I’ve been wanting to get into triathlons since moving to Washington. I’ve been a runner for many years – I started regularly running my freshman year of college to burn off some extra energy and stress that accumulated during school, and I haven’t stopped since (except for stints in Nigeria and China when I felt running might be more harmful to my health than helpful). I’ve run three marathons so far, and have kept up a three to four run per week schedule for most of my adult life. Running is a great sport for New York City, where the logistics of cycling, hiking, and climbing are way more involved than here in Seattle. And unlike many other sports, you don’t need really any special gear to run, so it’s one of the cheapest ways to stay fit.
But over the years, running got monotonous. In New York I started to vary it by mixing up my slow long runs with intervals and shorter anarobic stuff. But still I was feeling a bit bored by it. So when we moved to Washington, I bought a bike and joined the Bainbridge Island Master Swimmers. I’ve kept up my running but have added regular swim and biking workouts as well.
I’m also a generalist and like the challenge of being proficient at a number of different things more than the idea of becoming an expert at one. So for all these reasons, triathlon really appealed to me. I didn’t do any races last year, but this year decided to bite the bullet and just sign up for a few. I wanted to start with a sprint-distance race since I felt I could compete in this without really changing my existing workout schedule too much or really ramping up my training to the point of sacrificing other stuff that I like doing.
The Seafair triathlon is one of the best supported local races – it’s very well organized and is convenient to get to from Bainbridge Island. I read up a bit on racing triathlons, but really just jumped right in, not worrying at all about messing up (wait…which sport comes first?) or what my times were.
Seafair is a .5 mile swim, a 12 mile bike, and a 5K. I didn’t get any fancy equipment – I used my normal road bike, my old worn-out running shoes (essentially barefoot running by this point), and my surfing wetsuit. The day of the race I put all my gear in a big backpack, parked the car, and just rode down to the transition area. I essentially just watched how other people got set up and copied them.
When my wave was up to start, I got out into the water – it turns out I wasn’t the only first-timer there…at least three other people I was chatting with were first time racers as well!
The swim leg went fine – it was a bit more chaotic than I’d anticipated, with people bumping into each other, my goggles flooding or fogging up, getting tossed about in the chop, and trying to navigate the course without zig-zagging to much. I didn’t really try to hold much back since this was a sprint, but I also wasn’t really at all concerned about what the bulk of the other swimmers were doing.
My first surprise of the race was how dizzy I got after I got out of the water. I’ve since learned that this is pretty common coming off the swim leg. But as I was putting on my cycling shoes, I had to grab on to the bar to keep from falling over – not a great condition to start riding a bike! Fortunately, this passed very quickly and I was on my way. It’s a strange sensation to jump on a bike seconds after getting out of the water – I was still dripping wet and in my tri-shorts and racing top, wearing less and feeling more exposed than any other time on the bike. The bike leg was certainly my weakest. I felt like I was being passed much more frequently than I was passing. But because the olympic distance race and the various age groups get all mixed up on the course, it was hard to know whether any given athlete actually started in my wave, so that takes a lot of the pressure off.
Triathlon is also a comparatively solitary test – there’s no peloton of the sort that forms in bike road races and on the running leg people are all strung out over a big distance. So it’s really just you and whatever sport you happen to be doing at that moment.
My second surprise was how difficult it was to transition from cycling to running. As soon as I started out, my legs felt rubbery and heavy – like I was completely out of shape and trying to do something my body was really not used to. The way to avoid this is through brick workouts – combined bike-run and swim-bike workouts that get your body accustomed to the transition. Of course, being as unprepared as I was, I’d never done any of these! Looking at the splits after the race was over, I actually had been running quite a bit faster than what it felt like at the time.
The great thing about triathlon is that you can do it your entire life. I think sports like track, cross-country, cycling, swimming, and tennis should be emphasized much, much more in school, since those are the sports people can do long term. You don’t see many football or baseball players after college! Looking at the age variance in the results, you see a wide range – from teenagers to those in their 60s and up, all competing on the same course in the same event. Like running, triathlon is one of those sports where amateurs can compete in the exact same event as professionals and those competing at world-class levels.
Finally, triathlon is neophyte-friendly. People are really supportive, whether you’re a seasoned and highly-competitive athlete or a newcomer to the sport.
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