Does someone that’s never won Paris-Roubaix deserve his own denim collection, Hincapie jeans? I wonder if finishing 119 in the Issaquah Triathlon 2009 allows me to put my name on someone’s ass. Probably not. At best I might be able to persuade my wife to get my name (it’s short) on a cupcake, but she also did the triathlon and won’t be too impressed.Triathlons can seem daunting. Before you do one, you imagine drowning in the swim, crashing on the bike, and tripping over a squirrel and smashing into a tree on the run. The worst excuse is that it’s too hard. It keeps people from ever attempting it. So it’s awesome to turn out to an event and seeing numbers upwards of a thousand people tackling their aspirations (triathlon, duathlon, 5k, etc). I’ve been to these types of events before, but this was my first triathlon.
In some ways it was like the first time I went snowboarding. The experienced boarders I was with took me down a black diamond run to “teach” me to board. After that all the other runs were easy. To some level, that was my experience with my first triathlon. The triathletes that I know are competitive and they set my expectation in training. So the green run of a sprint triathlon seems pretty easy.
In the Obama era, even the Issaquah triathlon changed. The bike was shorten due to road construction and the run was extended to make it closer to 5k. All this was minor, probably the biggest change was the increase of the participants by over 30% for the triathlon from 2008 (704 to 929). That’s a good change in my book.
After a few months of training, I'm one of these new rookies. Last fall, my friends threw me into a pool and taught me to swim, just about the same time I started my running again. Both were tough starting out, I couldn’t even swim a length of a pool when I started and my knees would be so sore I couldn’t walk after a 3 mile run at slower than a 10 min/mile pace. So when I look at a triathlon, the swim and run are the most intimidating, where the mass start swim is probably the most infamous part of a triathlon and potentially the most terrifying.
Well, the swim indeed lived up to the expectation. How my friend described it to me afterwards was that I was stuck in the washing machine part of the pack. I guess I need to avoid that part in the future, going faster than the pack or swimming off the edge or the back. I vote for being in front. The first 100 meters were crazy. You just surfed the mass of bodies undulating in the water, elbowing and kicking each other to the first turn. After that you can almost swim without being clobbered constantly. Of course, you have to stop seeing stars first.
The bike was my strength as I’ve been biking for a good number of years. I’m pretty comfortable, with my stealth bomber Orbea Ordu, riding in a pack in tight situations. Since there’s no drafting in a triathlon, the biggest benefit is being comfortable passing people on the road in the aero position. I pretty much passed everyone I saw on the road and felt pretty good. However, it was not like what I’m used to in a conventional time-trial with a lot more people dodging and a lot more easy spinning. The mile in and out of the park was slow without much opportunity to pass unless you want to take unnecessary risk to make better time, potentially knocking a few aspiring triathletes off their bikes, including yourself. So I lost a lot of time in those parts, which I imagine can vary dramatically for each competitor. In the end, I was pretty happy with my bike with plenty of opportunity to improve next year.
Running was not like I trained at all. I couldn’t just keep hitting the up arrow to increase the speed to my target pace and watch the Oxygen channel to build mental toughness. Also the treadmill doesn’t have all the bumps of the uneven terrain. I wonder if someone is going to invent that. The run course is beautiful on a sunny day, if you weren’t gasping for air and have tunnel vision. Probably the biggest thing next year is trying wearing a shoe that has more stability, which may be helpful for the trail running and increasing my run speed. Or just tether to the guy blazing by me from 2 waves back. I’m slow, just started running, and decreased my run volume before this triathlon. There should be some good room to grow.
Adding all that up, including some OK transition times for a rookie, I had 1:10:41 for my first sprint triathlon with a ranking of 119/929 overall or 23/116 for my age group. I was able to beat John Curley a local celebrity and health and fitness advocate working the cause, http://ibeatjohncurley.com/. For next year, maybe I’ll be bold and try to break 100 overall. Ok that’s a lie, but check back next year to see what happens. Next up, a blue run, Lake Steven’s Ironman 70.3. I can’t wait to get to my first black diamond triathlon.
BTW, does anyone want to buy jeans from a guy who finished 119 in a triathlon. I loved to be sponsored and do this for a living.
