Time to start looking down the road to September 14, 2008, when I'll take the starting line of the Nation's Triathlon and setting off for the swim in the lovely waters of the Potomac River. Let's see, that's 19 weeks away. If I train hard this summer maybe I can stay out of the ranks of the hindmost stragglers and make it up to the back of the middle of the pack.
I'm a 50-year-old adult-onset triathlete. I'm overweight, and relatively slow, but I keep plugging away at them and I usually get the job done. It's fun and it's the only thing that has kept me motivated enough to work out consistently for several years. Besides, I have twin 4-year-old daughters at home, and I have to keep active in order to keep up with them!
My first Olympic-distance triathlon was in May, 2005 at Columbia, Maryland, where I crossed the finish line 1205th out of 1227 finishers. I loved it. I was hooked. Since then I've done quite a few other triathlons, but the Olympic distance of 1500m swim, 24.8-mile bike, and 6.2-mile run has remained my favorite. Short enough that you can't sprint it, you aren't stuck in any one discipline for terribly long, short enough that you can walk relatively normally the day after, but long enough that you can still get a substantial workout and truly test yourself.
In less than two weeks I'll be taking on that challenging course in Columbia again for the fourth consecutive year. I'm just coming back from a very nasty bout of pneumonia this spring, and my lungs are still not quite right, so I'm still in the process of figuring out how I'm going to survive those tough hills. I'm in an evolving state of mind - first thinking that I'll just drop out at the end of the swim and chalk it up to open water swim practice; progressing to thinking I might as well take the bike out for a spin and get some unaccustomed hill training and bag it after that; to thinking that if I'm going to do that much work I might as well slog around the run course and pick up my medal at the finish line.
But if there's anything I have learned in triathlon, it's that you can never predict how a race will go. You can only get yourself to the starting line in the best shape you can with the limited time we all have, and then let the day unfold as it will. In my book, the finisher who has the most fun on the course wins.
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