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....