Try More
Months of preparation, days of stress, and way too much money; thoughts on my first triathlon
A Week Before the Race
It’s 21:32 on Sunday, July 6th. In less than a week I’ll participate in my first triathlon.
I committed myself to this, months ago, on a whim. I watched as a friend and classmate of mine spent a lecture period signing up for the Hamburg Wasser triathlon. After class, I asked her about it, and she said she’d never done one and wanted something to start training for. That sounded pretty good to me, so I decided to register as well.
Important to note: I am not a fast man.
I have never been a fast man; I’m not built for running, and any time spent in the pool has been a struggle against drowning more than anything else. The only credentials I have to participate in an endurance event are that I share a physique with many of the cyclists I see out on the road - big calves with plenty of fuel stored in the midriff.
I’m being unfair to myself. While I do maintain that I’m inept in the water, I’ve come a long way in my overall cardio training. I think I’m in good shape for the cycling portion of the triathlon; between biking to Paris and back with Mark, and my weekly spin sessions with Julia, I think I’ll be able to manage 40k in the saddle. Plus I’ve gone running quite a bit in Europe, so I think I’m as prepared as I’ve ever been in my life.
But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous.
While I was reading the rules and regulations a few weeks ago, I came across a passage detailing cutoff times. As far as I can parse it, I’ve got 2:30 to complete my swim and cycle segments, with a total race time of 3:30.
In other words, I need to swim 1,500m (~9/10ths of a mile), cycle 40km (~25 miles), and then run a 10k (~6 miles).
None of that is too challenging on its own. Last weekend I cycled a 50k and then ran 9km immediately after as part of my training. It felt… okay… but I finished, and that’s all that I cared about.
But the cutoff time has been looming over me all week like a guillotine waiting to drop.
When I decided I wanted to do this 8 months ago, I told myself I didn’t want to take it too seriously. I was going to train, but it wouldn’t become my life. I just wanted to see if I had it in me, to see if I could commit to something that has been a dream of mine for the last 5 years.
When I first had the idea of training and completing a triathlon, I was 19 and in my undergraduate studies at UMich. I started running and biking more, but a suffocating relationship neutered any ambitions I had. Pretty quickly after it started, the training fell off.
When I graduated and moved back home, I started tacking fitness more seriously. I was active in the gym, and had even begun doing laps at the YMCA. Back then the plan was just a simple sprint triathlon (500m/1/3 mile, 20km/12 mile, 5km/3 mile) that I would do alone outside of any official events. Then a few weeks before I planned to do it, I pulled a hamstring and couldn’t do any sports for a month.
So here I am, many years later with nothing more than a couple charity runs under my belt. I’ve stopped and started and stopped, meandering my way towards the goal without ever doing the damn thing.
With a week to go, I’ve spent way more money than I thought I’d have to. The event itself cost 120 Euros, with an additional 20 for a one day membership to the official German triathlon association. What a scam. Add to that the triathlon suit that I bought, and it’s nearly 200 Euro for a stupid race. This is without considering the costs of regular training and equipment, either.
Weirdly though, I don’t regret spending the money. Yes, I had to close my eyes and grind my teeth at checkout, but I know I’d go back and do it again in a heartbeat. Because it’s more than a stupid race.
I set out to do this race because I spent too many years of my life numb to my body. I tried to get out of sports as often as I could throughout my teenage years, hardly doing anything after I turned 16 and my mom found it too difficult to coerce me into participating. I sat around with my friends, playing video games and generally avoiding anything too physical.
Then one day I woke up and realized all I wanted to do was run and jump and climb and cycle and wrestle and lift weights and sweat and bleed and celebrate the very fact that I’m alive and well enough to do these things. Arthritis runs in the family and I’m fearful that eventually I’ll be unable to do any of the things I told myself I would.
I spent the money because I wanted to prove to myself that it’s not too late to try something new. I have no delusions that I’ll be scouted by Team U.S.A. for the 2028 olympics. But that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I set my sights and decided I’m going to do something, for no other reason than I wanted to see if I could.
In a week I’ll write the second half of this after my first triathlon. With any luck, I’ll have crossed the finish line. But even if I’m disqualified for being too slow, I’m excited to share my experiences.
After the Race
I have been laying on the couch drinking a liter of chocolate milk for the last hour. It’s unclear if I will do anything else before bed.
I’m sore, I’m tired, and already I’m planning the next big event.
The triathlon went better than I ever could’ve dreamed and I loved every single second of it.
I have an obnoxious tendency to become neurotic in the 24 hours leading up to anything big and exciting. I’ll be relatively level headed up until the day before, and then all ability to function goes out the window as I try to come up with solutions to thousands of issues I invented which, if they go unresolved, will bring my plans to a catastrophic end.
Yesterday I frantically checked my gear, went out to pick up one thing, rechecked all of my gear, and repeated this process for hours and hours. Eventually I became so exhausted that it was becoming dangerous for me to ride a bike, so I called it a night. A quick shower, a big bowl of pasta, and then too few hours of low quality sleep. Exactly what you want before a big race.
