Welcome back to the triathlon blog everyone’s been talking about! Was a rainy week here in Portland, but it’s all good and there is a lot of fitness out there for the claiming. Morale is high.
As promised, what I’m hoping to accomplish with this post is a brief outline of what y’all can look forward to over the coming year. Which races, in what exotic locations, involving which famous celebrities, and how many nights spent in my van...? Be warned, it’s actually not that brief at all. In fact, it was so long I decided to divide it into two separate posts. I realized I got a little carried away and hadn’t even mentioned a single specific race yet. So this is Pt. I – some thoughts on race types and distances, which certainly determines which ones I actually sign up for.
I realized I had some explaining to do before just throwing you all into the whirling, senseless maelstrom of my thoughts. So to answer a common question before I get into the deets for the season: how long is a triathlon? While every race is uniform in format (swim – bike – run, in that order; if it’s not, then it’s technically a different sport), they can be a variety of distances. The shortest ones are called sprint triathlons. Exact distances can vary, but these are short and sweet. Or not so sweet, because you pretty much have to red-line it the whole time. Very painful but a complete gas and so much fun. Extend things a bit and you have an Olympic-distance event, so named because that’s the distance they race at the Olympic Games. The standard length of an Olympic tri is a 1.5k swim, 40k bike and 10k run (for those not metrically inclined, that comes out to a 0.9 mile swim, 25 mile bike, and 6.2 mile run). These are also relatively short and fast.
Longer still and you have the half-iron distance, which is a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run. I switched over to the imperial system because the metrics of the half iron distance are just silly (89.6 km bike? Nobody knows what that means.) The longest of all, and only for the crazy-psychos out there, are the full length ironman races. These bad boys are twice as long as the half-irons, making them all-day affairs with the fastest pros generally finishing somewhere around 8 hours, depending on the course and conditions. If someone told me I had to swim a long ways, ride my bike 112 miles then get off and run a marathon, I’d tell them to quit joking around, because that ain’t funny. If they insisted, I’d be liable to get defensive, project my insecurities, stand there and cry, or some combination of the three. Suffice it to say, I’m not signing up for an ironman any time soon.
And believe it or not, it actually gets even longer. So if you just can’t get enough distance, take a look at these.
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| Swim start at the Norseman... in a fjord... in Norway. Give me a break. Photo courtesy of guyhuste.blogspot.com |
-Leadman Epic Tris – a bunch of crazies!
-Norseman Extreme Tri – what is wrong with these people?
-Ultraman Tris – no comment.
The question that usually follows: how long are the ones I do? And since this is a blog about me, after all (check the blog title), I feel it isn’t unreasonable for me to respond. I predominantly compete at the half-iron distance. And that is for two main reasons:
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| More or less what I look like in the open water. Although his race suit is better. Photo courtesy of bordom.net |
1. I’m not what you would call a “strong” swimmer. When you step up to this distance the swim becomes proportionally shorter, a good thing if you have never really been much of a fish. Which I haven’t. Also, I have more time on the bike and run to make up all the ground I lost in the water. I’ve pinpointed the problem: I have sinking legs. But I can’t seem to channel that
knowledge into a working solution. If you have ideas please send them my way.
2. I have a fragile body. I’ve been plagued by running injuries the last few years, usually forcing me to end my season prematurely and take a long break from running. I’ve never been able to put in the necessary miles to prepare for an ironman. Besides, those races are too long anyway. And I’m not a crazy-psycho.
But don’t be worried! I have been working hard on these two issues. I’m feeling faster in the pool, and have been slowly transitioning to a new running style that *hopefully* will allow me to run injury free. Can’t deny that there is a not-so-subtle irony here though, as I have been swimming since I was a wee-lad and I even raced a bit through junior high and high school. After years of hard work, I remain decidedly mediocre. On the other hand, despite a fragile constitution, and that it was the last sport I picked up, running is the strongest of my three disciplines. Who knows?
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| The pack I wouldn't be in. Photo courtesy of bleacherreport.com |
One final thing I consider in selecting a race is whether or not it is draft-legal. In most triathlons, you are not allowed to draft off other cyclists during the bike. This makes it purely a time-trial-type situation, where it is just you out there, riding alone in a one-man bubble. Allow drafting and all of a sudden the entire dynamic of the race changes. In a nutshell, if you can’t swim with the lead pack, then you get gapped coming out of the water. If you get gapped out of the water, you miss the main bike group. If you miss the main bike group, you ride by yourself. If you ride by yourself, you lose more and more time to the large “peleton” who has the advantage of working together. If you keep losing time to the peleton, you come off the bike in a bad, bad way. If you come off the bike in a bad, bad way, well, your race is pretty much over, and you should just cruise through the run like it’s your own, private, highly-spectated pub crawl. Take in the scenery, and think about what beer to order. Because after a long day by yourself, you’ve certainly earned a beer. Best thing is all the spectators are still there cheering - you are just nowhere near the action. It seems like they are really excited you are going to get that beer, but it’s the sympathy vote, really. All this to basically say, I’m not a good enough swimmer to have much success in draft-legal racing. Looks like a lot of fun, so maybe someday. But that day is not going to come anytime this season. Those boys can swim!
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| Where I'd be headed. And a pretty fair rendering of the ovation I'd receive on my way. Photo courtesy of mckinnonsirishpub.com |
So now that all of that is out of the way, what is lined up for this season? Basically, a bunch of non-drafting, half-ironmans in locations I can drive to. But more on that next time. Going to keep you all in suspended anticipation!
Train well!
Andrew
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