It seemed the unlikeliest of possibilities. My friend, Yi Shun, an adventure racer and all-around athletic person whom I most often viewed with amazement from the comfort of a barstool, frosty beverage in hand, believed that I could do a triathlon. My first instinct: “Are you mad?”
She wasn’t, and over the course of several drinks and follow-up emails, explained that she wasn’t suggesting an Ironman, just a sprint triathlon: a half-mile swim, twelve-mile bike, and a three-mile run. Easy-peasy for her, I scoffed, but I wasn’t sure if I could manage any one of those legs, never mind all three of them, one after the other. But Yi is a persuasive person, and some short time later, I found myself signing up for the tri. I trained two or three days a week, working with a swim trainer, biking around Central Park, or running with friends. As the date for the tri grew closer, we started combining workouts into “brick” sessions, piling one on top of the other—swimming followed by biking, a ride followed by a run.
Eventually, the great day arrived, and after a ridiculously early start, I dove into the water with a group of like-minded and similarly bathing-capped women, and started my first tri. Finished it, too, less than two hours later. It wasn’t pretty, and I wasn’t going to break any records, but I’d done it. Wouldn’t dream of calling myself a triathlete, though. That was for the elite racers, not me.
A year later, I did it again. If possible, it was even less pretty. I’d skipped most of the training this time, telling myself I didn’t need to worry about my form for a freestyle crawl—I could always breaststroke. I depended on the flatness of the terrain to get me through the bike ride, although the turn halfway through the ride nearly did me in, when the wind was no longer pushing me along but pressing against me. As for the “run”—let’s not even dignify my actions with the term run. I may have jogged for a few yards, but I walked those three miles, and was happy to cross the finish line in one piece.
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