A Look Back

           We’ve all been there before…a time when we were total newbies without a clue as to what this whole triathlon thing was all about.  When we didn’t know the difference between a low end road bike and a high end tri bike (other than the ridiculous price tag on the latter), when we couldn’t tell you what RPE, OWS, or Z 1-5 stood for, and when we had no idea what periodization, base work, or speed work was. There’s a lot that can be gleaned from those beginning days, so here is a look back at where it all started for me.

I played team sports all through high school and a little bit in college, but after that was all over, I needed a competitive outlet so I picked up the sport that my parents had long been involved in…running. A few years later, I saw an advertisement for the Santa Rosa Island Triathlon and thought it sounded like a pretty cool challenge. Despite the fact that I had never swam more than taking a few lessons when I was little and splashing around in the pool or at the beach and the fact that I didn’t own a bike, I signed up.

            First task was to get a bike so my husband and I headed over to the bike shop and picked one out. I got a Trek hybrid bike and couldn’t believe that I paid $400 for a bike J!  Now all I had to do was work up to riding 12 miles (it was a shorter course that year). My biggest concern was whether or not I could sit on a bike seat for that long which looking back now is so funny cause that seat was HUGE.  I remember exploring my neighborhood and eventually working up the courage to go out onto the real roads.

            When I started looking for a place to swim, I was excited when I realized that the University of West Florida, where I was taking classes, had one of the best in the area and I had free access to it. I had no idea what I was doing and I would just swim back and forth as many times as I could and hope that I could do more the next time.

            Running of course came naturally, but running after riding a bike, whoa that was weird. My legs felt like jelly, I didn’t know how people ran 3 miles after riding their bikes, it seemed impossible. The more I did it though, the more I got used to it, or at least I realized that if I made it past a mile my legs felt semi-normal.

           

Coming from having been a runner for a few years I was used to being active 4-5 days a week, but I could not believe that people would sometimes do two workouts a day, especially two workouts back to back…these people were crazy. My training wasn’t structured at all, just haphazardly swimming, biking, or running a couple of times a week each. I found out about mere mortals who were meeting at the beach every Sunday to train so I started showing up and it became the highlight of my week.

I learned so much training for that first triathlon (and even more since). I learned the difference between bike and tri shorts and that the former are NOT made for swimming in, I learned (very quickly) that when someone wants to pass you on their bike they yell “on your left” and then come flying by, I learned that swimming in the ocean wasn’t as scary as I thought, I learned how to eat and drink while riding my bike, I learned what T1 and T2 stood for, I leaned that hybrid bikes are not made for triathlons (and quickly upgraded to a road bike) and most importantly I learned that I didn’t have to be the fastest out there to have fun.  When I finally got to the race, I ended up finishing dead last in my age group (blame it on the bike J) but I had such a good time that it barely mattered. That is a lesson that is easy to forget, but as I approach the very race that started this whole journey off without having been able to run for the last four weeks due to ITB issues I’m reminded of how lucky I am just to be able to be out there.