There is no Tri: The Swim: Preamble

I grew up in Carpinteria, CA, with a pool in my backyard and the beach less than a mile from my front door. So it goes without saying that I feel comfortable in water and wasn't too concerned about being ready for the swimming leg of the triathlon. I'll admit, swimming long distances was never something I did with any regularity growing up, but after several weeks of training in our community pool and hitting the 1,400-yard mark for one session (the actual tri was 550 yards), I felt fairly confident leading up to La Quinta. The only thing missing was an actual open-water swim, which is vastly different than swimming in a calm, temperature-controlled pool that has black lane lines for spotting, 100% visibility and walls and a shallow bottom to rest on. But other than that, I felt like I was ready.

So anyway, back to Lake Cahuilla. One thing I read over and over while training was that it's important to warm up before the race starts --a short jog, bike ride or swim -- to get the blood flowing and to work out some of the pre-race jitters. Unfortunately, my event warmup consisted of panic and frustration. 

That's because as I zipped my wetsuit, something strange happened: the zipper made its way to the top, but it didn't zip closed. That's right, the zipper broke. After unsuccessfully doing a visual scan for the wetsuit rental booth, I returned to my rack and asked a fellow racer if he could pop the zipper back in -- which, of course, isn't actually possible on a wetsuit. He suggested closing it up with safety pins, but somehow I had the presence of mind to ask the question, "How am I going to get it off?"



So it was on to Plan B. I decided to just punk it and closed the velcro flap at the top, giving me quite possibly the world's first backless triathlon wetsuit. Don't get me wrong, I know I looked dead sexy, but this wasn't part of the plan for swimming in 65-degree water at 7:30 am.

I did have a chance to wade into the lake for a minute and crouch down to let the freezing-ass water into my open back, as I figured it was better to feel that shock before the horn when off than after. After that, I walked back onto the beach and waited with about 75 other people. The funny thing is that only one person mentioned to me that my zipper was down, but I chalked that up to everyone being busy getting into their "zone." Either that or they were simply mesmerized by my daring yet delectable open-backed wetsuit.

So a couple more minutes went by, and as I idly chatted with a couple other dudes an air horn suddenly went off and it was a stampede into the water. My plan was to hang back and swim on the outside, in order to avoid swimming into other people and getting kicked in the face, ribs or any other part of my person.

As most of the herd scampered into the lake, I waited, counted to 10, walked into the water and started swimming....

Next time: The Swim: I Don't Want to Die!

There is no Tri....

Swim. Bike. Run. Go as fast as you can. Don't stop. That's the basic premise of a triathlon.

The first time I ever talked about entering a triathlon was after I had been running three times a week for a couple months and was feeling confident and possibly up to the challenge. That was 14 years ago.

On the morning of Sunday, March 7th, I swam 500 meters, biked 14 miles and ran 3 miles in the Toyota Desert Sprint Triathlon in La Quinta. Approximately 5,000 days after first bringing it up in conversation, I had finally finished my first triathlon.

I will not lie to you: it was difficult, overwhelming and exhausting. But it was also the most gratifying thing I've ever done (athletically) in my life. There were definitely a few rough spots, some equipment problems and lots of room for improvement, but in the end I didn't really care because once I crossed that finish line, I had achieved my goal.

Scanning the crowd for Adrian....

My total time was 1:49:00, which put me 323rd out of 462 competitors and 18/24 in my division (my division being Clydes 35+, which is the politically correct way of saying "old fat dudes"). If I was 323rd out of 462 in my high school graduating class, that would be pretty embarrassing. But the beauty of the triathlon is that it's 500 people competing together, but in reality everyone is racing against themselves. And this sport  does not discriminate against gender, fitness level, age or physical limitations. In my race there was a guy who weighed close to 300 pounds, several septuagenarians, and at least two people who had each lost the lower half of a leg.

Spectators cheered for people they had never seen before, competitors offered words of encouragement as they blew past fellow racers (yes, I got plenty of that) and the 462nd finisher was no less of a triathlete than the person who finished first. And I'm willing to bet that #462 -- along with the other 461 -- will be out there again soon. Swimming. Biking. Running.


I'll be posting a more detailed account soon....

Picking Up the Intensity

So with a month to go until the triathlon, I definitely turned up the training intensity, especially in the pool.

February

Training Totals

These are my training totals for December and January. The holidays sort of threw me off a bit, so I wouldn't call December a solid month.

          December

January was definitely better. Once my schedule opened up considerably, I was able to spend a lot more time in the water.

          January

Crazy Dedicated or Just Plain Crazy?

At this moment I am 25 days, 1 hour and 10 minutes away from my first triathlon. It became official on New Year's Eve when I signed up and paid the $75 registration fee.

Since the post-N*tflix era has begun, my training intensity has increased dramatically.

I locked in a hotel room. I've reserved a wetsuit rental for the swim (water temperature in the low- to mid-60s -- call me a pussy, but at least I'll be a warm one). I bought my tri shorts (a shorter, less-padded version of regular cycling shorts) and tri top (I haven't worn a tank top since my varsity hoops days in the '80s, but this time ... pockets in the back!). I've exceeded the actual distances for each event during my training.

Despite all that, there was still some doubt in the back of my mind. I've always been more of an anaerobic athlete, after all -- baseball, basketball, hockey -- and was never a fan of endurance events. So the thought of doing 3 of them in a row, without stopping, occasionally makes me think I'm just fooling myself.

But today, I turned some sort of magical corner, halfway between determined dedication and completely crazy. My training schedule told me that today was a swim day, 35 minutes. I knew it was supposed to rain today, and it was freezing-ass cold.

But I swam anyway. In the cold rain. For 35 straight minutes and 1300 yards (that's 52 lengths of the half-Olympic-sized pool, bitches). I even got out of the pool after 2 laps and ran to my car to get the goggles I had left behind.

I am ready.