There was no swelling orchestral music in the background when I picked myself up, after falling within sight of the finish line of my first triathlon. Because it was being run by the “Rock’n’Roll”-branded event company, there almost certainly was music, and it was probably some shitty John Cougar song, but I didn’t hear music. I just heard myself swearing, mostly at the uncoordinated jackass who ran into me at the last sharp turn into the finishing chute. He just barged into me to keep his balance, and kept right on going. When I finished rolling, and the laser beams failed to shoot out of my eyes to incinerate him, I pushed myself off the spongy mat that had softened my fall but scarred my knee, and ran the last fifty yards and across the finish line with the energy I had left.

Exactly a year earlier, I had talked my wife and parents into a trip to Austin, just to watch them compete, mostly to check out how the swimming leg of it worked. I’m a decent swimmer, but I had never tried to swim a half-mile, let alone in an open lake, and frankly the idea scared the crap out of me. The four of us stood on the sidewalk of the Congress Street bridge (closed for the race) and watched waves of men and women in a crayola box of swim caps (to group them by age) crawl from buoy to buoy. Some looked like machines coursing through the water. Others flailed at the water with less competence.  The sight of kayaks spaced out every few yards watching over the swimmers gave me a huge sense of relief, and committed me to being in the splashing mass the following year. 

Even before a person jumps off the dock into the water to begin the swim, a triathlon is a surreal experience. I have literally NEVER been in a place where so many people looked exactly like me. I’ve only done a couple of races, all in Austin, but from my experience, three-quarters of male triathletes are reasonably fit white guys with buzz cut hair. The only way you can tell the thirties guys from the forties guys is by how grey the fuzz at their temples is. A few of us didn’t have tribal-band tattoos. The next year I competed, my parents came down to watch, and my mom and dad decided they’d just cheer for everyone, in the statistical likelihood that one of them had to be me. 

So I stood in a crowd of hundreds of other Kevins, Brads, Chads, Thads, Brents and Brians until it was our turn to, one by one, jump into the water and swim away, like baby turtles, to face the dangers of the open water, mainly bumping into other swimmers not paying attention. Some races start with entire groups all at once, and I am glad not to have been in one yet, as I do not enjoy being kicked in the face. Swimming out a hundred yards from shore is an instantly sobering experience, and was a real test of nerve for me. Even in my prep year, I’d only been able to swim in a local river, which wasn’t much wider than an olympic size pool. I had to work hard to get my adrenaline and breath under control, and start the slow, steady stroke I had practiced all those early mornings at the local pool. One trick I’ve always told myself to counter the fear of big open water, is that there is no difference between seven foot deep and seventy foot deep water: they’re  both over my head. So as the bottom of the lake dropped away, I focused on the seven feet below me, and “just kept swimming.” 

There are entire courses you can take to learn the art of triathlon transitioning, so as to not lose precious time. I watched a couple YouTube videos and tried to stay out of that rabbit hole, rationalizing that if I got to transition, I hadn’t drowned, and that was a victory in itself. Honestly, it’s not that hard to dry your feet off on a little towel and strap your helmet on. I suppose an elite performer pushing her metabolism to the edge might save a second by having shoes clipped to their bike pedals already, but once you have to remember to leave your bifocals in your helmet, the word elite loses all meaning.

There are no interesting stories about the cycling section of a triathlon. Everyone gets on the bike they overpaid for, because it’s easier to pay for a lighter bike than lose the weight and train harder, and sets off at a pace they’ve pre planned based upon hours of previous riding. All triathletes are nerds with a little computer/speedometer on the bar that they just stare at like a bunch of WhatsApping teens, only sweatier and breathing heavier, possibly. It depends upon how a person uses WhatsApp, I suppose. So depending upon the length of the course, you get off the bike thirty to sixty minutes later, with swollen thighs, change your shoes, and try to remember how to move without wheels. Watching the first fifty yards outside of the bike-run transition is Benny Hill funny. Everyone looks like they should be able to run, but they’re still trying to rewire from the trance the bike put them into. Also your legs are really tired. People spend a lot of money on specialty-built triathlon bikes with the seat and pedals positioned to preserve their running muscles. I don’t know if they work. I don’t have one of those. Everyone waddles like a duck for fifty meters. 

Between the end of the duck-running zone and the being pushed over by a youngster zone, I had three-thousand meters of what I remember as the “it’s too hot and I’m tired” zone. As I’ve mentioned before, I run like a metronome. I can literally set my legs to a beats per minute number and just go. I don’t like to listen to music when I run, because in my brain, every run is a reenactment of the movie Apollo 13. My body is a capsule moving through a hostile environment, and I’m just checking from gauge to gauge to see what’s going to try to kill me next. Calf tightness, nominal; heart rate, yellow alert; low-back posture, slouchy – tighten it up for the curve; knee creak, holding at level-six for now. Airline pilots trying to ditch in the Hudson have fewer checklists than I do during a three mile run. 

One way to tell what races are owned and organized by runners versus non-competitors is what order people give you things after you cross a finish line. If the order is drink, banana, medal, the hosts have actually finished races; If it’s medal, drink, banana, they haven’t. Who the FUCK wants to be approached face to face by a stranger who hangs extra weight around their neck? Even Han and Luke got to clean up and eat a damn banana first. Afterwards, I wandered around the grassy plaza, eating my medal, with my banana hanging around my neck, until it was time to go get my bike and head home.

Carrying the bike to the top floor of the parking garage made me wish I’d paid the money for the lighter bike.