Davids First Triathlon

David’s First Triathlon
We did it! I did it! I made it through the Treasure Island Olympic distance triathlon alive and feeling great! 1.5K swim, 40k bike, and 10k run! Even if I did get a few scratches, bumps and bruises along the way.

One thought crossed my mind before the tri day came was that I hope I get a good time, under three hours would be great. But I didn’t really worry about that much. I ended up doing it in 3 hours 11 minutes, including time spent recovering from my “tri tyro moment:” a crash off my bike.

The hardest point in the race for was getting started in the swim. I jumped into the 58.2 degree water ok and even felt pretty good doing a few strokes of warm up. Somewhere between the starting horn and the first buoy, though, I had my first low point. I couldn’t relax – I felt like I couldn’t get enough air. My lungs just wouldn’t do their job. I tried exhaling completely, I tried the sidestroke and even floating on my back, and I just could not get the motor started. About 200m down, I thought maybe I wasn’t going to make it through the race after all. I’d seen one guy from a previous wave turn around and quit. Maybe I’d be the next one. But I kept plowing forward. I don’t remember what I did – I think I tried counting strokes, I tried telling my self to get to the buoy. Eventually I just started breathing the way I wanted to –three strokes, breathe left, three strokes, breath right. I do remember thinking about that line from Finding Nemo – some little fish singing about just keeping on swimming. And eventually my breath caught up with me. I could swim again! And I could move on to other issues, like slowing down my pace, gliding more, and being more efficient. Sighting – popping my head up to look for the buoys – was still a challenge, but I’ll get that down on some future triathlon.

I was amazed to see later that I swam the 1500m in 37 minutes. I can only speculate what time I would have been able to achieve if I had not taken what seemed like hours for the first 300-400 meters. That’s something I’ll leave to be determined another day at another triathlon.

I’ll write more soon about the tri. I’m in Beijing right now, where I scaled the Great Wall of China. Those are some steep stairs that the Chinese soldiers used to patrol. I thought it was great training but the colleague I was with, who isn’t quite in triathlon shape, wasn’t as enthralled with the experience. Turns out someone started a Great Wall Marathon, too. Maybe I’ll do the half next May!