Clear Lake Triathlon

Two years ago I realized I was fat.

Actually it was more than two years ago, but that’s when I decided to do something about it. I outlined a three phase plan:
1. Start lifting weights, even though they are heavy
2. Start doing aerobic exercise, even though it’s ridiculous
3. Start eating right, even though I don’t know what that means

A good friend helped me implement phase 1 of the plan, but that is about as far as I got. I didn’t actually lose weight, but I did become less fat. Cutting down on restaurant food probably helped there as much as working out. I couldn’t seem to muster the motivation to run or swim, so I never got implemented phase 2 (which should clearly come before phase 3).

A triathlon always sounded fun, so in April I searched the internet for one and signed up. I don’t know why committing $60 a race motivated me to exercise for a hundred hours. It’s probably a sign of psychosis. A picture of the venue:

I started with a plan I found online called “couch to 5K” along with regular swimming at our gym. My awesome wife contributed to a bike for my birthday, and my most excellent parents got me a triathlon suit. Bet you didn’t know expensive exercise wear could reduce your body temperature – did you? I didn’t either. It’s great.

Unfortunately, my legs are a little odd, so I injured my knee after biking the first few weeks. A month of rest and no running, helped, and I was still able to do the race Aug 27 – but I hadn’t done any running since June. Who needs running anyway?

Because people don’t like racing when it’s hot, and because I don’t like being late, I got up at 4 am to eat some breakfast and put on my tattoos. I had numbers all over: both arms, both calves, on the bike, on the helmet, on my shorts. When I got to Clear Lake at the hour was more reasonable, I realized not all my numbers matched. The “tri-tats” were 219, and everything else was 216. Good thing I was cool as a cucumber and got that worked out with the race official early. 216 it is.

My heat started at 7:08 am. For some reason I had this vision of the mass of us running into the water – like on a beach. It wasn’t like that. We all strolled to the end of a pier, hopped in, and treaded water behind a line that wasn’t there waiting for a gun. Because I didn’t want to be in other people’s way, I was at the back of the swimming pack. That was foolish. I should have sprinted off the line, because for the first ¼ of the race I was crawling over people who weren’t moving. Because this was probably the best part of the race for me, imagine me swerving in an out of competitors, blowing away the competition. It was a good swim – bit I prefer a black line on the bottom of a pool to follow without all the people in the way.


Going in to T1 (triathalon talk for the transition from swim to bike), I was feeling pretty good. I decided to take an extra 30 seconds to catch my breath by walking instead of running, and I think that was a good move. No need to rush into the biking. I had planned on eating something, but thinking about that made me nauseous, so I just jumped on the bike and went.


For the first ten minutes I was getting passed by people that looked like really serious bikers. It was gratifying to get passed by really tuff athletes 20 minutes into a race. Ha! I was beating you for a whole 20 minutes! At least that is what I thought as they screamed past me. I’ve never done a bike race before, but I really enjoyed it. There were about 90 police officers blocking every intersection on the route to make sure we never had to stop, which was neat. The race was organized really well. For a place with no mountains, the scenery was an 8 out of 10. I like looking at water, and the ride was around Clear Lake. The only hill was a bridge, at it is hard to complain about only one hill.

I probably went a little too fast on the bike, because the run was a joke. It was more of a walk than run. Whenever my heart rate hit 180 I would start walking until it got back down to 172. In short, I was only running about 1 minute in 3, and it took more than 25 minutes to go two miles. I would have been embarrassed if there weren’t so many people around me doing the same thing that also looked like they were about to pass out. A picture of me about to pass out:

Victory!


All in all I was really please with the race. They still haven’t posted results online, but I think I was 230ish out of 400, which I think is respectable. I’m looking forward to the next one.