Normally, I had been a runner most of my life. An average one really, as I’ve been doing half marathons once a year with a few other easier races. My best times have hovered around 1:40. Running on its own had been getting boring and I was avoiding what I was always bad at which was: swimming. I decided to bite the bullet and take adult swim lessons. I could barely swim 10 meters without stopping. I didn’t know how to breathe as stupid as that sounds. I thought it’d be great motivation if I signed up for my very first triathlon in June 2018 while I was taking lessons in January.
I decided on the Tri-A-Triathlon from the Subaru Series in Guelph because I had heard the swimming was not too bad. So it would start off with a swim of 375 m , onto the bike for 10 km, and finally a run of 2.5 km. I mentioned it to my swimming instructor and he didn’t really seem confident that I should have done that. Granted, the equivalent swim of 375 m is about 15 lengths of the pool of which I could only do 4 when I told him. But that was ok! I had a few months left to improve. Swimming was really my only concern.
I was almost ready! I initially was going to use my old mountain bike from grade 7 because I mean, how much worse could I do if I didn’t have a road bike? I mentioned this to my boss at the time and she said ‘You’ve lost already.’ Well, I was convinced. Time to invest in this new adventure. A few weeks before the race, I bought a road bike. I could now swim 400 m without stopping in the pool. Time to race!
I had reached out to my friends to see who else would want to do it and I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was a lot of interest! I completed it all in just under 50 minutes. My goal was just to finish and I was happy. I didn’t drown! Pictured here are my friends who also all did their first triathlons with me. It was an amazing experience but I wouldn’t say we’re heroes like the banner in the picture.
I had a great time doing the first race with no real training plan. This year however, I have decided to sign up for the Sprint Triathlon which has about double the distances. I will be updating my journey to train for it using a 12 week program in this blog. If you are new to triathlons, join me in my struggle!
-Adam