising is when you get off the bike and try to run, your legs feel pretty rubbery. They’ve been working, but haven’t had to deal with your weight. I was probably about a mile in before I felt like I was hitting my stride.

One other neat thing they had going on was the ‘Beat John Curley’ Challenge. If you registered to compete against the 47 year old local TV news personality and posted a better time, you were entered into a raffle. The winner was given $500 for the charity of their choice. He even spotted the field 3 seconds for each person who registered. Needless to say, I didn’t beat Mr. Curley. Though, I kind of wish I did. As part of the victory ceremony the winner took a picture while standing on his back. Problem was some skinny little woman won. I wanted to put some weight on him!


That about covers it. Next up: figure out my bike situation and train for a sprint triathlon.