Today I completed my first triathlon, and I learned the most
important lesson: my training really didn’t prepare me for the intensity of the
experience, but finishing has strengthened my resolve to train harder and
smarter for the next time around.
We arrived (me, Amy, and our son Scott) at Lake Wappapello
in southeast Missouri a little after 6 a.m. The parking lot at the visitor’s
center was more than half full, and the bike racks were filling up quickly.
Most of the competitors were clearly experienced triathletes, and I felt just
like the new kid on the first day of school.
I was worried at first about the water temperature—the air
was in the upper sixties when we arrived—but that didn’t turn out to be the
major issue. As it turned out, I trained for a completely different
environment. I did all of my swimming in a pool, but the lake’s water was so
murky that swimming face down in the water was pointless. I tried to swim
freestyle with my head up to keep on track with the buoy markers, but before
long, I had to resort to breaststroking.
Anyone who remembers me from high school swim team knows
that breaststroke was by far my worst event. Slow. Tired. Ugh. But I had no
choice. By the time I made it to the furthest marker, I had 180 yards to go,
and I could barely breathe. I switched to a slow backstroke and tried to
conserve energy, but it took all I had left just to stay afloat and keep
moving.
By the time I reached the boat ramp exit, I was spent,
gasping for air and barely able to move. Lesson learned: if the event is open
water swimming in a lake, train with breaststroke instead of freestyle. But the
damage was done, because physically, I never did recover. I might have been
better off just sitting out for five or ten minutes until my heart rate dropped,
but I had already done what I was determined not to do—blow out my energy on
the swim.
The bike route was next—almost 16 miles with a bunch of
killer hills. By the time I got past the second mile, the leaders of the race
were already on their way back. I had to not only walk up the first big hill,
but I had to stop to catch my breath and lower my heart rate. I was breathing
so hard that I started coughing, and even as I write this, I can’t take a deep
breath without coughing—it feels like bronchitis. On the bright side, the rest
of my body feels okay, and my pulse rate and blood pressure are both great.
As I mentioned earlier this week on Facebook, there was a
steep hill that went for almost a full mile just after the halfway turn. I
didn’t get far before I had to walk, but at least another biker was in the same
spot, and we got to experience a little camaraderie on the way up. Once I made
it to the top, getting back took a while just because I kept my bike low-geared
and tried to conserve as much energy as I could for the run.
The run was uneventful—it was more like a walk interrupted
by periods of slow jogging. This was the one area where my training did pay
off. I knew to save enough energy on the bike that I could do 5 kilometers
without collapsing. The final 3/4-mile ran along the long, straight road long
the top of the lake dam. I had my iPod playing my two favorite finishing songs:
“Rooftops” by Jesus Culture and “Cannons” by Phil Wickham, and even though I
was the last to cross the finish line, the crowd at the finish was clapping and
cheering me across the line. I found one last burst of speed, crossed the line,
then collapsed in a heap of exhausted joy.
At one point during the bike ride, when it felt like I would
never be able to finish, I wondered if I would even want to try this again. Now
that I’ve had the day to consider the experience, I definitely want to do
another triathlon. Next time I’ll know how to train better and what to expect.
Perhaps the next time, whenever and wherever that may be, I’ll be able to enjoy
the experience while I’m in the midst of it instead of just the satisfaction of
knowing that I finished.
