How I "won" a triathlon... and then didn't

Now, firstly I have big news: Kate is pregnant. I feel like I’m obligated to say that before writing anything else because it is, well, big news. But since I’ve also known about it for awhile it’s breaking news to you and not so much to me, so you’ll have to excuse me for writing about something other than my unbridled joy at becoming a father. Don’t get me wrong, we’re excited. I just have other things happening, too!

Add to that the awesome day of youth activities we had in church today, culminating with three baptisms, and things are just awesome (that's double the awesome, y'all!). Today's service is the happy reason I am not posting a sermon this week (because our youth talked, which is frankly better for all of us anyway). So that, too, was exceptional and at some point I’ll probably write more.

But if you clicked on this post because it said “triathlon” all of that is neither here nor there. So, onward!

My "old man" face. Patented.

The Background
 
Yesterday I raced in the Crookston Triathlon. I won the race: pumped my fist and everything. For two hours after finishing I won a triathlon. Sure, there weren't many competitors and it's far more honest to compare myself to, you know, myself, but... I won it! Suffice it to say I was damn proud of myself.

And then I didn't.

But we'll get to that eventually.

I actually need to start this story several months ago. A person who shall remain nameless, possibly because I forgot who it was, pointed me in the direction of this race. Perfect, I thought, because I had been planning on doing the Backus Triathlon next week and this one was closer and had the all-important indoor swim (as opposed to the lovely dip in Rainy Lake for the Backus Tri). Plus, Crookston is less than an hour and a half away, which is pretty much as close as civilization comes to Hallock, Minnesota. So, all the pieces were in place for me to complete my fifth triathlon (and maybe even get a good time).

Except that’s not exactly how it happened either.

That's me (the very white person on the far end of the pool).

You see, I can really only tell this story for real now that the cat (actually, baby) is out the bag that Kate is pregnant, because this story actually started with Kate doing the Crookston Triathlon--not me. This was going to be her first triathlon. She was looking for a fitness challenge earlier in the spring and what better opportunity than a sprint triathlon? She had started training, putting together an ambitious, but doable, fitness plan, and quickly Jim (our brother-in-law) said he would be in to try a triathlon, too. There was even talk at one point that maybe we could talk Sam (Kate’s sister) into doing the race as well. With all this in the works I said, Yes, I would absolutely do the race, too. After all, why not? I needed something to work toward over the course of the summer, and the rest of the family was doing it!

Fast forward several months and they were all there...

....cheering me on from the sidelines.

As it turned out, Jim tweaked his knee early on in the summer, Sam was never really in on the whole triathlon thing, and Kate, well, Kate got pregnant and that put the kibosh on amping up her training. Weirdly, it was only me--the afterthought--who ended up competing.


Winning?


I trained a good deal for this event, don't get me wrong. I did a lot of brick workouts, followed my own ambitious training regimen, even ate (sort of) OK from time to time. But none of that really gave me much hope of finishing well in quite the same way as the idea that this triathlon was not going to be well attended. That sounds rather not in the spirit of things, but hey, I'll take what I can get. The truth is I started to get the idea in the week or so before the tri that there was going to be a very small turnout. There were a few clues to this effect (little activity on Facebook, a brand new event, no publicity on major triathlon sites, etc), and so I found myself pondering what it would be like to actually be one of the fast guys--albeit by default.

Then race morning came, and I found out it was, in fact, a small event by most standards. There were only 24 adults and of those (I didn't know this at the time) only something like 16 were actually competing individually. There was a good deal of hope I would finish very highly. I never talked about "winning." In fact, I sagely pointed out to Kate that leading would actually be an annoyance because I wouldn't have anybody to chase. Then we scouted the other bikes and, again, it looked like I would have a good chance. There was only one really nice triathlon bike. Good, I said, Somebody who I won't be able to catch. But deep down I was of course thinking, He could be slow. Maybe I can win this thing?

The Race

 Swimming... I'm probably the one making big waves over on the far side.

Once the gun actually goes off things change completely. I felt good leading up to the start--scary good; really, oddly good--but after that first stroke in the water everything changes. Everything. It's not that I felt bad; in fact, I still felt just fine, but everything inside of me was telling me, You are slow. Go faster. Go faster. Go faster. All of this meant I had to consciously combat my body by saying, "No, go slower. You need to pace yourself. You always go too fast at the beginning." I've learned by now that swimming thirty seconds faster at the cost of using up power in the legs is just not worth it. Better to settle into a moderately fast pace and have something left for the rest of the day. This time I actually followed my advice.

