HALF AN IRON MAN: My First Triathlon—May 9, 2009

  This is more than you want to know about what I’m into.  This is the narcissism of our age—blogocissism.  Absolva me, absolva me.  I’ve got to tell you; a lot of you have asked.  At the end of a study leave week at Billy Graham’s “Cove” in Asheville, NC, I traveled south to Panama City Beach, FL.  Panama City has been host for the last twenty-seven years to the Gulf Coast Triathlon—a half iron man event of 1.2 miles swimming, 56 miles cycling, and 13.1 miles running.  About 1,045 men and women, from “age-groupers” to “professionals” assembled for the agony.  Some turned it into a relay just to dish the pain around.  Some of us wanted the pain all to ourselves.

 

THE SWIM—1.2 miles / My time: 50:33 minutes

   The swim was in high rolling surf followed by interminable choppiness.  If you don’t breathe right, you’re gagged by Gulf salt water.  At the start line—the Gulf’s edge—loud speakers blared an old Rolling Stone’s hit, “Start Me Up.”  At the signal, I went in very conservatively, sans wetsuit—I didn’t have one.  This conservative way means letting all the day glow-green-capped guys go in first.  No sense getting beat up in the mass entrance.  The surf was enough bashing.  I was saving myself for the rest of the day’s fun.

 

   “Speedon’t”  I swam “old school” in my swim team Speedo brief.  Friends, this isn’t anything you really want to see.  In the early sixties, this was how we dressed for swim meets in Southern California.  It seemed practical enough that day, and a signal to my friend Conrad that the water was perfect—no wetsuit needed.  He swam fully dressed anyway, and beat me!  Back to the “practicality”—this came in the transitions.  From swimming to biking all I had to do was slip on the padded bike shorts.  In the biking to running transition all I had to do was change from bike shorts to running shorts.  Since all this changing was to be done in public, the Speedo brief seemed the modest strategy.  I have since been advised that there is a single pair of triathlon shorts that can be worn for all three elements: swimming, biking, and running.  Now that is a modest invention.  I’m buying a pair. 

 

THE BIKE—56 miles / My time: 3:11:38 hours at 17.5 mph

   The bike ride was fabulous under scattered high clouds, and I felt good throughout.  I fueled carefully (the smart science of Hammer Nutrition), and I hydrated properly.  My watch alarm signaled every fifteen minutes to sip a bit from my Perpetuem® fuel bottle, and then chase it down with water.  Remember the Dream Bar ice cream dessert?  My fuel tasted like a luke-warm melted Dream Bar.  I also choked down broad-spectrum electrolyte capsules.  I think they worked but next time I’ll just mix the stuff in my fuel bottle.  All this sounds so complicated compared to the 14 or so “Gatorade-and-go” marathons I’ve done.  But at the end of the day, I was glad for the nutritional science that helped me to last, though I wasn’t very fast.

 

   Some of the riders amazed me.  Flat tires within the first miles—amazing!  (My tires are three years old; stock stuff from the day of purchase in ‘06).  Tires blow because the super-competitive super-inflate their tires.  The solid-er the tire, the more efficiently power moves you forward instead of being soaked up by a lowly inflated 120 lb. per square inch tube.  Makes sense.  But changing a blown tire on the roadside seems to me to soak up a lot of time.  The bike gear amazed me: special bars with elbow rests, streamlined helmets, wind-tunnel tested bike frames, and rear wheels called “disks”—solid carbon fiber wheels and spokeless.  I’m told that the disk cuts wind resistance and can even give a sail-like effect to the ride.  Cheaters!  Mine is a very adequate Trek 5000 of carbon fiber construction.  But my bike had none of the aforementioned extras.  On the road big bright orange pylons—you-can’t-miss-‘em cones—kept riders safe from busy traffic in the congested areas.  But I clipped one in a moment of inattention, then flattened another in yet another lapse.  Amazing!  I was wide awake the rest of the ride but no quicker; suffered no flat tires. 

 

THE RUN—13.1 miles / My time: 3:05:43 hours at 14:39 pace per mile

   What happened here?  From the beginning my run felt lifeless; my legs useless.  I was not sore or tight or hurting (the magic of Perpetuem®?).  I was just drained and weak; sapped.  So my half-marathon was a run-walk-run.  Not pretty.  Should have had more 7-hour workouts during the winter/early spring.  My longest workout would have been a 5-hour swim-bike-shortrun.  So I guess what I felt at the start of the half-marathon was the “wall.”  I must have hit it the instant I got off the bike; just didn’t know it.

 

TRANSITIONS—there are two of these guys: one transition follows the swim, the other follows the bike ride.  I transitioned slowly.  The first was 8:33 minutes and the second was 14:20 minutes (I could not find a single porta-john with tissue in the transition area.)  Hey, it’s all part of the “fun.”  Plus, like I said earlier, I’m getting a pair of triathlon shorts to speed through the transitions. 

 

The Aftermath

  There were a dozen or so participants from the greater Shoals area: Todd Allen (thanks for the Hammer Nutrition advice, Todd!), Adam and Tanya Collum, Pauline Bullard, Kevin Hutcheson, Jan, Linda Brewer, Conrad Pitts, Lance Willis, and I.  In Florida they don’t add an “s” to my last name like they do here in the Shoals (it's BaskiN, not BaskinS--don't worry, I'll remind you).  So I really enjoyed the finish line a little more.  I guess you don’t get the epithet shouted at you (“You are an Iron Man!”) until you complete the full iron man at twice the distance.  But I once heard a guy in an L.A. airport speak religiously--gazily--about his experience swimming, biking, and running the full iron man (Arizona Iron Man). Californians are like that.  I guess being half an iron man is spiritual enough for me.  It’s good being half…an iron man. 

  Larry