Near the tail end of my sabbatical during the summer of 2021 I decided to explore getting into triathlons. It had always been something bouncing around the back of my head, but for various reasons had never really taken the plunge in a meaningful way. One used road bike and a gym-with-a-pool membership later, I was on the path to my first triathlon. Now, roughly seven months of extremely consistent training, I’m looking back at actually completing my first one.
To quickly set the stage, my fitness starting point in September 2021 was:
No real swimming ability. I could functionally swim, like, to survive. But swimming more than 50 meters without my heart exploding seemed impossible.
No real running ability. Around the time I started training I could maybe run 1 or 2 miles without my shins hurting and my lungs exploding.
I did not own a bike. But I did have strong quads from years of ice hockey so I thought I would maybe be okay at it?
With the preliminaries out of the way, let’s dig into it.
The race was the Sprint distance (750 meter swim, 12 mile bike ride, 3.1 mile run) and it was held a little over two hours away from my home in Northern Virginia. Luckily, I was not really worried about my ability to complete any of the three disciplines. I regularly do workouts much longer than each of these distances at this point — although I had never done all three disciplines in one day. The other question mark was the swim. I train in a pool where swimming in a straight line is a matter of following a painted line on the bottom of the pool and the water never gets colder than 80 degrees. This swim was done in a lake where I could see nothing when I looked down and the water temperature was in the low 60s. I had done one 10ish minute swim in the pool with my wetsuit and one 15ish minute swim in a much colder lake two days before the race. This would definitely be my longest open water swim up to this point and while I knew I could do the distance, I also knew there was no grabbing onto the edge of the pool or standing up in chest deep water to catch my breath.
Friday
Emily and I wrapped up our work days a couple hours early, loaded up our car, and made the two and a half hour drive down to the race location. The aim was to make sure we could find it, pick up my race packet, and generally just scope out the area. I should’ve had “drive the bike course” on my list of things to do (foreshadowing).
We arrived, parked, and I flew through the packet pickup line in a matter of maybe 45 seconds. Kinetic Multiport runs a tight ship! The only notable thing about packet pickup was that I received race number 404, which made me audibly laugh when I received it (much to the confusion of the nice volunteer who handed it to me). I couldn’t decide if it was a good or bad omen. Either way, my tech nerd friends on Twitter appreciated it.
After walking around the transition area, seeing the swim start and exit, and generally taking in the sights, Emily and I went off in search of dinner. We wanted something simple and familiar so we found a Panera and I had a small bowl of soup and a steak sandwich. From there, a quick drive to the hotel and early to bed!
Saturday
Pre-Race & Warmup
Since this race was only an Olympic and Sprint, it didn’t start until 9:00 (and the Sprint participants didn’t actually take off until 9:30). That meant I was able to get up at my usual time of 6:00 and eat my usual breakfast of oatmeal and coffee around my usual time of 6:15. Pretty perfect timing, digestion-wise.
We got in the car a little after 7:00 and made the drive out to the race location (a scenic 30 minute drive through the woods and fields of Virginia). Parked, got my bike off the car rack, and headed straight to transition to find a spot and setup my gear. As this was my first ever triathlon, I wasn’t quite sure what the optimal layout was for all my stuff. I definitely copied some of the folks around me but mostly just thought it through from first principles and then stood in front of it all and visualized myself going through each transition and putting on/taking off each piece of gear. I was a little worried I’d forget I needed my helmet on and buckled before handling my bike, so that was on the top of everything. I also put a piece of red electrical tape on the seat of my bike, thinking it might be easier to just look for the red tape when I’m stumbling through the transition after my swim and realizing that everyone’s bike kind of looks the same. I ended up not needing it because I found a pretty good landmark for my spot (first rack after the volleyball court).
When I felt that I more or less had everything laid out the way I wanted I packed up my backpack with my wetsuit and other non-transition-area paraphernalia and found Emily to go kill some time. We had well over an hour before I needed to start warming up so we just found a picnic table for a bit and walked around. Hit the port-a-potties once or twice and once it got close to the Olympic start time, I started doing some light calisthenics to warm up and threw on my wetsuit. With the Olympic athletes starting their swim, I went to a place on the beach far from where they were and got into the water and did maybe 100-150 meters of warming up. Mostly, I just didn’t want the first time I touched this pretty cold water to be when I was starting the swim. That was definitely a good call.
Swim
The start was a “time trial” start which meant that we roughly lined up by swim speed (“If you’re fast be near the front, if you’re less fast be in the middle, if your’re definitely not fast go to the back”). I was near the back. Every two to three seconds they would send off another person. As I mentioned earlier, this was my first open water swim of any significant distance so the only thing I was interested in doing was staying calm and controlled. I was not shooting for any time. I was shooting for a feeling — I wanted to feel like I could’ve kept going once I got to the end. Everything went more or less fine during the swim. I definitely don’t have my sighting technique dialed in. I only started practicing it maybe a week ago and right now when I do it I either don’t see enough to adjust my trajectory or I break my stroke flow a little bit too much. I had a couple moments of treading water/breast stroking to confirm my orientation, but didn’t really need to resort to any of my “emergency” strokes to get through the distance, which felt good.
While I’m not sure how much farther I could’ve gone, I did exit the swim with my heart rate and breathing under control — even if I was extremely happy to be done swimming.
(See my Strava activity here).