Always thankful to no longer be swimming

There was one other person in my swim lane--a fifteen-year-old boy whose father was the "counter" for our lane. He was nervous. Who isn't? He told me ahead of time that he expected to swim "much slower" than me so we should just swim on either side of the lane. Not a problem--I've been in situations with many more people in a lane and so two was going to be easy. But then his father told me that he had been training in the river in his hometown. The wealth of triathlon experience, which I pretend to have, meant I could share that surely he would be much faster than the thirteen minutes he projected. Lakes and rivers are much harder to swim in than pools for many reasons, so clearly he was going to get a much faster time. I was hoping to swim around 8 minutes. I expected him to be faster than 13. The only question was: how much faster?

My transitions this time? Much improved.

I was right about him being faster. In fact, at the first 25 meters he was basically right with me. This was only a 400 meter swim and so naturally my first thought went something like this: "Oh crap! What if he is swimming a 13 minute 400 and I'm just as slow?!" As if I would be 5 minutes slower than the pace I swam in training day after day. These are the things that my mind says to me all the time. In reality, he started out way too fast--of course. By around 200 meters he was backstroking and momentarily drowning me by crossing over the lane and all sorts of things like that. I was not swimming too slow. He was swimming too fast. As it turns out I was right on the pace I wanted. I finished the swim in just over 8 minutes.

Now, the one difference in my triathlon this year compared to the last was the transitions. If you know triathlon well you know there are the three main disciplines: swimming, biking and running, and then there is the fourth, all-important, discipline of transitions. It really is its own thing. And oddly, it took until my fifth time doing this to realize it. Last year I caught my breath in transition, put on socks, struggled into my bike shoes and then awkwardly walked my bike with cleats to the point where I would mount (I even put on bike gloves for some reason). This year--not so much. I did the most novel of things to improve my transitions: I actually practiced. Then I picked up some tips. Then I practiced again. Sure I looked completely silly with goggles on my head in my driveway in Hallock, but who was laughing on race day?

No seriously, who? I was so focused I didn't have a moment to hear it.

A "blur" on the bike (quotation marks for effect)

When I got on the bike it took over a mile to get the legs under me. That's nothing new. What was new was the feeling that I just saved over a minute in transitioning compared to last year. Also, it was a very good thing that I practiced mounting the bike with cleats already in the pedals, because it turned out that this transition required running my bike a block (a block!) over concrete and asphalt before mounting. That would have been terrible to do while in bike cleats. It was tough enough in bare feet over hard ground. Regardless, I was back in my element. The bike.

The funniest thing happened as I followed the 3.5 mile course out of Crookston: I didn't see anybody coming back from the other direction. At first this was expected. Surely nobody would be 8-10 minutes ahead of me (not yet!), but as I neared the turnaround I had passed four people, there was another just ahead and still nothing coming back at me. I even started to wonder if I just missed somebody. Strangest of all, the guy ahead of me wasn't even riding a road bike--it was a mountain or hybrid. I couldn't believe he held out until almost the turnaround before I caught him. By then I realized: I was leading the race.

The route called for two laps of the 7 mile course: 3.5 miles out and back, two times--that's 14 miles in all for the mathematically impaired. The bike is my passion. I don't own a super nice triathlon bike; it's just a standard road affair, and honestly it's way too small for me and I look a little ridiculous with the raised post, but after four years of riding it I've grown accustomed to its quirks. I can ride it fast enough most days that I don't stop to think about what a nicer bike and better fit would do for me. So, when I found myself in the lead with over 10 miles left to go I had one thought, "Pace yourself and put distance into everyone." I knew I was feeling good, but I didn't know if one of these guys behind me would be running a sub-20 minute 5k or something. Already I was doing something strange for me: I was thinking about winning.

Look at my beautiful bike rack! Er.. I mean wife!

So, I settled into a nice pace. It was awfully exciting to reach the turnaround and have a crowd (OK, like 10 people) cheering for me in the knowledge that I was actually leading the race! I type that in italics because it's that absurd. So, I trudged on and turned in a good but not earth-shattering bike time. To be honest I don't know how fast I went--the organizers didn't track splits, the long transition meant the bike computer logged an extra long time, and I was too dazed to remember what I saw when I looked at my watch, but it was around a 42 minute bike ride--so basically right on 20 mph. I was happy with that time, but something in my mind had switched over to competitive mode and I cared even more now about my competition. I wanted to know where the second place guy was.

The answer? Nowhere close. The run began up the same stretch of street where the bike finished so I expected so see somebody in second place come sweeping down the block as I struggled to wake up my running legs and rid them of their lactic acid binge from mashing pedals. But I saw nobody. This could not be right. I continued to trudge on.

