When I was a teenager, there was a neighborhood kid in his early 20s who would run 100 mile races. Not only did he run them, he would finish top 15 consistently. (Part of me wonders now if there were only 15 people signed up for those races…) My brother and I thought he was the coolest dude ever and we asked him if he was going to get sponsored. He said he was too young and that peak endurance athletes are between 30-35.
Whether or not that is true, that has been the bar I set in my mind for when my body will begin to just decay into nothing. So I wanted to add to my Live to 100 list to do “an incredible physical feat before age 35”.
In high school I swam competitively, and currently I love biking, so I thought my best option would be to do a triathlon. However, I have always been a bit nervous about the swim in open, murky water. So when I came across a triathlon in Cancun, Mexico with the swim taking place in a clear bay used for snorkeling, I signed up.
At the time, my family and I had just moved to Querétaro, Mexico for work so the timing was great. We lived in a 30 story apartment building that had an indoor lap pool that I could train in anytime. Our neighborhood was fairly large and felt very safe, so I could run outside. The only problem was I didn’t have my road bike with me (it was back in Kansas City) and even if I did, I didn’t dare ride my bike on any street in Mexico. So I told myself, for now I could just use the stationary bike at the apartment gym and then rent a bike in Cancun. So I began training.
I had previously injured myself doing running training, so I gave myself 6 additional weeks prior to starting the 6 month training program I found, so that I could slowly work into running exercises and the strain on my body. After that I began training for all three.
My first time on the stationary bike at the gym, the seat would not go high enough for me and it was one of those enormous cushiony seats that make it very uncomfortable to bike properly. So after looking like I was riding a BMX bike, I had to change my strategy. On top of that, I called all the bike rental places I could find and no one carried the size I needed. (Considering the average height of men in Mexico is exactly 1′ shorter than I am, I probably should have seen that coming.) I started looking at some of the retail stores, but really didn’t want to spend an extra $800 dollars, or more, on a bike. So I had to table that for the moment and just get some sort of bike exercise in on the stationary BMX.
A few weeks later at a kids birthday party, I met a guy named Pancho (Francisco), and I mentioned I was training for this race. Truthfully, I don’t even remember talking to him about the bike, but he texted me a week later and said he had a friend with a bike that might fit me. Freaking sure enough, this dude had a XXL road bike sitting in the back of his garage gathering dust. Had to be the only XXL in all of Mexico. He said I was welcome to train with it as long as I needed! I still didn’t trust the roads in Mexico, and most of my training was at night anyways, so I bought a bike training stand and just trained in my apartment. Bam! Now I could do my full training plan for this triathlon.
My training mostly took place after 8pm each day because I had to leave early for work and wouldn’t get home some days until after 7. So for several months all I did was literally eat, sleep, work, train. It was probably a good thing I had this though because work was pretty stressful so I needed that time to get healthy and feel normal.
As the race approached I started doing combo workouts on Saturdays and would rest on Sundays. I could tell I was getting better at swimming and running by how I felt and how much I was able to achieve. However, biking was a bit of a mystery. I was only putting in time, not miles. The bike trainer does have the ability to increase resistance and I was increasing my time on the bike, but it isn’t the same as the variation of effort you put in while riding on a road. So I had to just trust that it was enough.
Race week came and it was time to pack up. We were flying to Cancun from Querétaro so I needed to check my bike. I found a bike box at a local bike shop and it had all the protective padding already in it which was helpful. I thought flying with a big box like that would be difficult, but it ended up being pretty smooth since I only needed to take the box from the curb to the counter!
We decided to go to Cancun a few days early so our kids could have a vacation out of it. It’s way cheaper flying inside Mexico than it is to fly there from the States. So we partied at the beach and drank at least 100 limonadas, then it was race day.
The night before was gear check in, which means you bring your bike and anything else you want to the transition area so that the morning of the race goes smooth. The energy even that night was awesome, I was starting to feel pumped.
The next morning I got up really early and drove to Xel-Ha for the race. There were tons of people and the lines for the bathrooms were ultra long (if you know, you know). I got my swim stuff on and then walked to the waiting area. They were calling each group by estimated swim time and I was the green group. I was just standing there doing some stretches and stuff and realized I didn’t see any other green group swim caps. So I ran towards where the swim was taking place and just barely caught my group before they started haha how lame would that have been?? The swim had a floating bridge for the start and was in the most awesome clear water bay. As soon as I started swimming there was fish and cool rock formations to look at, which made the swim so cool. I felt like I did pretty well on the swim but forgot to turn on my watch, ya rookie! However, my transition was so slow to get on the bike. I’m pretty sure I was the only one without clipless pedals and I just took forever to get my socks on.
Once I was on the bike it was pretty clear that I had not done enough bike training. Everyone that I got ahead of on the swim quickly smoked me on the bike. They were all drafting and had fancy shoes and must have had safer roads to train on because they made me look like I was riding a tricycle. Luckily, partway through the ride a group of 2 dudes picked me up in their draft and I was able to get into a good rhythm for 5 or 10 miles out of the 24.
After the ride, I thought my legs still felt pretty decent and my bike to run transition was much better. At the start of the run I needed my watch going because I used it to give me my pace. But I couldn’t for the life of me get it to respond correctly because my hands were so sweaty and the touch screen did not like that. I took me a good 5 minutes to get it going which messed with my rhythm getting started. After that, I got into the run, but about 3 miles in I just hit a wall. I had my energy gels and stuff, but I think I just hadn’t done enough bike to run training and it was brutal. Up until that point, the run had been one of my stronger training categories but now I found myself stopping and walking multiple times. It didn’t help that by this point in the race, the sun was up and it was full humidity slap to the face. Finally after my second lap on the course I was heading for the finish line and it was over. I finished with a time of 3:07:00 overall. I was a little bit bummed because I had trained to hit 2:47:00, but in the end I think I didn’t realize how hard the run was going to be and I was way over my training times for a 10k.
For some reason, I had told myself during training that when I finished the race, I would yell triumphantly or something epic that would look cool in slow motion. So when I finally finished the race I yelled “Yes!!” and kinda did a flex looking thing. It definitely didn’t feel that epic or look that cool hahahaha. But, when I was sitting in the ice bath they had, I definitely felt like I had just done something really amazing. I had swam a mile, biked 24 miles, and ran 6 all together in 3 hours. The energy was really cool in the athlete section because everyone knew they had all just accomplished something awesome. It was so fun to hang out for a while just in that area where no one else was allowed and talk about the race with each other. They had massage tables sent from heaven, tons of food, and the mega ice bath.
After the race I was way hyped on triathlons and started reading more about how to train better, eat better, etc. My next goal was to do the half Ironman, which to me felt like the major athletic accomplishment I had written down on my list. Unfortunately, I had a foot injury from running and that has kept me away from running since. So overall, I am a little disappointed and feel like I didn’t quite achieve what I had written down as my goal to do an incredible physical feat before I turned 35. I am glad I put an age limit on my goal though, otherwise I don’t think I would have been on the lookout for the Olympic triathlon in Cancun Mexico. And I will be adding another amazing physical feat goal to do before I’m 40 to my Live to 100 list.