T1
The first couple of steps coming out of the water were a little wobbly and I kind of forgot I needed to start stripping off my wetsuit until I was well into the transition area. Eventually I remembered that I wouldn’t be riding my bike in a wetsuit and I started clambering out of it as I jogged. I found my bike no problem and was glad I had lathered my arms and legs up with conditioner prior to putting on my wetsuit — it definitely made it much easier to take off. Wetsuit off. Helmet on. Sunglasses on. Put socks on wet feet. I can’t remember if I sat on the ground. I must’ve, because I can barely put my socks on when I’m standing in my living room, never mind after swimming kind of hard for 20 minutes. Bike shoes on. Bike off rack. Jog with bike for a kind of long time until I hit the Mount line at the top of a little gravelly hill and hit the pavement.
Bike
It felt good to clip into my bike and start picking up speed. While I’m not particularly good at any discipline of triathlon, I think I’m most confident and comfortable on the bike. I don’t have a power meter on my bike, so I didn’t really have a great way to judge how much effort I was putting into it, but I knew I wanted to go pretty hard since it was such a short ride (only 12 miles). I was a little surprised how tired my legs felt initially, but that started to fade as I hit miles 6, 7, and 8.
As I was getting close to the 12 mile marker, I made a critical error. Because I hadn’t driven the course ahead of time and I didn’t really recognize the area, what I thought was the spot where the Olympic distance people would turn to go off on their second lap as actually where I was supposed to turn to finish my first lap (Olympic-distance athletes did two laps of the 12 mile course and the Sprinters were supposed to do 1). I thought the Sprint finish would be just after this spot. The timing was really unfortunate because as I slowed down to read the signs, a couple of really fast people on expensive bikes whizzed by me and made the left-hand turn where the only part of the sign I could quickly read said, “Second lap.” So, I assumed that was where the Olympic-distance folks were turning to do their second lap so I just carried on my merry way.
As I hit miles 13 and 14, though, I knew I had made a grave error. I had an initial moment of panic where I wasn’t sure if I should try to turn around and go back or just keep going and do another lap. I didn’t have my phone so didn’t trust my ability to actually find where I needed to go without GPS/map and I knew it would be unsafe as they had only blocked off one lane of the road from vehicle traffic. I was very worried, though, because I knew Emily was waiting for me and I had no way of contacting her to let her know I was going to be out on the cycle course for another 40ish minutes. I think I used that anxiety to fuel myself through that second lap.
The second time around I didn’t miss my turn off and after a very eventful cycling leg I was ready to be done with my bike.
T2
I saw Emily almost immediately upon dismounting my bike and she seemed utterly unperturbed yet still excited to see me. I decided to hold off on explaining what happened and just focus on finishing the race.
The rest of this transition felt smooth and easy. I realized that T1 feels awkward and hard because taking off a wetsuit is inelegant, no matter who you are. But throwing a bike onto a rack, putting on running shoes, a running belt, and a running hat feels awesome.
Someone tried to offer me water just as I was coming out of T2 and I wish I had grabbed it. Instead, I shuffled my way up the hill and out into the woods for what I hoped would be a relatively quick and easy 5k.
Run
Unfortunately, my confidence about knowing the course was totally shot at this point. I also didn’t hydrate particularly well while I was on the bike because I had only brought one bottle with me (again, thinking I was only going to be out there for like 35 minutes instead of an hour and ten minutes). If I had known I was going to do a 24 mile bike ride I probably would’ve had a gel near the end, too. Anyway, these are the things I was telling myself as I realized my legs felt terrible early in the run. Well, actually, they kind of felt okay at first. It was around the first mile marker that I realized I was not going to finish this thing with total grace.
The whole first half of the race I was wondering if I even knew where the Sprint turnaround was. Whether maybe they had taken down all the Sprint signage because surely all the Sprint athletes who didn’t do an extra 40 minute bike ride were finished by now. Luckily, my concerns appeared unfounded as I saw the blessed turnaround sign at the approximately 1.5 mile mark and was able to power walk through an aid station where I tasted the best Gatorade I had ever had in my life.
The last mile and a half were pain (mostly calves and shins but this was also the moments where I realized that while I had Body Glided the shit out of my collar and upper shoulders to prevent wetsuit chafing, I had neglected to apply any to my nipples which I realized were rapidly starting to chafe), but I was able to keep moving at a decent clip, walk through one more aid station with about half a mile to go, and run through the finish line with something like a smile across my face.
Final Thoughts
I’m not actually super upset that I messed up the cycling portion of this race. I wasn’t actually racing anybody except myself and I’ve always viewed this race and the one I’m doing in June as existing solely to get me ready for the half-Ironman I’m doing in September. So, in some ways, I’m proud of myself for doing the Olympic distance even though I was not mentally, hydrationally, or nutritionally prepared to do so.
Doing my first open water swim, not missing any key equipment, and not having any equipment failures are all other confidence-boosting experiences from this weekend. On the other hand, it was also a humility-inducing event. I realized that I still have a long way to go in my training to be able to approach an Olympic or half-IM distance triathlon with the same confidence that I brought to this one. I was so done with swimming after 750 meters. I was so done with cycling after 24 miles. I was so done with running after only 5k. That was fine for this race, and I’m proud of how far I’ve come since September of last year, but I have a lot further to go before I get to September of this year.
Ultimately, though, the main feeling I left with from this weekend was that I couldn’t wait to get back into my training next week. If I could come this far in only a handful of months, how much farther can I go if I keep pouring time and effort into this endeavor over the next few months? I can’t wait to find out.