Focused (on not falling) after the bike-run transition

For those of you who have absolutely no experience with triathlon, duathlon or even just getting off your bike after a hard ride and trying to run, let me tell you how strange an experience it is. I thought I was ready for this: I had just done a workout the week prior where I rode my bike over 20 mph for 16 miles and then logged a sub-21 minute 5k immediately thereafter. I thought I had this down. But the swim and the bike and the run all together just never stops being hard. I felt slow. SOOOOOOO slow. In fact, even as I finished the first mile of the run I expected somebody to come up behind me and leave me in their dust. Please understand how ridiculous this is: I had at least three minutes on the nearest competitor after the bike, these clearly weren't world-class triathletes, and I had run only one mile. For somebody to make up three minutes on me in one mile, even if I was running a glacial (for-me) 8-minute mile pace (which I wasn't; it just felt like it) they would have to be running a 5-minute mile. That clearly wasn't happening.

The nice thing about this particular course is that the run was another out-and-back. Actually, that makes finding motivation in new scenery on the run really challenging, but if you're leading a race and wanting to know exactly how far back the competition is it's really not a bad thing... unless of course you're paranoid that everybody is faster than you and then it really doesn't matter. At this point I should say that I was paranoid the entire race. I was right about what I told Kate early on--even if I didn't really know what I was saying--it is hard to lead a race. There really is nothing to chase and, worse, there's a feeling that somebody is always gaining on you, even if it isn't true.

At the turnaround I hit the lap button on my watch and waited until I passed somebody going the other direction. When I finally did he was at 1:30, which meant about 3 minutes back. This was very good news. I would have to have a complete meltdown to give that away in a mile and a half. Thankfully, that meltdown didn't come. I kept up a decent pace and finished the last stretch with nobody in sight. The clock showed a final time of 1:15:22 with my run being right around a 23 minute 5k. This wasn't fast by any means, but I was spent and content--I had, after all, won my first triathlon.

Or so I thought.

Victory! ... or is it?

Ready for a nice victory bag of Cheez-its

The Awards Ceremony

We stayed around the for Awards Ceremony in part because we had nothing super important to do (except eat but that could wait a few minutes), and anyway I felt like the Champion (capitalized and all) should be there to the end. The awards were nice--come to think of it everything was nice and especially well-run for a first-time event. The volunteers were great; everybody was enthusiastic; the door prizes were awesome (we totally won a set of grilling supplies, which was actually badly needed!). That alone paid for our entry. There was not a thing to complain about. And since the triathlon was relatively sparsely attended a good percentage of participants won their age groups (many age groups only had one participant). There was a kid's race before the adults with 15-20 young people, which is also a good sign for the future of these kinds of events in Crookston.

Anyway, we get to the age groups and I win the 25-29 year old male group. No surprise. I won the race after all. Let me just say that again one more time because I haven't patted myself on the back enough yet: I won the race. Then, somebody wins the 30-39 year old male group. I wasn't paying much attention, until the race director mentioned, "with the fastest overall time." Whoa, whoa there, I thought. Some typo somewhere, obviously. There was only one heat of individuals and I was the first to cross the line: people cheered, I clearly won the race.

Actually, not.

Here's what happened. There was a relay heat after the adults. I knew that but I also didn't really think much about it. I assumed that some of the faster cyclists were part of the relay teams but other than that I didn't really concern myself with it. Unbeknownst to me there was a member of one relay team who, after tagging his partner, completed all three legs. So, in fact he was both a part of a relay team and an individual in the event. He also happened to be faster than me. Little did I know I was two minutes behind the actual winner who finished 13 minutes after me (because his heat started fifteen minutes after mine).

The funny thing is, a day later, I'm really glad I didn't "win" a triathlon. Firstly, I'm not fast. If I would have entered into the Northwoods Triathlon in Nevis on Saturday and posted a similar time I would have finished around 70th. And that's really the point. For me, triathlon or, for that matter, running or biking on their own are not about winning. Sure, pros can care about shaving seconds for a better paycheck, but for the rest of us it is about measured improvement. It is a race against the clock, yes, but more importantly it is a race against yourself. So, by that yardstick this was quite the success. I've improved. I have a good long possibility of improving on the horizon but in this moment it is enough to take stock of the progress I've made. Anyway, it may well turn out to be a very good thing that I did not "win" a triathlon, because all winning would do is potentially take the edge off what I could still achieve. I never would have cared where I finished if it wasn't such a small affair. The risk in winning is getting a big head, and the reward is actually rather small compared with the satisfaction of personal improvement.

Anyway, I didn't win. That's OK. I also did win. Just not the way I thought.

'Til next time: never count your victories before they're awarded :-)