Why Do I Do Triathlons?

I am asked this often.

One could argue that I'm too old at 50, the gear is expensive, entry fees and traveling costs are expensive, training takes so much time, traveling to and from events takes so much time, it's self-indulgent, it's "out there."

I offered an attempt at an answer about a year ago in a High-Tech Athlete Profile for Handshake 2.0.

Let me try again by working backwards, from present to past, a reverse timeline:

• I am signed up to do 5 triathlons during the 2009 Virginia Triathlon Series.  I have a paid coach, Kati Derrick, a two-time Lousiville Ironman-finisher, and a personal trainer, Don Belote.  I do 5 to 6 workouts per week, 1 to 2.5 hours each.

• I asked Don Belote, my personal trainer at The Weight Club, if he could use one word to describe me when he first began working with me in July, 2006, what it would be.  He answered, "Fragile."

• I discovered I had three training speeds:  all out, recovery from all out, and daydreaming.

• I began circuit training with Don Belote in January, 2009.

• During the 2008 Virginia Triathlon Series, I planned to do one sprint triathlon as a relay with friends, and one sprint triathlon as a milestone before I turned 50.  I ended up doing one relay and five triathlons, finishing 6th overall in Virginia in my age group, although I often finished near the end of a race with over 600 participants.  Obviously, a factor in the standings is the number of races one completes.  I completed. 

• I became engaged to a guy the day after I saw him participate in the 2007 Angels Race, a sprint triathlon held in Lynchburg, Virginia.  At age 53, he came in 44 out of 188 men.  I said, "Yes," to Clark Kent.

• I met a bespectacled, mild-mannered guy who told me he had done a sprint triathlon the previous year and was getting ready to do his first full sprint triathlon season.  He was 52 when I met him and I felt a little sorry for him, thinking a red convertible might be a better antidote to his mid-life crisis.

• When I decided to move from Tampa, Florida back to my hometown of Blacksburg, Virginia, I scanned the faces of the personal trainers on The Weight Club's site. I wanted the one who appeared to know the most about strength training, life, and pain.  I chose Don Belote.  I have had a weekly appointment with him since July, 2006.

• I learned I have an extreme ability to dissociate, to separate myself from my experience, to be able to "do" without consciousness of what I feel.  This would be the opposite of full presence in the moment.  Halved is the opposite of oneness.

• I saw a film on chronic pain sufferers - for which no medical solutions could be found - who were escorted slowly down the hall at the University of Massachusetts Medical School to Jon Kabat-Zinn.  Cried.  Started meditation lessons.

• I showed up on the doorstep of Fitwise, a personal fitness center in Tampa, Florida, owned by Dan Wall, on the first week day of January, 2005.  He told me later I seemed "defeated."  I began full body weight training to make "a tree trunk of muscle."

• I consulted an orthopedist for my back injury.  He told me to create "a tree trunk of muscle" in which my spine could rest.

• I developed a nightmare condition that left me awakening in terror all night, every hour, in 2002.  My physician advised me to "wear myself out" in the day.

• I began the chronic pain sufferer's classic search for relief:  test after test after test, prescriptions, physical therapy, injections, massage, reiki, prayer from me, prayer for me. 

• I was making a bed in December 1998, lifted the corner of the mattress, felt stabbed in the back, and was bed-ridden.  The diagnosis:  a "bulging disc."  I began an almost 10-year stint with new pain.

• I qualified for the state track meet in 1977 in the shot put.

• When the weight room was moved from the boys' locker room in the old high school to a co-ed space in the new Blacksburg High School, the athletic director required a permission note from my mother before I would be allowed to lift weights.

• I tore a hamstring in 1970 while slipping doing a handspring on wet grass in front of Margaret Beeks Elementary School, Blacksburg, Virginia.  I became what is now termed a chronic pain sufferer.

***

Since triathlon as a sport is only 25 years old, very few can say, "I've always been a triathlete."  Most adults came to the sport from having been a swimmer, cyclist, or runner.

I came to the sport from weight lifting.  Because of a guy.

What I have discovered, to my continuing awe and relief, is that, for me, extreme chronic pain responds to extreme training. 

I work hard so I'm "worn out."  Nightmares must work harder than I do these days. 

I co-exist with the discomfort of sitting and ironically, cannot lift boxes or sweep floors without re-injuring myself.

But, the stronger I get - the more oak-like my "tree trunk" becomes - the more my spine can stretch out, ease the pinch on its bulging disc, and rest.

That said, if I were not a chronic pain sufferer, I hope I would have found triathlon somehow.

I got tears in my eyes when I wrote that.

Why do I do triathlons?  Because when I train, when I race, I am with me.  Not halved.  Whole.

Comments

[Kati]

That is exactly what I was thinking while racing yesterday - racing and training makes me find the "ME" that I often lose in the day to day shuffle. Thanks for sharing!!!

[Anne Clelland]

Yes, Coach Kati, you have helped inspired me, too, to see triathlon training in personally enhancing ways. Thank you!