But everything felt better once I left the house. That’s the way it always goes. I made it to the check-in with plenty of time, and got in with hardly a second glance at my equipment. So I killed an hour laying out my gear in the transition zone so it would be exactly right when I needed it, and paced around. I think I peed 3 times.
Merle, the woman who first inspired me to register for the triathlon, happened to be in the same starting block as me. So we set our stations up next to each other and tried to jointly settle our pre-race nerves. I’m not sure if we helped each other or just increased our collective stress levels, but we guided each other to the swim start so it all worked out in the end.
In my pool training I would aim to do 200 meters freestyle, and then 50 meters backstroke as a rest. Earlier in the week when I did a mini-tri to test all of my gear and the transitions, I was able to swim 750m without a rest. So going into this, I told myself I’d get out to the halfway buoy, and then slow it down on the way back so I didn’t get on my bike gassed.
But once I was in the cool waters of the Alster, all bets were off. Maybe the swim cap cut off the circulation to my brain, maybe the race adrenaline kicked in, or maybe I just got competitive with myself but I managed to do all 1,500m without breaking from my freestyle.
As I was being pulled from the water at the finish line, I was met with thunderous cheers from the crowd. Looking up, I saw eight of my closest friends holding signs and screaming their heads off, hyping me up at 9:47 am
.
It all felt pretty unreal. I tried to wrap my head around the fact that so many people left bed on a Sunday morning to stand around in a cold rain, just for the chance to cheer me on for 10 seconds as I went past. I had butterflies as I threw on my shoes and mounted the bike.
I was happy with how my swim went because I didn’t need to slow down at any point. I was elated with the cycle because few things are more fun than pushing a racing bike to its limits on closed off streets, surrounded by other people pushing themselves as hard as you are. We had three 13km loops to complete, and I wish they had added a few more.
The cycle started with a surreal kilometer through a busy tunnel through Hamburg. Being on this route that’s otherwise reserved for cars, barreling through the eerie silence, made me feel special. It made me thankful that I followed through with the race.
My cheerleaders relocated to a strategic position near the second U-turn of the track, so I got to hear them roar six times throughout my race. I always tried to put on a little show for them as I passed, and I think my speed increased for the few kilometers leading up to their spot because I was so excited to see them.
With the rain coming down and making the roads slick, I did see one man’s bike slide out from under him at the U-turn. Everyone took the bends slowly after that, but otherwise my cycle went by without a hitch.
Finally, the run. It makes sense that running would be the last leg of the event - between the risk of drowning or high speed crashes, a comparatively slow land-based event is the safest of the three. But stepping off the bike and THEN having to stumble through a foot race is disorienting and unsatisfying.
It felt painfully slow making my way through Hamburg. I wasn’t here to set a PR or anything, but I’m pretty sure I verbally exclaimed that ‘this was the slowest I had ever run’ somewhere around kilometer three.
Once again, my friends had moved and were cheering me on as I set off. I could unzip the top of my trisuit, so I greeted them to a little strip tease. Anything to keep morale high.
This time, I was the one who wiped out. You had to pull a 180 at one of the aid stations, and since I didn’t want to break my pace I tried throwing my paper cup mid stride. Something about my pivot mixed with being off balance from the throw was the perfect storm, and my feet ran away from me like I was on an ice rink. I was only down for a second or two, but it still felt pretty silly that after everything I struggled to stay upright on my own two feet.
As I was closing in on the finish, I was dismayed to see that my friends weren’t where I left them. In all honesty, I had been looking forward to the much needed morale boost that a few high-fives could provide. But I had to soldier on without them.
Finally I spotted them in the last hundred meters of the track, lining the final bend before the finish. Their cheers once again gave me a needed boost and I turned on some unknown reserves to fly through the finish.
All in all, it was an incredible day. Where other people gritted their teeth and ground their way through each trial, I felt like I was having the most fun of my life. I was racing others, and the constant jostling for position motivated me to keep trying.
More than anything else, however, I was competing against myself.
I never doubted that I would finish. I knew that I could get through the kilometers, even if I had to crawl my way there. But with the cutoff in my mind, I went into the race anxious.
All of that went away as soon as I jumped into the lake. Instead of worrying about my time, worrying about disqualifying and all of my money going to waste, the only thing on my mind was the task at hand. It was one stroke, one pedal, one footstep at a time.
And then I was done.
When I was 15, I walked the warmup jog during gym class. When I eventually made it to the kickball field, my teacher kicked me out of class and sent me inside. It was one and a half miles.
When I was 20, I thought I maybe needed to get in better shape. I knew fit people ran, so I thought I should maybe try running. So I bitterly completed my 8 laps around the middle school track, walking the bends to catch my breath.
When I was 21 my cousin invited me to join the local running club. On our first run, he slowed down and stayed by my side, talking me through the entire four mile track. That was the farthest I had ever run in my life.
At 22 I convinced a couple friends to do a charity 5k with me. A few days before the race I pulled a hamstring and ended up walking the thing. It took us 73 minutes. Several times the cops came to make sure we hadn’t wandered off and gotten lost.
I’m 24 now. I just completed my first triathlon in 2:51.
Try more.
Mehr Ballern.
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