I am aluminium man
In some ways triathlon is a very simple sport - you turn up and try and swim
for a bit, cycle for a bit, then run for a bit. However if you think "I
could do that, where do I sign up?" you are then suddenly faced with a
multitude of choices in race distance - Super Sprint, Sprint, Olympic, Half
Ironman and Ironman. (Olympic distance is the one they do in the Olympics and
Iron Man is that film with Robert Downey Jr, boom boom.)
So I've fired a load of words at you without saying what these distances are. That's because they can actually vary from race to race - often it feels like they've decided to change the distance mid race so the finishing line gets further and further away as you head towards it.
For example, this year I took part in two Sprint races (it's a service I provide to make the slow competitors look like they are actually sprinting) which involved a 500m swim, a 26km cycle and a 5km run. However there is another local Sprint distance race that is actually 400m swim, a 20km cycle and a 4km run. Olympic distance races generally tend to be 1.5km swim, 40km cycle and 10km run. However an Olympic distance race I took part in this year had a 1km swim, with the remainder of the race sticking to the standard distances. And the year before that, when I took part in my very first triathlon, it was actually an 800m swim, a 30km cycle and a 7.5km run, so not actually any of the traditional distances. I know, pretty freaking crazy.
Anyway, the reason I've explained all that is to come back to my lack of commitment to running. For that first triathlon I put in a bit of running training but probably nothing more than 5km at a time. I just assumed that the adrenaline on the day would get me through it and I rely on my cycling prowess to save me from embarrassment. Luckily it did. So therefore I adopted the same attitude with my two sprint triathlons this year, thinking if I had been able to muddle through a 7.5km run at the end of a triathlon then 5km would be no problem.
Again I just about got away with it, although my running time, on average, was significantly slower on both occasions than my first race. Unfortunately this wasn't the case with the Olympic distance which was just plain awful. I finished, just about, but that is where I made the decision to work on my running for the coming season. To be continued...
So I've fired a load of words at you without saying what these distances are. That's because they can actually vary from race to race - often it feels like they've decided to change the distance mid race so the finishing line gets further and further away as you head towards it.
For example, this year I took part in two Sprint races (it's a service I provide to make the slow competitors look like they are actually sprinting) which involved a 500m swim, a 26km cycle and a 5km run. However there is another local Sprint distance race that is actually 400m swim, a 20km cycle and a 4km run. Olympic distance races generally tend to be 1.5km swim, 40km cycle and 10km run. However an Olympic distance race I took part in this year had a 1km swim, with the remainder of the race sticking to the standard distances. And the year before that, when I took part in my very first triathlon, it was actually an 800m swim, a 30km cycle and a 7.5km run, so not actually any of the traditional distances. I know, pretty freaking crazy.
Anyway, the reason I've explained all that is to come back to my lack of commitment to running. For that first triathlon I put in a bit of running training but probably nothing more than 5km at a time. I just assumed that the adrenaline on the day would get me through it and I rely on my cycling prowess to save me from embarrassment. Luckily it did. So therefore I adopted the same attitude with my two sprint triathlons this year, thinking if I had been able to muddle through a 7.5km run at the end of a triathlon then 5km would be no problem.
Again I just about got away with it, although my running time, on average, was significantly slower on both occasions than my first race. Unfortunately this wasn't the case with the Olympic distance which was just plain awful. I finished, just about, but that is where I made the decision to work on my running for the coming season. To be continued...
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