Tri hard

About 13 years ago some work colleagues of mine thought that it would be a good thing to do a triathlon together. They proposed that we enter the BRW Corporate Cup event with each of us completing one of the legs. They’d volunteered for the run and the bike legs and suggested that perhaps I’d like to do the swim for them. Foolishly I agreed. I say foolishly because I hadn’t really done any swimming and apparently I didn’t really start doing any prior to the event because ‘it’s only 400m’.
As the day of the event drew closer, it came out in conversation that they’d not entered us in the team sprint event, but had in fact entered us in the main event where each person completes the entire race.
Now at this point, panicking and doing a bit of training probably would have been better than the approach which I took, which was to say ‘oh shit’ and yet do nothing.
On the day of the event, my two team mates did admirably and then passed over to myself. I managed to complete about half the swim before resorting to less effective than freestyle strokes (yes, I did side-stroke some of the swim) partially because I’d swum so far of course that I probably added another 50m to it. I staggered out of the water to the bike transition where I was abused by my team mates because I was taking the time to put socks on.
On the back leg of the bike ride I was seriously forced to consider what the protocol was for vomiting whilst riding a bike. Was it lean left and pedal or get off and hurl? Fortunately I never found out. Whilst abusing my team mates at the half point of the ride I nearly ran over a marshall and when it came to the run, well there was a little bit of walking involved.
Overall we completed the event in under 3 hours but I was informed that just because we did that didn’t mean that we’d each completed it in under an hour. It was quite a point of note.
Although I’d survived the triathlon, I swore never to do another one as long as I lived.
Anyway, having been conned into the Corporate Cup run and City to Bay last year, this year the same group from my client suggested that we tackle, you guessed it, the BRW Corporate Cup Triathlon. Stupid said yes.
This time, I trained. I even went through a couple of practice triathlons with friends to make sure that I’d be ready. I bought elastic laces, I practised transitions and I was determined not to be the one that was being abused in the transition area for putting socks on. The same cannot be said for my comrades. This time around, I was determined to post a time that I’d be happy with where as they were both of the ‘finishing is the goal’ mindset. I tried not to give them too much shit for it.
I opted to go second, to avoid the thrash and bash in the water at the start and so I had a clear run into the water to start (especially since by the time our first competitor came through (he’d breast stroked the swim and then completed the ride on a Big W mountain bike) there weren’t too many teams hanging around the team transition area. I managed to over take a couple of people in the swim, had good transitions and had a good solid ride on the bike. In fact, of the people that completed the triathlon on the same leg as I did, I had the 23rd fastest swim and 26th fastest ride of the 147 or so people competing. If the event had stopped there, I would have been ecstatic about my place. As it happens, there’s the run leg on the back end that has to be added to it. I didn’t quite manage to fare so well in that part. I overtook plenty of people as I ran, but also had a couple overtake me as well. I needed some better motivation I think to kick my run harder earlier in that phase.
In the end I completed my section in 44:33 which I was more than happy with given I’d set myself a target of about 50 mins. The distances weren’t quite what was advertised in the ride and run which helped, but it meant that I’d been about on target and so walked away happy.
Far from my reaction of never again the first time, this time around I’m actually a little disappointed that I don’t get to do it again in say 2 weeks to try and improve on that time! Maybe next year.